New Delhi: The sixth edition of Twitter Files, released by independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi, uncovered the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's relationship with the social media platform.
Taibbi, who started the Twitter thread on Sunday said, "The Twitter Files are revealing more and more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content. Twitter's contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary."
"Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth," Taibbi wrote.
In the course of the investigation, Taibbi discovered a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.
Taibbi, who described the Twitter-FBI relationship as "The master-canine quality," said the ties came through this November 2022 email, in which "FBI San Francisco is notifying you" it wants action on four accounts: One account on the list mainly tweeted satire, but Twitter employees still rushed to "look for reasons to suspend" the account for "civic misinformation."
In the wake of 2016, the FBI created the social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, which swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.
"It's no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts," Taibbi said in a tweet.
"The #TwitterFiles show something new: agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation," he added.
In the series of tweets, Taibbi added, "Of the six accounts mentioned in the previous two emails, all but two - @ClaireFosterPHD and @FromMa - were suspended.
"In an internal email from November 5, 2022, the FBI's National Election Command Post, which compiles and sends on complaints, sent the SF field office a long list of accounts that 'may warrant additional action'," he added.
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.
On its part, the FBI said 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 characterisation of its relationship with Twitter and wouldn't say if it provided the social media company with any classified information, according to the New York Post.