Biden Regime to Drop Half a Million on Artificial Intelligence That Detects ‘Microaggressions’ on Social Media thumbnail

Biden Regime to Drop Half a Million on Artificial Intelligence That Detects ‘Microaggressions’ on Social Media

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By The Geller Report

Full on police state.

President Biden On His Administration’s New Actions On The Economy

By: Philip Caldwell • Washington Free Beacon •  December 21, 2022:

The Biden administration is set to dole out more than $550,000 in grants to develop an artificial intelligence model that can automatically detect and suppress microaggressions on social media, government spending records show.

The award, funded through President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, was granted to researchers at the University of Washington in March to develop technologies that could be used to protect online users from discriminatory language. The researchers have already received $132,000 and expect total government funding to reach $550,436 over the next five years.

The researchers are developing machine-learning models that can analyze social media posts to detect implicit bias and microaggressions, commonly defined as slights that cause offense to members of marginalized groups. It’s a broad category, but past research conducted by the lead researcher on the University of Washington project suggests something as tame as praising meritocracy could be considered a microaggression.

The Biden administration’s funding of the research comes as the White House faces growing accusations that it seeks to suppress free speech online. Biden last month suggested there should be an investigation into Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter after the billionaire declared the social media app would pursue a “free speech” agenda. Internal Twitter communications Musk released this month also revealed a prolonged relationship between the FBI and Twitter employees, with the agency playing a regular role in the platform’s content moderation.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton likened the Biden administration’s funding of the artificial intelligence research to the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to “censor speech unapproved by the state.” For the Biden administration, Fitton said, the research is a “project to make it easier for their leftist allies to censor speech.”

A spokesman for the National Science Foundation, which issued the research grant, rebuffed criticism of the project, which he said “does not attempt to hamper free speech.” The project, the spokesman said, creates “automated ways of identifying biases in speech” and addresses the biases of human content moderators.

The research’s description doesn’t give examples of what comments would qualify as microaggressions—though it acknowledges they can be unconscious and unintentional. The project is led by computer science professor Yulia Tsvetkov, who has authored studies that suggest the artificial intelligence model might identify and suppress language many would consider inoffensive, such as comments praising the concept of meritocracy.

Tsvetkov coauthored a 2019 study titled “Finding Microaggressions in the Wild,” which categorized microaggressions into subcategories, one of which was the “myth” that “differences in treatment are due to one’s merit.” Examples of microaggressions laid out in the paper included statements like “Your mom is white, so it’s not like you’re really black,” and questions including “But where are you from, originally?”

Tsvetkov also coauthored a July article that analyzed the “prominence of positivity in #BlackLivesMatter tweets” during the June 2020 George Floyd riots. Tsvetkov and her colleagues determined positive emotions like “hope, pride, and optimism” were prevalent in pro-Black Lives Matter tweets, evidence they said contradicts narratives framing Black Lives Matter protesters as angry.

Conservative watchdog groups raised alarm over the Biden administration’s funding of the research, telling the Washington Free Beacon the project represents a White House effort to curb free speech online.

“It’s not the role of government to police speech that some might find either offensive or emotionally draining,” said Dan Schneider, vice president of the Media Research Center’s free speech division. “Government is supposed to be protecting our rights, not suppressing our rights.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Hackers Tied to China’s Government Steal $20 Mil in U.S. COVID Relief Funds thumbnail

Hackers Tied to China’s Government Steal $20 Mil in U.S. COVID Relief Funds

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By Judicial Watch

Nearly a year after Judicial Watch launched an investigation into the theft of U.S. COVID relief funds by foreign hackers, the Secret Service confirms that cyber criminals connected to China’s government stole $20 million in benefits. This includes Small Business Administration (SBA) loans and unemployment insurance money in multiple states, according to a national news story that identifies the perpetrators as a APT41, a hacking group based in Chengdu. The report cites U.S. law enforcement officials and cybersecurity experts who believe the multi-million-dollar theft of government pandemic funds by the Chinese faction “may just be the tip of the iceberg.”

Back in February Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the SBA as part of an ongoing investigation into the pervasive fraud associated with the government’s COVID-19 cash giveaway. Specifically, Judicial Watch requested memoranda, reports, email communications, investigative reports, and other communications or data concerning the following: COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) deposits originating from a foreign Internet Protocol (IP) address, account holders attempting to transfer funds to foreign accounts of any type and loans approved utilizing a fraudulent social security number. On February 23, the SBA acknowledged via electronic mail that it received Judicial Watch’s FOIA request and issued an official tracking number. So far no records have been provided to Judicial Watch and the SBA is in violation of the federal deadline—20 working days—to produce the information.

Most government agencies practice similar stonewalling tactics and Judicial Watch has repeatedly been forced to file lawsuits to compel the release of records. Our goal as a nonpartisan educational foundation is to promote transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics, and the law. Pandemic relief has been a colossal multi-billion-dollar debacle rife with fraud and corruption. The problem is so bad that the Department of Justice (DOJ) created a COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to “enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud.” The special unit has been quite busy prosecuting a multitude of scams, false statements, and money laundering related to pandemic relief. Earlier this year House Republicans issued a report documenting 500 days of massive waste, fraud, and abuse in the American Rescue Plan. It includes more than $783 million in stimulus checks for convicted prisoners including the Boston Marathon bomber, $40 million to expand libraries in Delaware, $2 million for a Florida golf course and $16 million for electric vehicle charging stations in Maine and $20 million to modernize the state’s fish hatcheries. The list goes on and on.

The SBA got on Judicial Watch’s radar because it has disbursed approximately $390 billion to nearly four million small businesses and nonprofits under its COVID-19 EIDL. The program provides up to $2 million in financial assistance to help small businesses recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic. Like many of the other COVID relief initiatives, the government made it way too easy to obtain cash and failed miserably to implement adequate vetting protocols. Officials cited in the recent news article confirm that other federal investigations of pandemic fraud also seem to point back to foreign state-affiliated hackers. The Secret Service admits there are over 1,000 ongoing investigations involving transnational and domestic criminals defrauding public benefits programs and Chinese hackers are key among them. As if it were not serious enough that Chinese hacks are stealing American taxpayer funds, one senior Justice Department official points out the cybercrimes also have serious national security implications.

Besides the SBA’s EIDL, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed by Congress to provide over $2 trillion in “fast and direct economic aid” to Americans negatively impacted by the pandemic, also launched another fraud-infested initiative known as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). In addition to the DOJ’s special task force, federal prosecutors across the nation have charged dozens of individuals with crimes associated with PPP scams. A recent example includes a father and son convicted of illegally obtaining $1.7 in loans. A federal jury in North Carolina convicted the men of money laundering and other offenses with the father sentenced to four years in prison and the son three years. This month the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia revealed that in 2022 her office has charged more than 50 defendants in 26 cases of fraud schemes connected to COVID relief that defrauded the government out of nearly $125 million.

EDITORS NOTE: This Judicial Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

President Trump reacts to Twitter Files: Musk is a ‘hero’ thumbnail

President Trump reacts to Twitter Files: Musk is a ‘hero’

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By Dr. Rich Swier

In his first interview since the release of The Twitter Files, 45th President Donald Trump spoke with OAN’s Chief White House Correspondent Chanel Rion. Here’s part of that discussion as well as Trump’s reaction to Elon Musk’s Twitter Files release.

©One America News Network. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Elon Musk Sticking By His Word

RELATED TWEET:

BREAKING: GOP House Reps release bombshell report showing Pelosi staff had regular meetings setting up J6 security, helped revise plans, and turned down requests from USCP and House Sgt. at Arms for more funding and Nat’l Guard troops

IT WAS A SETUP!!https://t.co/NFDYpJ0a6z

— Rogan O’Handley (@DC_Draino) December 21, 2022

‘Attempting To Discredit The Agency’: FBI Responds To ‘Twitter Files’ thumbnail

‘Attempting To Discredit The Agency’: FBI Responds To ‘Twitter Files’

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By The Daily Caller

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a new statement Wednesday following the latest “Twitter Files” dump.

The FBI accused the “Twitter Files” release as an attempt “to discredit” the agency by disclosing information on the FBI’s correspondence with Twitter in October 2020. Journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that the agency warned the previous executives at Twitter of a “hack-and-leak” by “state actors” surrounding the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop to influence the 2020 presidential election.

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public,” the statement began.

“It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency,” the agency concluded.

The “Twitter Files” revealed that the FBI and Twitter worked closely in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. Internal documents published Monday found that the FBI paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million between October 2019 and February 2021 for managing its financial burdens caused while complying with the agency’s requests.

Taibbi reported he found no evidence that the FBI had involvement in Twitter’s suppression of the New York Post’s report on Hunter Biden’s laptop, though new reports released by author Michael Shellenberger indicated they may have, in fact, been involved.

Former FBI Deputy General Counsel James Baker argued Twitter’s then-head of trust and safety Yoel Roth’s claim that the Post’s report did not violate the social media site’s policies on October 14, according to Shellenberger. The agency had already been in possession of Biden’s laptop since December 2019, indicating that the agency knew the Post reported the story accurately.

Musk announced Dec. 6 that he fired Baker for allegedly withholding the release of documents related to the suppression of Biden’s laptop.

The agency also flagged certain tweets for Twitter to remove from the platform, the files found. Some agents were even employed at the social media company.

Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the incoming House Oversight Chair, said Tuesday that Congress should block funding of the FBI until it disclosed the alleged involvement in Big Tech censorship.

“In the beginning, I thought that there were probably two or three rogue employees who were orchestrating this cover up of the Hunter Biden laptop story, but now we know the FBI had a division of at least 80 agents,” Comer said. “We also know that the FBI paid Twitter over $3 million for their time, all the time they took over the past couple of years in telling them who to suppress, who to ban. You know, it’s just things that the government has no role in.”

“The FBI was never granted the authority to create any type of disinformation task force that policed the social media sites. Now this we know with Twitter,” he continued. “We’ve heard similar stories from Zuckerberg. Who knows what went on at YouTube and Google. This is an agency that’s out of control.”

AUTHOR

NICOLE SILVERIO

Media reporter. Follow Nicole Silverio on Twitter @NicoleMSilverio

RELATED ARTICLE: Twitter Gave ‘Special Protection’ To Pentagon Propaganda Accounts, Docs Show

RELATED VIDEO: Miranda Devine: The FBI Was Paying Twitter $3.4 Million ‘to Help Censor Americans’

RELATED TWEET:

“The Republican members on the Judiciary Committee are committed…get into the FBI’s role in all this,” .@Jim_Jordan said.

Rep. Jim Jordan Calls For Investigation Into FBI’s Alleged Role In Hunter Biden Laptop Story Suppression https://t.co/zi5WC4ufuJ via @dailycaller

— Nicole Silverio (@NicoleMSilverio) December 7, 2022

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: President Trump Outlines His Restoring Free Speech Plan—America’s Digital Bill of Rights thumbnail

VIDEO: President Trump Outlines His Restoring Free Speech Plan—America’s Digital Bill of Rights

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By Dr. Rich Swier

President Donald J. Trump sent a clear message on what his primary focus will be when he is reelected POTUS in 2024.

Watch: Trump vows to dismantle the “censorship cartel” when reelected,

In a December 15, 2022 Forbes article titled Trump Vows To Dismantle ‘Censorship Cartel’ If He’s Re-Elected—An Apparent Nod To Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ Release Sara Dorn reports,

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday promised to upend all forms of social media content moderation if he’s re-elected, in what he framed as a bid to “reclaim the right to free speech” while describing a plan that seems targeted at the previous management of Twitter, whose new owner Elon Musk has become a recent ally to the right.

KEY FACTS

  • In a seven-minute video posted on Truth Social, Trump said if he’s re-elected in 2024, he would “shatter the left-wing censorship regime” by banning any federal agency from “colluding with” businesses, organizations or people who attempt to censor any forms of speech.
  • Trump also said he would order the Justice Department to investigate all forms of censorship and revoke federal funding for nonprofits, colleges and universities that engage in content moderation, including flagging misinformation and disinformation.
  • The former president called on Congress to take immediate action toward executing his planned investigation by issuing “letters of preservation” to the Biden Administration and big tech companies ordering them not to destroy evidence of practices he called censorship.

In promoting his agenda, Trump highlighted “bombshell reports” he said “have confirmed that a sinister group” of “Silicon Valley tyrants,” among others, colluded to “silence the American people,” an apparent nod to Musk’s release of internal Twitter documents that show how the company made content moderation decisions prior to Musk’s ownership.

Read more.

President Donald J. Trump On Free Speech

If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country. It’s as simple as that. If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple. Just like dominos, one by one.

That’s why today, I’m announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans and reclaim is a very important word in this case because they’ve taken it away.

In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of deep state bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people. They have collaborated to suppress vital information on everything from elections to public health. The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed and it must happen immediately.

Within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person, to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as ‘mis-‘ or ‘dis-information’. And I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship — directly or indirectly… all parties involved in the new online censorship regime, which is absolutely destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified…

From now on, digital platforms should only qualify for immunity protection under Section 230, if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness and non-discrimination… “When users of big online platforms have their content or accounts removed, throttled, shadowbanned or otherwise restricted, no matter what name they use, they should have the right to be informed that it’s happening, the right to a specific explanation of the reason why and the right to a timely appeal.

The Trump Free Speech Plan for 2024

The “Restoring Free Speech” Plan:

  1. Ban federal agencies from colluding to censor American citizens.
  2. Ban taxpayer dollars from being used to label speech as “mis-” or “disinformation”.
  3. Fire every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship.
  4. Immediately send preservation letters to the Biden administration and Big Tech giants.
  5. Order the DOJ to investigate all parties involved in the online censorship regime and prosecute any and all crimes identified.
  6. Revise Section 230 to drastically curtail big tech platforms’ power to restrict lawful speech.
  7. Stop federal funding for all non-profits and academic programs engaged in censorship.
  8. Suspend federal dollars to any university that has engaged in censorship support activities.
  9. Enact criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to violate your Constitutional rights.
  10. Impose a 7-year cooling-off period before former intelligence and national security officials can work at Big Tech platforms.
  11. Pass a Digital Bill of Rights.

President Donald J. Trump has hit the nail on the head. Passing a a Digital Bill of Rights insures that federal bureaucrats stop colluding with big tech to censor Americans.

This is a priority as there is a reason that the First Amendment is first.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Musk’s Twitter Buy ‘The Best $44 Billion I’ve Seen Spent in My Lifetime’: Congressman thumbnail

Musk’s Twitter Buy ‘The Best $44 Billion I’ve Seen Spent in My Lifetime’: Congressman

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By Family Research Council

If Elon Musk won’t suppress the news, CBS, ABC, and NBC News are more than happy to. While the Twitter files continue to drip out damning evidence of the company’s pre-Musk bias, three of America’s biggest outlets refuse to cover the story that’s riveting people the world over. In an ironic twist, the media is so beholden to Big Tech that it is suppressing a story about suppression. But don’t think the truth won’t get out, Congressman Pat Fallon (R-Texas) warns. The GOP is weeks away from House control, and no amount of coordinated media blackouts will protect Silicon Valley then.

“Get ready for Republican oversight” was the message of incoming soon-to-be committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.). Like the rest of his conservative colleagues, he’s ready to dive into the last two years of criminal mismanagement under Democratic rule — on everything from the border and COVID to Afghanistan, energy, and Hunter Biden. But this latest wrinkle, this proof of widescale, devastating, conservative censorship will be priority #1.

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) may have been unsurprised by the revelations at Twitter, but he’s outraged nonetheless. “…[O]ur worst fears and suspicions have been confirmed,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch.” “Really. I mean, you had the head of their legal department, Vijaya Gadde, admitting that the FBI told him, ‘Hey, listen, you’re going to get probably a hack and leak story in October dealing with Hunter Biden. So just be aware of that and take action.’ That’s very troubling.” Add that to the suspicions that Google “magically” made 70% of GOP campaign emails redirect into spam, and Fallon warns that this is a much bigger, more sinister problem than people realize.

“Now we’ve confirmed that Twitter, I suspect Facebook, and other Big Tech firms are doing the same thing. We’ll get them under oath, because they claim that they’re not biased — which I find laughable, being that I’ve been… a victim of their shadow-banning for years. So let’s ask them… and see what they say. And if they want to commit perjury, well, then, they’re going to have to pay the consequences — and then they might do a perp walk after all.”

Perkins pointed out that while Twitter might be a private company, “they’ve become the public square. … They’re like a public utility… like a telephone company. And can you imagine the telephone company refusing to do service with one person because they don’t like their politics? But that’s essentially what we have with Big Tech.” And worse, he explained, since the Biden administration was colluding with these platforms to squelch “disinformation.”

“If you’re on the government clock,” Fallon argued, “… and using taxpayer resources to meddle in politics and campaigning — you’re breaking federal law. And it seems to us [from] what we’ve uncovered thus far, that’s exactly what went on. That’s why another [reason] we need to call some of these former executives and current executives of Big Tech [before Congress and ask], ‘Have government officials [been] pressuring you and telling you to edit political free speech?’”

Asked if Twitter violated election laws, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, who served on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) from 2006-2007, replied, “The answer to that is yes.” But, he told Perkins, “In September of last year, the Federal Election Commission, which has authority over investigating violations of our federal campaign finance laws, actually dismissed complaints that have been filed against Twitter — not only for shadow-banning Republican elected officials and candidates, but also for suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

Twitter executives claimed they hadn’t coordinated with the Biden campaign. But also, von Spakovsky, explained, Jack Dorsey’s team insisted they had “a bona fide commercial reason for suppressing the Hunter Biden story, which was their internal policy against publishing hacked materials.” But now that we know they were lying, the FEC needs “to reopen that file, reconsider the case, and potentially make criminal referrals to the Justice Department for any Twitter executives who committed perjury in their testimony to the FEC,” he insisted. After all, it’s “a potential violation of campaign finance law,” the former commissioner pointed out.

The lawyers who filed the original complaints need to go back to the FEC and say, “You might need to reconsider your decision to close the file based on this newly uncovered evidence,” von Spakovsky urged. At the end of the day, the FEC has civil authority, “so they can impose fines and … penalties on anyone violating campaign finance laws, including a corporation.”

In the meantime, expect an intense, in-depth investigation of Twitter and all of the social media platforms suspected of cracking down on conservative or politically inconvenient messaging. “This is the best $44 billion I’ve seen spent in my lifetime,” Fallon insisted. “I mean, thank you, Elon Musk. It’s like the Wizard of Oz, and he’s pulled back the curtain, and we find that all of our suspicions have been confirmed.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ex-Twitter Manager Slapped With Three-Year Prison Sentence For Spying For Saudi Arabia

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washing Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Twitter Files: Chinese Employee Told Coworkers Censorship Is Bad, Got Shut Down thumbnail

Twitter Files: Chinese Employee Told Coworkers Censorship Is Bad, Got Shut Down

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By The Geller Report

“Maybe because I am from China, I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.” 

Twitter Files: Chinese Employee Told Coworkers Censorship Is Bad, Got Shut Down

By ALANA MASTRANGELO

7. There were dissenters inside Twitter.

“Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.” pic.twitter.com/LtonK0gfS3

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

Elon Musk’s Twitter released another batch of internal discussions on Monday, which revealed that an employee from China tried to warn fellow Twitter employees that censorship is wrong. The employee was then shut down by a coworker who bizarrely retorted: “censorship by a government is very different than censorship of the government.”

“Maybe because I am from China, I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation,” a Chinese Twitter employee said to colleagues during an internal discussion about whether or not to ban then-President Donald Trump’s account.

A fellow Twitter employee responded to their Chinese coworker saying, “I understand this fear, but I also think it’s important to understand that censorship by a government is very different than censorship of the government.”

Keep reading….

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Twitter Execs Were Looking for Any Excuse to Ban Trump thumbnail

Twitter Execs Were Looking for Any Excuse to Ban Trump

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By Discover The Networks

Elon Musk’s Twitter released another batch of internal discussions on Friday night, which revealed that executives at the social media giant established a “framework” for banning former President Trump’s account before the events of January 6, and used the Capitol chaos as their excuse to finally blacklist him.

The documents posted to Twitter by journalist Matt Taibbi is the first release of documents pertaining to President Trump’s account ban in January 2021. In a lengthy Twitter thread, Taibbi explained that the internal communications at Twitter between January 6 and January 8 2021 suggest that even the employees of the social media company understood the move to censor a sitting U.S. president would have a historical impact.

“Is this the first sitting head of state to ever be suspended?” one Twitter user asked in internal communications.

After banning Trump, Twitter executives appeared to relish their newfound power, and even flirted with banning future the official @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts, but ultimately decided the accounts “will be transitioned over to the new administration in due course and will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.”

With regards to their reasons for banning Trump’s account, one Twitter executive said in an internal chat: “the narrative that Trump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly the last 4+ years must be taken into account.”

In addition to these revelations, Taibbi also published damning internal documents pertaining to Twitter execs “getting a kick out of intensified relationships with federal agencies” like the FBI during the 2020 presidential election.

Twitter

28 Known Connections

Twitter Employees Donate 99% to Democrats

On April 27, 2022, Fox News reported:

“Twitter employees are maintaining their torrid pace of 99 percent of their political donations pouring into Democratic campaigns and committees for the midterm elections, filings show. The partisan skew of Twitter employees’ donations illustrates the uphill battle facing Elon Musk, who has pledged to make the company ‘politically neutral’ in order to maintain trust.

“Individuals employed by the social media giant have disbursed 1225 donations through ActBlue, the Democrats’ central fundraising platform, totaling $72,296, Federal Election Commission records show. Meanwhile, just ten donations from Twitter employees were pushed through WinRed, the Republicans’ fundraising platform, for $505 through the end of March, according to the filings. This means that Twitter employees have maintained their astronomical pace of 99 percent of their contributions going towards Democratic campaigns and committees with just over six months until the 2022 elections.”

To learn more about Twitter, click here.

RELATED ARTICLE: Twitter Still Has MANY ex FBI/CIA Agents in High Ranking Positions

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Twitter Still Has MANY Ex-FBI/CIA Agents in High Ranking Positions thumbnail

Twitter Still Has MANY Ex-FBI/CIA Agents in High Ranking Positions

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By The Geller Report

“Why, after Trump was elected, did Twitter hire over a dozen ex FBI/CIA agents and place them in Senior Management roles?”

It gets more sinister by the day. We thought we knew, we knew nothing.

Not just the FBI, almost the entire intelligence community has been/still working from within social media platforms to keep tabs on users and suppress pieces of information from being accessed and shared. DIG DEEPER! #TwitterFiles2 https://t.co/mlL7yxjYDy pic.twitter.com/2CMpIHx3yp

— ꪑꫀꪑ᭢ꪮ᭢ ×͜× (@MemnonX) December 7, 2022

Read this thread:

Elon Musk, Your new company @Twitter has many ex FBI/CIA agents in high ranks. Should probably do a little housecleaning.

    1. Kevin Michelena – current Twitter Sr. Corporate Security Analyst. Ex FBI Intelligence Analyst 12 years
    2. Doug Hunt – current Twitter Senior Director. Ex FBI Special Agent 20 years.
    3. Mark Jaroszewski – current Twitter Director Corporate Security/Risk. Ex FBI 20 years
    4. Douglas Turner – current Twitter Senior Manager, Corporate and Executive Security Services. Ex FBI 14 years. Ex Secret Service 7 years.
    5. Patrick G. – current Twitter Head of Corporate Security. Ex FBI Special Agent 23 years.
    6. Karen Walsh – current Twitter Director – Corporate Resilience. Ex FBI Special Agent 21 years 
    7. Russell Handorf – current Twitter Senior Staff Technical Program Manager. Ex FBI 10 years.
    8. Michael B. – current Twitter Senior Corporate Security Manager. Ex FBI 23 years.
    9. Vincent Lucero – current Twitter Senior Security Manager. Ex FBI Special Agent 22 years.
    10. Kevin L. – current Twitter Corporate Security Manager. Ex FBI Special Agent 25 years.
    11. Matthew W. – current Twitter Senior Director of Product Trust, Revenue Policy, and Counsel Systems & Analytics. Ex FBI 15 years.
    12. Claire O. – current Twitter Senior Corporate Security Analyst. Ex FBI 8 years.
    13. Bruce A. – current Twitter Director, Corporate Security. Ex FBI 23 years.
    14. Jeff Carlton – current Twitter Senior Manager. Ex FBI & CIA Intelligence Analyst 3 years.

    What do all of these Twitter employees have in common? They were ALL hired since @realDonaldTrump was elected.

    Why, after Trump was elected, did Twitter hire over a dozen ex FBI/CIA agents and place them in Senior Management roles? 

    @elonmusk – how many “Jim Bakers” are imbedded in Twitter, possibly working against you? or…..”watching” you. I’d advise you to do some investigating and clean house. 

    AUTHOR

    Pamela Geller

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    ‘Zuckerbucks’ Back in Business for 2024

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    EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Twitter’s Safety Team Found Trump’s Final Tweets Did Not Violate Policy, But He Was Banned Anyway thumbnail

Twitter’s Safety Team Found Trump’s Final Tweets Did Not Violate Policy, But He Was Banned Anyway

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By The Daily Caller

Twitter’s safety team initially found that then-President Donald Trump’s final pair of tweets before his Jan. 8, 2021, ban were not in violation of the company’s rules, according to internal messages published by journalist Bari Weiss Monday, obtained as part of Elon Musk’s ongoing “Twitter Files.”

In the first, Trump praised the “great American Patriots who voted for me,” saying that they would “not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way shape or form!!!,” while the second read in its entirety: “To all those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” Several members of Twitter’s safety team agreed that the first did not contain what policy official Anika Navaroli described as “clear or coded incitement,” while the safety team concluded that the second was a “clear no vio,” in the words of one unidentified staffer, using shorthand for “violation,” according to Weiss.

“I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer, whose name was redacted, according to Weiss. “It’s pretty clear he’s saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.”

14. Another staffer agreed: “Don’t see the incitement angle here.” pic.twitter.com/6mbUU2Tma0

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

However, roughly 90 minutes later, former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde, argued that while the first tweet was not “a rule violation on its face,” it could possibly have been posted “as coded incitement to further violence,” Weiss reported.

Twitter would eventually ban Trump for the two tweets, issuing the public justification that they had the potential to “inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021,” because they presented the inauguration as a safe target for a potential attack, since Trump would not be present, and encouraged a disorderly transition of power to the Biden administration by stressing that his voters would not be disrespected.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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The Twitter Files: My Paranoia Has Been Vindicated

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By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

‘Twitter is both a social media company and a crime scene,’ says Elon Musk, its new owner.

In October, following months of speculation and controversy, Elon Musk closed on his deal to acquire Twitter.

Among the most valuable assets Musk obtained in the US$43 billion purchase were reams of secret internal communications amongst Twitter executives.

Musk made those communications public over the weekend, and summed up their contents by tweeting: “Twitter is both a social media company and a crime scene.”

Musk has tasked three independent journalists with unpacking that crime scene to the public, providing they publish their findings on Twitter first: Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Bari Weiss.

The Taibbi-Shellenberger-Weiss reports, since dubbed the Twitter Files, have set the internet on fire.

It is now without question that Twitter executives colluded with the FBI to systematically censor the speech of American citizens and a sitting American President. Their motives were political: a conclusion that is inescapable since Twitter’s leadership did their dark deeds in violation of the platform’s own policies.

Major figures at Twitter played their dystopian games while lying to the public. “We don’t shadow ban, and we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints,” former CEO Jack Dorsey claimed during the Trump presidency.

At Senate hearings, Dorsey repeatedly and explicitly told Congress that he and his employees did not let their political viewpoints interfere with Twitter’s commitment to free speech.

Dorsey and his underlings — like former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, and Yoel Roth, former Head of Trust and Safety — insisted that any censorship they enacted flowed from safety concerns for users, not the political whims of Twitter staff.

They told users that they intended Twitter as a place to break and discuss news, a free megaphone available to all, a global town square.

Behind closed doors, Twitter executives were shadow banning users they did not like, hiding their tweets, and making their profiles unsearchable via Twitter’s search bar. Users were censored arbitrarily and in secret, with no way to know they were being censored, much less protest or appeal the vindictive bans.

What Twitter did was the equivalent of Telstra putting static on the phone lines of Greens voters, or AGL feeding remote townships intermittent power as a punishment for voting National — all the while claiming innocence. Twitter’s secretive measures were far more widespread than the many outright suspensions the public knew about at the time.

As Glenn Greenwald, another independent journalist, has since commented:

Yoel Roth, meeting with FBI weekly, and his little censorship minions absolutely degraded Twitter into little more than a full-on Democratic Party activist machine, all while lying to the public about its function. This was a massive public fraud and 2020 election interference.

Stanford University epidemiologist Dr Jay Bhattacharya was one of Twitter’s many victims. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr Bhattacharya earlier this year in Sydney. It would be hard to find a more polite, measured, and thoughtful academic.

One of the original drafters of the Great Barrington Declaration,  Bhattacharya’s great sin was to speak out against Covid lockdowns and school closures from 2020 onwards.

“I spent the afternoon yesterday at Twitter HQ at the invitation of @elonmusk to find out more about the trend ‘blacklist’ that twitter placed on me,” Bhattacharya today tweeted. He continued:

Twitter 1.0 placed me on the blacklist on the first day I joined in August 2021. I think it was my pinned tweet linking to the @gbdeclaration that triggered the blacklist based on unspecified complaints Twitter received… Twitter 1.0 rejected requests for verification by me and @MartinKulldorff. Each time the reasoning (never conveyed to us) was that we were not notable enough.

The most high-profile personality to be censored and ultimately suspended by Twitter was of course President Donald Trump.

“In this specific case, we’re changing our public interest approach for his account…” was how Yoel Roth justified the decision. It was a case of making up new rules on the fly to censor conservatives, delivering verdicts first and updating Twitter policies later — all while in open communication with FBI officials.

As one critic puts it: “Twitter didn’t enforce their rules, they sat around and discussed how they could interpret their rules to silence their enemies.”

For years we were told that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. It appears that in reality, the FBI was colluding with Twitter with the aim of stealing the 2020 election from Trump.

A Big Tech insurrection? A digital January 6?

I began writing about social media censorship in mid-2019. At the time, I was laughed down by many followers and even friends. I was told not to be so paranoid, not to indulge in conspiracy theories.

Pre-Musk Twitter has now been caught with its hands in the proverbial cookie jar.

The wokerati can claim that the United States government colluding with Big Tech to tilt elections and censor conservative Americans is good, but they can no longer claim it didn’t happen.

And for all those upset with Elon’s takeover of the little blue bird, I have a message for you: Twitter is a private company. If you don’t like how it’s being run now, go build your own social media platform.

AUTHOR

Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate… More by Kurt Mahlburg

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Twitter Exec Pushed To Ban Matt Gaetz’ Account After Jan. 6

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By The Daily Caller

Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, pushed internally for the company to ban Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots, despite messaging another employee that such a decision did not align with the company’s policies, according to the company’s internal documents published by author Michael Shellenberger Friday as part of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files.”

An employee, whose name was redacted, messaged Roth around noon on Jan. 7, 2021, asking “What’s the latest on Antifa claims?” — seemingly in reference to a Jan. 6, 2021, tweet by Gaetz alleging that members of the anarchist movement Antifa had “infiltrated Trump protestors who stormed Capitol” — and noting that another employee, identified only as “C,” was “yelling from the other room that we should just ban Gaetz,” Shellenberger reported. Roth responded that Twitter had employees “working on that.”

“It doesn’t quite fit anywhere (duh),” Roth said, prompting agreement from the unnamed employee before he continued, according to the messages posted by Shellenberger. “But I’m trying to talk safety into treating it as incitement … I think we’ll get over the line for removal as a conspiracy that incites violence … [then-head of Legal, Policy and Trust] Vijaya [Gadde] was directionally okay with it.”

Around noon, a confused senior executive in advertising sales sends a DM to Roth.

Sales exec: “jack says: ‘we will permanently suspend [Trump] if our policies are violated after a 12 hour account lock’… what policies is jack talking about?”

Roth: “*ANY* policy violation” pic.twitter.com/ExSFNM7BAb

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 11, 2022

Gaetz’ account was ultimately never banned, despite the internal discussions.

The discussion occurred roughly seven hours before Roth would inform a sales executive that Twitter was “changing [its] public interest approach for [Donald Trump’s] account to say any violation would result in a suspension,” Shellenberger reported. Twitter policy protects tweets from elected officials that would otherwise violate its rules under so-called “public-interest exceptions,” which allow tweets to remain live so that the public may be aware of and discuss the users’ “actions and statements.”

Gaetz later had a June 1, 2021 tweet that read “Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?” hit with one such public-interest label for violating Twitter’s rules regarding the glorification of violence. At time of writing, Twitter users cannot share, like or comment on that tweet, but can still “quote tweet” it.

“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence,” the label reads at time of writing. “However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

Neither Twitter nor Gaetz’ office immediately responded to a Daily Caller News Foundation request for comment.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Lawsuit Depositions and Twitter Files Tell the Tale

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By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

There’s an old saying: Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want reported on the front page of the newspaper.  So many stunning revelations have been reported in the last couple days from the release of the Twitter files and the Missouri versus Biden Big Tech censorship case, there’s no room on the front page left.

An FBI agent testified in a deposition in the censorship case that FBI headquarters put its “stamp of approval” on requests to social media companies to block specific information before the 2020 elections.  Requests would get routed through FBI field offices around the country, federal prosecutors, FBI and Justice Department lawyers, and FBI headquarters before being sent to the agent’s “command post” in San Francisco for action.  The agent further testified social media platforms frequently complied with FBI requests to take down posts.

A State Department official testified during his deposition that the State Department has been funding online fact checkers.  He named the Poynter Institute which operates Politifact, a notoriously left-wing fact checker.  You might recall Facebook admitted in a lawsuit these so-called ‘fact checkers’ are really just “opinion”, left-wing opinion your State Department is only too happy to pay for.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk released a first set of files showing how former Twitter executives decided to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story three weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Twitter suppressed the story under its policy against “hacked” information, but there was no evidence the information was hacked.

In a second set of files released just yesterday, it was revealed the platform used several means to silence conservatives, including blacklists and shadow-banning, techniques which former Twitter executives had denied using and dismissed as conspiracy theory.  The targets included a well-known opponent of the Covid lockdowns and two conservative radio talk show hosts.  As one Twitter engineer put it, “we control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do.”  Twitter was taking down posts or limiting visibility as many as 200 times a day.

The head of the team was Jeff Carlton, a former U.S. Naval Intelligence officer who had previously worked for the FBI counterintelligence division and CIA.  I told you earlier this week Twitter’s deputy general counsel who had advised the company to block the Hunter Biden laptop story had previously worked for the FBI.  Elon Musk fired counsel James Baker this week for suppressing information and for giving an “unconvincing” explanation for why he reviewed the new Twitter files before they were published.

So we have more than just proof of concerted action between the Biden administration and Twitter executives to support the theory Twitter had become an extension of the government to suppress speech.  We have a revolving door that placed former intelligence agency and FBI officials inside Twitter at critical junctures, adding weight to the case Twitter had become a state actor.  Personnel is policy, as they say.

The Missouri Attorney General – now Senator-elect Eric Schmitt who brought the censorship case said:

This is a story of the federal government with all of its vast power and authority colluding with some of the biggest companies in the history of the world to censor Americans to put their thumb on the scale for what’s out there that people can actually read about before an election. It ought to scare the bejesus out of every American, I don’t care about your political stripe.

They suppressed speech and silenced conservatives, but they got caught.  Moral of the Story:  If you can’t do the time on the front page of the newspaper, don’t do the crime.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

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Twitter Used ‘Vast Array Of Tools’ To Throttle Trump’s Account Even Before Jan. 6, Docs Reveal thumbnail

Twitter Used ‘Vast Array Of Tools’ To Throttle Trump’s Account Even Before Jan. 6, Docs Reveal

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By The Daily Caller

  • Twitter took advantage of a “vast array of tools” to suppress the reach of former President Donald Trump, even prior to the company’s decision to ban him in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, journalist Matt Taibbi reported Friday.
  • The platform’s executives debated rolling out “L3 deamplification,” a label that limited users’ ability share offending tweets, in response to Trump posting a series of tweets on Dec. 10, 2020, questioning the results of the 2020 election, but ultimately decided to wait until the program’s “official” launch on Dec. 11, Taibbi reported.
  • “The significance is that it shows that Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump’s engagement, long before J6,” Taibbi tweeted.

Twitter deployed a “vast array of tools” to limit the impact of former President Donald Trump on the platform, even before the company decided to ban him following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to journalist Matt Taibbi, citing internal Twitter documents Friday.

The decision to ban Trump was made not solely due to his actions or the actions of his supporters on or around Jan. 6, 2021, but “over the course of the election and frankly the last 4+ years,”  one Twitter executive — whose name was redacted by Taibbi — wrote in an internal message, according to Taibbi. While Twitter had several teams to limit the visibility of users’ tweets, the majority were either automatic and rules-based or handled by high-ranking executives on a subjective, case-by-case basis, but those executives met with more and more federal officials as time went on, particularly before the 2020 election, Taibbi reported.

1. THREAD: The Twitter Files

THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP

Part One: October 2020-January 6th

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022

Twitter “had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6,” Taibbi tweeted.

Following Jan. 6, 2021, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth said in an internal Slack message that he lacked sufficient “generic enough” meetings to fill his calendar and hide his “very interesting” meetings from view, according to Taibbi.

“DEFINITELY NOT meeting with the FBI I SWEAR,” reads one of Roth’s messages following Jan. 6, Taibbi reported. Another Twitter employee, whose name and profile picture on Slack were censored by Taibbi, simply responded “lmao.”

On Oct. 8, 2020, Twitter executives opened a Slack channel dedicated to election-related account removals, with a particular focus on “Very Important Tweeters” or “VITs,” according to Taibbi. There was some level of friction between Safety Operations, a larger department within Twitter with a more rules-oriented approach to content moderation, and high-ranking executives like Roth and then-head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde, as the latter group often made moderation decisions “only the fly, often in minutes and based on guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President,” Taibbi reported.

In response to a member of Twitter’s marketing team asking if they can say Twitter detects misinformation through “partnerships with outside experts,” Policy Director Nick Pickles asked for the unidentified employee to simply say “partnerships,” according to Taibbi.

“Can we just say ‘partnerships’ … not sure we’d describe the FBI/DHS as experts or some [Non Governmental Organizations] that aren’t academic,” Pickles replied, according to Taibbi.

On Dec. 10, 2020, Twitter executive Patrick Conlon, announced internally that Twitter would be launching a new mode of suppression known as “L3 deamplification,” according to Taibbi. This mode, which was announced the same day Trump tweeted or retweeted roughly 20 posts challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, was a label that came with an automatic “deamplification” of the tweet in question, limiting its ability to be shared, Taibbi reported.

While some team members asked whether to deploy the new tool right away, Conlon opted to wait until the following day, when the policy was slated to officially go live, according to Taibbi. The team had also applied several “bots” to Trump’s account, monitoring both his claims and the claims of connected entities, such as right-wing news outlet Breitbart, Taibbi reported.

“The significance is that it shows that Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump’s engagement, long before J6,” according to Taibbi. “The ban will come after other avenues are exhausted.”

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

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RELATED TWEET:

Karine Jean-Pierre denies the Biden administration was involved in Twitter’s efforts to censor conservative voices pic.twitter.com/RvLtAjEblR

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 9, 2022

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Twitter Had Secret ‘Blacklists’ That Suppressed Stanford Doctor, Top Conservatives, Docs Show

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By The Daily Caller

  • Twitter maintained secret “blacklists” that included several prominent conservative voices and a Stanford professor of health policy, limiting the spread of their content, according to journalist Bari Weiss.
  • While Twitter kept a record of some of this activity, the most sensitive, politically charged actions were typically kept off-the-books by high-ranking members of Twitter’s staff, Weiss reported.
  • “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels,” a senior Twitter employee told Weiss. “It’s a very powerful tool.” 

Twitter kept secret “blacklists” that included a doctor at Stanford and several prominent conservative voices that suppressed their ability to be found or heard on the social media platform, according to journalist Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press and former Wall Street Journal and New York Times columnist, who launched the second chapter in Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files” Thursday evening.

Weiss tweeted what appeared to be a photo of Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy, with his account being prominently marked as being under a “Trends Blacklist.” Bhattacharya was secretly blacklisted because he “argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children,” and was thus unable to trend on the platform, according to Weiss.

In addition to Bhattacharya, Twitter placed Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk under a “Do Not Amplify” notice, while right wing talk radio personality Dan Bongino, who has appeared on Alex Jones’ InfoWars, was placed under a “Search Blacklist,” according to Weiss. The practice of limiting the access or reach of users’ content, commonly referred to as “shadow banning,” is something that Twitter has denied doing in the past, and is referred to internally as “Visibility Filtering” or “VF,” Weiss reported.

“Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels,” a senior Twitter employee reportedly told Weiss. “It’s a very powerful tool.”

THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART TWO.

TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS.

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022

Twitter operated two teams that managed visibility filtering, with the lower-level team — known as the “Strategic Response Team — Global Escalation Team” — handling roughly 200 routine and recorded cases per day, Weiss reported. However, a second group, known as “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” handled high-profile, politically sensitive accounts, making no record of their decisions, one Twitter employee told Weiss.

The second group included former Head of Legal, Policy and Trust Vijaya Gadde, former Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth, as well as then-CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, Weiss reported.

“Think high follower account, controversial,” the twitter employee told Weiss. The employee noted that when this group was involved, “there would be no ticket or anything.”

The company’s internal slack messages showed that Roth was interested in using “deamplification” and “remediations” in order to slow the spread of viral content that the team considered to be misinformation, according to Weiss.

“We got [CEO Jack Dorsey] on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations – especially for other policy domains,” said Roth in a message to the company’s Health, Misinformation, Privacy and Identity research team, according to Weiss. “So I’d love research’s POV on that.”

After Twitter suffered a steep decline in advertising revenue following Musk’s takeover in late October, the company’s new CEO committed to fighting hateful content by reducing its visibility on the platform, in a Nov. 9 call with advertisers.

Weiss’ thread arrived six days after Matt Taibbi, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, launched “Part One” of Musk’s Twitter Files, focusing primarily on the mechanisms by which various high-level executives at twitter coordinated to suppress the spread of a New York Post article detailing a laptop owned by Hunter Biden.

Musk had initially tweeted on Dec. 2 that the second installment of the files would be released on Dec. 3, a date that he then pushed back “another day or so,” before going silent on the issue.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Musk Releases Details On How Twitter Censored The Hunter Biden Laptop Story

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Chinese Operatives Ran A Massive TikTok Campaign To Help Dems In The Midterm Elections thumbnail

Chinese Operatives Ran A Massive TikTok Campaign To Help Dems In The Midterm Elections

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By The Daily Caller

  • TikTok accounts operating on behalf of Chinese state media published content that criticized Republicans and favored Democrats ahead of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, a Forbes investigation found.
  • Despite TikTok rules requiring accounts to disclose their government ties, at least three Chinese government-affiliated accounts with millions of views did not clearly describe their status to users.
  • “This opens a new dimension for conversation about TikTok,” Conor Healy, director of government research at surveillance research group IPVM, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

TikTok accounts operating as voices of Chinese state media promoted messages that appeared to denigrate Republican candidates and favor Democratic ones ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, according to a Forbes investigation.

While the Chinese-owned social media app has verbally affirmed the need to crack down on election disinformation and foreign interference, several news-oriented accounts failed to disclose their affiliation with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state-owned media on the platform, Forbes found. The accounts racked up tens of millions views on posts that covered divisive topics, such as abortion and race, as well as critical clips that mostly targeted Republican candidates ahead of the 2022 midterms.

“This opens a new dimension for conversation about TikTok,” Conor Healy, director of government research at surveillance research group IPVM, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The accounts are managed by MediaLinks TV, which registered as a foreign agent for China with the Treasury Department in 2019 and distributes the U.S. branch of China Central Television (CCTV), CGTN, according to the company’s LinkedIn page. MediaLinks also operates the CCTV and CGTN apps, according to Apple.

The largest accounts are @Panadorama, @The…Optimist and @NewsTokss, the latter of which expressly covers U.S. national news, according to Forbes.

NewsTokss in particular ran content that overall shone Republican politicians in an unfavorable light and praised Democrats, Forbes found.

A video from July was introduced with the caption “Cruz, Abbott Don’t Care About Us,” referring to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, according to Forbes. Another from October criticized Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida for having “Done Absolutely Nothing.”

Some content swayed against Democrats; one NewsTokss video in October asked viewers whether President Joe Biden’s promise to enshrine abortion rights served as a “political manipulation tactic,” Forbes found.

None of the videos clearly disclosed their ties to CGTN or the Chinese government, but the accounts’ profile bios did spell out, “Material distributed by MediaLinks TV LLC on behalf of CCTV. More info at DOJ, D.C.,” Forbes reported.

“That’s not disclosure,” Healy said. Between May 8 and July 6, NewsTokss received 8.3 million views but only 57,600 profile views, suggesting many users who watched the videos may not have realized a foreign government was pushing the content, Forbes reported.

Further, by redirecting users to the Department of Justice (DOJ), MediaLinks shrouded its status as a foreign agent.

However, such high-profile accounts should be easily identifiable as state-run, Healy argued to the DCNF.

“Either they don’t care and don’t have the protocols in place to deal with this, or they’re letting it happen,” he said.

In September, TikTok announced a new pilot policy of “mandatory verification for accounts belonging to governments, politicians, and political parties through the midterm elections” in November.

“We plan to introduce our state-controlled media policy and corresponding labels globally next year as part of our continued focus on media literacy,” a spokesperson for TikTok told Forbes.

fbi director christopher wray: chinese control over tiktok algorithm allows them to manipulate content and wield it for influence operations

‘that should concern us’

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) December 2, 2022

Chinese company ByteDance owns TikTok, causing suspicion that the company takes orders or signals from the CCP and prompting politicians to call for banning the app across the federal government.

Technology and China researchers have long expressed concerns about China’s election interference via social media content; cybersecurity firm Recorded Future warned ahead of the 2018 midterm elections found Chinese-run accounts “disseminating breaking news and biased content surrounding President Trump and China-related issues.”

CGTN did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Musk Releases Details On How Twitter Censored The Hunter Biden Laptop Story

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By The Daily Caller

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Matt Taibbi, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, released what Elon Musk has referred to as “The Twitter Files,” Friday afternoon detailing how the social media platform suppressed a New York Post story regarding a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden.

The NYP story revealed an email — which was verified soon after by the Daily Caller News Foundation — that connected President Joe Biden with an executive at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, with the executive thanking the president’s son for “giving me an opportunity to meet your father.” Taibbi alleged that former head of legal, policy and trust Viyaja Gadde played a “key role,” in the decision to suppress the story, which was made without the knowledge of then-CEO Jack Dorsey, but without any government involvement.

Taibbi tweeted an email indicating that Twitter’s trust and safety team initially explained to other employees that it made the decision to suppress the story — the company even went so far as to prevent it from being sent in private messages — because it violated Twitter’s policy for sharing “hacked materials.” Taibbi tweeted two additional emails that show Twitter employees discussing posts flagged by the Democratic National Committee and Biden staff, and communication on how to moderate the posts.

Democratic Rep. Khanna of California reached out to Gadde personally after the story was suppressed, concerned that Twitter’s actions were a “violation of the 1st Amendment [sic] principles,” according to Taibbi. Carl Szacbo, general counsel at trade association NetChoice that advocates for limited government intervention online, sent a letter to Twitter’s head of Public Policy, Lauren Culberston, noting that while members from both parties were frustrated with Twitter’s response to the situation, the three Democratic lawmakers they had polled were in agreement that social media companies needed to moderate more, arguing that “the First Amendment isn’t absolute.”

Sharing the NYP story was banned on Twitter from Oct. 14-16, 2020, a move that Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, described as a mistake in an interview on Nov. 30, 2022. Dozens of former intelligence officials criticized the NYP story in October 2020 as likely linked to Russian disinformation in an open letter, according to Politico; however, the veracity of the laptop’s contents has been confirmed by several major news organizations since the DCNF.

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022

Facebook also prevented users from sharing the story, which alleged that the laptop’s hard drive contained video of Hunter Biden using drugs while engaging in sexual activities.

Months before the NYP story, tapes leaked by Andriy Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament with connections to Russia’s intelligence, alleged that Joe Biden had pressured the former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire a prosecutor that was investigating Burisma, where his son was a member of the board, when he was the Vice President.

Twitter did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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Elon Musk Mocks Clueless Dems Targeting Twitter For Investigation

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

VIDEO EXPOSE: Apple Computers Block All P2P Communications for the Chinese Government thumbnail

VIDEO EXPOSE: Apple Computers Block All P2P Communications for the Chinese Government

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By Vlad Tepes Blog

Tucker Carlson reveals that Apple computers blocked all P2P communications for the Chinese Government to help them stop the protests.

Apple used to have air drop which allows file transfers without the use of the Internet. But they dropped an update which disabled it in China without telling the people it disabled it.

The collusion of big business with totalitarian government is known as fascism. It also happens in Canada in much the same way, and we have published the proof of it over and over, where Facebook worked with the Canadian government under Trudeau to block signals from phones at protests to people’s accounts showing the protest and speakers etc.

Tucker also has a segment of Dr. Malhotra from his morning show yesterday.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column posted by is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Governments Are Using Drones to Spy on Americans. Here’s How People Are Fighting Back thumbnail

Governments Are Using Drones to Spy on Americans. Here’s How People Are Fighting Back

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By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Drone technology is making it easier than ever for governments to stick their nose where it doesn’t belong.

Americans have long been concerned about government surveillance, and rightly so. Being watched by the government is incredibly disconcerting, especially when government agents are probing into your private life.

The rise of drone technology has not helped on this front. Whereas before a government would need a plane or helicopter to get aerial views of you or your property, now they just need a small remote-controlled device.

The issue of governments spying on Americans using drones has come up in some recent court cases and legislative disputes. One recent case involves Todd and Heather Maxon who live on a rural five-acre property in Long Lake Township, Michigan. Todd likes to fix up cars, and he keeps a number of vehicles on his property.

For years the Township has been going after the couple for zoning violations, accusing them of illegally storing “junk” on their property. But here’s the kicker. The cars can’t even be seen from outside the property…that is, unless you fly a drone overhead. And that’s exactly what the Township did.

Without even attempting to get a warrant, the Township hired a contractor to fly a drone as low as 150 feet over the Maxons’ property multiple times over two years. The Township is now trying to use the pictures taken by the drone as evidence that the Maxons are violating a local zoning ordinance.

“If the government wants to conduct intrusive surveillance like this, the Fourth Amendment requires that it get a warrant,” said Institute for Justice Attorney Mike Greenberg regarding the case. “The zoning authority’s failure to even try to get one shows their indifference to Michiganders’ constitutional rights.”

New York City has also come in the crosshairs in recent years for its decisions on this front. In 2019, the New York Police Department acquired 14 drones for “monitoring giant crowds, investigating hazardous waste spills, handling hostage situations and reaching remote areas in crime scenes, among other tasks.” Though the NYPD insists the drones won’t be used for warrantless surveillance, many are worried that putting this technology in the hands of police is just asking for trouble.

Citing these fears, privacy advocates pushed for legislation known as the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act (“POST Act”), which requires the NYPD to release information about how surveillance tools are being used and creates an annual oversight system to audit compliance with department policies. The Act was passed in June 2020 after gaining momentum following the death of George Floyd.

The legal issue with warrantless government surveillance revolves around the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which states the following:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

In plain language, governments aren’t allowed to conduct searches and seizures as they please. They need to get a warrant.

In the more than two centuries that have passed since this amendment was adopted in 1791, mountains of case law have built up establishing precedents for what exactly constitutes “unreasonable” and what qualifies as a “search” or “seizure.” Other related questions have also been extensively litigated, such as whether evidence collected in an unconstitutional search (such as pictures from a warrantless drone flight) can be used in court. On that issue, there is a long-standing precedent. “For more than a century, the remedy for a Fourth Amendment violation has been suppression of unlawfully obtained evidence,” the Institute for Justice notes.

Whether the Maxons win their case remains to be seen.

What’s clear, however, is that drone technology provides governments with unprecedented spying capabilities—capabilities they would gladly use against Americans if they could get away with it.

For many topics addressed in the Bill of Rights libertarians are firmly in favor of the right being recognized (for example, freedom of speech and gun rights). With the Fourth Amendment, however, there are some philosophical problems.

The economist and political philosopher Walter Block addresses the “right” to privacy in the Peeping Tom chapter of his book Defending the Undefendable 2. “According to the libertarian legal code,” Block writes, “we may do anything at all to each other, whether they like it or not, provided, only, that in so doing we not violate—not their privacy ‘rights’ which do not exist, but rather—their property rights in their own persons and justly owned physical possessions.”

As Block correctly points out, spying on people isn’t technically a rights violation from a libertarian perspective. Indeed, a “right” to privacy, consistently recognized, would lead to all sorts of absurd laws, such as banning detectives or prohibiting most journalism and gossip.

Should we let governments spy on us at will, then, and never push back through legal channels? Of course not. There is a sound philosophical case to be made against government surveillance—it just doesn’t rest on a supposed “right” to privacy.

The most fundamental point to be made in this regard from a libertarian framework is that government surveillance is funded by taxpayer dollars, which are taken coercively. This alone makes the practice immoral in the libertarian view.

It’s also worth pointing out that the purpose of government surveillance isn’t necessarily protecting people. Sometimes the government uses drones because it intends to force its laws on people (such as in the case of the Maxons and Long Lake Township’s zoning laws) in which case the government is using surveillance as a means to a liberty-violating end.

In such cases, libertarians will often make a tactical move. While we may disagree with the Fourth Amendment philosophically, holding the State to its stated laws on privacy is often a more effective way of defending people’s liberties (property rights) than appealing to philosophical ideals. Just saying “it’s their property, they have a right to use it as they please” may be a more philosophically sound rebuttal to zoning laws, but it’s not particularly effective in court.

If appealing to the Fourth Amendment is what will convince the powers that be to respect property rights, there’s nothing wrong with that. We just need to recognize that, for libertarians, such an appeal is merely a practical tactic—the philosophical argument against the government’s actions is rather different from the legal argument.

So that’s the argument against government drones, but what about private drones? Would libertopia have private drones flying everywhere, snooping on people constantly, seeing as libertarians don’t recognize a right to privacy? Of course not. Privacy is in high demand, so drones would almost certainly be regulated with voluntary contracts.

Responding to the Fourth Amendment at the end of his Peeping Tom chapter, Block summarizes the libertarian position on privacy as follows: “We have no such right. It is merely a privilege, one that, fortunately, the free market system can bestow upon us.”

AUTHOR

Patrick Carroll

Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Elon Musk Reinstates Trump’s Twitter Account

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By The Daily Caller

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said Saturday that former President Donald Trump will be reinstated on Twitter, following the results of a Twitter poll where a majority of voters favored his return.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” tweeted Musk, quoting a Latin phrase that means “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” He tweeted the announcement immediately after the conclusion of a poll asking the question “Reinstate former President Trump.”

Over 15 million users voted in the poll, which was active for 24 hours and ended on Saturday night, with a slim majority, 51.8%, voting in favor of Trump’s reinstatement. The decision comes nearly two years after Trump’s account, @realDonaldTrump, was permanently suspended by Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021, following the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by Trump’s supporters in protest against the results of the 2020 election.

The people have spoken.

Trump will be reinstated.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei. https://t.co/jmkhFuyfkv

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2022

Trump’s account @realDonaldTrump became visible on Twitter again shortly after Musk’s announcement.

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” wrote Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021, following tweets by Trump that he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20 of that year. The decision to remove Trump from the platform was widely criticized by conservatives as well as some progressives and foreign leaders, including then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as an illicit exercise of corporate power.

Reinstate former President Trump

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2022

Trump has repeatedly said that he will not return to Twitter following the ban and continues to post social media messages on Truth Social, a network he set up under the Trump Media and Technology Group. His contract with TMTG allegedly stipulates that he must post content on Truth Social before posting on any other social media website, according to TechCrunch.

Musk, also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the richest man in the world, recently acquired Twitter for $44 billion. He has claimed that his acquisition was motivated by concerns regarding free speech on the platform, with conservatives having long petitioned him for Trump’s reinstatement.

During Trump’s term, his Twitter account was the focus of international attention as he used it to make official pronouncements, fire officials and criticize political opponents as well as the media. His tweets often were the basis of political controversies.

Trump’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

ARJUN SINGH

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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