Thread by @mtaibbi on Thread Reader App
@mtaibbi: 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 Bu...…
Haven't read this yet but one thing that comes to mind is FBI Portland (and some sheriff's departments in the area) tweeting that the forest fires were unequivocally not caused by arson and to please stop wasting 911's time calling about arsonists - despite multiple reports and pictures of people on the side of the road caught trying to start fires.
Not to mention the fucking police themselves actually saying "we're getting a ton of people calling and claiming that they are seeing people starting brush fires", to the point that armed civilians actually started patrolling the roads.
None of that was in this release, and we never got arrests about it, but you're fucking crazy to think that Leftist fire-bugs and eco-warriors didn't think it would be a good idea to burn down the Republican parts of the state while claiming Climate Change was responsible.
Please don't let the Vashon Island folks know about this idea.
We should just wall cities up and let them rot
You'd need your local county elected positions to not be cowards to do that.
Summation:
Fundamentally, what we have here is a greater breakdown of the FBI and CIA's involvement in briefing Twitter on what they should be looking for regarding foreign information operations. That being said, it is also undoubtedly a Drip Campaign by the CIA themselves to condition Twitter to moderate to it's will.
The push for moderation in accordance with government narrative came from every direction, including local San Francisco police. The FBI seemed to be have staff explicitly monitoring twitter to influence it's moderation policies, in order to target accounts they claimed were spreading disinformation as part of a foreign intelligence effort. Most of the time, this was innocuous stuff.
When Twitter complained that it was mostly innocuous and that they couldn't find any Russian Disinformation campaigns for the election, like any good psychological abuser, the FBI told them to find it anyway because they weren't working hard enough. This poisons the well for the staff, so they start desperately trying to connect the dots where there aren't any. This goes along with the massive increase in reports they were sending to the moderation team to overwhelm them from all angles regarding "election misinformation". Remember than in previous releases, the FBI actually claimed that Twitter wasn't co-operating enough after the election, despite this level of co-operation actually being far more than they would normally get at other private companies.
Meanwhile, the CIA and FBI were also doing regular briefings (slides included) on posts they claimed foreign intelligence was making in order to spread disinformation, particularly regarding the Ukranian War. Taibbi correctly points out that although it's possible that these claims of foreign propaganda are true, the actual facts and evidence themselves are also potentially true.
Like a typical leftist, he asks if true information should be censored by government forces if it is enemy propaganda.
The correct answer is: NO, because we know that everyone is lying, and the only way we will decipher the truth is to sift through the lies and find the actual evidence. Not only do we need to take into account that our own government has a very particular slant and bias away from the truth when it fits with their narrative; but even we saw from the beginning on the Russo-Ukranian War that disinformation was going to be absolutely rampant on all sides.
"Should the government censor anti-Ukraine propaganda?" Bitch, Zelenisky just came to our own fucking legislature to demand our money from us, in a proxy war with Russia that the people of the US never asked for, and our own representatives (who decry our country a white supremacist Nazi shithole) flew a Ukranian flag in front of our American flag, while sending billions of more printed dollars which will increase our food prices and devalue our currency, along with "assault weapons" to actual fucking Nazis.
The government is incapable of objective conduct.
This would explain what is happening to Twitter now. They have everything set up to control the narrative by "users"
Well, let's be honest. They are still controlling the narrative, but they are defusing the responsibility of the narrative to others.
Which is literally the definition of Democracy.
Even false information or outright lies don't deserve censorship, never mind that idiotic BS about "hate speech."
As you say, "the only way we will decipher the truth is to sift through the lies and find the actual evidence."
Caveat Emptor.
Starting to look like they're releasing these things on the weekends and holidays to memory hole the story.
There may be another aspect of trying to draw engagement into Twitter on low-volume days.
Elon's primary task seems to focus on finding a way to make Twitter break even, so that should be the first perspective in forming a hypothesis about activity on Twitter.
Something really interesting I just noticed. The top reply to this as of right now is this, a standard NPC response all of these threads get. Here's the weird thing - I went to that account's twitter feed and 1. that tweet isn't there and 2. what is shown is only right-wing sounding tweets. To see the propaganda you have to check the replies in the 2nd tab, which is not selected by default. Also, the account is clearly fake.
I think this is some new propaganda tactic whereby, to anyone who casually looks, these Regime bot accounts seem to be right-wing but are actually churning out Progressive Regime propaganda that are only visible in their replies.
Good catch. It's a new form of Controlled Opposition.
I misspelled foreign.