The latest revelations about the FBI and Big Tech’s ‘collusion’ to censor social accounts
Twitter is confirmed main battlefield of the war for freedom of expression. As absurd as it may seem, alas, we have reached the point where the face of the West may depend on a social media platform’s content moderation policies for decades to come.
The stakes
At stake is nothing less than the affirmation of freedom of expression or, conversely, the betrayal of one of the founding principles of the modern West and its people Chinese drift.
The takeover of social media by Elon Musk has shattered the certainties of those who, since late 2016, have been elected donald trumpbelieved they had gained control of, and asserted themselves through, the main social platforms on which, willy-nilly, a significant portion of public debate now takes place narrative control on the issues that matter most credibility of governments in the eyes of the citizens.
Remember how they responded to objections to account closures and content censorship under the guise of disinformation, fake news? “These are private companies, they can do whatever they want.” Well, now that Musk has taken over Twitter and changed the moderation policy, they don’t think as much.
The Senator Elizabeth WarenWhen specifically asked, he replies that “a person shouldn’t be able to walk into a dark room alone and decide, ‘Oh, this person is heard, this person isn’t.’ That’s not how it’s supposed to work.” That’s exactly what Musk questioned with Twitter’s previous management.
Goal: Stop Musk
Washington and Brussels are moving together Stop Musk’s project Restore freedom of speech on Twitter.
In an amazing comment weeks ago, the White House spokeswoman Karine Jean Pierre he had already expressly said: anyone who opposes the majority idea will be considered an extremist by the administration (Text: “When you are not with what major of Americans are, then you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking ” ).
That being said, the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced one Revision Musk’s takeover of the social network after President Biden’s threat immediately after the midterms (“his cooperation with foreign countries must be heeded, there are many ways”).
Yellen mentioned the US Foreign Investment Committee, which reviews “foreign investment” transactions to see if they make a difference a risk to national security“. Adding: “We do not comment on the work in progress. But if there are such risks, it would be appropriate for the Committee to let us know quick view“.
The threat from Brussels
But even worse, in the same hours, Brussels threatened to do so Disable Twitter in EU countries — yes, just like in China — unless the new owner abides by their strict content moderation rules.
The threat, as reported by the Financial Times, came from Thierry Bretonthe EU commissioner responsible for implementing the Digital Service Act, who ordered Musk to do so during a video call on Wednesday follow a list of rulesincluding abandoning an “arbitrary” approach to recovering banned users and “aggressively” fighting so-called disinformation.
Musk has been warned that if Twitter doesn’t abide by these rules, it risks violating the EU’s new digital services law, which sets the global standard for how big tech controls content online. Breton reiterated that according to the law, Twitter could be harmed if violated a European ban or fines of up to 6 percent of global sales.
The Twitter owner has repeatedly stated, according to FT, that he thinks the DSA is “very reasonable, adding that he has read the legislation and thinks it should be applied anywhere in the world”.
On the part of the EU, commented the former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo“Consider banning Twitter while basically allowing TikTok to be within the gates of Europe misunderstands the risk for people it is his duty to protect. The CCP surveillance state, not a private American corporation, poses a clear threat.”
The “misinformation” about Covid
As you know, Musk is determined to do that restore freedom of speech on the social network and has already taken steps to restore thousands of suspended accounts, including that of the former President donald trump, who hasn’t resumed tweeting yet. Twitter’s new philosophy is based on the “de-amplification” of content that violates the rules: “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach”.
Twitter is also no longer applying the policy to counter “misleading information about Covid-19.” flagged or censored Tweets that don’t match the official narrative on Covid and vaccines.
What happened with the adoption of this policy is an example of how the risks of free speech are far preferable to the risks of censorship. Throughout the two-year pandemic and leading up to Musk’s takeover, from doubts about the virus’ natural origins to debate over the effectiveness of anti-Covid vaccines, Theses dismissed as conspiracy theories or “misinformation” and therefore censored, later proved to be more than justified.
And indeed, evidence of this has been emerging lately regular cooperation between Big Tech and US federal agencies, such as the FBI and DHS, e.g Censoring news and opinions classified as harmful to government policy regarding Covid and classified as ‘misinformation’.
Twitter has interfered in the 2020 election
Not just covid. In a tweet published Wednesday, Musk acknowledged that Twitter “meddled in the election.”
Commenting on a Portal article in which the former head of the social media Trust and Safety team claimed Twitter with Musk is “not safe anymore,” user @EvaFoxU wrote, “Twitter has changed significantly over the past 10 Years proven unsafe and has lost the trust of users. The former ‘Trust and Safety’ team is a disgrace so they have no right to judge what is being done now.”
Musk responded to that tweet, “Exactly. The apparent reality is, as long-time users know, Twitter has long failed in trust and security, and intervened in the election“. And added that “Twitter 2.0 will be much more effective, transparent and impartial”.
The Story of Hunter Biden’s Laptop
How would Twitter “intervene in the election”? Musk refers to censorshipin the closing days of the 2020 presidential campaign, from the – true – story of the laptop Hunter Bideneven the media account that said so, the New York Post, not exactly a conspiracy theorist bulletin but one of the major US newspapers.
In fact, a few days ago Musk had reached an agreement with Alex Lorusso, one of the banned journalists, according to which Musk himself “should publish internal discussions from Twitter about the decision to censor the New York Post story through on the laptop Hunter Biden just before the 2020 elections in the interest of transparency”.
“It is necessary to restore public confidence,” was Musk’s reply, who announced a few days later: “Twitter’s documents suppressing freedom of expression they will be published soon on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened…”
Recall that back then Twitter had locked for every user share the link to the Post survey both publicly and via direct message, e.g the account blocked personal former White House spokesman Kayleigh McEnanyas well as former President Trump’s campaign account, for sharing, but also Newspaper account blocked.
In April, months before acquiring the platform, Musk tweeted that “the suspension of a major news organization’s account for publishing a true story was apparent incredibly inappropriate“.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, had to apologize to Congress for suppressing reports that had been proven accurate and verified. And lately even the Washington Post, the New York Times and CBS News have had to recognize authenticity the history of the laptop.
But what can be gleaned from Twitter’s internal documents about Musk’s promised decision? Something similar to what he said Mark Zuckerberg in the podcast by Joe Roganwhen he admitted that Facebook was prompted to censor the story by FBI orders that it was Russian disinformation – which later turned out to be a total misrepresentation.
The collusion between the FBI and Big Tech
On the charge of arrangement A court case aimed at censoring and suppressing freedom of expression on social media is underway between senior government officials and big tech and has been filed against the federal government by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana.
According to her complaint, following a third-party subpoena, Meta identified the FBI’s foreign interference task force and specifically the agent Elvis Chanas involved in communications between the FBI and Meta led to oppression from Facebook’s laptop story Hunter Biden.
According to Fox News reports heard on November 14 last year, Agent Chan spoke of “weekly meetings‘ by the FBI with Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley ahead of the 2020 presidential election to discuss and get intelligence on ‘disinformation’ on social media efforts to censor it.
According to him, the FBI send regularly to social media companies lists of Internet URLs and accounts to be removed as “misinformation” from “malicious foreign influence operations.” The FBI then asks the platforms if they actually removed the content. And in many cases these They’re deleting accounts reported by the FBI.
In short, what emerges is a real censorship scheme. As Max Balestra aptly explained, in recent years the federal government has required major social networks like Facebook and Twitter to act as theirs Censorship Proxy. The request to Musk from Washington and Brussels is that Twitter will remain in place.
Truce with Apple
However, clarification between Musk and Tim cook, the CEO of Apple. In recent days, Musk has accused Apple of hostilely slashing its Twitter ad spend threatened with removal the app from their store.
Last Tuesday, the Florida governor intervened sharply on the matter Ron DeSantiswho warned at a press conference that if Apple banned Twitter from its store it would show it’s being exercised a monopoly power and Congress should deal with it:
We’re hearing that Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the App Store because Elon Musk is effectively opening it up to free speech, restoring many accounts that have been wrongfully and unlawfully banned for disseminating accurate information about Covid. If Apple responded by removing them from the App Store, I think they would a big mistakehuge, and would really be an exercise in pure monopoly power.