On Thursday, Matt Taibbi tweeted out another round of the Twitter files concerning what he dubbed the "Censorship-Industrial Complex," and reported on an "incestuous self-appointed truth squad" moving within Twitter, government agencies, establishment media, and non-profit organizations all of whom ideologically align in censorship efforts.
Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted that the revelations were "Concerning," as Taibbi highlighted an internal document from "the ultimate example of the absolute fusion of state, corporate, and civil society organizations," Stanford Internet Observatory's Election Integrity Partnership, who said "True content" might "promote vaccine hesitancy" such as "stories of true vaccine side effects" which they deemed "malinformation" as opposed to mis or disinformation.
The new round of the Twitter Files was released the same day as a Congressional hearing on the Twitter Files, which have been a series of reports detailing internal records at Twitter concerning the company's censorship efforts, especially regarding Covid and censorship, with collusion from government agencies towards those goals.
In Thursday's batch of Twitter Files, Taibbi began by noting that previous installments "focused on the company, which at times acted like a power above government" or "more like a partner to government." Taibbi added a screenshot of FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan sending Twitter a list of accounts that the FBI believed violated their terms of service.
Taibbi detailed how many of the reports "didn't even assert misinformation" and a list of YouTube videos were flagged for "anti-Ukraine narratives."
Taibbi reported how Twitter took many requests for censorship from non-governmental organizations such as non-profit organizations.
"The National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, and Hamilton 68’s creator, the Alliance for Securing Democracy," were all in this so-called Censorship-Industrial Complex.
Taibbi said the Censorship-Industrial Complex had its "Woodstock" when "the Aspen Institute - which receives millions a year from both the State Department and USAID - held a star-studded confab in Aspen in August 2021 to release its final report on 'Information Disorder.'"
Katie Couric was a co-author of the report and Prince Harry served as a Commissioner.
"Their taxpayer-backed conclusions: the state should have total access to data to make searching speech easier, speech offenders should be put in a 'holding area,' and government should probably restrict disinformation, 'even if it means losing some freedom,'" Taibbi said.
"The same agencies (FBI, DHS/CISA, GEC) invite the same 'experts' (Thomas Rid, Alex Stamos), funded by the same foundations (Newmark, Omidyar, Knight) trailed by the same reporters (Margaret Sullivan, Molly McKew, Brandy Zadrozny) seemingly to every conference, every panel," Taibbi tweeted and called it an "incestuous self-appointed truth squad moving from law enforcement/intelligence to the private sector and back."
"#TwitterFiles repeatedly show media acting as proxy for NGOs," Taibbi reported.
Taibbi said the Stanford Internet Observatory's Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was a significant flagger of content to Twitter.
EIP was created after the Disinformation Governance Board and "According to the EIP's own data, it succeeded in getting nearly 22 million tweets labeled in the runup to the 2020 vote."
EIP research manager Renee DiResta "boasted" in what EIP had accomplished in getting certain tweets removed.
EIP, later renamed the Virality Project, "was partnered with state entities like CISA and GEC while seeking elimination of millions of tweets."
"DiResta has become the public face of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, a name promoted everywhere as an unquestioned authority on truth, fact, and Internet hygiene, even though her former firm, New Knowledge, has been embroiled in two major disinformation scandals," Taibbi tweeted.
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