FBI treated Twitter as a ‘subsidiary,’ flagged tweets and accounts for ‘misinformation’

As recently as Nov. 22 of this year, for example the FBI’s San Francisco office sent an email flagging four accounts that “may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service.”

One account on the list tweeted mostly satire, but Twitter employees still rushed to “look for reasons to suspend” the account for “civic misinformation.”  

While conservatives have suggested that Twitter’s enforcement actions have unfairly targeted them, Taibbi said the FBI also flagged left-wing accounts in fits of overzealous speech policing. 

In one case, the FBI noted a user with the name “ULTRA MAGA” who tweeted on Nov. 8, midterm election day: “Americans, Vote today. Democrats you vote Wednesday 9th.”

In another instance, the bureau flagged an account belonging to a user who Taibbi said “kids a lot,” and wrote: “I’m a ballot counter in my state. If you’re not wearing a mask, I’m not counting your vote,” and “For every negative comment on this post, I’m adding another vote for the Democrats.”

“Anyone who cannot discern obvious satire from reality has no place making decisions for others or working for the feds,” the user, @ClaireFosterPHD, told Taibbi when asked for comment about the flagging. 

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857573219819529?s=20&t=QtQBLoNkxzAujLOS5IoAgA

Federal authorities ramped up their focus on social media in the wake of the 2016 election, Taibbi notes, with the FBI’s social media-focused task force growing to 80 agents and the Department of Homeland Security partnering with outside security contractors and think tanks “to pressure Twitter to moderate content.”

Taibbi admitted he could not determine if the agencies themselves sought out posts to flag to Twitter or if they farmed out the work.

“You have to prove to me that inside the f—ing government you can do any kind of massive data or AI search,” Taibbi quoted a former intelligence officer as saying. 

Friday’s Twitter Files also revealed that the company participated in monthly meetings with not only the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, but also with the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In a letter to recently fired Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker from Sept. 16, Twitter legal executive Stacia Cardille shared her notes from one of the meetings, which she said were “soon to be weekly.”

The letter also reveals that Twitter and the FBI appeared to be on such good terms that the feds were “adamant” that they could share classified information with executives, according to Cardille. 

In March of 2021, the FBI sent Cardille a packet of “products” that she passed along to Baker and Roth, among others at Twitter, that Taibbi said were “really DHS bulletins stressing the need for greater collaboration between law enforcement and ‘private sector partners.'”

The FBI bulletins highlight alleged threats of Russian and Iranian misinformation on social media, as well as the “Domestic Violent Extremist Threat.”

 Federal law enforcement’s aggressiveness in sending Twitter “possible violative content” to review was so extreme that an employee described one set of materials to review as a “monumental undertaking” that required several employees to pitch in and help.

Taibbi found that similar content was also flagged by DHS, state governments, and partner organizations, such as the Center for Internet Security, described by Taibbi as a “DHS contractor” and Stanford University’s Election Integrity Project, which the journalist called “one of a series of government-affiliated think tanks that mass-review content.”

“Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists,” Taibbi summed up in a tweet following the file drop, “the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation. People should not be okay with this.”

The FBI told the Post on Friday that it “regularly engages” with private companies to provide information about the activities of malicious foreign actors, but the bureau wouldn’t comment on Taibbi’s characterization of its relationship with Twitter and wouldn’t say if it provided the social media company with any classified information.

“The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them,” the FBI said in a statement.