Matt Taibbi, a journalist, claimed in the most recent edition of “Twitter Files” that the microblogging site was pressured into cooperating with US government agencies to look for Russian meddling.
In the most recent set of revelations under “Twitter Files,” Elon Musk claimed that over 250,000 accounts had been requested to be suspended by US government agencies.
Musk wrote the following in response to the journalist Matt Taibbi’s Twitter thread: A US agency demanded the suspension of 250 thousand accounts, including those of Canadian officials and journalists!
Users’ Twitter accounts were allegedly requested to be suspended by the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Global Engagement Centre, which reportedly prepared numerous accounts that “displayed inorganic behavior” and included “two or more” Chinese diplomats’ accounts.
Taibbi posted a picture of an email to Twitter employees Yoel Roth and Nick Pickles, who worked as the social media platform’s Global Head of Trust & Safety, in a 40-post thread. However, the email demonstrated that Twitter was receiving the list for their “situational awareness and no action is requested.”
Additionally, Taibbi emphasized the fact that the US intelligence community was putting pressure on the social media giant to restrict information and suspend accounts.
Notably, under the Trump administration, the relationship between the US intelligence community and Twitter flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In addition, Taibbi’s thread demonstrated how Twitter was receiving suspension requests from GEC, DHS, FBI, NSA, and CIA.
Taibbi also said in the most recent version of “Twitter Files” that the microblogging site was forced to work with US government agencies to look for Russian meddling.
In a tweet, Taibbi wrote, “The GEC flagged accounts as “Russian personas and proxies” based on criteria such as “Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,” “blaming” “research conducted at the Wuhan institute,” and “attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.”
Additionally, Taibbi shared an email in which the office of Democratic Representative and Chairman of the House Intel Committee Adam Schiff requested that Paul Sperry be barred from the country “related to alleged harassment from QAnon conspiracists.”
Additionally, Schiff’s office requested that Twitter “label and reduce the visibility of any content” and “stop the spread of future misinformation” regarding committee staff on the social media platform.
Taibbi wrote, noting that Twitter’s responses to Schiff’s office frequently stated “we don’t do this,” and that “even Twitter declined to honor Schiff’s request at the time.” However, Sperry was later suspended, as Taibbi noted.
For the unconfirmed, journalist Bari Weiss has collaborated with author Michael Shellenberger, author Michael Taibbi, and former Rolling Stone writer Taibbi, among others.
