While waiting for the seventh part of the Twitter Files to be unveiled, the FBI wanted to respond to the latest revelations by journalist Matt Taibbi on the role played by the federal office in moderating content on the social network. Asked by Fox News, the FBI on Friday (December 16th) dismissed reports that its employees exerted pressure on Twitter to moderate content or suspend accounts. Matt Taibbi responded with additional revelations.
Part 6 of the Twitter Files, unveiled by Taibbi on Friday, laid bare the social network’s relationship with the FBI, with the reporter going so far as to call it a “subsidiary company” of the federal police. The documents demonstrate the character “hyper-intrusif” from the intelligence service, which worked with the platform’s previous team to moderate its content and demand the suspension of several accounts.
Explanations required…
“The FBI routinely engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to the subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities of identified Malicious Foreign Influencers”reacted the same day the federal office, questioned by Fox News. The spokesperson even claimed that “private sector entities”, like Twitter, “make independent decisions about what actions, if any, they take on their platforms and for their clients after being notified by the FBI.”
What push Matt Taibbi to reveal additional documents in order to respond to the words of the FBI. On his Twitter account, he bounces on “independence” which would benefit the “private sector entities” according to the FBI and publishes internal letters which demonstrate a little more the pressure exerted on the moderation team of the social network.
“In July 2020, San Francisco FBI Agent Elvis Chan told Yoel Roth to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF),” we read. This questionnaire came after a briefing between Twitter officials and several security and intelligence agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, during which the platform’s leaders allegedly indicated that they had no “observed a lot of activities of the official actors” on Twitter.
Yoel Roth and his colleagues were thus invited in a mail to explain their “unpopular conclusion”who has “generated quite a bit of discussion within the United States Intelligence Community”. The mail listed several articles, as if to demonstrate to Twitter that their finding was wrong.
Screenshots posted by Matt Taibbi hint at the “perplexity” from Yoel Roth, head of moderation at Twitter before he was fired by Elon Musk, who expressed surprise that such requests came from the FBI. He also explained that he was not “comfortable with the obligation to answer, in writing, these questions”.
In another internal note, Yoel Roth explained that he had clearly stated that “official propaganda was present on Twitter” and “its management differs from that of fake accounts”. He announced to his colleagues that he will meet with Elvis Chan for “clarify the situation”.
The documents prove otherwise…
To the FBI’s response, Matt Tabbi writes: “That may be true (that private entities are independent, editor’s note), but we haven’t seen that in the documents released to date. Instead, we mostly saw moderation requests involving low-following accounts belonging to ordinary Americans.”
In the last episode, the American journalist promised to reveal in the following Twitter Files, with Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger, details about “how the government collects, analyzes and reports content on social networks”.
The role played by the FBI in moderating content around the elections had already been mentioned in a third part. Internal documents showed how employees of the social network tried to define the role played by the FBI and other intelligence agencies in moderating content to justify the suspension decisions taken.
The suspension wasn’t Twitter’s only weapon. In previous installments, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger explained how social network executives, including Yoel Roth and VIjaya Gadde, formed themselves into “Supreme Court of Moderation”violating Twitter’s own policies and rules to justify banning Donald Trump and using blacklists to reduce the visibility of certain accounts.
The first set of documents from the Twitter Files were unveiled on December 2 by Elon Musk, to prove Twitter “interference” in the previous US elections through the scandal linked to the laptop of Hunter Biden, the son of the current President of the United States Joe Biden.