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Censorship, Manipulation and Control: Government’s Role in Big Tech

US intelligence has their fingers in all sorts of major corporations and tech companies. Twitter likely had a long established relationship with the intelligence community ever since its inception and going live in 2006.

The latest installment of the Twitter Files focuses partly on 2017, and “How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In.”

This installment of the Twitter Files, posted by Matt Taibbi, sheds more light on the direct channel between Twitter and US government and intelligence agencies.

In 2017, “Russiagate” was a hot topic. Media, government and US citizens feverishly accused social media users of collusion with Russia and being part of a vast network on social media, spreading lies, propaganda and interfering with US politics and elections. 

Any account expressing dissent or critical of mainstream narratives was accused of being a Russian bot acting on behalf of foreign interests. And every branch of the US government intelligence was compiling lists of thousands of accounts that they vaguely suspected were Russian bots or inauthentic users. They funneled these lists to all social media platforms, including Twitter. Basically spoonfeeding them accounts that they demanded Twitter suspend, ban, and censor.

Taibbi says “In August 2017, when Facebook decided to suspend 300 accounts with “suspected Russian origin,” Twitter wasn’t worried. Its leaders were sure they didn’t have a Russia problem.”

Internal communication at Twitter had takeaways like, “FB may take action on hundreds of accounts, and we may take action on ~25.” Twitter was not seeing any large network of Russian actors buying lots of ads and propagating misinformation. They saw “no larger patterns” of Russian bots or networks of Russian accounts interested in meddling in US elections.

Taibbi says, “In September, 2017, after a cursory review, Twitter informed the Senate it suspended 22 possible Russian accounts, and 179 others with ‘possible links’ to those accounts, amid a larger set of roughly 2700 suspects manually examined.”

“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.’” 

Colin Crowell, the former Vice President of Global Public Policy and Philanthropy at Twitter, sent an email to Jack Dorsey and others updating them on Mark Warner pushing the Russian election interference story, Crowell says “Warner has political incentive to keep this issue at top of the news, maintain pressure on us and rest of industry to keep producing material for them.”

Crowell says, “We knew going in that our biggest vulnerability was that our teams are addressing and solving the malicious bot/misinformation problems of 2017 and beyond, but Warner and the Intel committees are singularly focused on what transpired in 2016. And we simply don’t have a lot of data or conclusions to share with them on that front.”

Crowell continues that Democrats are “also taking cues from Hillary Clinton, who in her ‘What Happened’ book tour is pointedly talking about role of Russian propaganda and dirty tricks that were pushed through social media had in her demise. She has specifically called out FB ‘and other social media’ for not doing enough to address state-sponsored mischief in the election.” 

Hillary Clinton said, “It’s 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.”

Taibbi says, “In growing anxiety over its PR problems, Twitter formed a ‘Russia Task Force’ to proactively self-investigate.” The task force began in October of 2017 and through all of their internal investigations, they didn’t find much of anything to speak of. The vast network of Russian bots did not exist.

A task force update was posted on October 13th, 2017, it says “We have found suspicious accounts which demonstrate our strategy is working, however we see no evidence of a coordinated approach, all of the accounts found seem to be lone-wolf type activity (different timing, spend, targeting, <$10k in ad spend).” The note continues, “at first pass it would suggest that these are low spend/isolated actors rather than anything significant.” By October 18, they only found 15 high risk accounts worth mentioning, with only 3 of these accounts having any ties to Russia, 2 of which were RT, formerly Russia Today, an English language news network owned by Russia state-affiliated media. 

By the end of October, the task force was making more progress, they had already combed through 2,500 accounts, but they only found that 17 of them were suspicious accounts that might be somehow connected with Russia “only 2 of those have significant spend one of which is Russia Today…remaining <$10k in spend.”

Twitter wasn’t delivering the results that the US government officials desired. Taibbi says, “As congress threatened costly legislation” and Twitter “was subject to more bad press fueled by the committees, the company changed its tune about the smallness of its Russia problem.”

Taibbi says, “‘THE COMMITTEES APPEAR TO HAVE LEAKED’ Even as Twitter prepared to change its ads policy and remove RT and Sputnik to placate Washington, congress turned the heat up more, apparently leaking the larger, base list of 2700 accounts.”

If Twitter didn’t act quickly enough, the Intel committee then leaked that information to the media and the press were all too eager to publish salacious stories about Russian bots and misinformation campaigns in a powerful and vast sprawling network. A new Red Scare was born in the twenty-first century, it was called “Russiagate.” 

A scant few of the accounts on the lists the committee provided were proven to be foreign. Most of the evidence Twitter discovered through looking at the accounts, proved just the opposite. But the Intel Committee pushed the lists unto decision makers at Twitter and when the committee didn’t get the response they desired, they went to the press, where they were all too pleased to push stories about fake accounts and Twitter facilitating Russian bots on the platform. 

Twitter was being accused of acting as a conduit for Russian misinformation and acting as propagator for information straight from the FSB, the bureau that is the successor of the KGB in Russia. Thomas Rid of the Intel committee told Politico, “Were Twitter a contractor for the FSB… they could not have built a more effective disinformation platform.”

Taibbi says, “Twitter was soon apologizing for the same accounts they’d initially told the Senate were not a problem.”

Taibbi says, “‘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.” 

A note from Twitter on November 21, 2017 says, “we can expect more investigations of accounts that are tangentially associated with the IRA handover to the U.S. committees, buoyed by academic brand names. Reporters now know this is a model that works.”

Taibbi says, “Twitter soon settled on its future posture.

In public, it removed content ‘at our sole discretion.’

Privately, they would ‘off-board’ anything ‘identified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.'”

The other thread installment of the new Twitter Files by Matt Taibbi starts with 

“Twitter and the FBI ‘Belly Button'”

This installment jumps forward a few years. “By 2020, Twitter was struggling with the problem of public and private agencies bypassing them and going straight to the media with lists of suspect accounts,” Taibbi says.

Twitter’s relationship with the Intelligence community deepened. The agenda was to censor and ban accounts baselessly accused of being Russian state actors in a “disinformation campaign” to propagate misinformation and influence international politics. 

US government agencies pressured Twitter to fabricate Russian interference. Basically extorted them, if Twitter didn’t take action quickly, the US government agencies would leak their lists of baselessly accused accounts of being Russian bots directly to the Media, as had happened back in 2017. Some of these accounts were news networks like RT, the Russian owned newscaster, other accounts could not be more distantly related to working on behalf of Russia, such as government officials in Canada, CNN newsmen, and other US based newsgroups.

Taibbi says, “In February, 2020, as COVID broke out, the Global Engagement Center – a fledgling analytic/intelligence arms of the State Department – went to the media with a report called, ‘Russian Disinformation Apparatus Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Concerns.'”

Taibbi says, “the GEC flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria like, ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.'” Also on the GEC’s criteria for Russian boys were accounts that were critical of Bill Gates “blaming Bill Gates for running a simulation test six weeks prior to the outbreak in China.”

Taibbi says, “State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular U.S. ZeroHedge, claiming the episode ‘led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.’ ZH had done reports speculating that the virus had lab origin.”

Taibbi says, “The GEC still led directly to news stories like the AFP’s headline, ‘Russia-linked disinformation campaign led to coronavirus alarm, US says,’ and a Politico story about how ‘Russian, Chinese, Iranian Disinformation Narratives Echo One Another.’

Taibbi Tweets, “‘YOU HAVEN’T MADE A RUSSIA ATTRIBUTION IN SOME TIME’ When Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub complained Twitter hadn’t ‘made a Russia attribution’ in some time, Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth said it was ‘revelatory of their motives.'”

Internal communication at Twitter describes it, “they did ask about our findings regarding the latest list of accounts they shared with NBC and I relayed we did see some inauthentic behaviours, but that we were unable to attribute the accounts to the IRA.” The IRA refers to the Internet Research Agency in Russia accused of running Russian bots in vast trolling operations engaged in propaganda and election meddling. It continues, “they noted we haven’t made an attribution to Russia in some time, and asked if there is any information they could provide to help us make those links. I offered it would be helpful in the future to arrange an analytical exchange ahead of any conclusions they release.”

It was clear Twitter was unhappy with the academics, intelligence agencies, government officials and armchair detectives that were taking unproven lists of accounts to the media and people were being unfairly maligned as Russian bots or trolls when the accounts had no association of the sort. All sorts of regular people on Twitter had their privacy violated and they were baselessly and slanderously accused.

“‘WE’RE HAPPY TO WORK DIRECTLY WITH YOU ON THIS, INSTEAD OF NBC.’ Roth tried in vain to convince outsider researchers like the Clemson lab to check with them before pushing stories about foreign interference to media,” Taibbi says.

Yoel Roth said in internal communication at Twitter about the Clemson media forensics group, “I started interfacing directly with the Clemson folks, in hopes of getting them to stop this path of running to press with claims of IRA activity. Obviously, I was unsuccessful (as we’ve been unsuccessful for years now).”

Taibbi says, “When the State Department/GEC – remember this was 2020, during the Trump administration – wanted to publicize a list of 5,500 accounts it claimed would ‘amplify Chinese propaganda and disinformation’ about COVID, Twitter analysts were beside themselves.”

The GEC sent Twitter a list that was a quarter of a million names long. They wanted Twitter to investigate all these accounts and suspend, ban or censor them. The bar for being a foreign-acting-troll was so low the criteria was things like the account followed two or more Chinese diplomats.

Taibbi says, “The GEC report appeared based on DHS data circulated earlier that week, and included accounts that followed ‘two or more’ Chinese diplomatic accounts. They reportedly ended up with a list ‘nearly 250,000’ names long, and included Canadian officials and a CNN account.”

“Roth saw GEC’s move as an attempt by the GEC to use intel from other agencies to ‘insert themselves’ into the content moderation club that included Twitter, Facebook, the FBI, DHS, and others,” Taibbi says.

“The GEC was soon agreeing to loop in Twitter before going public, but they were using a technique that had boxed in Twitter before. ‘The delta between when they share material and when they go to the press continues to be problematic,’ wrote one comms official,” Taibbi says.

“The episode led to a rare public disagreement between Twitter and state officials,” Taibbi says. “‘IT MAKES SENSE TO PUSH BACK ON GEC PARTICIPATION IN THIS FORUM’ When the FBI informed Twitter the GEC wanted to be included in the regular ‘industry call’ between companies like Twitter and Facebook and the DHS and FBI, Twitter leaders balked at first.”

Taibbi says, “Facebook, Google, and Twitter executives were united in opposition to GEC’s inclusion, with ostensible reasons including, ‘The GEC’s mandate for offensive IO to promote American interests.'”

Taibbi says, “A deeper reason was a perception that unlike the DHS and FBI, which were ‘apolitical,’ as Roth put it, the GEC was ‘political,’ which in Twitter-ese appeared to be partisan code.  

‘I think they thought the FBI was less Trumpy,’ is how one former DOD official put it.”

Taibbi says, “After spending years rolling over for Democratic Party requests for ‘action’ on ‘Russia-linked’ accounts, Twitter was suddenly playing tough. Why? Because, as Roth put it, it would pose ‘major risks’ to bring the GEC in, ‘especially as the election heats up.'”

Taibbi says, “Eventually the FBI argued, first to Facebook, for a compromise solution: other USG agencies could participate in the ‘industry’ calls, but the FBI and DHS would act as sole ‘conduits.'”

Referring to FBI special agent Elvis Chan and Yoel Roth being the “him,” Taibbi says, “‘STATE… NSA, and CIA’ Chan reassured him it would be a ‘one-way’ channel, and ‘State/GEC, NSA, and CIA have expressed interest in being allowed on in listen mode only.'” People at Twitter were being overwhelmed by various requests from all different areas of government and special interest groups making demands on Twitter and flooding them with accounts to take action on. The new arrangement would allow participation for more agencies without further burdening Twitter personnel, or so it appeared.

“Roth reached out to Chan with concerns about letting the ‘press-happy’ GEC in, expressing hope they could keep the ‘circle of trust small.’ Taibbi says.

“‘BELLY BUTTON’ ‘We can give you everything we’re seeing from the FBI and USIC agencies,’ Chan explained, but the DHS agency CISA ‘will know what’s going on in each state.’ He went on to ask if industry could ‘rely on the FBI to be the belly button of the USG.’” Taibbi says in a Tweet.”

In the document from FBI agent Elvis Chan, he asks Yoel if they will continue to use the established channels to communicate back and forth between the FBI and Twitter through direct email, for example, like they have used before. Chan tells Yoel Roth that he doesn’t know what channels of communication he has with the (Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency) and asks if Yoel wants Elvis and others from the FBI to act as a sort go-between interagent, sending messages between Twitter and the other US government agencies to keep everyone on the same page. Chan says “If that is the case, that will work for the FBI, but I don’t know what communication channels you have with CISA. Or will the industry partners rely on the FBI to be the belly button for the USG? We can do that as well.”

Twitter and US intelligence agencies settle on communicating via Signal, an encrypted phone and messaging service. Taibbi says, “Chan circulated private numbers of each company’s chief moderation officer in a Word Doc marked ‘Signal Phone Numbers.’” 

“Twitter was taking requests from every conceivable government body, beginning with the Senate Intel Committee (SSCI), which seemed to need reassurance Twitter was taking FBI direction. Execs rushed to tell ‘Team SSCI’ they zapped five accounts on an FBI tip,” Taibbi says. “Requests arrived and were escalated from all over: from Treasury, the NSA, virtually every state, the HHS, from the FBI and DHS, and more.”

Taibbi says, “They also received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned. Here, the office for Democrat and House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff asks Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry.”

Schiff’s office requested that Twitter delete and remove content from Twitter, put warning labels on certain content, reduce the visibility of content about certain subjects and people and  “suspend the many” accounts it had previously requested, “including @GregRubini and @paulsperry_, which have repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies and harassed.”

“‘WE DON’T DO THIS’ Even Twitter declined to honor Schiff’s request at the time. Sperry was later suspended, however.” Taibbi says. “Twitter honored almost everyone else’s requests, even those from GEC – including a decision to ban accounts like @RebelProtests and @BricsMedia because GEC identified them as ‘GRU-controlled’ and linked ‘to the Russian government,’ respectively”

Government agencies sent Twitter piles of lists of accounts to look into and take action on and remove. Taibbi says,“‘USIC’ requests often simply began ‘We assess’ and then provided lists (sometimes, in separate excel docs) they believed were connected to Russia’s Internet Research Agency and committing cyber ops, from Africa to South America to the U.S.”

One brief report, sent right after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year, flagged major Russian outlets like Vedomosti and Gazeta.ru. Note the language about ‘state actors’ fits Twitter’s internal guidance.

Government agencies loaded on to Twitter with lists of thousands of accounts to look into and take action on. Twitter was so flooded with demands and lists of accounts to take action on that they lost track of some of them. Taibbi says, “By the weeks before the election in 2020, Twitter was so confused by the various streams of incoming requests, staffers had to ask the FBI which was which.” They lost track of a list of 132 names, and no one seemed to have it. Taibbi says, “Requests poured in from FBI offices all over the country, day after day, hour after hour: If Twitter didn’t act quickly, questions came: ‘Was action taken?’ ‘Any movement?’” Employees were so flooded with email requests, they would say things like “My inbox is really F— up at this point” and ask to send messages on other services. Twitter acted as an arm of the intelligence agency. As Taibbi put it, they were “underpaid” for their labor.

Taibbi says, “Twitter was paid $3,415,323, essentially for being an overwhelmed subcontractor. 

Twitter wasn’t just paid. For the amount of work they did for government, they were underpaid.”

Image altered from photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash and Photo by Marco Verch Professional P

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