Keep coming back here for links to the Twitter files as they are released. After the last release, expect an extensive anaylsis of the Twitter files from Freedomist.com
The Twitter Files Part One – Matt Taiibi – How and Why Twitter Blocked the Biden Laptop Story 12-2-22
Supplement to Twitter Files Part One – Matt Taiibi – 12-18-22
The Twitter Files Part Two – Bari Weiss – Twitter’s Secret Blacklists – 12-8-22
The Twitter Files Part Three – Matt Taibbi – The Removal of Donald Trump Part One: October 2020-January 6th – 12-9-22
The Twitter Files Part Four – Michael Shellenberger – The Removal of Donald Trump Part Two: January 7th 12-10-22
The Twitter Files Part Five – Bari Weiss – The Removal of Trump from Twitter – 12-12-22
The Twitter Files Part Six – Matt Taibbi – Twitter, the FBI Subsidiary – 12-16-22
The Twitter Files Part Seven – Michael Shellenberger – The FBI and the Hunter Biden Laptop 12-19-22
The Twitter Files Part Eight – Lee Gang – How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon’s Covert Online PsyPo Campaign – 12-20-22
The Twitter Files Part Nine – Matt Taibbi – Twitter and “Other Government Agencies” – 12-24-22
The Twitter Files Part Ten – David Zweig – How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate – 12-26-22
- THE FIRST TWITTER FILE – The First Twitter Files, and the Supplement, reveals the nature of the relationship that emerged between the FBI (who made it clear they were acting on behalf of the whole U.S. Intelligence Community, even though many of them aren’t supposed to involve themselves in domestic affairs) and Twitter during efforts by the FBI to convince Twitter to censor the story about the discovery of then-Presidential-Nominee Joe Biden’s son’s laptop that revealed systemic pedophilia at home and sedition abroad.
What we know is that the FBI had the laptop well before the story broke, that it knew the laptop was Hunter Biden’s, that it knew Hunter and Joe are pedophiles preying on their own family members, that it knew Joe Biden was a seditionist trading American power for personal blood money from violent regimes like China, but, knowing all that it lied to Twitter, claiming the news was Russian agit prop, and that it did so to ensure Trump did not beat the dead man walking with a teleprompter, Joe “I’ll sniff your underage kid” Biden.
The FBI’s answer to this was to call it a conspiracy theory, which was received rightly as a violent threat by the agency, who had previously warned that conspiracy theorists were the greatest threat to “our Democracy.” They mean to paint Elon and his reporters as criminals the FBI can now use the secret Star Chambers, aka FISA courts, to spy on without anyone else knowing it (and don’t think that’s not already happening). Remember, they used those same Star Chambers to illegally spy on a Presidential candidate, and later a sitting President. They have no restraint on their bloodlust at this time.
- THE SECOND TWITTER FILE – The second release revealed that Twitter was doing anything and everything it can to protect its Twitter Market Assassination mobs from facts. It intentionally blacklisted non-seditionists, Americans, from appearing in others’ timelines (shadow banning) and Twitter’s trending page, all to assure the illusion that violent sedition against Americans by our corporations and governments is perfectly acceptable and normal and welcome by the general public (the Twitter spam bot mob created by America’s intelligence agencies to work against the Republic’s own interests, liberty).
- THE THIRD THROUGH FIFTH TWITTER FILES – The 3rd, 4th, and 5th Twitter Files all deal with Twitter’s removal of an American President. The removal of Donald Trump from Twitter after the justified protests of January 6th, 2021 is exposed for what it was, an effort by DNC political saboteurs from within the FBI to bully their own seditious ally, the staff of Twitter, to do something they knew was an overt act of sedition, to remove a sitting President from Twitter at the insistence of his own government, the treasonous FBI, who made it clear in this exchange they are aligned with the Chinese Communist Party politically, not the American Republic.
All this was to protect their lie that we just had a legitimate election, not a mass mailer coup run by the DNC and its corporate henchmen. The undeniable proof of this collusion and this illegal activity by members of the DNC that infiltrated and destroyed the FBI from within is seen in Twitter Files Parts Three, Four, and Five.
- THE SIXTH TWITTER FILE – The fourth tweet in this Twitter thread from Matt Taibbi reveals the spirit of this twitter thread: “Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBVI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.”
What this thread reveals is that beyond the Hunter Biden laptop story being buried (along with anyone who dared to continue to tweet about it), beyond Trump being removed, the FBI was working in close concert with Twitter’s top censors to assure the Democratic Party’s narrative was protected, at all costs, by any means necessary, including in open defiance of our Constitution.
Not only did they censor tweets and market-kill Americans willing to defy them, the FBI and other intelligence agencies coordinated their misinformation campaigns with Twitter to protect their lies from being flagged for what they are, overt misinformation intended to destroy the Republic.
We know full well if DNC Inc was willing to do this with Twitter, they were willing to do it with every other social media platform as well (at least the seditionist ones willing to violate American liberty for the sake of the party).
- THE SEVENTH TWITTER FILE – In the seventh thread, we learn how the FBI and other intelligence agencies intentionally sought to discredit truthful information, as well as the truthtellers themselves. Michael Shellenberger tweets: “In Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published.”
- THE EIGHTH TWITTER FILE – What the seditious Intelligence agencies are doing to America (using disinformation to destroy fact and destroy American truthtellers to facilitate regime change, to destroy the Republic and insert market socialism in its place), they’ve done to other nations as well. Twitter Files Part Eight exposes efforts by “American” intelligence agencies and Twitter DNC activists to spread disinformation to foreign countries for the purpose of producing regime overthrows.
- THE NINTH TWITTER FILE – These Twitter Files directly answer the CCP-like statement by the FBI in response to the Twitter files. The rogue agency said, in part, “The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public…. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
Chairman Xi himself couldn’t have said it any better, nor could any other leftist fascist through the ages (like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and FDR) say it any better than the FBI just did.
Matt Taibbi answered the CCP-like response from the rogue agency by revealing that it wasn’t just the FBI that was illegally manipulating American companies for the sake of the DNC’s parochial interests (they protect the DNC, not the American public), it was any agency that has been infiltrated by DNC operatives, hellbent on destroying American liberty from within. And he brought receipts, including collusion-revealing emails between the seditious agencies and the treasonous corporation that is (or was) Twitter.
- THE TENTH TWITTER FILE – The 10th Twitter File we will cover in this report was released by David Zweig, who exposes how government officials and Twitter censors used censorship, suspensions, and shadow banning to protect the official state-corporate narrative on Covid-19. The DNC machine that is Twitter chose to use its platform to oppress dissent and reinforce the official policies of the Democratic Party. This decision left millions unable to make an informed decision about how to protect their families from getting Covid-19 and how to treat them if they caught Covid-19.
Archive
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.
3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.
7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”
9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:
10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
11. This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. https://opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/summary?id=D000067113…
12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.
Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let’s jump forward
The Twitter Files Part Two – Bari Weiss – Twitter’s Secret Blacklists – 12-8-22
20. The committee justified her suspensions internally by claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” by insinuating “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.”
21. Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes.
22. When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated she says Twitter Support responded with this message: “We reviewed the reported content, and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.” No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up.
23. In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects. Here’s Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then Global Head of Trust & Safety, in a direct message to a colleague in early 2021:
24. Six days later, in a direct message with an employee on the Health, Misinformation, Privacy, and Identity research team, Roth requested more research to support expanding “non-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification/visibility filtering.”
25. Roth wrote: “The hypothesis underlying much of what we’ve implemented is that if exposure to, e.g., misinformation directly causes harm, we should use remediations that reduce exposure, and limiting the spread/virality of content is a good way to do that.”
26. He added: “We got Jack on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations – especially for other policy domains.”
27. There is more to come on this story, which was reported by
and the team The Free Press
. Keep up with this unfolding story here and at our brand new website: http://thefp.com.
thefp.com
The Free Press
A new media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of American journalism.
28. The authors have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.
29. We’re just getting started on our reporting. Documents cannot tell the whole story here. A big thank you to everyone who has spoken to us so far. If you are a current or former Twitter employee, we’d love to hear from you. Please write to: [email protected]
30. Watch
for the next installment.
The Twitter Files Part Three – Matt Taibbi – The Removal of Donald Trump Part One: October 2020-January 6th – 12-9-22
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
claiming “Between 2% and 25% of Ballots by Mail are Being Rejected for Errors.”
The FBI’s second report concerned this tweet by
:
25. The FBI-flagged tweet then got circulated in the enforcement Slack. Twitter cited Politifact to say the first story was “proven to be false,” then noted the second was already deemed “no vio on numerous occasions.”
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:
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.
The Twitter Files Part Four – Michael Shellenberger – The Removal of Donald Trump Part Two: January 7th 12-10-22
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.”
Around 2:30, comms execs DM Roth to say they don’t want to make a big deal of the QAnon ban to the media because they fear “if we push this it looks we’re trying to offer up something in place of the thing everyone wants,” meaning a Trump ban.
The Twitter Files Part Five – Bari Weiss – The Removal of Trump from Twitter – 12-12-22
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.
28. Things escalate from there. Members of that team came to “view him as the leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler and on that basis and on the totality of his Tweets, he should be de-platformed.”
29. Two hours later, Twitter executives host a 30-minute all-staff meeting. Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde answer staff questions as to why Trump wasn’t banned yet. But they make some employees angrier.
30. “Multiple tweeps [Twitter employees] have quoted the Banality of Evil suggesting that people implementing our policies are like Nazis following orders,” relays Yoel Roth to a colleague.
The Twitter Files Part Six – Matt Taibbi – Twitter, the FBI Subsidiary – 12-16-22
Conversation
1. THREAD: The Twitter Files, Part Six TWITTER, THE FBI SUBSIDIARY
2. The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content.
3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.
4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
5. Some are mundane, like San Francisco agent Elvis Chan wishing Roth a Happy New Year along with a reminder to attend “our quarterly call next week.” Others are requests for information into Twitter users related to active investigations.
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.
8. Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.
9. It’s no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts.
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:
The Twitter Files Part Seven – Michael Shellenberger – The FBI and the Hunter Biden Laptop 12-19-22
Conversation
25. In Aug, 2020, FBI’s Chan asks Twitter: does anyone there have top secret clearance? When someone mentions Jim Baker, Chan responds, “I don’t know how I forgot him” — an odd claim, given Chan’s job is to monitor Twitter, not to mention that they worked together at the FBI.
26. Who is Jim Baker? He’s former general counsel of the FBI (2014-18) & one of the most powerful men in the U.S. intel community. Baker has moved in and out of government for 30 years, serving stints at CNN, Bridgewater (a $140 billion asset management firm) and Brookings
27. As general counsel of the FBI, Baker played a central role in making the case internally for an investigation of Donald Trump
wsj.com
FBI Took Michael Sussmann’s Allegation of Trump-Russia Ties Seriously, Former Official Testifies
The 2016 claims from national-security lawyer Michael Sussmann alarmed the agency’s most senior officials, the FBI’s then-top lawyer testified at the criminal trial of Mr. Sussmann.
28. Baker wasn’t the only senior FBI exec. involved in the Trump investigation to go to Twitter. Dawn Burton, the former dep. chief of staff to FBI head James Comey, who initiated the investigation of Trump, joined Twitter in 2019 as director of strategy.
29. As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees — “Bu alumni” — working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.
30. Efforts continued to influence Twitter’s Yoel Roth. In Sept 2020, Roth participated in an Aspen Institute “tabletop exercise” on a potential “Hack-and-Dump” operation relating to Hunter Biden The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it
31. The organizer was Vivian Schiller, the fmr CEO of NPR, fmr head of news at Twitter; fmr Gen. mgr of NY Times; fmr Chief Digital Officer of NBC News Attendees included Meta/FB’s head of security policy and the top nat. sec. reporters for
and others
The Twitter Files Part Eight – Lee Gang – How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon’s Covert Online PsyPo Campaign – 12-20-22
11. In several other 2020 emails, high-level Twitter executives/lawyers discussed the covert network and even recirculated the 2017 list from CENTCOM and shared another list of 157 undisclosed Pentagon accounts, again mostly focused on Middle East military issues.
12. In a May 2020 email, Twitter’s Lisa Roman emailed the DoD w/two lists. One list was accounts “previously provided to us” & another list Twitter detected. The accounts tweeted in Russian & Arabic on US military issues in Syria/ISIS & many also did not disclose Pentagon ties.
13. Many of these secretive U.S. military propaganda accounts, despite detection by Twitter as late as 2020 (but potentially earlier) continued tweeting through this year, some not suspended until May 2022 or later, according to records I reviewed.
15. The U.S. propaganda network relentlessly pushed narratives against Russia, China, and other foreign countries. They accused Iran of “threatening Iraq’s water security and flooding the country with crystal meth,” and of harvesting the organs of Afghan refugees.
16. The Stanford report did not identify all of the accounts in the network but one they did name was the exact same Twitter account CENTCOM asked for whitelist privileges in its 2017 email. I verified via Twitter’s internal tools. The account used an AI-created deep fake image.
17. In subsequent reporting, Twitter was cast as an unbiased hero for removing “a network of fake user accounts promoting pro-Western policy positions.” Media covering the story described Twitter as evenly applying its policies & proactive in suspending the DoD network.
18. The reality is much more murky. Twitter actively assisted CENTCOM’s network going back to 2017 and as late as 2020 knew these accounts were covert/designed to deceive to manipulate the discourse, a violation of Twitter’s policies & promises. They waited years to suspend.
19. Twitter’s comms team was closely in touch with reporters, working to minimize Twitter’s role. When the WashPost reported on the scandal, Twitter officials congratulated each other because the story didn’t mention any Twitter employees & focused largely on the Pentagon.
20. The conduct with the U.S. military’s covert network stands in stark contrast with how Twitter has boasted about rapidly identifying and taking down covert accounts tied to state-backed influence operations, including Thailand, Russia, Venezuela, and others since 2016.
21. Here is my reported piece w/more detail. I was given access to Twitter for a few days. I signed/agreed to nothing, Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by a Twitter attorney, so what I saw could be limited.
The Twitter Files Part Nine – Matt Taibbi – Twitter and “Other Government Agencies” – 12-24-22
1.THREAD: The Twitter Files TWITTER AND “OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES”
After weeks of “Twitter Files” reports detailing close coordination between the FBI and Twitter in moderating social media content, the Bureau issued a statement Wednesday.
http://2.It didn’t refute allegations. Instead, it decried “conspiracy theorists” publishing “misinformation,” whose “sole aim” is to “discredit the agency.”
3.They must think us unambitious, if our “sole aim” is to discredit the FBI. After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the #TwitterFiles. Why stop with one?
4.The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.
5.The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors – from local cops to media to state governments.
6.Twitter had so much contact with so many agencies that executives lost track. Is today the DOD, and tomorrow the FBI? Is it the weekly call, or the monthly meeting? It was dizzying.
7.A chief end result was that thousands of official “reports” flowed to Twitter from all over, through the FITF and the FBI’s San Francisco field office.
8.On June 29th, 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan wrote to pair of Twitter execs asking if he could invite an “OGA” to an upcoming conference:
9.OGA, or “Other Government Organization,” can be a euphemism for CIA, according to multiple former intelligence officials and contractors. Chuckles one: “They think it’s mysterious, but it’s just conspicuous.”
10.“Other Government Agency (the place where I worked for 27 years),” says retired CIA officer Ray McGovern.
11. It was an open secret at Twitter that one of its executives was ex-CIA, which is why Chan referred to that executive’s “former employer.”
12.The first Twitter executive abandoned any pretense to stealth and emailed that the employee “used to work for the CIA, so that is Elvis’s question.”
13.Senior legal executive Stacia Cardille, whose alertness stood out among Twitter leaders, replied, “I know” and “I thought my silence was understood.”
14.Cardille then passes on conference details to recently-hired ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker.
15.“I invited the FBI and the CIA virtually will attend too,” Cardille says to Baker, adding pointedly: “No need for you to attend.”
16.The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm.
17. These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others. Industry players also held regular meetings without government.
http://18.One of the most common forums was a regular meeting of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), attended by spates of executives, FBI personnel, and – nearly always – one or two attendees marked “OGA.”
13.Senior legal executive Stacia Cardille, whose alertness stood out among Twitter leaders, replied, “I know” and “I thought my silence was understood.”
14.Cardille then passes on conference details to recently-hired ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker.
15.“I invited the FBI and the CIA virtually will attend too,” Cardille says to Baker, adding pointedly: “No need for you to attend.”
16.The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm.
17. These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others. Industry players also held regular meetings without government.
http://18.One of the most common forums was a regular meeting of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), attended by spates of executives, FBI personnel, and – nearly always – one or two attendees marked “OGA.”
19.The FITF meeting agendas virtually always included, at or near the beginning, an “OGA briefing,” usually about foreign matters (hold that thought).
20. Despite its official remit being “Foreign Influence,” the FITF and the SF FBI office became conduit for mountains of domestic moderation requests, from state governments, even local police:
21. Many requests arrived via Teleporter, a one-way platform in which many communications were timed to vanish:
23. Email after email came from the San Francisco office heading into the election, often adorned with an Excel attachment:
24. There were so many government requests, Twitter employees had to improvise a system for prioritizing/triaging them:
25. The FBI was clearly tailoring searches to Twitter’s policies. FBI complaints were almost always depicted somewhere as a “possible terms of service violation,” even in the subject line:
26. Twitter executives noticed the FBI appeared to be aasigning personnel to look for Twitter violations.
27.“They have some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations. This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,” remarked Cardille.
28. Even ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker agreed: “Odd that they are searching for violations of our policies.”
29.The New York FBI office even sent requests for the “user IDs and handles” of a long list of accounts named in a Daily Beast article. Senior executives say they are “supportive” and “completely comfortable” doing so.
30. It seemed to strike no one as strange that a “Foreign Influence” task force was forwarding thousands of mostly domestic reports, along with the DHS, about the fringiest material:
The Twitter Files Part Ten – David Zweig – How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate – 12-26-22
1. THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE – By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy – By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed – By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*
2. So far the Twitter Files have focused on evidence of Twitter’s secret blacklists; how the company functioned as a kind of subsidiary of the FBI; and how execs rewrote the platform’s rules to accommodate their own political desires.
3. What we have yet to cover is Covid. This reporting, for The Free Press,
, is one piece of that important story.
4. The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19.
5. Internal files at Twitter that I viewed while on assignment for
showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes.
6. At the onset of the pandemic, according to meeting notes, the Trump admin was especially concerned about panic buying. They came looking for “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation” about “runs on grocery stores.” But . . . there were runs on grocery stores.
7. It wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.
8. When the Biden admin took over, one of their first meeting requests with Twitter executives was on Covid. The focus was on “anti-vaxxer accounts.” Especially Alex Berenson:

11. A December 2022 summary of meetings with the White House by Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of U.S. Public Policy, adds new evidence of the White House’s pressure campaign, and cements that it repeatedly attempted to directly influence the platform.
12. Culbertson wrote that the Biden team was “very angry” that Twitter had not been more aggressive in deplatforming multiple accounts. They wanted Twitter to do more.
13. Twitter executives did not fully capitulate to the Biden team’s wishes. An extensive review of internal communications at the company revealed employees often debating moderation cases in great detail, and with more care than was shown by the government toward free speech.
14. But Twitter did suppress views—many from doctors and scientific experts—that conflicted with the official positions of the White House. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing.
15. There were three serious problems with Twitter’s process: First, much of the content moderation was conducted by bots, trained on machine learning and AI – impressive in their engineering, yet still too crude for such nuanced work.
16. Second, contractors, in places like the Philippines, also moderated content. They were given decision trees to aid in the process, but tasking non experts to adjudicate tweets on complex topics like myocarditis and mask efficacy data was destined for a significant error rate
17 Third, most importantly, the buck stopped with higher level employees at Twitter who chose the inputs for the bots and decision trees, and subjectively decided escalated cases and suspensions. As it is with all people and institutions, there was individual and collective bias
18. With Covid, this bias bent heavily toward establishment dogmas.
19. Inevitably, dissident yet legitimate content was labeled as misinformation, and the accounts of doctors and others were suspended both for tweeting opinions and demonstrably true information.
20. Exhibit A: Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, tweeted views at odds with US public health authorities and the American left, the political affiliation of nearly the entire staff at Twitter.
21. Internal emails show an “intent to action” by a moderator, saying Kulldorff’s tweet violated the company’s Covid-19 misinformation policy and claimed he shared “false information.”
22. But Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one which also happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines.
23. After Twitter took action, Kulldorff’s tweet was slapped with a “Misleading” label and all replies and likes were shut off, throttling the tweet’s ability to be seen and shared by many people, the ostensible core function of the platform:
24. In my review of internal files, I found countless instances of tweets labeled as “misleading” or taken down entirely, sometimes triggering account suspensions, simply because they veered from CDC guidance or differed from establishment views.
25. A tweet by
, a self-proclaimed public health fact checker, with 18K followers, was flagged as “Misleading,” and replies and likes disabled, even though it displayed the CDC’s *own data.*
26. Internal records showed that a bot had flagged the tweet, and that it received many “tattles” (what the system amusingly called reports from users). That triggered a manual review by a human who– despite the tweet showing actual CDC data–nevertheless labeled it “Misleading”
27. Tellingly, the tweet by
that was labeled “Misleading” was a reply to a tweet that contained actual misinformation. Covid has never been the leading cause of death from disease in children. Yet that tweet remains on the platform, and without a “misleading” label.

28. Whether by humans or algorithms, content that was contrarian but true was still subject to getting flagged or suppressed This tweet was labeled “Misleading,” even though the owner of this account,
, a physician, was referring to the results of a published study
29. Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician, was permanently suspended from Twitter after receiving multiple strikes for misinformation. One of his strikes was for a tweet referring to the results from a peer reviewed study on mRNA vaccines.
30. A review of Twitter log files revealed that an internal audit, conducted after Bostom’s attorney contacted Twitter, found that only 1 of Bostom’s 5 violations were valid.
31. The one Bostom tweet found to still be in violation cited data that was legitimate but inconvenient to the public health establishment’s narrative about the risks of flu versus Covid in children.