The FBI acts “as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government,” in keeping with the most recent Twitter Files launch.
Mentioning that the FBI didn’t refute the earlier claims about the way it benefited from the social media platform, which had principally asserted that the FBI moderates Twitter, journalist Matt Taibbi mentioned on Twitter that the bureau shared an announcement on Wednesday, saying: “The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public…”
“It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency,” the FBI added.
Taibbi mentioned: “The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”
“The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors – from local cops to media to state governments,” he mentioned in a collection of tweets.
“Twitter had so much contact with so many agencies that executives lost track,” the journalist mentioned.
“A chief end result was that thousands of official ‘reports’ flowed to Twitter from all over, through the FITF and the FBI’s San Francisco field office,” Taibbi added.
Since taking up Twitter, Musk, 51, has sacked roughly half of the corporate’s 8,000 staff, reinstated beforehand banned accounts on the platform, and likewise introduced an “amnesty” for suspended accounts, prompting considerations a couple of rise in disinformation and hate speech.
On Thursday, Musk suspended various journalists’ Twitter accounts, solely to revive them Saturday primarily based on on-line polling. Critics say the suspensions have been unfair and capricious and the short reversals an indication of Musk’s erratic administration.
Critics have additionally downplayed the importance of the Twitter Files as overblown.
