The 6th installment of the “Twitter Files,” released by Matt Taibbi on Dec. 16, with supplementary material on Dec. 18, exposes the intimidation methods that the FBI employed to induce Twitter to see Russian and Chinese propaganda where there was none.
FBI emails to Twitter show that, on June 10, 2020, Twitter’s head of Trust and Safety, Yeol Roth, made the mistake of reporting honestly, to a “DHS/ODNI/FBI/Industry briefing” that they “had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors” on Twitter. FBI agent Elvis Chan called upon Roth on July 20, 2020 to answer in writing how Twitter had come to that conclusion. The FBI was giving Twitter an opportunity for “clarifications.” Chan then challenged Roth with five references to ‘authoritative’ sources, headed by the UK’s “Oxford Internet Initiative,” that were convinced that the Russians and Chinese were all over social media with their nefarious activities. He asked: “In what ways and by what measures do you see official propaganda actors as less active than other groups on your platform?”
Roth, taken aback, emailed Twitter executives that the FBI’s premise in their questions “seems flawed,” and that Twitter had “been clear official state propaganda is definitely a thing on Twitter,” the intelligence community had “fundamentally misunderstood” Twitter’s position.
Taibbi explains that, after the 2016 election results had rattled the intelligence community, 80 FBI agents were assigned to monitor foreign interference on social media. “Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI” and Twitter’s Roth, and “a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation….”
