The sixth instalment of Twitter Files was released on the microblogging platform by independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi. The latest edition of "Twitter Files" uncovers the FBI's connections to the dominant social media platform.
The thread was started by Taibbi on Friday by writing, "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."
"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," he wrote next.
"Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth... 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."
The Twitter thread also noted that the FBI established the FTIF, a task force with a social media concentration, after the 2016 presidential election. The FTIF grew 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.
Numerous examples of communication between Twitter and the FBI were shown in the thread, most of which related to tweets that the FBI had identified as having "possible violative content."
