The Columbia Bugle's Sunday Newsletter
And another one. This week, Elon Musk continued his weekly drop of Twitter Files exposing the internal discussions and tactics of Twitter employees to collude with intelligence agencies to silence and suppress narratives, pundits and politicians critical of the Regime.
Elon and his team began this week with the last part of their Twitter Files series on the conversations happening inside Twitter regarding the decision to permanently suspend President Donald Trump.
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Twitter Files: The Removal Of President Donald Trump
A few weeks ago, Elon Musk made good on his promise to reinstate President Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
The people have spoken.
Trump will be reinstated.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
Elon Musk @elonmusk
The account is back up with all of his old tweets, but has yet to be used by President Trump.
The banning of President Donald Trump by unelected Left Wing Silicon Valley Tyrants was an unforgivable act (in a sane country, a crime) and one every American should never ever forget.
Even several foreign heads of state, some not big fans of Trump, expressed concerns about the banning.
38. Outside the United States, Twitter’s decision to ban Trump raised alarms, including with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, and Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
39. Macron told an audience he didn’t “want to live in a democracy where the key decisions” were made by private players. “I want it to be decided by a law voted by your representative, or by regulation, governance, democratically discussed and approved by democratic leaders.”
40. Merkel’s spokesperson called Twitter’s decision to ban Trump from its platform “problematic” and added that the freedom of opinion is of “elementary significance.”
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny criticized the ban as “an unacceptable act of censorship.”
It was something that Twitter used to say was a bridge they must not cross.
Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.
5. “Our mission is to provide a forum that enables people to be informed and to engage their leaders directly,” the company wrote in 2019. Twitter’s aim was to “protect the public’s right to hear from their leaders and to hold them to account.”
https://t.co/rtQjkQQxSs
Last week, Matt Taibbi began the first part in a Twitter Files series on the Removal of Donald Trump.
The Taibbi Thread
A Few Highlights From The Taibbi Thread
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 5. Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech.
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 7. Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways.
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 8. The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 11. After J6, internal Slacks show Twitter executives getting a kick out of intensified relationships with federal agencies. Here’s Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth, lamenting a lack of “generic enough” calendar descriptions to concealing his “very interesting” meeting partners.
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 12. These initial reports are based on searches for docs linked to prominent executives, whose names are already public. They include Roth, former trust and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, and recently plank-walked Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker.
Would like to see more from this channel.
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 14. On October 8th, 2020, executives opened a channel called “us2020_xfn_enforcement.” Through J6, this would be home for discussions about election-related removals, especially ones that involved “high-profile” accounts (often called “VITs” or “Very Important Tweeters”).
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 15. There was at least some tension between Safety Operations – a larger department whose staffers used a more rules-based process for addressing issues like porn, scams, and threats – and a smaller, more powerful cadre of senior policy execs like Roth and Gadde.
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 16. The latter group were a high-speed Supreme Court of moderation, issuing content rulings on the fly, often in minutes and based on guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President.
Why not just post all these files online so all of us can go through them?
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 17. During this time, executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content. While we’re still at the start of reviewing the #TwitterFiles, we’re finding out more about these interactions every day.
.@mirandadevine is absolutely right. Release it all.
"@elonmusk needs to let all the information out, let us all see it. No more of this curating and holding back."
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 19. Pickles quickly asks if they could “just say “partnerships.” After a pause, he says, “e.g. not sure we’d describe the FBI/DHS as experts.”
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 20. This post about the Hunter Biden laptop situation shows that Roth not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI):
LMFAO
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 21. Roth’s report to FBI/DHS/DNI is almost farcical in its self-flagellating tone:
“We blocked the NYP story, then unblocked it (but said the opposite)… comms is angry, reporters think we’re idiots… in short, FML” (fuck my life).
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss 24. Here, the FBI sends reports about a pair of tweets, the second of which involves a former Tippecanoe County, Indiana Councilor and Republican named @JohnBasham claiming “Between 2% and 25% of Ballots by Mail are Being Rejected for Errors.”
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham 26. The group then decides to apply a “Learn how voting is safe and secure” label because one commenter says, “it’s totally normal to have a 2% error rate.” Roth then gives the final go-ahead to the process initiated by the FBI:
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham 27. Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here.
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham @TitaniaMcGrath 33. Roth suggests moderation even in this absurd case could depend on whether or not the joke results in “confusion.” This seemingly silly case actually foreshadows serious later issues:
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham @TitaniaMcGrath 35. In another example, Twitter employees prepare to slap a “mail-in voting is safe” warning label on a Trump tweet about a postal screwup in Ohio, before realizing “the events took place,” which meant the tweet was “factually accurate”:
BEFORE The Election
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham @TitaniaMcGrath 36. “VERY WELL DONE ON SPEED” Trump was being “visibility filtered” as late as a week before the election. Here, senior execs didn’t appear to have a particular violation, but still worked fast to make sure a fairly anodyne Trump tweet couldn’t be “replied to, shared, or liked”:
Different Standards
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham @TitaniaMcGrath @RealJamesWoods 41. Meanwhile, there are multiple instances of involving pro-Biden tweets warning Trump “may try to steal the election” that got surfaced, only to be approved by senior executives. This one, they decide, just “expresses concern that mailed ballots might not make it on time.”
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham @TitaniaMcGrath @RealJamesWoods 42. “THAT’S UNDERSTANDABLE”: Even the hashtag #StealOurVotes – referencing a theory that a combo of Amy Coney Barrett and Trump will steal the election – is approved by Twitter brass, because it’s “understandable” and a “reference to… a US Supreme Court decision.”
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham @TitaniaMcGrath @RealJamesWoods 43. In this exchange, again unintentionally humorous, former Attorney General Eric Holder claimed the U.S. Postal Service was “deliberately crippled,”ostensibly by the Trump administration. He was initially hit with a generic warning label, but it was quickly taken off by Roth:
“Deamplification Tool”
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham @TitaniaMcGrath @RealJamesWoods 45. On December 10th, as Trump was in the middle of firing off 25 tweets saying things like, “A coup is taking place in front of our eyes,” Twitter executives announced a new “L3 deamplification” tool. This step meant a warning label now could also come with deamplification:
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham @TitaniaMcGrath @RealJamesWoods 46. Some executives wanted to use the new deamplification tool to silently limit Trump’s reach more right away, beginning with the following tweet:
@ShellenbergerMD @bariweiss @JohnBasham @TitaniaMcGrath @RealJamesWoods 48. The significance is that it shows that Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump’s engagement, long before J6. The ban will come after other avenues are exhausted
The second part in this series was posted by Michael Shellenberger.
The Shellenberger Thread
1. TWITTER FILES, PART 4
The Removal of Donald Trump: January 7
As the pressure builds, Twitter executives build the case for a permanent ban
A Few Highlights From The Shellenberger Thread
But after the events of Jan 6, the internal and external pressure on Twitter CEO @jack grows.
Former First Lady @MichelleObama , tech journalist @karaswisher , @ADL , high-tech VC @ChrisSacca , and many others, publicly call on Twitter to permanently ban Trump.
Around 11:30 am PT, Roth DMs his colleagues with news that he is excited to share.
“GUESS WHAT,” he writes. “Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.”
The new approach would create a system where five violations ("strikes") would result in permanent suspension.
Roth's colleague's query about "incitement to violence" heavily foreshadows what will happen the following day.
On January 8, Twitter announces a permanent ban on Trump due to the "risk of further incitement of violence."
#StopTheSteal
Roth immediately DMs a colleague to ask that they add "stopthesteal" & [QAnon conspiracy term] "kraken" to a blacklist of terms to be deamplified.
Roth's colleague objects that blacklisting "stopthesteal" risks "deamplifying counterspeech" that validates the election.
Indeed, notes Roth's colleague, "a quick search of top stop the steal tweets and they’re counterspeech"
But they quickly come up with a solution: "deamplify accounts with stopthesteal in the name/profile" since "those are not affiliated with counterspeech"
Separate Rules For Trump
What happens next is essential to understanding how Twitter justified banning Trump.
Sales exec: "are we dropping the public interest [policy] now..."
Roth, six hours later: "In this specific case, we're changing our public interest approach for his account..."
Congressman Matt Gaetz
Roth pushes for a permanent suspension of Rep. Matt Gaetz even though it “doesn’t quite fit anywhere (duh)”
It's a kind of test case for the rationale for banning Trump.
“I’m trying to talk [Twitter’s] safety [team] into... removal as a conspiracy that incites violence.”
The final part was posted by Bari Weiss this past Monday.
The Bari Weiss Thread
A Few Highlights From The Weiss Thread
7. There were dissenters inside Twitter.
“Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.”
The Pressure Builds Within Twitter
9. After January 6, Twitter employees organized to demand their employer ban Trump. “There is a lot of employee advocacy happening,” said one Twitter employee.
10. “We have to do the right thing and ban this account,” said one staffer.
It’s “pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules,” said another.
11. In the early afternoon of January 8, The Washington Post published an open letter signed by over 300 Twitter employees to CEO Jack Dorsey demanding Trump’s ban. “We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection.”
Twitter employees look for a justification for banning Trump after initially determining his tweets were fine.
12. But the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies.“I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer.
15. “I also am not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet,” wrote Anika Navaroli, a Twitter policy official. “I’ll respond in the elections channel and say that our team has assessed and found no vios”—or violations—“for the DJT one.”
16. She does just that: “as an fyi, Safety has assessed the DJT Tweet above and determined that there is no violation of our policies at this time.”
18. Next, Twitter’s safety team decides that Trump’s 7:44 am ET tweet is also not in violation. They are unequivocal: “it’s a clear no vio. It’s just to say he’s not attending the inauguration”
26. Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, Vijaya Gadde—Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust—asked whether it could, in fact, be “coded incitement to further violence.”
27. A few minutes later, Twitter employees on the “scaled enforcement team” suggest that Trump’s tweet may have violated Twitter’s Glorification of Violence policy—if you interpreted the phrase “American Patriots” to refer to the rioters.
32. One hour later, Twitter announces Trump’s permanent suspension “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
Twitter Moves On To Their Next Censorship Project
35. By the next day, employees expressed eagerness to tackle “medical misinformation” as soon as possible:
These threads not only highlight the bias (which we all knew), but the system of censorship used by these Silicon Valley Tyrants, including a relationship with the Federal Government to assist in the bypassing of the First Amendment.
Matt Taibbi released another thread this week adding more details on this relationship.
The Taibbi FBI Thread
A Few Highlights From The Taibbi FBI Thread
4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
6. But a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.
7. The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.
10. The #TwitterFiles show something new: agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.
11. What stands out is the sheer quantity of reports from the government. Some are aggregated from public hotlines:
18.In an internal email from November 5, 2022, the FBI’s National Election Command Post, which compiles and sends on complaints, sent the SF field office a long list of accounts that “may warrant additional action”:
21.Many of the above accounts were satirical in nature, nearly all (with the exceptions of Baldwin and @RSBNetwork) were relatively low engagement, and some were suspended, most with a generic, “Thanks, Twitter” letter:
24.In a letter to former Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker on Sep. 16, 2022, legal exec Stacia Cardille outlines results from her “soon to be weekly” meeting with DHS, DOJ, FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:
25.The Twitter exec writes she explicitly asked if there were “impediments” to the sharing of classified information “with industry.” The answer? “FBI was adamant no impediments to sharing exist.”
33.The ubiquity of the 2016 Russian interference story as stated pretext for building out the censorship machine can’t be overstated. It’s analogous to how 9/11 inspired the expansion of the security state.
35.FBI in one case sent over so many “possible violative content” reports, Twitter personnel congratulated each other in Slack for the “monumental undertaking” of reviewing them:
36.There were multiple points of entry into Twitter for government-flagged reports. This letter from Agent Chan to Roth references Teleporter, a platform through which Twitter could receive reports from the FBI:
40.“WHY WAS NO ACTION TAKEN?” Below, Twitter execs – receiving an alert from California officials, by way of “our partner support portal” – debate whether to act on a Trump tweet:
The “Election Integrity Project” Makes An Appearance
41.Here, a video was reported by the Election Integrity Project (EIP) at Stanford, apparently on the strength of information from the Center for Internet Security (CIS):
This is truly creepy... this is what it looks like to kick the hornet's nest.
The Color Revolution networks are NOT happy
This is from the "Election Integrity Project"---funded by key Color Revolution outfits including Atlantic Council's disgraced and notorious DFR Lab
For more on the relationship the Regime has with Big Tech:
Disinformation Governance Board
#Thread Tucker Carlson’s Monologue Exposing The Biden Administration’s Ministry Of Truth
“So today to herald the coming of the new Soviet America, the Administration announced it's own Ministry of Truth. This will be called the 'Disinformation Governance Board.'"
#BREAKING Senator @HawleyMO Joins Tucker Carlson To Discuss Whistleblower Documents He Obtained That Expose The Biden Admin's "Disinformation Governance Board"
Sen. Hawley: "This Administration wanted you to be monitored. This 'Disinformation Board' was set up to go after you."
Sen. @HawleyMO Reveals Whistleblower Documents Exposing The Disinformation Governance Board's Planned Big Tech Coordination
"We see that in fact this Disinformation Board from the beginning was meant to track & go after political speech that this Administration did not favor."
DHS Working With Twitter And Facebook
Leaked Documents Show Facebook And Twitter Worked Closely With The FBI And DHS To Police "Disinformation"
@lhfang Joins Tucker Carlson Tonight To Discuss This Bombshell Report
Link To The Intercept Piece: theintercept.com/2022/10/31/soc…
Former Employees Of Intelligence Agencies Working For Big Tech
Thread🧵
Twitter is hiring a TON of FBI agents. Searching employment websites, it is clear Twitter has been extensively recruiting from the FBI, employing a dozen former feds.
My new @MintPressNews investigation explores why and what this means for us.
mintpressnews.com/twitter-hiring…
Tucker Carlson Segment On The Number Employees At Twitter Who Worked For Foreign And Domestic Intelligence Agencies
"Could it be that Twitter was actually, maybe primarily a propaganda tool, an intelligence gathering apparatus for a variety of intel agencies?"
Covered this more in our Substack from last week
Senator @HawleyMO Grills Facebook Executive And Gets Him To Admit That They Have Coordinated With The Biden Administration To Censor Constitutionally Protected Speech
While these Twitter File threads have been incredibly informative and have revealed a lot about how exactly these censorship tactics were (are still?) implemented on Twitter and the cozy relationship Twitter had (has?) with our government and foreign governments, it still would be preferable to have Elon just dump these files all in one place (Wikileaks Style) where anyone can search through and interpret them without the editorializing of some of Elon’s chosen disseminators.
We’ll end with a few of the questions we still have:
How many more Twitter Files drops?
Is anything being purposely left out?
Who else was blacklisted by Twitter?
Did any government agency demand and were granted the censorship or suppression of questions about January 6th involving potential federal informants?
What other topics did these government agencies demand Twitter suppress?
How many former government employees are working at Twitter currently?
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