Matt Taibbi posted two more Twitter Files threads yesterday afternoon. They are the eleventh and twelfth such threads posted by the journalists to whom Elon Musk has opened the files of old Twitter. Taibbi has taken the lead in documenting The eleventh thread includes 33 tweets that can be accessed via the first (below).
1.THREAD: The Twitter Files
How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Twitter was pressured to do something about Russia! Russia! Russia! Twitter was unable to find a Russia problem in its world, but they had to answer to Senator Mark Warner.
7.Receiving these meager results, a furious Senator Mark Warner of Virginia – ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee – held an immediate press conference to denounce Twitter’s report as “frankly inadequate on every level.” pic.twitter.com/DAkX13igEE
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
Twitter got down to the business of pleasing Democrats disappointed by the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
12.The “Russia Task Force” started mainly with data shared from counterparts at Facebook, centered around accounts supposedly tied to Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). But the search for Russian perfidy was a dud: pic.twitter.com/UKjxyRTSnZ
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
Try as they might, Twitter couldn’t find the desired culprits. It’s almost funny.
14.OCT 18 2017: “First round of RU investigation… 15 high risk accounts, 3 of which have connections with Russia, although 2 are RT.” pic.twitter.com/MjtuvEZkYY
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
Hey, they found themselves in a public relations crisis.
18.The failure of the “Russia task force” to produce “material” worsened the company’s PR crisis.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
Twitter went back to work to please its political masters. They found a modus operandi that worked like a Pavlovian mechanism. The future is now.
30.“REPORTERS NOW KNOW THIS IS A MODEL THAT WORKS”
This cycle – threatened legislation, wedded to scare headlines pushed by congressional/intel sources, followed by Twitter caving to moderation asks – would later be formalized in partnerships with federal law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/DWSlHkk2cm
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
As always, I encourage interested readers to scroll through the whole thing with your own eyes.
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