The third installment of the “Twitter Files” investigation that details the removal of former President Donald Trump from the platform has been released by journalist Matt Taibbi. The Twitter files are a deep dive into the documents and internal communications that detail the social network’s efforts to censor content on the platform.
“We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies,” Taibbi explains.
Taibbi’s investigation also proves collusion between the FBI, DHS, and DNI and how deeply they were all involved in interfering in the 2020 election.
Here is the full Taibbi thread:
1. THREAD: The Twitter Files
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP
Part One: October 2020-January 6th
2. The world knows much of the story of what happened between riots at the Capitol on January 6th, and the removal of President Donald Trump from Twitter on January 8th…
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
3. We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
4. This first installment covers the period before the election through January 6th. Tomorrow, @Shellenbergermd will detail the chaos inside Twitter on January 7th. On Sunday, @BariWeiss will reveal the secret internal communications from the key date of January 8th.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
5. Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech. pic.twitter.com/tQ01n58XFc
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
6. As soon as they finished banning Trump, Twitter execs started processing new power. They prepared to ban future presidents and White Houses – perhaps even Joe Biden. The “new administration,” says one exec, “will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.” pic.twitter.com/lr66YgDlGy
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
7. Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways. pic.twitter.com/Trgvq5jmhS
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
8. The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
9. Before J6, Twitter was a unique mix of automated, rules-based enforcement, and more subjective moderation by senior executives. As @BariWeiss reported, the firm had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
10. As the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
11. After J6, internal Slacks show Twitter executives getting a kick out of intensified relationships with federal agencies. Here’s Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth, lamenting a lack of “generic enough” calendar descriptions to concealing his “very interesting” meeting partners. pic.twitter.com/kgC4eGykcO
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
12. These initial reports are based on searches for docs linked to prominent executives, whose names are already public. They include Roth, former trust and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, and recently plank-walked Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
13. One particular slack channel offers an unique window into the evolving thinking of top officials in late 2020 and early 2021.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
14. On October 8th, 2020, executives opened a channel called “us2020_xfn_enforcement.” Through J6, this would be home for discussions about election-related removals, especially ones that involved “high-profile” accounts (often called “VITs” or “Very Important Tweeters”). pic.twitter.com/xH29h4cYt9
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
15. There was at least some tension between Safety Operations – a larger department whose staffers used a more rules-based process for addressing issues like porn, scams, and threats – and a smaller, more powerful cadre of senior policy execs like Roth and Gadde.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
16. The latter group were a high-speed Supreme Court of moderation, issuing content rulings on the fly, often in minutes and based on guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President. pic.twitter.com/5ihsPCVo62
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
17. During this time, executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content. While we’re still at the start of reviewing the #TwitterFiles, we’re finding out more about these interactions every day.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
18. Policy Director Nick Pickles is asked if they should say Twitter detects “misinfo” through “ML, human review, and **partnerships with outside experts?*” The employee asks, “I know that’s been a slippery process… not sure if you want our public explanation to hang on that.” pic.twitter.com/JEICGRTyz7
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
19. Pickles quickly asks if they could “just say “partnerships.” After a pause, he says, “e.g. not sure we’d describe the FBI/DHS as experts.” pic.twitter.com/d3EaYJb5eR
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
20. This post about the Hunter Biden laptop situation shows that Roth not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI): pic.twitter.com/s5IiUjQqIY
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
21. Roth’s report to FBI/DHS/DNI is almost farcical in its self-flagellating tone:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
“We blocked the NYP story, then unblocked it (but said the opposite)… comms is angry, reporters think we’re idiots… in short, FML” (fuck my life). pic.twitter.com/sTaWglhaJt
23. Some of Roth’s later Slacks indicate his weekly confabs with federal law enforcement involved separate meetings. Here, he ghosts the FBI and DHS, respectively, to go first to an “Aspen Institute thing,” then take a call with Apple. pic.twitter.com/i771hD8aCD
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
24. Here, the FBI sends reports about a pair of tweets, the second of which involves a former Tippecanoe County, Indiana Councilor and Republican named @JohnBasham claiming “Between 2% and 25% of Ballots by Mail are Being Rejected for Errors.” pic.twitter.com/KtigHOiEwF
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
The FBI's second report concerned this tweet by @JohnBasham: pic.twitter.com/8J8j5GlUVx
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
25. The FBI-flagged tweet then got circulated in the enforcement Slack. Twitter cited Politifact to say the first story was “proven to be false,” then noted the second was already deemed “no vio on numerous occasions.” pic.twitter.com/LyyZ1opWAh
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
26. The group then decides to apply a “Learn how voting is safe and secure” label because one commenter says, “it’s totally normal to have a 2% error rate.” Roth then gives the final go-ahead to the process initiated by the FBI: pic.twitter.com/lyZm4gmT19
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
27. Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
28, 29, 30, 31 – MISSING
32. This inspires a long Slack that reads like an @TitaniaMcGrath parody. “I agree it’s a joke,” concedes a Twitter employee, “but he’s also literally admitting in a tweet a crime.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
33. "Could still mislead people… could still mislead people," the humor-averse group declares, before moving on from Huckabee pic.twitter.com/vibLHqv9Kt
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
35. In another example, Twitter employees prepare to slap a “mail-in voting is safe” warning label on a Trump tweet about a postal screwup in Ohio, before realizing “the events took place,” which meant the tweet was “factually accurate”: pic.twitter.com/4r6nJ3JDmY
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
"VERY WELL DONE ON SPEED": the group is pleased the Trump tweet is dealt with quickly pic.twitter.com/WMyQjbWqNW
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
38. After Woods angrily quote-tweeted about Trump’s warning label, Twitter staff – in a preview of what ended up happening after J6 – despaired of a reason for action, but resolved to “hit him hard on future vio.” pic.twitter.com/dusFylxAXS
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
40. Twitter teams went easy on Hice, only applying “soft intervention,” with Roth worrying about a “wah wah censorship” optics backlash: pic.twitter.com/PGuihwNSu6
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
41. Meanwhile, there are multiple instances of involving pro-Biden tweets warning Trump “may try to steal the election” that got surfaced, only to be approved by senior executives. This one, they decide, just “expresses concern that mailed ballots might not make it on time.” pic.twitter.com/kGtHHngtyd
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
43. In this exchange, again unintentionally humorous, former Attorney General Eric Holder claimed the U.S. Postal Service was “deliberately crippled,”ostensibly by the Trump administration. He was initially hit with a generic warning label, but it was quickly taken off by Roth: pic.twitter.com/UXoXxE9E1S
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
45. On December 10th, as Trump was in the middle of firing off 25 tweets saying things like, “A coup is taking place in front of our eyes,” Twitter executives announced a new “L3 deamplification” tool. This step meant a warning label now could also come with deamplification: pic.twitter.com/MP4F7cvguw
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
47. However, in the end, the team had to use older, less aggressive labeling tools at least for that day, until the “L3 entities” went live the following morning. pic.twitter.com/0uz9rHe45o
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
49. In Twitter docs execs frequently refer to “bots,” e.g. “let’s put a bot on that.” A bot is just any automated heuristic moderation rule. It can be anything: every time a person in Brazil uses “green” and “blob” in the same sentence, action might be taken. pic.twitter.com/zkBkhSSodv
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
51. There is no way to follow the frenzied exchanges among Twitter personnel from between January 6thand 8th without knowing the basics of the company’s vast lexicon of acronyms and Orwellian unwords.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
53. “Interstitial,” one of many nouns used as a verb in Twitterspeak (“denylist” is another), means placing a physical label atop a tweet, so it can’t be seen.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
55. This is all necessary background to J6. Before the riots, the company was engaged in an inherently insane/impossible project, trying to create an ever-expanding, ostensibly rational set of rules to regulate every conceivable speech situation that might arise between humans.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
57. The firm’s executives on day 1 of the January 6th crisis at least tried to pay lip service to its dizzying array of rules. By day 2, they began wavering. By day 3, a million rules were reduced to one: what we say, goes
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
