{"id":3459,"date":"2023-01-05T03:34:33","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T09:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3459"},"modified":"2023-03-16T21:28:08","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T02:28:08","slug":"new-twitter-bombshell-how-american-spies-used-false-claims-of-russian-election-interference-to-bring-the-tech-giant-to-heel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3459","title":{"rendered":"New Twitter bombshell: How American spies used false claims of Russian election interference to bring the tech giant to heel<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Files reveal how the specter of Moscow’s supposed underhand ways was used to subjugate the platform to the US Democratic Party
\nIn a pair of blockbuster #TwitterFiles threads, this week, journalist Matt Taibbi has blown open, even wider, the media giant’s concerning collusion with the US national security state. The former Rolling Stone writer exposed how political pressure from the US Democratic Party very effectively forced the company\u00a0to endorse the lie that its platform was extensively weaponized by Russia, with hugely significant consequences.
\nFind the “Russian trace” at any cost
\nThe\u00a0first, boldly titled ‘How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In’, documents how in August 2017,\u00a0despite dubious allegations that Russian bots and trolls were responsible for the election of Donald Trump in the mainstream media reaching fever pitch, Twitter’s hierarchy knew its platform wasn\u2019t riddled with malign Kremlin-directed actors.
\nIn internal emails, the company\u2019s senior executives and communications professionals almost mocked the idea that it\u00a0was overrun with Russian bots. They could neither detect\u00a0\u201ca big correlation\u201d\u00a0in account activity related to the November 2016 election, nor any\u00a0\u201clarger patterns\u201d\u00a0at all. They forecast potentially taking action against less than 25 users. As such, it was decided to simply\u00a0ignore\u00a0approaches from the media on the issue.
\nThe next month, Twitter informed the Senate it had suspended 22 possible Russian accounts, and 179 others with\u00a0\u201cpossible links\u201d\u00a0to those accounts. Senator Mark Warner, a ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee,\u00a0immediately\u00a0held a high-profile press conference to denounce the social network\u2019s response as\u00a0\u201cfrankly inadequate on every level.\u201d
\nSuch pressure, combined with bitter, twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton declaring,\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s time for Twitter to stop dragging its heels and live up to the fact that its platform is being used as a tool for cyber-warfare,\u201d\u00a0forced the social network to set up a dedicated\u00a0\u201cRussia task force\u201d\u00a0to investigate the issue. It did\u00a0\u2013 and found\u00a0nothing.\u00a0\u201cNo evidence of a coordinated approach\u201d\u00a0between accounts flagged as potentially Kremlin-run was identified, despite an \u201cexhaustive\u201d internal investigation.<\/p>\n

Rt<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Files reveal how the specter of Moscow’s supposed underhand ways was used to subjugate the platform to the US Democratic Party In a pair of blockbuster #TwitterFiles threads, this week, journalist Matt Taibbi has blown open, even wider, the media giant’s concerning collusion with the US national security state. The former Rolling Stone writer exposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1236,3604,3602,1433,1431,1770,3601,1211,3603,1432],"class_list":["post-3459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-democrats","tag-election-meddling","tag-fake","tag-giant","tag-how","tag-russia","tag-tech-giants","tag-twitter","tag-us-spies","tag-used"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3459"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7804,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3459\/revisions\/7804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}