Twitter was pressured by US lawmakers and media to exaggerate alleged Russian meddling on the social media platform during the 2016 president election, journalist Matt Taibbi said in the latest release of the so-called Twitter Files.
The latest batch of internal documents released on Tuesday, in coordination with Twitter chief Elon Musk, shows that the social media giant had originally seen no coordinated effort by Russia to use the social media platform to launch a major campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election.
"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)," Twitter's Russia Task Force said in a document on October 2017.
Twitter's then Public Policy Vice President Colin Crowell said in an email to former CEO Jack Dorsey in September 2017 that Democrat lawmakers had taken cues from then Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to pressure Twitter to investigate accounts linked to Russia.
The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence Committee Mark Warner also pressured Twitter to produce material that will make news headlines about alleged Russian meddling in the US elections via social media, according Crowell.
However, Twitter continued to find no coordinated effort by Russia to use the platform to allegedly influence the presidential elections, the documents found.
In an October 23, 2017 email the task force said the probe found only 17 suspicious accounts linked to Russia, only two of which had significant ad purchases, including Russia Today, which spent less than $10,000.
Twitter Files, discrediting doctors and experts who spoke out against vaccines
New twitter document released on December 26, detailing how Twitter executives attempted to censor 'inconvenient' data on Covid by discrediting doctors and experts who spoke out against vaccines
Using their pull, Zweig writes, the government was able to discredit doctors and experts, and suppress ordinary users' freedom of speech on Twitter — even if they were citing the Center for Disease Control's own data.
The documents provide more context as to how the government infiltrated the social media giant to suppress certain stories, as Twitter CEO Elon Musk vows there will be more revelations next week
According to the documents released on Monday, the Trump administration met with executives at Twitter, Google, Facebook and Microsoft looking for 'help from the tech companies to combat misinformation' about 'runs on grocery stores... that could stoke panic buying and behaviors' in the early days of the pandemic.
1. THREAD:
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE
– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*
Then, when the Biden administration took over, they became focused on tackling 'misinformation' about vaccines and targeted high-profile vaccine skeptics like Berenson.
In the summer of 2021, Zweig writes, Biden said social media companies were 'killing people' for allowing vaccine misinformation — and just a few hours later, Berenson's account was suspended.
He was kicked off the platform the following month, and ultimately sued (and settled with) Twitter.
As part of the legal process, Twitter was compelled to release internal communications, which showed how the White House pressured the company to take action on Berenson.
14. But Twitter did suppress views—many from doctors and scientific experts—that conflicted with the official positions of the White House. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing.
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
But the Biden administration was apparently 'very angry' that Twitter had not done more to deplatform other accounts, and pressured executives to do more.
The Biden administration also piled pressure on the social media platform to suspend former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson over his tweets questioning Covid vaccines
In the latest instalment of the Twitter Files, journalist David Zweig laid bare how both the Trump and Biden administrations pressured Twitter executives to censor information that was 'true but inconvenient.'
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