8. Twitter Files Part 8, by @lhfang, December 20, 2022

   HOW TWITTER QUIETLY AIDED THE PENTAGON’S COVERT ONLINE PSYOP CAMPAIGN

   Lee Fang takes a fascinating detour, looking at how Twitter for years approved and supported Pentagon-backed covert operations. Noting the company explicitly testified to Congress that it didn’t allow such behavior, the platform nonetheless was a clear partner in state-backed programs involving fake accounts.

   Key revelations: after the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) sent over a list of 52 Arab-language accounts “we use to amplify certain messages,” Twitter agreed to “whitelist” them. Ultimately the program would be outed in the Washington Post in 2022 — two years after Twitter and other platforms stopped assisting — but contrary to what came out in those reports, Twitter knew about and/or assisted in these programs for at least three years, from 2017-2020.

   Lee wrote a companion piece for the Intercept here:

9. Twitter Files Part 9, by @mtaibbi, December 24th, 2022

   TWITTER AND “OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES”

   The Christmas Eve thread (I should have waited a few days to publish!) further details how the channels of communication between the federal government and Twitter operated, and reveals that Twitter directly or indirectly received lists of flagged content from “Other Government Agencies,” i.e. the CIA.

   Key revelations: CIA officials attended at least one conference with Twitter in the summer of 2020, and companies like Twitter and Facebook received “OGA briefings,” at their regular “industry” meetings held in conjunction with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI and the “Foreign Influence Task Force” met regularly “not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo!, Twitch, Cloudfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia.”

10. Twitter Files Part 10, by @DavidZweig, December 28, 2022

    HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE

    David Zweig drills down into how Twitter throttled down information about COVID that was true but perhaps inconvenient for public officials, “discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed.”

    Key Revelations: Zweig found memos from Twitter personnel who’d liaised with Biden administration officials who were “very angry” that Twitter had not deplatformed more accounts. White House officials for instance wanted attention on reporter Alex Berenson. Zweig also found “countless” instances of Twitter banning or labeling “misleading” accounts that were true or merely controversial. A Rhode Island physician named Andrew Bostom, for instance, was suspended for, among other things, referring to the results of a peer-reviewed study on mRNA vaccines.

11. and
12. Twitter Files Parts 11 and 12, by @mtaibbi, January 3, 2023

    HOW TWITTER LET THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY IN

    and

    TWITTER AND THE FBI “BELLY BUTTON”

    These two threads focus respectively on the second half of 2017, and a period stretching roughly from summer of 2020 through the present. The first describes how Twitter fell under pressure from Congress and the media to produce “material” showing a conspiracy of Russian accounts on their platform, and the second shows how Twitter tried to resist fulfilling moderation requests for the State Department, but ultimately agreed to let State and other agencies send requests through the FBI, which agent Chan calls “the belly button of the USG.” Revelations: at the close of 2017, Twitter makes a key internal decision. Outwardly, the company would claim independence and promise that content would only be removed at “our sole discretion.” The internal guidance says, in writing, that Twitter will remove accounts “identified by the U.S. intelligence community” as “identified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.”

    The second thread shows how Twitter took in requests from everyone — Treasury, HHS, NSA, FBI, DHS, etc. — and also received personal requests from politicians like Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, who asked to have journalist Paul Sperry suspended.

GLOSSARY OF “TWITTER FILES” TERMS

1. Government Agencies and NGOs

   CISA: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

   CENTCOM: Central Command of the Armed Forces

   ODNI: Office of the Director of National Intelligence

   FITF: Foreign Influence Task Force, a cyber-regulatory agency comprised of members of the FBI, DHS, and ODNI

   “OGA”: Other Government Agency, colloquially — CIA

   GEC: Global Engagement Center, an analytical division of the U.S. State Department

   USIC: United States intelligence community

   HSIN: Homeland Security Information Network, a portal through which states and other official bodies can send “flagged” accounts

   EIP: Election Integrity Project, a cyber-laboratory based at Stanford University that sends many reports to Twitter

   DFR: Digital Forensic Research lab, an outlet that performs a similar function to the EIP, only is funded by the Atlantic Council

   IRA: Internet Research Agency, the infamous Russian “troll farm” headed by “Putin’s chef,” Yevgheny Prigozhin

2. Twitter or Industry-specific terms

   PII: Can have two meanings. “Personally identifiable information” is self-explanatory, while a “Public Interest Interstitial” is a warning placed over a tweet, so that it cannot be seen. Twitter personnel even use “interstitial” as a verb, as in, “Can we interstitial that?”

   JIRA: Twitter’s internal ticketing system, through which complaints rise and are decided

   PV2: The system used at Twitter to view the profile of any user, to check easily if it has flags like “Trends Blacklist”

   SIP-PES Site Integrity Policy — Policy Escalation Support. SIP-PES is like Twitter’s version of a moderation Supreme Court, dealing with the most high-profile, controversial rulings

   SI: Site integrity. Key term that you’ll see repeately in Twitter email traffic, especially with “escalations,” i.e. tweets or content that have been reported for moderation review

   CHA: Coordinated Harmful Activity

   SRT: Strategic Response Team

   GET: Global Escalation Team

   VF: Visibility Filtering

   GUANO: Tool in Twitter’s internal system that keeps a chronological record of all actions taken on an account

   VIT: Very Important Tweeter. Really.

   GoV: Glorificaiton of Violence

   BOT: In the moderation content, an individualized heuristic attached to an account that moderates certain behavior automatically

   BME: Bulk Media Exploitation

   EP Abuse: Episodic abuse

   PCF: Parity, commentary and fan accounts. “PCF” sometimes appears as a reason an account has escaped an automated moderation process, under a limited exception

   FLC: Forced Login Challenge. Also called a “phone challenge,” it’s a way Twitter attempts to verify if an account is real or automated. “Phone challenges” are seen repeatedly in discussions about verification of suspected “Russia-linked” accounts

   IO: Information Operations, as in The GEC’s mandate for offensive IO to promote American interests.

This page will be kept open and updated as needed. If you have questions about terms, please send them to taibbi@substack.com

UPDATES:

Episode 20: “America This Week,” with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn

About your post Today at 4:34 PM: No one else can see your post.And so on and so forth. In fact, just recently, each article at my “parent site”, ADINA KUTNICKI: A ZIONIST & CONSERVATIVE BLOG, had its FB registered shares go from the hundreds, with some up to the many thousands, to a big, fat ZERO. In other words, all my shares have gone down the rabbit hole. Just like that. Poof. Gone. As such, take it to the bank that each and every conservative voice which reaches a wide readership will, sooner than later, be CENSORED. MUTED.} MESSAGE FAILED: This message contains content that has been blocked by our security systems. If you think you’re seeing this by mistake, please let us know. Yes, additional “proof-in-the pudding” as to why “BANNED: How Facebook Enables Militant Islamic Jihad” had to be written!}