Journalist Matt Taibbi outlined the process by which “Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In” and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s involvement in instigating the Russian witch hunt in the first of two “Twitter Files” threads published on Tuesday.
The “Twitter Files” episode from Tuesday provided a chronology that showed how and when government intelligence organizations including the CIA, FBI, and Department of Defense acquired control of Twitter to further their own progressive agendas by stifling user expression. This is only one instance of how influential governmental bodies are using social media for political benefit. “taking cues from Hillary Clinton” and under pressure from supporters in the corporate media.
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According to the article, Facebook has deactivated around 300 accounts of “suspected Russian origin” Colin Crowell, a former vice president of public policy at Twitter, suggested to keep “the spotlight” on other platforms despite the fact that Twitter discovered that just 22 Russian accounts were linked to suspected intervention in the US election.
In a news conference, Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Senator Mark Warner (Va.) voiced dissatisfaction with the findings of an inquiry. He said that they are “frankly inadequate on entry level.” and profoundly deficient on the most fundamental levels.
Crowell wrote Twitter’s CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey to set up a conversation with members of Intelligence Committees to further investigate the current problem. In this private discussion, Warner presented his perceptions of new security threats posed by social networking sites. “political incentive to keep this issue at top of the news” as a hearing was set in just over a month and that, “Democrats [were] 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.”
Former Secretary Clinton strongly asserted that Russian involvement contributed to Donald Trump’s win as she launched her book tour and spoke about the consequences of Russian interfering in the 2016 presidential election. “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.”
In the days after Crowell’s update to Dorsey, Twitter established a “Russia Task Force” that, as of Oct. 13, 2017, an internal report indicated, “provided very minimal confirming findings.” “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).”
In the end, despite changing the search’s parameters, Out of 2500 account evaluations, “‘only 2’ significant accounts” were discovered, but the information was utilized by the media to create headlines like “Russian Influence Reached 126 Million Through Facebook Alone.”
The press criticized Twitter for its lack of substantial results, with publications including Politico saying “Twitter deleted data potentially crucial to Russia probes” With the publication citing Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins, as having remarked, “Were Twitter a contractor for the FSB [Russian Intelligence] … they could not have built a more effective disinformation platform.”
Twitter was under pressure to change its political advertising when new restrictions were put forward in order to comply and avoid getting into legal issues. A list of seemingly innocent accounts that had triggered red lights was made public by the Intelligence Committees of Congress, presumably indicating that more research into the influence of digital media on politics is necessary.
With many journalists promoting the story of Russian meddling, Twitter was deluged with questions and finally buckled under pressure from outside sources. As Taibbi said succinctly: “REPORTERS NOW KNOW THIS IS A MODEL THAT WORKS,” as he summed up, “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.”
Invoking a policy that was against the publicly declared removal of information “at our sole discretion,” the investigation revealed, “Internal Guidance: Any user identified by the U.S. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber operations against targets associated with U.S. or other elections, or an entity associated with such operations, shall not be allowed to advertise on Twitter.”
As he concluded, “Twitter let the ‘USIC’ into its moderation process,” following cues from Clinton, and “It would not leave.”
