Tony the Fauch is no hero. More like one who has committed crimes against Humanity.
Self-proclaimed “Chief Twit” Elon Musk snapped back at former CIA Director John Brennan Monday, bashing him for throwing stones in a glass house after the latter rebuked him for urging the prosecution of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Musk sparked a Twitter frenzy over the weekend after tweeting, “my pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” which drew blowback from Brennan, who juxtaposed Fauci as a “national hero” with Musk as a promulgator of “public hate & divisions.”
“Good people in democracies need a more effective way to prevent attention-craving, emotionally immature, & highly devious individuals, esp those of means, from being socially, culturally, & politically destructive. We certainly seem to have far too many of them lately,” Brennan tweeted.
Musk has since elaborated on his Fauci tweet, arguing that the doctor, who is set to retire at the end of the month, lied to Congress. He did not specify how Fauci lied, but some conservatives have argued that he was not truthful when discussing government funding of gain-of-function research, in which scientists enhance viruses for experimental purposes.
“Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone. As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo,” Musk contended.
Brennan served as CIA director under the Obama administration from March 2013 until January 2017. Since his Twitter takeover, Musk, who appears to have lurched to the political Right in recent months, has unloaded on the intelligence community and Twitter’s old leadership for the suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020.
Under Musk’s stewardship, Twitter has given access to a trove of internal materials to journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, and author Michael Shellenberger, who have released the so-called Twitter Files detailing the behind-the-scenes decision-making process for suppressing the laptop story and booting former President Donald Trump from the platform in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter took effect in October.
The fourth part of the “Twitter Files” series was published Saturday night by journalist Michael Shellenberger, outlining how Twitter executives twisted the platform’s rules with the intention of blacklisting former President Donald Trump on January 7, 2020.
In a recently published thread, journalist Michael Shellenberger outlined the fourth release of the “Twitter Files” series, detailing the internal workings at Twitter and conversations between executives ahead of the banning of former President Donald Trump.
Shellenberger states that following the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, Twitter faced immense pressure to ban former President Trump, with many claiming they needed to ban Trump for safety reasons. During this time, then-CEO Jack Dorsey was on vacation and appeared to delegate much of the decision-making to other top executives including Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth and Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust Vijaya Gadde, the platform’s censorship queen:
On January 7, Dorsey emailed employees saying that the platform must remain consistent in its policies, including allowing users to return to the platform following temporary bans. Roth reassured an employee that “people who care about this… aren’t happy with where we are.”
Roth later excited DM’d colleagues stating “GUESS WHAT. Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.” This would allow Twiter to create a system where five violations of rules would result in permanent suspension:
Colleagues continued to ask Roth about “incitement to violence,” and on January 8, Twitter announced a permanent ban on Trump’s account due to the “risk of the further incitement of violence.” Twitter said that the ban was based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted,” but Shellenberger notes that in 2019, Twitter stated that it did “not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.”
In another discussion, Roth asks a colleague to add “stopthesteal” and “Kraken” to a blacklist of terms to be unamplified. The colleague objects stating that doing so could risk “deamplifying counterspeech” that validated the 2020 election results.
The latest Twitter Files release appears to show a general attempt by Roth and other Twitter employees to justify the banning of Trump and attempts to figure out how current policy could be applied in a way that would explain the permanent suspension.
Shellenberger ends the thread by noting that Facebook’s suspension of former President Trump and its willingness to ignore its own rules put the final nail in the coffin for Trump’s return to Twitter.
By Jeremy Frankel | Thursday, 08 December 2022 09:55 PM EST
Journalist Bari Weiss dropped a second round of “Twitter Files” Thursday.
Following last week’s release by new owner Elon Musk through journalist Matt Taibbi that said it revealed Twitter’s collusion with the Biden 2020 presidential campaign, Weiss revealed “that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.”
Weiss dropped the second batch of files on Thursday in a lengthy Twitter thread, continuing: “Twitter once had a mission ‘to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.’ Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.”
The thread continued with examples, such as Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who was placed on a “Trends Blacklist” after arguing that COVID-19 lockdowns would harm children. The blacklist prevented his tweets from trending.
Conservative radio and TV host Dan Bongino was placed on a “Search Blacklist” at one point, while the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was set to “Do Not Amplify.”
“Twitter denied that it does such things,” Weiss continued. “In 2018, Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: ‘We do not shadow ban.’ They added: ‘And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.'”
“What many people call ‘shadow banning,’ Twitter executives and employees call ‘Visibility Filtering’ or ‘VF.’ Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning,” Weiss continued. “‘Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,’ one senior Twitter employee” said.
“‘VF’ refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the ‘trending’ page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches. All without users’ knowledge,” Weiss said.
A Twitter engineer said, and two other Twitter employees confirmed: “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do.”
Weiss added that the Strategic Response Team-Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET, was the group that made the decision on whether to limit the reach of specific users. This team handled up to 200 “cases” per day.
However, there was also a level that existed beyond official ticketing or following Twitter’s policy on paper, called the “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” or “SIP-PES.”
“This secret group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others,” Weiss continued, adding, “This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. ‘Think high follower account, controversial,’ another Twitter employee told us. For these ‘there would be no ticket or anything.'”
One of these accounts was Libs of TikTok (LTT), which was both placed on the Trends Blacklist and designated as “‘Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.'”
Libs of TikTok, which was started by Chaya Raichik in November 2020 and has over 1.4 million followers, received six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik said. “Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against ‘hateful conduct.'” These suspensions each blocked Raichik from posting for up to a week.
However, Weiss continued, “in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that ‘LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.'”
The group internally justified her suspensions by claiming that her posts “encouraged online harassment of ‘hospitals and medical providers’ by insinuating ‘that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.'”
However, when Raichik herself was doxxed and a photo of her home and address went up on Twitter, Twitter Support responded: “We reviewed the reported content, and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.” The doxxing tweet is still up, and no action was taken, Weiss said.
“In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects,” Weiss continued.
Roth said in one of these messages to a colleague that “a lot of times, SI has used technicality spam enforcements as a way to solve a problem created by Safety under-enforcing their policies. Which, again isn’t a problem per se — but it keeps us from addressing the root cause of the issue, which is that our Safety policies need some attention.”
Six days later, Roth messaged an employee on the Health, Misinformation, Privacy, and Identity research team requesting more research to support expanding “non-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification/visibility filtering.”
“Roth wrote: ‘The hypothesis underlying much of what we’ve implemented is that if exposure to, e.g., misinformation directly causes harm, we should use remediations that reduce exposure, and limiting the spread/virality of content is a good way to do that.'” Weiss said.
Roth added, “We got Jack on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations — especially for other policy domains.”
“The authors,” who include journalists Abigail Shrier, Michael Shellenberger, Nellie Bowles and Isaac Grafstein, “have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files,” Weiss said. “The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.
“We’re just getting started on our reporting. Documents cannot tell the whole story here. A big thank you to everyone who has spoken to us so far. If you are a current or former Twitter employee, we’d love to hear from you. Please write to: tips@thefp.com,” Weiss said.
Weiss concluded by telling readers to watch journalist Matt Taibbi for the next installment.
Investor slides shared by Musk say that the daily inflow of new users has reached two million, while “user active minutes per day” likewise reached eight billion. The company now has more than 250 million monetizable daily active users, Musk says. All three metrics exceed previous company records.
Purported hate speech impressions have been lower since Musk acquired the platform. Musk, who claimed he purchased Twitter to promote free expression and peaceful dialogue across the political spectrum, revealed last week that the company is still defining hate speech with “the same list of terms” implemented before the acquisition.
Musk also hinted at a number of new offerings from “Twitter 2.0,” including enhanced video content, long-form tweets, encrypted direct messages, and entertaining advertisements.
Musk has remarked that widespread coverage of the acquisition and his subsequent attempts to reform the company, including negative reports from mainstream outlets, has contributed to usage reaching record levels. He said his number-one priority is the removal of child exploitation ( I think I know of 4 or 5 people who were part of this. White Progressives. ) content from Twitter, which previous management neglected to accomplish. Several advertisers paused campaigns on the platform two months ago after a report showed that child sexual abuse material had appeared alongside major advertisers’ profiles.
I have seen my likes and followers grow, so I’m happy the direction Twitter is going in.
Not so long ago the left just loved Twitter. Why? They for the most part would single out Conservatives and use a broad brush when they would call something racist or misinformation. But recently that changed. Gone are the days when COVID looked at from a scientific point of view was banned. Gone when you would be banned for calling the undocumented illegals.
Twitter has missed a few far right loons, but they also are still allowing race baiters and progressive racists spew their hate. So I guess it’s an even trade off. But I FOR ONE HAVE NO ISSUES WITH TWITTER.
CBS quits Twitter on Friday, comes crawling back Sunday.
CBS on Friday said they were leaving Twitter. Sunday they came crawling back. First they said they had security concerns, So they go to TIC TOK. But after much ridicule they come crawling back. Said they will monitor the situation.
“Responding to misinformation is my day job. My night job is RUNNING ELECTIONS.” – CISA document 6/22/22. Name redacted, emphasis added.
Here is a disturbing story. It demonstrates intrigue, corruption, and disdain for American principles at the highest level.
Perhaps the saddest thing about this story is that you probably won’t be surprised. Especially if you’ve been paying attention for the past few years.
The story is this: Twitter and other social media platforms have been cozy with the Department of Homeland Security to squelch what DHS calls “misinformation,” “disinformation” and “malinformation,” or “MDM,” according to an investigative report published Monday by The Intercept.
Job one for Musk was to not only fire CEO Parag Agrawal but also Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top lawyer and the individual responsible for booting former President Donald Trump off the platform and for censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 election.
You probably remember a few months ago when DHS rolled out what it called its Disinformation Governance Board, designed to go after “MDM” on social media. A firestorm of bad publicity meant the Biden administration had to quickly yank it offstage.
But the concept is still around and Gadde has been part of it.
Gadde is a member of an advisory committee of the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). In June, the committee put out a report that essentially outlined a need to get around the First Amendment to stop “MDM” since it “poses a significant risk to critical functions like elections, public health, financial services and emergency response.”
Also, The Intercept reported on DHS documents saying the agency is going after “MDM” on “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”
In other words, DHS wants to push the Biden administration’s line on many of the controversies Americans might be discussing on social media, and attack or suppress other views that oppose it.
And Twitter has been right there in the middle of it.
Lee Fang, one of the authors of The Intercept article, tweeted that Gadde had met monthly with DHS to discuss censorship and, along with Facebook, Twitter “created special portals for the government to rapidly request takedowns of content.”
The emails and documents show close collaboration b/w DHS & private sector. Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde (fired by @elonmusk last week) met monthly with DHS to discuss censorship plans. Microsoft exec texted DHS: “Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t”
In March, top officials of Twitter and JPMorgan Chase met with Laura Dehmlow, section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force. Dehmlow said subversive information on the internet could undercut support for the U.S. government, according to notes of the meeting reported by The Intercept.
In a statement for The Intercept report, a Twitter representative said the company does not “coordinate with other entities when making content moderation decisions,” following, rather, its own rules in such situations.
Still, Twitter joined other tech companies in monthly meetings with the FBI, CISA and other government agencies to determine how to handle misinformation leading up to the 2020 elections, according to NBC News.
In 2018, DHS began notifying social media companies of what it described as voting disinformation appearing on their platforms. The following year, DHS developed the Foreign Influence and Interference Branch which morphed in 2020 to track communication regarding COVID-19, The Intercept said.
Varied U.S. intelligence agencies moderated social media surrounding the 2020 election and leading up to the November voting there were regular emails among officials of Twitter, DHS and the Center for Internet Security regarding takedown procedures for social media postings.
And while the Disinformation Governance Board was scrapped, DHS in August published a document titled “DHS Needs a Unified Strategy to Counter Disinformation Campaigns.”
In it, DHS intones “such campaigns may aim to erode public trust in our government and the Nation’s critical infrastructure sectors, negatively affect public discourse, or even sway elections.”
Sway elections? You think? Hasn’t that been a major aim of Silicon Valley?
Of course, DHS does not address a key foundational principle which allows for pesky ideas that the Department of Homeland Security considers “MDM.”
It’s contained in the document that proclaims, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The Founders, ever conscious of man’s corruption, knew what’s now called “MDM” would be protected by the First Amendment, but, as in other parts of the Bill of Rights, they also knew liberty was more important than government convenience.
Twitter, as The Intercept report shows, clearly has been involved in the federal government’s attempts to outsource censorship and suppression of dissent.
Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has publicly declared himself to be a “free speech absolutist.”
Clearly, something has to give.
There’s no telling where the company will go now that Musk is in charge, but he was right about one of his first major personnel moves.
Justice has been served. Biden posted one of his lies and Twitter fact checked him. Sweet. Biden Claimed 55 Corporations made 40 billion and paid no taxes. and his inflation reduction act would put a stop this.
Only 14 companies are eligible to pay this tax. And only if their accountants don’t find the loop hole to not pay it.
