INTRODUCTION
The Twitter Files are a set of internal Twitter, Inc. documents that were made public, starting in December 2022, by CEO Elon Musk, journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and authors Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig and Alex Berenson shortly after Musk acquired Twitter on October 27, 2022. Taibbi and Weiss coordinated the release of the documents with Twitter management, releasing the details of the files as a series of Twitter threads.
The first installment, by Taibbi, included content related to Twitter's moderation process regarding a New York Post article on the Hunter Biden laptop controversy. The second installment, by Weiss, addressed what Musk and others have described as the shadow banning of some users. The third installment, by Taibbi, highlighted events within Twitter leading to Donald Trump's suspension from Twitter. The fourth installment, by Shellenberger, covered how Twitter employees reacted to the January 6 United States Capitol attack and the conflict within Twitter on how to moderate tweets and users supporting the attack. The fifth installment, by Weiss, covered how Twitter employees influenced the decision to ban Trump from the platform. The sixth installment, by Taibbi, described how the FBI contacted Twitter to suggest that action be taken against several accounts for allegedly spreading election disinformation. In the seventh installment, Shellenberger claimed the FBI and the intelligence community interacted with Twitter employees to moderate the coverage of the New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop.
The releases have prompted debate over the nature of blacklisting, vows for congressional investigation, calls for the full release of all documents for the sake of transparency, and calls to improve content moderation processes at Twitter.
After the first set of Files was published, many technology journalists wrote that the reported evidence did not demonstrate much more than Twitter's policy team having a difficult time making a tough call but resolving the matter swiftly, while right wing voices said the documents confirmed Twitter's liberal bias.
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BACKGROUND
The releases have prompted debate over the nature of blacklisting, vows for congressional investigation, calls for the full release of all documents for the sake of transparency, and calls to improve content moderation processes at Twitter.
After the first set of Files was published, many technology journalists wrote that the reported evidence did not demonstrate much more than Twitter's policy team having a difficult time making a tough call but resolving the matter swiftly, while right wing voices said the documents confirmed Twitter's liberal bias.
Elon Musk gave a series of internal Twitter documents, such as screenshots, emails, and chat logs, to freelance journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss. Taibbi noted that "in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions" that he did not disclose. Weiss stated that the only condition she and her reporting team agreed to was that the material would be first published on Twitter. Musk later stated he had not read the documents before their release to Taibbi and Weiss.
On December 6, Musk fired James Baker, deputy general counsel at Twitter, for allegedly vetting information before it was passed on to Taibbi and Weiss, and providing an explanation that Musk found "unconvincing." Baker had been involved in the decision to withhold the laptop story and had previously been general counsel for the FBI.
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TWITTER FILE INDEX
Part 1 - Dec 2nd, 2022 - Twitter And The Hunter Biden Laptop Story
Part 2 - Dec 8th, 2022 - Twitters Secret Blacklists
Part 3 - Dec 9th, 2022 - The Removal of Donald Trump #1
Part 4 - Dec 10th, 2022 - The Removal of Donald Trump #2
Part 5 - Dec 12th, 2022 - The Removal of Donald Trump #3
Part 6 - Dec 16th, 2022 - Part A: The FBI Subsidiary
Part 6 - Dec 18th, 2022 - Part B: The “exiting” Of Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker
Part 7 - Dec 19th, 2022 - The FBI And Hunter Biden’s Laptop
Part 8 - Dec 20th, 2022 - How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon
Part 9 - Dec 24th, 2022 - Twitter And "Other Government Agencies"
Part 10 - Dec 26th, 2022 - How Twitter Rigged The Covid Debate
Part 11 - Jan 3rd, 2023 - How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In
Part 12 - Jan 3rd, 2023 - Twitter And The FBI “belly Button”
Part 13 - Jan 9th, 2023 - How Twitter Covered Up Covid Truths
Part 14 - Jan 12th, 2023 - The Russiagate Lies
Part 15 - Jan 13th, 2023 - More Adam Schiff Bans, And “Deamplification.”
Part 16 - Jan 16th, 2023 - How the pharmaceutical industry lobbied with social media
Part 16a - Jan 27th, 2023 - Move Over, Jayson Blair: Twitter Files Expose Next Great Media Fraud
Part 17 - Mar 2nd, 2023 - New Knowledge, the Global Engagement Center, and State-Sponsored Blacklists
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Part 1 - Dec 2nd, 2022 by Matt Taibbi
TWITTER AND THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY
Recounting the internal drama at Twitter surrounding the decision to block access to a New York Post exposé on Hunter Biden in October, 2020.
Key revelations: Twitter blocked the story on the basis of its “hacked materials” policy, but executives internally knew the decision was problematic. “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” is how comms official Brandon Borrman put it. Also: when a Twitter contractor polls members of Congress about the decision, they hear Democratic members want more moderation, not less, and “the First Amendment isn’t absolute.”
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1598 ... 83394.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 683394.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221220191 ... 9866683394
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Part 2 - Dec 8th, 2022 by Bari Weiss
Twitters Secret Blacklists
Bari Weiss gives a long-awaited answer to the question, “Was Twitter shadow-banning people?” It did, only the company calls it “visibility filtering.” Twitter also had a separate, higher council called SIP-PES that decided cases for high-visibility, controversial accounts.
Key revelations: Twitter had a huge toolbox for controlling the visibility of any user, including a “Search Blacklist” (for Dan Bongino), a “Trends Blacklist” for Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and a “Do Not Amplify” setting for conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Weiss quotes a Twitter employee: “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool.”
Link: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/16 ... 5633305600
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1601 ... 05600.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 305600.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221220211 ... 5633305600
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Part 3 - Dec 9th, 2022 by Matt Taibbi
The Removal of Donald Trump #1: October 2020 - January 6th, 2021
Where Matt Taibbi documents how senior Twitter execs censored tweets by Trump in the run-up to the Nov 2020 election while regularly engaging with representatives of U.S. government law enforcement agencies.
First in a three-part series looking at how Twitter came to the decision to suspend Donald Trump. The idea behind the series is to show how all of Twitter’s “visibility filtering” tools were on display and deployed after January 6th, 2021. Key Revelations: Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth not only met regularly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Also, Twitter was aggressively applying “visibility filtering” tools to Trump well before the election.
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601352083617505281
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1601 ... 05281.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 505281.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221216112 ... 3617505281
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Part 4 - Dec 10th, 2022 by Michael Shellenberger
The Removal of Donald Trump #2: January 7th, 2021
As the pressure builds, Twitter executives build the case for a permanent ban of Donald Trump.
This thread by Michael Shellenberger looks at the key day after the J6 riots and before Trump would ultimately be banned from Twitter on January 8th, showing how Twitter internally reconfigured its rules to make a Trump ban fit their policies.
Key revelations: at least one Twitter employee worried about a “slippery slope” in which “an online platform CEO with a global presence… can gatekeep speech for the entire world,” only to be shot down. Also, chief censor Roth argues for a ban on congressman Matt Gaetz even though it “doesn’t quite fit anywhere (duh),” and Twitter changed its “public interest policy” to clear a path for Trump’s removal.
Link: https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/sta ... 2275378176
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1601 ... 78176.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 378176.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221216011 ... 5005511680
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Part 5 - Dec 12th, 2022 by Bari Weiss
The Removal of Donald Trump #3: January 8th, 2021
As angry as many inside Twitter were with Donald Trump after the January 6th Capitol riots, staffers struggled to suspend his account, saying things like, “I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement.” As documented by Weiss, they found a way to pull the trigger anyway.
Key revelations: there were dissenters in the company (“Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation”), but are overruled by senior executives like Vijaya Gadde and Roth, who noted many on Twitter’s staff were citing the “Banality of Evil,” and comparing those who favored sticking to a strict legalistic interpretation of Twitter’s rules — i.e. keep Trump, who had “no violation” — to “Nazis following orders.”
Link: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/16 ... 7194432515
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1602 ... 32515.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 432515.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221216193 ... 7194432515
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Part 6 - Dec 16th, 2022 by Matt Taibbi
Part A: THE FBI SUBSIDIARY
Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.
Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
Twitter’s contact with the FBI was “constant and pervasive,” as FBI personnel, mainly in the San Francisco field office, regularly sent lists of “reports” to Twitter, often about Americans with low follower counts making joke tweets. Tweeters on both the left and the right were affected.
Key revelations: A senior Twitter executive reports, “FBI was adamant no impediments to sharing” classified information exist. Twitter also agreed to “bounce” content on the recommendations of a wide array of governmental and quasi-governmental actors, from the FBI to the Homeland Security agency CISA to Stanford’s Election Integrity Project to state governments. The company one day received so many moderation requests from the FBI, an executive congratulated staffers at the end for completing the “monumental undertaking.”
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857534737072128
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1603 ... 72128.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 072128.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221217093 ... 4737072128
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Part 6 Supplemental - Dec 18th, 2022 by Matt Taibbi
Part B: The “exiting” Of Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker
A second round of Twitter Files releases was delayed, as new addition Bari Weiss discovers former FBI General Counsel and Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker was reviewing the first batches of Twitter Files documents, whose delivery to reporters had slowed.
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1604613292491538432
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1604 ... 38432.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 538432.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221220150 ... 2491538432
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Part 7 - Dec 19th, 2022 by Michael Shellenberger
The FBI And Hunter Biden’s Laptop
The Twitter Files story increases its focus on the company’s relationship to federal law enforcement and intelligence, and shows intense communication between the FBI and Twitter just before the release of the Post’s Hunter Biden story.
Key Revelations: San Francisco agent Elvis Chan “sends 10 documents to Twitter’s then-Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter,” the evening before the release of the Post story. Also, Baker in an email explains Twitter was compensated for “processing requests” by the FBI, saying “I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!”
Link: https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/sta ... 0613753856
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1604 ... 53856.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 753856.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221220164 ... 0613753856
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Part 8 - Dec 20th, 2022 by Lee Fang
How Twitter Quietly Aided The Pentagon’s Covert Online Psyop Campaign
Lee Fang takes a fascinating detour, looking at how Twitter for years approved and supported Pentagon-backed covert operations. Noting the company explicitly testified to Congress that it didn’t allow such behavior, the platform nonetheless was a clear partner in state-backed programs involving fake accounts.
Key revelations: after the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) sent over a list of 52 Arab-language accounts “we use to amplify certain messages,” Twitter agreed to “whitelist” them. Ultimately the program would be outed in the Washington Post in 2022 — two years after Twitter and other platforms stopped assisting — but contrary to what came out in those reports, Twitter knew about and/or assisted in these programs for at least three years, from 2017-2020.
Link: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605292454261182464
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1605 ... 82464.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 182464.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221220232 ... 4261182464
Lee wrote a companion piece for the Intercept here: https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twi ... -accounts/
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Part 9 - Dec 24th, 2022 by Matt Taibbi
Twitter And "Other Government Agencies"
The Christmas Eve thread (I should have waited a few days to publish!) further details how the channels of communication between the federal government and Twitter operated, and reveals that Twitter directly or indirectly received lists of flagged content from “Other Government Agencies,” i.e. the CIA.
Key revelations: CIA officials attended at least one conference with Twitter in the summer of 2020, and companies like Twitter and Facebook received “OGA briefings,” at their regular “industry” meetings held in conjunction with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI and the “Foreign Influence Task Force” met regularly “not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo!, Twitch, Cloudfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia.”
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701397109796866
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1606 ... 96866.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 796866.pdf
Web Backup: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701397109796866
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Part 10 - Dec 26th, 2022 by David Zweig
How Twitter Rigged The Covid Debate
David Zweig drills down into how Twitter throttled down information about COVID that was true but perhaps inconvenient for public officials, “discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed.”
Key Revelations: Zweig found memos from Twitter personnel who’d liaised with Biden administration officials who were “very angry” that Twitter had not deplatformed more accounts. White House officials for instance wanted attention on reporter Alex Berenson. Zweig also found “countless” instances of Twitter banning or labeling “misleading” accounts that were true or merely controversial. A Rhode Island physician named Andrew Bostom, for instance, was suspended for, among other things, referring to the results of a peer-reviewed study on mRNA vaccines.
Link: https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1 ... 6338340867
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1607 ... 40867.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 340867.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221226172 ... 6338340867
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Part 11 - Jan 3rd, 2023 by Matt Taibbi
How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In
and...
Part 12 - Jan 3rd, 2023 by Matt Taibbi
Twitter And The FBI “belly Button”
These two threads focus respectively on the second half of 2017, and a period stretching roughly from summer of 2020 through the present. The first describes how Twitter fell under pressure from Congress and the media to produce “material” showing a conspiracy of Russian accounts on their platform, and the second shows how Twitter tried to resist fulfilling moderation requests for the State Department, but ultimately agreed to let State and other agencies send requests through the FBI, which agent Chan calls “the belly button of the USG.”
Revelations: at the close of 2017, Twitter makes a key internal decision. Outwardly, the company would claim independence and promise that content would only be removed at “our sole discretion.” The internal guidance says, in writing, that Twitter will remove accounts “identified by the U.S. intelligence community” as “identified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.”
The second thread shows how Twitter took in requests from everyone — Treasury, HHS, NSA, FBI, DHS, etc. — and also received personal requests from politicians like Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, who asked to have journalist Paul Sperry suspended.
Part 11 Info:
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372352872783872
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1610 ... 83872.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 783872.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20230105000 ... 2872783872
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Part 12 Info:
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394197730725889
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1610 ... 25889.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 725889.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20230105131 ... 7730725889
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Part 13 - Jan 9th, 2023 by Alex Berenson
How Twitter Covered Up Covid Truths
New addition Alex Berenson details how Twitter throttled down or erased true information about COVID-19, with the help of a former Pfizer lobbyist, Scott Gottlieb.
Key Revelations: Twitter senior political liaison Todd O’Boyle feared that onetime acting FDA commission Brett Giroir’s correct observations about the effectiveness of natural immunity were “corrosive” and might “go viral,” and put a misleading label on the tweet. Gottlieb also pressured Twitter to remove Berenson himself.
Link: https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status ... 7038897167
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1612 ... 97167.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 897167.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20230116125 ... 7038897167
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Part 14 - Jan 12th, 2023 by Matt Taibbi
Part A: The Russiagate Lies
One: The Fake Tale of Russian Bots and the #ReleaseTheMemo Hashtag
Internal communications at Twitter show that Russian bots were not in fact hyping the classified memo of Republican congressman Devin Nunes in January of 2018.
Key Revelations: Three key Democrats — Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Blumenthal, and former House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff — cited a think tank called Hamilton 68 in denouncing a memo by Nunes as aided by “Russian influence operations.” Yet all three were told by Twitter executives there were no Russians in the picture. Said former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth, “I just reviewed the accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with #releasethememo and… none of them show any signs of affiliation to Russia.”
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589031773769739
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1613 ... 69739.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 769739.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20230117110 ... 1773769739
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Part 15 Supplemental - Jan 13th, 2022 by Matt Taibbi
More Adam Schiff Bans, And “Deamplification.”
A brief thread of 10 tweets showing that the former head of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, sent repeated requests for bans of people critical of their office.
Key Revelation: Schiff and the DNC both not only asked for the takedown of an obvious satire by “Peter Douche,” but requested takedowns of accounts that were critical of the Steele dossier and outed the name of the supposed “whistleblower” in the Ukrainegate case, Eric Ciaramella. Schiff staffers said that while they “appreciate greatly” efforts by Twitter to deamplify certain accounts, they worried such effort s “could… impede the ability of law enforcement to search Twitter.”
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613932017716195329
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1613 ... 95329.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 195329.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20230116164 ... 7716195329
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Part 16 - Jan 16th, 2022 by Lee Fang
How the pharmaceutical industry lobbied with social media
Link: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1615008625575202818
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1615 ... 02818.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 202818.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20230117082 ... 5575202818
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Part 16a - Jan 27th, 2022 by by Matt Taibbi
MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1619 ... 55105.html
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Part 17 - Mar 2nd, 2022 by by Matt Taibbi
New Knowledge, the Global Engagement Center, and State-Sponsored Blacklists
Link: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1631338650901389322
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1631 ... 89322.html
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Jan 19th, 2022 by Robby Soave
The Facebook Files
Link: https://twitter.com/robbysoave/status/1 ... 2284379137
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1616 ... 79137.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 379137.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20230121131 ... 2284379137
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These are not part of Elon's releases, they are from a, “direct source”.
Here, you will see examples of the code executed when a tweet was targeted for moderation.
Words and phrases should not be censored
Link: https://twitter.com/sparklingruby/statu ... 9918599181
Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1602 ... 30114.html
PDF Backup: http://americanpatriotsocial.com/twitte ... 330114.pdf
Web Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20221221011 ... 9918599181