{"id":6798,"date":"2023-03-03T02:19:13","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T08:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=6798"},"modified":"2023-03-03T02:19:18","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T08:19:18","slug":"twitter-received-state-sponsored-blacklists-from-us-matt-taibbi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=6798","title":{"rendered":"Twitter received \u2018state sponsored blacklists\u2019 from US \u2013 Matt Taibbi<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US State Department, both directly and through third-party organizations, pressed Twitter to censor American users for their non-existent connections to Russia, China, and Hindu nationalism, according to internal documents.
\nPublished by journalist Matt Taibbi on Thursday, the latest \u2018Twitter Files\u2019 reveal that the company\u2019s former trust and safety chief, Yoel Roth, was approached in 2021 and given a list of 40,000 accounts suspected of engaging in \u201cinauthentic behavior\u201d in support of India\u2019s Bharatiya Janata Party.
\nThe list was provided by the \u2018Digital Forensics Research Lab\u2019 at the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by the US State Department\u2019s \u2018Global Engagement Center\u2019 (GEC), as well as a host of NATO governments and weapons manufacturers.
\nAccording to the files, Roth investigated the list and found that \u201cvirtually all appear to be real people\u201d rather than Indian bots, while Taibbi contacted several and learned that they were \u201cordinary Americans\u201d with no connection whatsoever to Indian politics.
\nCreated in the final year of the Obama administration, the GEC is a State Department entity that works with multiple US intelligence agencies to \u201ccounter foreign disinformation.\u201d It is forbidden from operating within the United States, and recently had to cut its ties with a George Soros-backed NGO that was using its funding to target American conservative news sites.
\nWhile the list of supposed Hindu nationalists was given to Twitter via the Atlantic Council, the GEC directly passed other lists to the social media platform, including 500 accounts that were allegedly spreading Iranian \u201cdisinformation,\u201d and 5,500 \u201cChinese accounts\u201d engaged in \u201cstate-backed coordinated manipulation,\u201d despite the fact that this latter list included multiple Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees.
\nRoth described the Chinese list as \u201ca total crock,\u201d while fellow employee Aaron Rodericks said it provided \u201cmore entertainment value than anything.\u201d
\nThe GEC and its organizations tangentially connected to the State Department \u2013 such as the infamous \u2018Alliance for Securing Democracy\u2019 that published the \u2018Hamilton68\u2019 dashboard of \u201cRussian bots\u201d \u2013  had long pressed Twitter to crack down on allegedly Kremlin-connected accounts, but Roth told staff that it was impossible to detect \u201cRussian fingerprints\u201d on any of the accounts.
\nInstead, accounts that retweeted \u201cnews sources linked to Russia\u201d were considered Kremlin-sponsored. One list handed to Twitter by the GEC considered membership in France\u2019s anti-government \u2018Yellow Vests\u2019 movement as \u201cbeing Russia-aligned.\u201d
\nWhile Twitter\u2019s executives may have been skeptical of the GEC\u2019s \u2018blacklists\u2019, the US media was not. Emails show that multiple news outlets and agencies \u2013 including the Associated Press \u2013 would receive reports from the organization, and then press Twitter to take action and ban the listed accounts.
\n\u201cReauthorization for GEC\u2019s funding is up for a vote this year,\u201d Taibbi wrote on Twitter on Thursday. \u201cCan we at least stop paying to blacklist ourselves?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rt<\/p>\n

Tags\uff1aTwitter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US State Department, both directly and through third-party organizations, pressed Twitter to censor American users for their non-existent connections to Russia, China, and Hindu nationalism, according to internal documents. Published by journalist Matt Taibbi on Thursday, the latest \u2018Twitter Files\u2019 reveal that the company\u2019s former trust and safety chief, Yoel Roth, was approached in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6799,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[1375,1211],"class_list":["post-6798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-state","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6800,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798\/revisions\/6800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}