Twitter Files 9.0 reveals coordination between tech giant & govt agencies other than FBI

Matt Taibbi, a writer for Substack, published Twitter Files 9.0 on Christmas Eve alleging that Twitter has engaged in significant levels of surveillance and censorship in cooperation with a variety of government agencies, including the FBI, State Department, Pentagon, and CIA. According to Taibbi, the extent of Twitter's interactions with these agencies was so extensive that company executives had difficulty keeping track of them. According to Taibbi, coordination between Twitter and government agencies, particularly the FBI, involved regular meetings of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), attended by executives from Twitter, FBI personnel, and representatives from "other government agencies" (OGAs).

Taibbi also mentioned that it was well-known within Twitter that one of its executives had previously worked for the CIA, and that this executive was often invited to participate in these meetings. The meetings discussed "foreign matters," but they also included a large number of requests from state governments and local police for moderation of domestic content on Twitter. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, the FBI contacted Twitter about "problem accounts" that were spreading misleading information. Taibii, in Twitter Files 9.0 stated that the Foreign Influence Task Force and the San Francisco FBI office seemed to be handling a large volume of these requests, including ones about "fringiest material," and it was unusual that a task force focused on foreign influence was involved in such a high volume of domestic reports.

What else did the Twitter files reveal?

According to Taibbi, an unnamed Twitter executive admitted in an email that "government partners" were becoming more aggressive in their attribution efforts and that this was closing Twitter's "window" of independence. Taibbi also noted that the CIA has not commented on its relationship with tech companies like Twitter and that the searches he conducted for his "Twitter Files" series were carried out by third parties, potentially limiting the information he was able to access. The series has previously revealed Twitter's direct assistance with US military influence operations and the FBI's efforts to discredit information about US President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings. Twitter is not the company which was in contact with government agencies. Some time ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in the Joe Rogan Show that the FBI contacted Facebook, as a result of which Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden story.