The Twitter Files: Consolidated Thread

[schwartzie]

'Twitter Files' Bombshell Exposes Biden Admin's Disturbing Pandemic Agenda



By Peter Partoll

December 26, 2022 at 11:47am


Another installment in the “Twitter Files” saga is once again exposing how Big Tech worked hand-in-glove with the Biden administration to further their agenda.



This time, it concerns how Twitter worked with the Biden administration to stop what it deemed “misinformation” about COVID-19 from being spread on the platform.



On Monday, author and journalist David Zweig took to Twitter to post a thread about how the social media giant “rigged the COVID debate,” by censoring inconvenient information about the pandemic, silencing health experts who dissented from the government’s consensus, and “suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*.”

Trending: Jan. 6 Committee Raises 'White Flag,' Withdraws Major Action Against Trump

Zweig began by mentioning that at the onset of COVID, the Trump administration met with social media sites, hoping to “combat misinformation” that would lead to panic buying and runs on grocery stores.

But it is what Zweig reveals about the actions of the Biden administration that is particularly disturbing.


Zweig wrote that when the Biden administration took over, they immediately met with Twitter and put pressure on it to do more to suppress “anti-vaxxer” accounts, including journalists like Alex Berenson.

Alex Berenson is a former New York Times Journalist who criticized COVID restrictions and lockdown measures during the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Zwieg reveals that after Biden’s comments to Twitter, Berenson was kicked off the platform.

Continued at link

[OmegaMan]

Latest dump of ‘Twitter Files’ show that even Trump admin pushed Twitter to censor, ban information during pandemic

Thursday, December 29, 2022 by: JD Heyes

Tags: Biden, Biden administration, Big Tech, Censorship, controlling the narrative, COVID-19 information, deception, deep state, Donald Trump, Glitch, Joe Biden, lies, Social media, speech police, technocrats, thought police, Trump, Trump administration, Twitter



This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author


(Natural News) Ironically, the president who was cheated out of a second term and went on to found a ‘free speech’ platform — Truth Social — was himself responsible, to a degree, for online censorship of COVID-19 information during the pandemic, according to the latest Twitter Files dump.



While presidents often do not know what is going on every day of the week in every one of the more than 430 federal agencies under control of the Executive Branch, it is safe to assume that Trump — an avid Twitter user at the time — would have been told whether anyone in his administration was meeting with social media platforms to discuss censorship of ‘competing’ COVID information.



So it comes as somewhat of a surprise that the latest dump of files shows that Trump administration officials worked with Twitter to throttle information that the ‘regime’ did not want Americans to know about.



“The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic. Internal emails that I viewed at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes,” reporter David Zweig noted in a column at the Free Press published this week.



Zweig’s report was based on data he was shown after being invited to fly out to San Francisco from New York to view what Twitter boss Elon Musk wanted him to see: That both administrations are guilty of information suppression which they justified by claiming they were just combatting misinformation.



Brighteon.TV

“At the onset of the pandemic, the Trump administration was especially concerned about panic buying, and sought ‘help from the tech companies to combat misinformation,’ according to emails sent by Twitter employees in the wake of meetings with the White House,” his report continued. “One area of so-called misinformation: ‘runs on grocery stores.’ The trouble is that it wasn’t misinformation: There actually were runs on goods.



“And it wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others,” he added.



After the Democrat-leaning deep state robbed Trump of his reelection and installed Joe Biden in the Oval Office, the new regime made it very plain very early on Americans: “Be very afraid of Covid and do exactly what we say to stay safe,” Zweig wrote.



Mind you, by the time Biden got into office, the country was a year into the pandemic and the vaccine roll-out was already well underway — meaning the country was already on the downhill side of things. But because Democrats are tyrants and control freaks, the plan became, ‘Let’s clamp down harder.’ And that is the message that the regime took to Twitter and the other social media companies, Zweig noted, citing the information he was shown.



“They were especially concerned about Alex Berenson, a journalist skeptical of lockdowns and mRNA vaccines, who had hundreds of thousands of followers on the platform,” he wrote.



Berenson, a former New York Times reporter and certainly no crackpot, would later be banned from Twitter for daring to post COVID information that ran counter to the regime’s pandemic propaganda.



“By the summer of 2021…Biden announced publicly that social media companies were ‘killing people’ by allowing misinformation about vaccines. Just hours later, Twitter locked Berenson out of his account, and then permanently suspended him the next month. Berenson sued Twitter. He ultimately settled with the company, and is now back on the platform,” Zweig wrote.



He went on to note that while Twitter did not act on all of the Biden regime’s demands for censorship, “Twitter did suppress views—and not just those of journalists like Berenson. Many medical and public health professionals who expressed perspectives or even cited findings from accredited academic journals that conflicted with official positions were also targeted,” he wrote.



Musk has done the country a huge public service by purchasing Twitter and revealing what that company — and, very likely, the other social media majors — was doing for years: Shaping narratives on behalf of big government.

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[songbird]

Elon Musk: Fauci Files to Drop Later This Week – 2023 Is About to Get Interesting!

By Jim Hoft

Published January 1, 2023 at 7:20pm


In early December, Elon Musk released the Twitter Files, Part 4 report on the company’s discussions on the censoring and banning of United States President Donald Trump.



Part 4 of the release included part 2 of the internal discussions leading up to the ‘removal of Trump’



President Trump was ultimately banned from Twitter on January 8, 2021.



Hours later Twitter owner Elon Musk announced his next topic in the Twitter Files series.



Elon Musk announced he was going to expose Dr. Tony Fauci and the suppression and suspension of any Fauci critics.


Elon posted this in December, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”

Elon then tweeted out this photo of Tony Fauci and Joe Biden. WOW!







And when asked when he will release the Twitter files on COVID, Elon Musk replied, “Oh its coming bigtime…”

On Sunday Elon Musk tweeted out that the Fauci Files will be released later this week.









Grab your popcorn. 2023 is about to get started!

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[maybetoday]

Another Twitter Files Drop: How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In

By Cristina Laila

Published January 3, 2023 at 3:05pm




Journalist Matt Taibbi released more Twitter files on Tuesday: How Twitter let the Intelligence community in



1.THREAD: The Twitter Files

How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In


2. In August 2017, when Facebook decided to suspend 300 accounts with “suspected Russian origin,” Twitter wasn’t worried. Its leaders were sure they didn’t have a Russia problem.

Details at link

Another Twitter Files Drop: How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In

By Cristina Laila

Published January 3, 2023 at 3:05pm


Journalist Matt Taibbi released more Twitter files on Tuesday: How Twitter let the Intelligence community in



1.THREAD: The Twitter Files

How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023



2. In August 2017, when Facebook decided to suspend 300 accounts with “suspected Russian origin,” Twitter wasn’t worried. Its leaders were sure they didn’t have a Russia problem.Second Twitter Files Drop of the Day Includes Adam Schiff Seeking Ban of Journalist Paul Sperry

By Cristina Laila

Published January 3, 2023 at 5:08pm

A second Twitter files dropped Tuesday afternoon.

The new Twitter Files thread includes Adam Schiff seeking a ban of journalist Paul Sperry.

Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations and a contributor to the New York Post, has been on the Deep State’s radar going back to the Clinton Administration.

Sperry confronted President Bill Clinton about Chinagate back in the 90s.

Paul Sperry is a huge threat to Deep State actors because he exposes their corruption.

Details at link

[ExquisiteGerbil]

Twitter Files: US State Department Panicked Over ZeroHedge Covid-19 Reporting

BY TYLER DURDEN

TUESDAY, JAN 03, 2023 - 08:00 PM


Journalist Matt Taibbi gave the public a double-header on Tuesday - first revealing how Twitter was swarmed by the US intelligence community...



1.THREAD: The Twitter Files

How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

The drop includes several bombshells about how the US intelligence community, and Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), tried to force-feed the Russian influence narrative down Twitter's throat despite the fact that Twitter just wasn't seeing it.



Anyone shocked that Twitter manufactured a fake Russian disinformation campaign at the request of a United States Senator (Warner) to make it look like foreign actors were still influencing American elections?#TwitterFiles



— Spitfire (@dogrightgirl) January 3, 2023

And second, a thread on how the intelligence community started going straight to the media with lists of suspect accounts.



t.co/BcFhHCvjAE February, 2020, as COVID broke out, the Global Engagement Center – a fledgling analytic/intelligence arms of the State Department – went to the media with a report called, “Russian Disinformation Apparatus Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Concerns.” pic.twitter.com/KjUeE8vejt



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

In the early days of the pandemic, the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC) was flagging accounts suggesting COVID-19 was a bioweapon, blaming the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or "attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA," (the latter of which nobody was actually saying... it was speculation over work done at Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina).



As Taibbi further notes, the State Department also flagged accounts that retweeted ZeroHedge due to "Sinophobia" and a "flurry of disinformation" that allegedly broke out after our suspension on Twitter.



5.State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular U.S. ZeroHedge, claiming the episode “led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.” ZH had done reports speculating that the virus had lab origin. pic.twitter.com/JlIobPzAFE



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

Which only raises more questions.



Why was this GEC more concerned about "Sinophobia" (fear of China) than the truth?



— ICULuci (@icu_luci) January 3, 2023

But hey, they had a giant problem on their hands, since even those with double-digit IQs could connect the dots between the Obama administration banning Gain-of-Function research to manipulate bat coronaviruses in order to become more transmissible to humans, then Anthony Fauci offshoring it to Wuhan, China via EcoHealth Alliance, which was carried out by a guy who repeatedly bragged about... manipulating bat coronavirus, and then COVID-19 breaks out in the same exact town.



What are the odds?



Anthony "the Science" Fauci desperately tried to hide his involvement in Wuhan covid research. Anything that pointed at him, even remotely, was "Russian propaganda" t.co/FOPObnvm74



— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 3, 2023

Did we mention we're really interested in the Twitter 'Fauci Files' that are supposedly dropping later this week?



The real source of disinformation turned out to be, what do you know, the government.



— Dave Benner, Thomas Paine Promoter (@dbenner83) January 3, 2023

Back to the infiltration of Twitter...



7.“YOU HAVEN’T MADE A RUSSIA ATTRIBUTION IN SOME TIME” When Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub complained Twitter hadn’t “made a Russia attribution” in some time, Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth said it was “revelatory of their motives.” pic.twitter.com/zByT5aCaBo



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

8.“WE’RE HAPPY TO WORK DIRECTLY WITH YOU ON THIS, INSTEAD OF NBC.” Roth tried in vain to convince outsider researchers like the Clemson lab to check with them before pushing stories about foreign interference to media.


9.Twitter was also trying to reduce the number of agencies with access to Roth. “If these folks are like House Homeland Committee and DHS, once we give them a direct contact with Yoel, they will want to come back to him again and again,” said policy director Carlos Monje.


10.When the State Department/GEC – remember this was 2020, during the Trump administration – wanted to publicize a list of 5,500 accounts it claimed would “amplify Chinese propaganda and disinformation” about COVID, Twitter analysts were beside themselves.



Continue reading here

[Midnight]

Pinkerton: The Twitter Files Remind Us the Deep State Lives

a

JAMES P. PINKERTON
8 Jan 2023

By now, anyone with a political pulse knows about the Twitter Files. Thanks to their release, we have proof of what we long suspected: that the real collusion was between Big Tech and Big Government. And one of the leading chroniclers of this historic moment, Matt Taibbi, helps us tie up another loose end:



The takeaway: what most people think of as the “deep state” is really a tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors, and (sometimes state-funded) NGOs. The lines become so blurred as to be meaningless.



Ah yes, the Deep State, much written about here at Breitbart News. Back in late 2016, Breitbart News noticed that hidden forces in the federal government were mobilizing against Donald Trump, even before he was inaugurated as the 45th president. In a flurry of articles, this website chronicled the Deep State’s successful effort, for example, to take out Michael Flynn as Trump’s national security adviser.



At the time the establishment denied that there was any such thing as the Deep State. Nothing to see here—just patriotic civil servants doing their duty! Yet then, in November 2021, after Trump was safely gone from office, they fessed up; one Beltway establishmentarian published a book entitled—you guessed it!—American Resistance: The Inside Story of How the Deep State Saved the Nation. The book received admiring notices from—you guessed this one, too!—National Public Radio. Obviously, as they emerged from the gloom of Trump to the bright light of Biden, Deep Statists were happy to shift, from denying the plainly obvious to basking in liberal applause.



Yet as Taibbi documents, the Deep State is more than just lifer-bureaucrats in the Federal Triangle. It also includes sympathetic techsters, easily enlisted in the Deep State doings. And here, providing granular detail, the Twitter Files are invaluable. Another Twitter File scribe, Michael Shellenberger, notes that the FBI was so eager to get the company in on its game that it extended Top Secret security clearances to Twitter employees. Did you know that the FBI could do that? Indeed, the FBI gave Twitter $3.4 million to help with the suppressing, filtering, shadow-banning, and deplatforming. Did you know the FBI could do that?



Shellenberger further adds, “As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees—‘Bu alumni’—working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.”



Beyond career enhancement and networking for FBI alums, the big mission was discrediting the Hunter Biden laptop story. The FBI (the one headquartered in Washington) had gained possession of the laptop in late 2019, seizing it from the Delaware repair-shop owner. And while the Bureau obviously had no intention of telling anyone about the laptop prior to the election—indeed, two years after the election, we don’t even know for sure that the laptop even still exists—the FBI seems to have figured that there were copies of the laptop somewhere, perhaps due to surface prior to election day, 2020. And that would be bad for Joe Biden, and thus good for the dreaded Trump. So the FBI and its Deep State pals hatched a plan to preemptively declare the laptop’s contents to be a hoax, nothing but Russian disinformation.



Hunter Biden and his son Beau Biden, President Joe Biden's grandson, arrive with the president and first lady Jill Biden at Nantucket Airport in Nantucket, Mass., Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022. The Baden's are spending the Thanksgiving Day holiday in Nantucket with their family. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Hunter Biden and his son Beau Biden, President Joe Biden’s grandson, arrive with the president and first lady Jill Biden at Nantucket Airport in Nantucket, Mass., Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)



Shellenberger explains of the laptop-release strategizing, “The goal was to shape how the media covered it—and how social media carried it.” As Taibbi puts it, the relationship between the FBI and Twitter was “master-canine.” And journalist Lee Fang shows us part of the plan of preemption:

Continued at link


The Aspen Institute hosted reporters, media co

[Berean]

BREAKING: Twitter was pressured by Pfizer to suppress posts questioning Covid vax efficacy: Twitter Files

"This is the kind of stuff that’s corrosive. Here he draws a sweeping conclusion off of a single retrospective study in Israel that hasn’t been peer reviewed. But this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage."



BREAKING: Twitter was pressured by Pfizer to suppress posts questioning Covid vax efficacy: Twitter Files

Image

Hannah Nightingale

Washington DC

Jan 9, 2023


Alex Berenson dropped records from the Twitter Files on Monday, stating that a board member for Pfizer pressured Twitter to suppress and censor any posts questioning the efficacy of the company's mRNA vaccine.



On August 27, 2021, Pfizer Board Member Dr. Scott Gottlieb emailed Todd O’Boyle, a Senior Manager of Public Policy at Twitter’s Washington, DC location, according to LinkedIn, and also Twitter’s point of contact with the White House, Berenson reported.


The email subject line contained a tweet from Dr. Brett Giroir, who had briefly served under Gottlieb in the Food and Drug Administration.



That tweet read: "It’s now clear that [Covid-19] natural immunity is superior to [vaccine] immunity, by ALOT. There’s no scientific justification for [vax proof] if a person had prior infection."



The tweet added that CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and President Joe Biden "must follow the science. If no previous infection? Get vaccinated!"



In response to the tweet, Gottlieb told O’Boyle, "This is the kind of stuff that’s corrosive. Here he draws a sweeping conclusion off of a single retrospective study in Israel that hasn’t been peer-reviewed. But this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage."



O’Boyle forwarded Gottlieb’s email to the Twitter "Strategic Response" team through Jira, an internal system used by Twitter for managing complaints, according to Berenson.



The Strategic Response team is responsible "for handling concerns from the company’s most important employees and users," Berenson wrote.



O’Boyle wrote in this forwarding email, "Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner," leaving out that Gottlieb was a Pfizer board member, one of the companies manufacturing the mRNA vaccines used against Covid-19.



While a Strategic Response analyst found that the tweet didn’t violate Twitter’s rules on misinformation, the tweet was still flagged as "misleading."



Gottlieb brought forth a tweet to O’Boyle again on September 3, 2021, written by Justin Hart, which stated, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but a viral pathogen with a child mortality rate of ~0% has cost our children nearly three years of schooling."



O’Boyle once again referred to Gottlieb as only "former FDA Commissioner Gottlieb," though Twitter did not end up acting on this complaint.



In response to the latest Twitter Files drop, Twitter owner Elon Musk wrote, "Some conspiracies are actually true."



Gottlieb also responded, writing in a Twitter thread, "In the past, I've raised concerns with Twitter related to the safety of me and others, and threats being made on the platform. This included direct as well as specific threats. Sometimes it included statements that I believed were purposely false and inflammatory."



Gottlieb said that "The selective disclosure of my private communications with Twitter stokes the threat environment."



"So does actions that empower people who’ve shown little restraint when it comes to purposeful vitriol. It instigates more menacing dialogue, with potentially serious consequences," he added.



Gottlieb released additional emails in which he communicated with Twitter, adding that "safety remains an existential concern for Twitter," and that "if the goal of TwitterFiles is transparency, here's some of the private e-mails I had with Twitter."



One of these emails to O’Boyle on October 1, 2021, said, "Todd, this doxxes me, invokes my wife. I have given it over to some security folks, but wanted to flag for you as well."



In response, O’Boyle wrote, "Hi Scott - sorry to hear that. I’ll send it to our team right away."



Another email, sent to O’Boyle on August 31, 2021, highlights a comment made by a person, directed at Gottlieb, stating, "Execute this bastard!"



An April 3, 2022 email to O’Boyle flagged a number of messages from a user calling Gottlieb a "murderer" and saying he would soon be "judged" or need to be held "accountable." Gottlieb noted that this user also made various posts regarding gun rights.



"Being on the receiving end of these, it does feel to come close to inciting violence. I have included some tweets below, but there are tweets about every day or two along the same lines."



Gottlieb and Berenson have come head to head before, with Berenson revealing in October of 2022 that Gottlieb, "a director of Pfizer, on the executive committee of Pfizer, which is made 10s of billions of dollars from selling these vaccines, went to Twitter and said 'this guy is a problem.' And then they banned me."



Berenson, speaking with Tucker Carlson, revealed that Andy Slavitt, "who was in the White House as a senior adviser to the Biden administration's COVID Response Team," had been talking with Twitter as early as April 2021 about "who I was, and that I was a problem for the White House and I was discouraging people from getting the vaccines which the White House wanted, and asking them why they hadn't banned me, so we know that."



Berenson later added, ""In July they gave me three strikes, and I already had one previous strike, which I didn't even know about. So I was one strike away from being suspended at the end of July. And by the way, Andy Slavitt, who is no longer in the White House, but was still sort of at the center of this conspiracy and talking to Albert Bourla, who was the head of Pfizer, and talking to people inside the administration, on a practically daily basis, was very upset."



"He was continuing to push Twitter secretly to ban me," Berenson continued. "Still, when I came back on the platform last year in August, and was asking even harder questions about the vaccines, at a time when the Biden administration knew they were going to be pushing for mandates, knew they were gonna be pushing for boosters, they still wouldn't ban me. And then Scott Gottlieb, who is a director of Pfizer on the executive committee of Pfizer, which is made 10s of billions of dollars from selling these vaccines, went to Twitter and said this guy is a problem and then they banned me."



Berenson’s Twitter account was later restored after the social media company settled a lawsuit with the journalist.



Shortly after Berenson revealed this, Gottlieb joined CNBC’s "Squawk Box," stating "I'm unconcerned about debate being made. I’m concerned about physical threats being made for people's safety."



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[Midnight]

Latest ‘Twitter Files’ Drop: Top Pfizer Exec Got White House-Level Censorship Access

by Kari Donovan

January 11, 2023

OPINION: This article contains commentary which may reflect the author’s opinion





Pfizer was among the drugmakers most elevated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and, going forward, the pharma giant has no plans to give up on its current momentum, according to a press release from the company.



But what Twitter is releasing about the company may change all of that momentum.



“Speaking this week at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Ph.D., laid out scenarios that could take the drugmaker to $84 billion—or $70 billion in a less optimistic case—in non-COVID revenues in 2030,” the Pfizer release on Fierce Pharma, went on, adding:

That’d be a huge increase from 2020, when the drugmaker pulled down $41.9 billion globally. Of course, Pfizer’s trajectory changed after the company launched its massively successful COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty and its antiviral Paxlovid.



To reach those 2030 revenue goals, the company is entering “the most important 18 months in the history of Pfizer,” Bourla said Monday. That’s because the company is planning 19 drug launches or label expansions over the next year and a half.



Those launches, in total, should generate $20 billion in sales by 2030, Bourla said. The group includes an RSV vaccine, elranatamab in multiple myeloma, ritlecitinib in alopecia areata and many other products.



Beyond those launches expected over the next 18 months, Bourla touted a pipeline of drugs expected to reach markets after the second half of 2024. Those include a much-anticipated oral GLP-1 drug, a gene therapy portfolio and several vaccines.



Here is what could derail it all.



“The latest release of the “Twitter Files” exposed actions taken by Pfizer board member and former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb to suppress debate over the necessity of COVID vaccines for those with natural immunity,” Western Journal reported, adding:



The findings were revealed by independent journalist Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who gained recognition as a contrarian’s voice during the pandemic.



Berenson’s full report can be viewed on his Substack website, “Unreported Truths.”



One of the most notable revelations was that Gottlieb, in his official capacity for Big Pharma, had turned to the same Twitter lobbyist the Biden White House worked with to shut down a post from Dr. Brett Giroir, a one-time acting FDA commissioner, who tweeted that the vaccine was unnecessary for those with natural immunity.



In August 2021, the month before President Joe Biden announced his ill-advised and unconstitutional vaccine mandate, Giroir wrote: “It’s now clear #COVID19 natural immunity is superior to #vaccine immunity, by ALOT. There’s no scientific justification for #vax proof if a person had prior infection.”



Obviously, both Pfizer and Gottlieb were acutely interested in keeping alive the cash cow their mRNA vaccine had become. According to Berenson, Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine contributed nearly 50 percent to the company’s 2021 revenue of $81 billion. And Gottlieb was paid $365,000 for his service on the Pfizer board that year.



With his financial interests in mind, Gottlieb emailed Todd O’Boyle, a senior manager in Twitter’s public policy department, to ask the company to remove the tweet.



Gottlieb wrote: “This is the kind of stuff that’s corrosive. Here he draws a sweeping conclusion off a single retrospective study in Israel that hasn’t been peer reviewed. But this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage.”



O’Boyle forwarded Gottlieb’s email to the company’s strategic response team with a message that said, “Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner.” Berenson noted that O’Boyle omitted the fact that Gottlieb was a member of Pfizer’s board.



Despite a strategic response team member’s reply that the tweet did not violate Twitter’s misinformation rules, the company nevertheless put a “misleading” warning on it which, Berenson wrote, prevented “almost anyone from seeing it.”



1/ My first #TwitterFiles report: how @scottgottliebmd – a top Pfizer board member – used the same Twitter lobbyist as the White House to suppress debate on Covid vaccines, INCLUDING FROM A FELLOW HEAD OF @us_FDA!



Thanks @elonmusk for opening these files,” Alex Berenson (@alexberenson) posted on Twitter on January 9, 2023.

2/ In August 2021, Gottlieb told Todd O’Boyle – a senior manager in Twitter’s public policy department – that a tweet from @drgiroir claiming CORRECTLY that natural immunity was superior to vaccine immunity was “corrosive” and might “go viral.”



3/ Twitter put a misleading tag on the tweet, preventing it from being shared. Gottlieb then went after a tweet about Covid’s low risk to kids from @justin_hart. Pfizer would soon win the okay for its mRNA shots for children, so keeping parents scared was crucial…

4/ In October 2022, @scottgottliebmd claimed on Twitter and CNBC that he was not trying to suppress debate on mRNA jabs. These files prove that Gottlieb – board member at a company that has made $70 billion on the shots – did just that.

“Scott Gottlieb‘s behavior speaks for itself. A former FDA commissioner (now Pfizer board member) schemed with a lobbyist & @twitter to apparently put corporate interests first — not public health. If anything, we need more open, honest, uncensored debate – not less,” Brett Giroir posted.

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[maybetoday]

Congressional Trolls:’ Twitter Files Show Company Knew Democrat Claims About ‘Russian Bots’ Were False


ALLUM BOKHARI
12 Jan 2023

A new release of the Twitter Files provides further evidence that the company was aware that claims of “Russian bots” on the platform, made by Democrats and the media, were wildly exaggerated or outright fabrications. Nevertheless, Twitter continued to indulge the Democrat and mainstream media-pushed conspiracy theory in public.



As Twitter attempted to placate Democrats on the hill with an appeasement strategy, humoring claims about Russian influence they knew were false, Twitter officials complained that the strategy amounted to “feeding congressional trolls.”

“Twitter warned politicians and media the[y] not only lacked evidence, but had evidence the accounts weren’t Russian – and were roundly ignored,” wrote journalist Matt Taibbi, who released the latest batch of the Twitter Files.



One prominent example highlighted by Taibbi is when former Congressman Devin Nunes submitted his classified memo to the House Intelligence Committee, exposing FBI abuses in using FISA courts to approve surveillance against individuals linked to Trump, and the critical role played by the discredited Steele Dossier.


Democrats including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), along with Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) claimed that Russian bots were boosting the Nunes report through the hashtag “#ReleaseTheMemo.”



“We find it reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans,” wrote Blumenthal, in a letter to Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter.

But Twitter could not find any significant evidence of Russian bots boosting the hashtag. “I just reviewed the accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with #releasethememo and… none of them show any signs of affiliation to Russia,” wrote Yoel Roth, who would briefly become head of Trust & Safety under Elon Musk, in an email to colleagues.



“We investigated, found that engagement as overwhelmingly organic, and driven by VITs.” VITs is a reference to Very Important Tweeters — prominent accounts that drive engagement.



Twitter then attempted to persuade Blumenthal that the allegations of Russian bot activity were overblown — only for Blumenthal to release his letter publicly, putting more PR pressure on the company.



“Blumenthal isn’t looking for real and nuanced solutions” but “just wants to get credit for pushing us further,” concluded one official at Twitter.

In addition to calling them “trolls,” Twitter officials compared the behavior of Russia-obsessed Democrats to the children’s story “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.”



In the story, attempting to placate a hungry mouse by offering him a cookie only leads to endless demands for more snacks.



“I’m legit embarrassed I didn’t think of that first,” was how one Twitter executive described the metaphor.



Despite mocking the Democrats’ obsession with non-existent Russian influence operations behind closed doors, Twitter made virtually no attempt to warn the public that the “bot panic” was exactly that — a panic, motivated by politics and without basis in reality.



“Despite universal internal conviction that there were no Russians in the story,” wrote Taibbi, “Twitter went on to follow a slavish pattern of not challenging Russia claims on the record.”

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[bloodbought]

Another ‘Twitter Files’ Drop: More Adam Schiff Ban Requests – Twitter “Deamplified” Alleged Conservative Accounts They Say Were Linked to Q-Anon

By Cristina Laila

Published January 13, 2023 at 11:40am




Another ‘Twitter Files’ dropped Friday morning.



Journalist Matt Taibbi released files revealing more Adam Schiff ban requests.



Recall, in a previous Twitter files drop it was revealed Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff asked for journalist Paul Sperry to be banned.



There’s more…


1.TWITTER FILES: Supplemental

More Adam Schiff Ban Requests,

and “Deamplification”



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 13, 2023



2. Staff of House Democrat Adam Schiff wrote to Twitter quite often, asking that tweets be taken down. This important use of taxpayer resources involved an ask about a “Peter Douche” parody photo of Joe Biden. The DNC made the same request:



2.Staff of House Democrat @adamschiff wrote to Twitter quite often, asking that tweets be taken down. This important use of taxpayer resources involved an ask about a “Peter Douche” parody photo of Joe Biden. The DNC made the same request: t.co/fM2Y2jxVKw pic.twitter.com/LIQMbns1B0



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 13, 2023



3. The real issue was Donald Trump retweeted the Biden pic. To its credit Twitter refused to remove it, with Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth saying it had obvious “humorous intent” and “any reasonable observer” – apparently, not a Schiff staffer – could see it was doctored.



3.The real issue was Donald Trump retweeted the Biden pic. To its credit Twitter refused to remove it, with Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth saying it had obvious “humorous intent” and “any reasonable observer” – apparently, not a Schiff staffer – could see it was doctored. pic.twitter.com/QJtS6s506Z



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 13, 2023



4. Schiff staffer Jeff Lowenstein didn’t give up, claiming there was a “slippery slope concern here.”



4.Schiff staffer Jeff Lowenstein didn’t give up, claiming there was a “slippery slope concern here.” pic.twitter.com/qM1cJiZLFh



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 13, 2023



5. Twitter also refused requests for bans of content about Schiff and his staff, e.g. “complete suppress[ion of] any and all search results about Mr. Misko and other Committee staffers.” Twitter said this would not be “conceivable.”



5.Twitter also refused requests for bans of content about Schiff and his staff, e.g. “complete suppress[ion of] any and all search results about Mr. Misko and other Committee staffers.” Twitter said this would not be “conceivable.” pic.twitter.com/2HQrmp4fnY



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 13, 2023



6. Even when Twitter didn’t suspend an account, that didn’t mean they didn’t act. Schiff’s office repeatedly complained about “QAnon related activity” that were often tweets about other matters, like the identity of the Ukraine “whistleblower” or the Steele dossier:



6.Even when Twitter didn’t suspend an account, that didn’t mean they didn’t act. Schiff’s office repeatedly complained about “QAnon related activity” that were often tweets about other matters, like the identity of the Ukraine “whistleblower” or the Steele dossier: pic.twitter.com/XKzY8AmB5R



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 13, 2023



7. Twitter policy at the time didn’t ban QAnon, but “deamplified” such accounts. About the batch of tweets that included those above, Twitter execs wrote: “We can internally confirm that a number of the accounts flagged are already included in this deamplification.”



7.Twitter policy at the time didn’t ban QAnon, but “deamplified” such accounts. About the batch of tweets that included those above, Twitter execs wrote: “We can internally confirm that a number of the accounts flagged are already included in this deamplification.” pic.twitter.com/IWss2BoUKx



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 13, 2023



8. Schiff’s office had a concern about “deamplification,” though: it might make it harder for law enforcement to track the offending Tweeters.



8.Schiff’s office had a concern about “deamplification,” though: it might make it harder for law enforcement to track the offending Tweeters.



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 13, 2023



9. “WE APPRECIATE GREATLY”

“We are curious whether any deamplification measures implemented by Twitter’s enforcement team – which we appreciate greatly – could… impede the ability of law enforcement to search Twitter for potential threats about Misko and other HPSCI staff.”



9.“WE APPRECIATE GREATLY”

“We are curious whether any deamplification measures implemented by Twitter’s enforcement team – which we appreciate greatly – could… impede the ability of law enforcement to search Twitter for potential threats about Misko and other HPSCI staff.” pic.twitter.com/h7TRauK6j5



— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 13, 2023



*END THREAD*

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[ExquisiteGerbil]

Twitter Files Expose How Dems/Media Defied Twitter 'Facts' To Spread 'Russian Bot' Hoax

BY TYLER DURDEN

FRIDAY, JAN 13, 2023 - 11:50 AM


What's this? Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and staff repeatedly pushed Twitter to remove perfectly legal content that they found offensive, according to Friday's installment of "The Twitter Files."

When Twitter pushed back, Schiff staffer Jeff Lowenstein pulled out the 'slippery slope' argument.

Twitter also refused requests to ban content about Schiff and his staff, telling the congressman's office that this would not be "conceivable."

Hilariously though, Schiff's office was concerned that if tweets were "deamplified" that law enforcement may have a harder time tracking the offending users.

But there's much, much more...



As Mimi Nguyen Ly and Tom Ozimek noted earlier via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),



The latest Twitter Files release shows how prominent Democrats knowingly pushed a false Russiagate-related narrative about “Russian bots” promoting a key House Intelligence Committee memo that detailed efforts to spy on the Trump campaign, despite the lawmakers being told by Twitter executives that it wasn’t true.


The 14th instalment of the Twitter Files was released on Jan. 12 by journalist Matt Taibbi, who explained in a series of posts that, at a key moment in the Trump-Russia investigation, Democrats alleged that “Russian bots” were spreading an explosive report from then-Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).



“At a crucial moment in a years-long furor,” Taibbi explained in one of the posts, “Democrats denounced a report about flaws in the Trump-Russia investigation, saying it was boosted by Russian ‘bots’ and ‘trolls.’”



“Twitter officials were aghast, finding no evidence of Russian influence,” Taibbi continued.



In support of this take, Taibbi shared screenshots of correspondence from Twitter executives to several Congressional Democrats, including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), confirming that they had “not identified any significant activity connected to Russia with respect to Tweets posting original content to this [#ReleaseTheMemo] hashtag.”



The #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag spread like wildfire on Twitter, topped its trending list starting on Jan. 18, 2018 and reflecting the widespread call to publicly release a then-classified memo submitted by Nunes, who at the time was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.



Widely referred to as the Nunes memo (pdf), it was later declassified under then-President Donald Trump’s order on Feb. 2, 2018.



The memo showed how the FBI under the Obama administration used unverified opposition research—the infamous “Steele Dossier” funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee—to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page as part of an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.



The claims made in the Nunes memo were confirmed by Justice Department Inspector-General Michael Horowitz in his report, released on Dec. 9, 2019.


Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) had introduced the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag on Jan. 18, 2018, and on the following day, joined a group of 65 House Republicans calling for the declassification of the memo. Many of the lawmakers, who collectively represent millions of voters, also sent out the hashtag on Twitter.



Just days later, on Jan. 23, 2018, Democrat lawmakers, including Feinstein and Schiff, wrote an open letter to then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to investigate allegations of “Russian bots and trolls surrounding the #ReleaseTheMemo online campaign.”



The letter from Feinstein and Schiff led Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to himself issue a letter (pdf) that also alleged the hashtag was a part of Russian disinformation campaigns.



“We find it reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans,” he wrote in a letter issued later that day—even though before the letter’s issuance, Twitter’s staff told the senator’s staffers they did not believe Russian bots were behind the hashtag, Taibbi reported.



Multiple legacy outlets also did the same, claiming Russian bots and trolls were behind the effort. All had cited the same source—the Hamilton 68 dashboard, a project with the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), an organization that tracks 600 Twitter accounts it claims are linked to the Russian government or repeat its news.



According to Taibbi, executives inside Twitter at the time complained that “Hamilton 68 seemed to be everyone’s only source, and no one was checking with Twitter” to verify the claims.



Twitter Internally Disputed ‘Russian Bots’ Claims

Taibbi shared an email from Emily Horne, who was at the time the global policy communications director of Twitter. The email, shared internally on Jan. 23, said that “it is extraordinarily difficult for outside researchers, who do not have access to our full API and internal account signals, to say with any degree of certainty that they believe an account is behaving suspiciously is 1) automated and 2) Russian.”



Yoel Roth, who was Twitter’s trust and safety chief at the time, reportedly told colleagues: “I just reviewed the accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with #releasethememo and … none of them show any signs of affiliation to Russia.”



Taibbi reported that “outside counsel from DC-connected firms like Debevoise and Plimpton” had advised Twitter to respond to lawmakers by using language like: “With respect to particular hashtags, we take seriously any activity that may represent an abuse of our platform.”



According to an email screenshot shared by Taibbi, Twitter was also advised to say something to the effect of: “Our initial assessment indicates that these [hashtag] trends are driven primarily by organic, non-automated activity [if true], but we are continuing to analyze the data and … will inform Congress about what we find.”



“Despite universal internal conviction that there were no Russians in the story, Twitter went on to follow a slavish pattern of not challenging Russia claims on the record,” Taibbi wrote.



Absent any such challenge, “s a result, reporters from the AP to Politico to NBC to Rolling Stone continued to hammer the ‘Russian bots’ theme, despite a total lack of evidence,” he reported.



“Russians weren’t just blamed for #ReleaseTheMemo but #SchumerShutdown, #ParklandShooting, even #GunControlNow—to ‘widen the divide,’ according to the New York Times,” Taibbi added.



Meanwhile, inside Twitter, staffers acknowledged that both the #SchumerShutdown and #ReleaseTheMemo hashtags “appear to be organically trending.”



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[OmegaMan]

Twitter Files: Drugmakers pushed for censorship of generic vaccine advocacy

by Christopher Hutton, Technology Reporter

January 16, 2023 03:35 PM



Representatives from drug companies pushed for the censorship of COVID-19 vaccine-related threads on Twitter, even those from accounts with minimal readership, to forestall competition, newly released internal documents show.



Lobbyists from medical companies such as BioNTech and Pfizer were in regular contact with Twitter, pushing for it to restrict specific online campaigns around the vaccine, according to the latest Twitter Files released by the Intercept's Lee Fang. They tried to quell an international effort to require Pfizer and other vaccine manufacturers to share intellectual property so other companies can reproduce the coronavirus vaccine.

The censorship campaigns were regularly sent via the company's policy team. For example, former Twitter's head of public policy in Germany, Nina Morschhaeuser, forwarded an email from a BioNTech spokesperson who asked Twitter to "hide" activist tweets targeting her company's account over two days. The email also asked them to monitor the hashtags #peoplesvaccine and #joinCTAP, both of which were used to promote a World Health Organization program that helped spread vaccine access to developing countries.



When asked how to monitor these alleged campaigns related to the requests offered by a pharmaceutical company, a Twitter spokesperson pulled together a collection of tweets that could be alleged violations, many of which were from nonprominent users. Two of the listed tweets were from a British bricklayer named Terry Brough, who had asked Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca to share their technology with poorer countries.



Brough was surprised to be told that his account had been targeted. "I'm actually 74 and still living," Brough told Fang. "I was a bricklayer all my life just like my dad. I'm no Che Guevara, but I've been an activist, a trade unionist, and a socialist. And all I did was sign a tweet. I wish I could've done more, really."


The email request arrived at the same time that pharmaceutical companies launched a campaign to prevent having to share the vaccine patents in 2020.



Previous versions of the Twitter Files have detailed the company's communications with federal officials regarding content moderation. This included efforts by select members of Congress to take down content and regular communications between Twitter and the FBI to remove alleged Russian bots and misinformation from the platform.

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