BREAKING: Twitter censored information about Ukraine war, Covid vaccines under direction from US intelligence agencies: Twitter Files

"27. 'They have some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations. This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,' remarked Cardill"

"28. Even ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker agreed: 'Odd that they are searching for violations of our policies.'"

"29.The New York FBI office even sent requests for the 'user IDs and handles' of a long list of accounts named in a Daily Beast article. Senior executives say they are 'supportive' and 'completely comfortable' doing so."

"30. It seemed to strike no one as strange that a 'Foreign Influence' task force was forwarding thousands of mostly domestic reports, along with the DHS, about the fringiest material:"

"31. 'Foreign meddling' had been the ostensible justification for expanded moderation since platforms like Twitter were dragged to the Hill by the Senate in 2017:"

"32. Yet behind the scenes, Twitter executives struggled against government claims of foreign interference supposedly occurring on their platform and others:"

"33. The #TwitterFiles show execs under constant pressure to validate theories of foreign influence – and unable to find evidence for key assertions."

"34. 'Found no links to Russia,' says one analyst, but suggests he could 'brainstorm' to 'find a stronger connection.'"

"35. 'Extremely tenuous circumstantial chance of being related,' says another."

"36. 'No real matches using the info,' says former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth in another case, noting some links were 'clearly Russian,' but another was a “house rental in South Carolina?"

"37. In another case, Roth concludes a series of Venezuelan pro-Maduro accounts are unrelated to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, because they’re too high-volume:"

"38.The Venezuelans 'were extremely high-volume tweeters… pretty uncharacteristic of a lot of the other IRA activity,' Roth says."

"39. In a key email, news that the State Department was making a wobbly public assertion of Russian influence led an exec – the same one with the 'OGA' past - to make a damning admission:"

"40. 'Due to a lack of technical evidence on our end, I've generally left it be, waiting for more evidence,' he says. 'Our window on that is closing, given that government partners are becoming more aggressive on attribution.'"

"41. Translation: 'more aggressive' 'government partners' had closed Twitter's 'window' of independence."

"42. 'Other Government Agencies' ended up sharing intelligence through the FBI and FITF not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo!, Twitch, Clouldfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia:"

"43. Former CIA agent and whistleblower John Kiriakou believes he recognizes the formatting of these reports."

"44.'Looks right on to me,' Kiriakou says, noting that 'what was cut off above [the 'tearline'] was the originating CIA office and all the copied offices."

"45. Many people wonder if Internet platforms receive direction from intelligence agencies about moderation of foreign policy news stories. It appears Twitter did, in some cases by way of the FITF/FBI."

"46. These reports are far more factually controversial than domestic counterparts."

"47. One intel report lists accounts tied to 'Ukraine 'neo-Nazi' Propaganda.' This includes assertions that Joe Biden helped orchestrate a coup in 2014 and 'put his son on the board of Burisma.'"

"48. Another report asserts a list of accounts accusing the 'Biden administration' of 'corruption' in vaccine distribution are part of a Russian influence campaign:"

"49. Often intelligence came in the form of brief reports, followed by long lists of accounts simply deemed to be pro-Maduro, pro-Cuba, pro-Russia, etc. This one batch had over 1000 accounts marked for digital execution:"

"50. One report says a site 'documenting purported rights abuses committed by Ukrainians' is directed by Russian agents:"

"51. Intel about the shady origin of these accounts might be true. But so might at least some of the information in them – about neo-Nazis, rights abuses in Donbas, even about our own government. Should we block such material?"

"52. This is a difficult speech dilemma. Should the government be allowed to try to prevent Americans (and others) from seeing pro-Maduro or anti-Ukrainian accounts?"

"53. Often intel reports are just long lists of newspapers, tweets or YouTube videos guilty of 'anti-Ukraine narratives':"

"54. Sometimes - not always -Twitter and YouTube blocked the accounts. But now we know for sure what Roth meant by 'the Bureau (and by extension the IC).'"

"55. The line between 'misinformation' and 'distorting propaganda' is thin. Are we comfortable with so many companies receiving so many reports from a 'more aggressive' government?"

"56.The CIA has yet to comment on the nature of its relationship to tech companies like Twitter. Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by third parties, so what I saw could be limited."

"Watch @bariweiss,b@shellenbergerMD, @lhfang, and this space for more, on issues ranging from Covid-19 to Twitter's relationship to congress, and more."

The Twitter Files have been a series of reports concerning the company's efforts towards censorship and information suppression. Matt Taibbi tweeted out the round 1 of the Twitter files on December 2, which revealed the deliberate efforts behind-the-scenes at Twitter to censor stories around Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell. Round 2 of the Twitter files came via Bari Weiss on December 8 and confirmed that leadership at the social media platform built blacklists and participated in shadow banning for years under the watch of Vijaya Gadde, former Twitter lead counsel. Taibbi tweeted out the third installment on December 10. Michael Shellenberger posted round 4 on December 10, which showed former head of Twitter Trust and Safety Yoel Roth devised a justification to ban the sitting president but bypassed it in an ad hoc fashion to suspend Trump on January 8. Weiss sent out round 5 on December 12 which showed how Twitter employees labelled Trump a "terrorist" to justify the ban. On December 16, Taibbi published round six which covered the collusion between the social media giant and the FBI, with Taibbi saying the government agency acted as a "subsidiary" for the company before Elon Musk's takeover. He tweeted a supplemental installment on December 19, which showed how the FBI pressured Twitter to find evidence of foreign influence on the platform, despite Twitter having said that what the FBI was looking for was not extant.