Twitter Files: What do They Tell Us About FBI Coercion? Opinion.
The setting:
C-SPAN: MARCH 9, 2023
Hearing on Twitter Documents About Content Moderation Decisions.
Senator Goldman:
Mr. Shellenberger in all of the emails that you reviewed, did the FBI ever direct Twitter to take down any accounts or remove any posts?
Mr Shellenberger:
Yes. They direct. Yes I think that's an accurate use of the word "direct".
Senator Goldman:
They said these may violate your terms of service. So you think that the saying that they violate your terms and conditins is the same as directing them to take it down?
Senator Goldman went on to note that this understanding of “this may violate your terms of service” was the FBI “directing” Twitter to remove a post was very revealing.
Taibi and Schellenberger and the House and Senate Republicans have absolutely nothing, unless you count the complete lack of anything as something! Plus, they are in need of a dictionary!
The witnesses, journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger think FBI suggestions that a tweet might be misinformation is the same as the FBI “directing” Twitter to take it down shows their general approach to the “Twitter Files”. This shows that the most damning examples of FBI coercion are nothing more than simply asking Twitter to look at a post and see if they think it might violate their own standards!
This must be some new usage of the term ”direct” of which I was heretofore unaware!
The background of this breakdown:
The hearings are ostensibly for the purpose of investigating government coercion of social media to influence elections, particularly as it had to do with the squelching of the infamous Hunter Biden Laptop story.
The New York Post had published stories from the hard drive allegedly from the laptop given to them by Rudy Giuliani, without inspecting it first, despite evidence of tampering and instructions not to inspect it before publishing. Should this not have raised some concerns? How could this not have caught the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, especially since Giuliani had spent an inordinate amount of time with known Russian agents and influencers, two of them were imprisoned for illegal election donations to Trump supporting political action committees?
The original, as far as we know laptop, like the Twitter Files springing from its alleged suppression, has turned out to be of no consequence. There is no smoking gun, no Joe Biden China connection, and no Joe Biden Ukraine Corruption Money connection, but there is still one more matter that the committee accidentally regurgitated.
The 2016 Trump Russian campaign interference.
This brings the tale full circle, giving the proper missing details of why the FBI thought the laptop was a Russian plant and watched social media so closely.
The Trump campaign knew about Russia's 2016 election interference and even encouraged it. They used it for their benefit.
So after the foreign interference in our 2016 election, social media companies naturally wanted to work with the intelligence community to stop Vladimir Putin from interfering in our elections again. It would seem a legitimate pursuit of the FBI to try to stop foreign interference in our elections.
Conclusion:
Unless the committee is trying to say that the FBI has no basis to inform social media companies of potential efforts to interfere in our elections, this is a colossal waste of resources! This seems like an attempt to get government to take control of social media by pretending government is controlling social media by making obscure suggestions!
al media by making obscure suggestions!