1.THREAD: The Twitter Files
Twitter and the FBI “Belly Button” pic.twitter.com/nfOGQGlvUM— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
https://t.co/BcFhHCvjAE February, 2020, as COVID broke out, the Global Engagement Center – a fledgling analytic/intelligence arms of the State Department – went to the media with a report called, “Russian Disinformation Apparatus Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Concerns.” pic.twitter.com/KjUeE8vejt
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
5.State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular U.S. ZeroHedge, claiming the episode “led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.” ZH had done reports speculating that the virus had lab origin. pic.twitter.com/JlIobPzAFE
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
7.“YOU HAVEN’T MADE A RUSSIA ATTRIBUTION IN SOME TIME” When Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub complained Twitter hadn’t “made a Russia attribution” in some time, Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth said it was “revelatory of their motives.” pic.twitter.com/zByT5aCaBo
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
9.Twitter was also trying to reduce the number of agencies with access to Roth. “If these folks are like House Homeland Committee and DHS, once we give them a direct contact with Yoel, they will want to come back to him again and again,” said policy director Carlos Monje. pic.twitter.com/ytvK532j4M
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
11.The GEC report appeared based on DHS data circulated earlier that week, and included accounts that followed “two or more” Chinese diplomatic accounts. They reportedly ended up with a list “nearly 250,000” names long, and included Canadian officials and a CNN account: pic.twitter.com/GYi4YuPdyu
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
13.The GEC was soon agreeing to loop in Twitter before going public, but they were using a technique that had boxed in Twitter before. “The delta between when they share material and when they go to the press continues to be problematic,” wrote one comms official. pic.twitter.com/ONn9BfYybi
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
15.“IT MAKES SENSE TO PUSH BACK ON GEC PARTICIPATION IN THIS FORUM” When the FBI informed Twitter the GEC wanted to be included in the regular “industry call” between companies like Twitter and Facebook and the DHS and FBI, Twitter leaders balked at first. pic.twitter.com/S4aUMXW2ed
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
17.A deeper reason was a perception that unlike the DHS and FBI, which were “apolitical,” as Roth put it, the GEC was “political,” which in Twitter-ese appeared to be partisan code.
“I think they thought the FBI was less Trumpy,” is how one former DOD official put it. pic.twitter.com/y33deYO50B
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
19.When senior lawyer Stacia Cardille tried to argue against the GEC’s inclusion to the FBI, the words resonated “with Elvis, not Laura,” i.e. with agent Elvis Chan, not Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) unit chief Laura Dehmlow: pic.twitter.com/zOfVr8VlRx
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
21.Roth reached out to Chan with concerns about letting the “press-happy” GEC in, expressing hope they could keep the “circle of trust small.” pic.twitter.com/17qLQFldVj
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
23.”BELLY BUTTON” “We can give you everything we’re seeing from the FBI and USIC agencies,” Chan explained, but the DHS agency CISA “will know what’s going on in each state.” He went on to ask if industry could “rely on the FBI to be the belly button of the USG.” pic.twitter.com/CHiCsZJBAh
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
25.Twitter was taking requests from every conceivable government body, beginning with the Senate Intel Committee (SSCI), which seemed to need reassurance Twitter was taking FBI direction. Execs rushed to tell “Team SSCI” they zapped five accounts on an FBI tip: pic.twitter.com/hWnkOX292C
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
27.They also received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned. Here, the office for Democrat and House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff asks Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry: pic.twitter.com/SXI1ekqi13
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
29.Twitter honored almost everyone else’s requests, even those from GEC – including a decision to ban accounts like @RebelProtests and @BricsMedia because GEC identified them as “GRU-controlled” and linked “to the Russian government,” respectively: pic.twitter.com/OQjQuKTzTO
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
31.Remember the 2017 “internal guidance” in which Twitter decided to remove any user “identified by the U.S. intelligence community” as a state-sponsored entity committing cyber operations? By 2020 such identifications came in bulk. pic.twitter.com/OrSC1uwgm8
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
https://t.co/8CuYA5AmvV brief report, sent right after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year, flagged major Russian outlets like Vedomosti and https://t.co/DEZHKl0MPQ. Note the language about “state actors” fits Twitter’s internal guidance. pic.twitter.com/ken4c2Y9MJ
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
35.They were even warned about publicity surrounding a book by former Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokhin, who alleged “corruption by the U.S. government” – specifically by Joe Biden. pic.twitter.com/EWdl5L2IpG
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
37.“I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR WORK LOAD”: Requests poured in from FBI offices all over the country, day after day, hour after hour: If Twitter didn’t act quickly, questions came: “Was action taken?” “Any movement?” pic.twitter.com/KAu2YesocC
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
https://t.co/08M51rg2BM all led to the situation described by @ShellenbergerMD two weeks ago, in which Twitter was paid $3,415,323, essentially for being an overwhelmed subcontractor.
Twitter wasn’t just paid. For the amount of work they did for government, they were underpaid.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
40.For more on the #TwitterFiles, check out @BariWeiss, @ShellenbergerMD, @LHFang, and @davidzweig. For more on this story, read https://t.co/otqYK3tD7c
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023