FBI instructed Twitter to target satirical accounts, posts

The Post Millennial reported Friday that Twitter was acting as a "subsidiary" of the FBI for almost two years, with over 150 emails exchanged between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth between January 2020 and November 2022.

Matt Taibbi laid out the specifics in a series of tweets, beginning with "an internal email from November 5, 2022," that the FBI’s National Election Command Post, a part of the agency that would compile and send complaints to Twitter had a "long list of accounts that 'may warrant additional action.'"

The FBI flagged the accounts because they were "being utilized to spread misinformation about the upcoming election." The FBI sent Agent Elvis Chan in the San Francisco office to coordinate with Twitter to determine whether the accounts had "violated Twitter's terms of service."

Taibbi tweeted that "Agent Chan passed the list on to his 'Twitter folks.'"

"Let us know if you decide to take any actions against these accounts based on our tipper to you," Chan wrote. "Also let us know if we need to issue a preservation letter as we intend to serve legal process for these accounts."

"Twitter then replied with its list of actions taken," Taibbi's next tweet read, noting that actor Billy Baldwin, one of the few accounts that isn't satirical, was shown mercy by the company.

Seven accounts were permanently suspended, one was temporarily suspended, and nine accounts "had tweets bounced for civic misinformation policy violations."

The response was written by Twitter Elections & Crisis Response Lead Patrick Conlon, who last week wiped clean his LinkedIn account that detailed his past intelligence work in the US Department of Defense.

Finally, Taibbi stated that "many of the above accounts were satirical in nature, nearly all (with the exceptions of Baldwin and @RSBNetwork) were relatively low engagement, and some were suspended, most with a generic, 'Thanks, Twitter' letter."

Since December 2, Elon Musk has been gradually releasing internal documents from Twitter to journalist Matt Taibbi, opinion writer Bari Weiss, and author Michael Shellenberger, revealing the widespread censorship and information suppression within the company.