Tipsheet

Another Edition of the Twitter Files Is Out. This Time, We're Talking About the Pentagon.

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  December 20, 2022 9:15 PM

On Tuesday afternoon, yet another edition of the Twitter Files was released to highlight troubling revelations about the social media platform. The eighth edition was shared by investigative journalist Lee Fang, who also published a piece in The Intercept about the findings. 

This edition is titled "How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon's Covert Online PsyOp Campaign," with Fang explaining that "Twitter docs show that the social media giant directly assisted the U.S. military's influence operations." Adding insult to injury to the whole scandal is that the social media platform has claimed, and even testified before Congress, that they do not engage in such efforts. 

Twitter knew about the operations, and yet did nothing. They even let such accounts remain, with some still remaining active, according to Fang. 

As was revealed in later tweets of this thread, the timeline involves "detection by Twitter as late as 2020 (but potentially earlier)," with "some not suspended until May 2022 or later."

We've heard of accounts being blacklisted, which we all pretty much already knew before the Twitter Files were released, though this was confirmed in a previous edition released earlier this month. Fang details how there were "whitelist" accounts, which he describes as having the verification status without necessarily having the blue check mark, "meaning they are exempt from spam/abuse flags" and they are "more visible/likely to trend on hashtags."

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Hm, perhaps this is part of the reason as to why Elon Musk wants to reform the blue-check mark verification process?

While Fang mentions one Twitter official who "feels deceived by the covert shift," many other Twitter executives were aware. One name that keeps coming up is Twitter lawyer Jim Baker, who it was reported earlier this month caused a delay to the second edition of the Twitter Files. Musk relieved him around that time. There were more, though. 

In case you had any questions about whether or not the liberal mainstream media played a role, Fang gets to that towards the end of his thread, especially when it comes to how "Twitter was cast as an unbiased hero for removing" fake accounts. "Media covering the story described Twitter as evenly applying its policies & proactive in suspending the DoD network." Of course they did. It would be funny if not dealing with such a serious matter. 

Fang's subsequent tweet again emphasizes how Twitter, despite being aware of violations, "waited years to suspend" these accounts. 

In case you need any more of a recap of how Twitter has acted with impunity, Fang's last tweet before sharing his work in The Intercept highlights how the social media platform claims and even boasts otherwise.

This really is huge. It may sound like that every time, but what comes out of these Twitter Files is truly revealing and damning. It's also no longer just about punishing the conservative viewpoints that Twitter disagrees with, or about censorship and free speech. Something tells us that liberals will still find a way to spin it and ratchet up their hatred towards Musk. 

Fang is no stranger to this subject, as he had also revealed details in late October about "an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms" from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to police and even censor speech over social media.