The Pentagon, CIA and other US intelligence and law-enforcement agencies became increasingly \u201cmore aggressive\u201d with takedown requests, the latest trove of Twitter files has revealed. The documents suggest the agencies were effectively pushing the platform to censor foreign-policy stories that ran against the Washington-approved narrative.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government \u2013 from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA,\u201d journalist Matt Taibbi wrote in the Christmas Eve edition of the Twitter Files, released with the blessing of the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk.<\/p>\n
Thousands of censorship requests flowed to Twitter from what were termed OGA” in the documents, or \u201cOther Government Organizations,” through the FBI\u2019s Foreign Influence Task Force.<\/p>\n
Twitter executives often struggled to validate government claims, but were under constant pressure to find evidence to blame any foreign actor, Russia in particular.<\/p>\n
\u201cFound no links to Russia,\u201d an unnamed analyst said in one of the emails, later suggesting he could \u201cbrainstorm\u201d to \u201cfind a stronger connection.\u201d Former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth admitted in another instance that he’d found \u201cno real matches using the info.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\nInternal communications show that Twitter had been getting so many requests that its executives had to improvise a system for prioritizing them. The feds had dedicated personnel tasked with tailoring takedown requests to Twitter\u2019s policies for faster processing, which the execs acknowledged as \u201codd,\u201d but even then the company often struggled to justify censorship.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people wonder if Internet platforms receive direction from intelligence agencies about moderation of foreign policy news stories. It appears Twitter did, in some cases by way of the FITF\/FBI,\u201d Taibbi wrote. At least some of these directives originated at the CIA, according to former agent and whistleblower John Kiriakou, who said he \u201crecognized the formatting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The feds sometimes sent massive batches of over 1,000 accounts lined up for \u201cdigital execution,\u201d with only a brief explanation of the alleged problems. On multiple occasions they accused \u201cRussian agents\u201d of directing accounts that highlighted \u201cpredominantly anti-Ukraine narratives\u201d or documented \u201cpurported rights abuses committed by Ukrainians.\u201d<\/p>\n