(Note that the numbering does not always match order of release.)
Stifling Hunter laptop news
Part 1. Dec. 2
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394
Overruling internal dissent, the head of global safety and site integrity, Yoel Roth, made the call to block the New York Post's election-season story on Hunter Biden's laptop drive, which contained damaging information on Joe Biden's financial arrangements.
Roth rationalized his decision on ground that in 2016, "hacked" materials had aided Donald Trump's election. He said that even if the hacking allegation was questionable, it was necessary to err on the side of a blockade.
Not only did Twitter forbid the story from spreading via tweets, it even blocked it from spreading via direct message, a tactic only used in the past in cases at the level of child pornography.
Twitter's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, was sealed off from knowledge of what his right-hand man was doing.
The squelching of the Post's story contributed to Trump's loss.
Roth's political decision is not out of line with media practice or law but struck many as an infringement of the whole point of social media.
Musk cans counsel for filtering Files
Supplemental report. Dec. 6.
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1600243405841666048?lang=en
The new chief of Twitter, Elon Musk, ousted Twitter's deputy counsel after he was discovered to be controlling access to internal Twitter records that were sought by journalists assigned by Musk to review them.
Jim Baker, who came to Twitter from the FBI, left immediately after Bari Weiss, one of the journalists, alerted Musk to the roadblock.
Secret blacklists
Part 2. Dec. 9
Bari Weiss
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601007575633305600?lang=en
Twitter colluded with governmental authorities to blacklist people warning about negative effects of covid lockdowns. For example, Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who argued that the lockdowns endangered children, was placed on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending.
The company, which was overwhelming staffed with liberals, even placed rightist commentator Dan Bongino on a search blacklist. Another conservative, Charlie Kirk, was placed on a "do not amplify" shadow ban.
Another tweeter, Chaya Raichik, who had 1.4 million followers, was suspended multiple times, not because her content violated company guidelines on incendiary speech, but because top officials did not like her attitude on transgender issues. Yet Twitter refused to do anything about a tweet that published Raichik's home address, as if any potential danger to her was just too bad.
Such blocks are not out of line with media practice or law but struck many as an infringement of the whole point of social media. But, the toeing of a governmental line on covid speech has raised concerns, especially in light of other Twitter Files stories showing federal collusion with and even arm-twisting of Twitter executives.
Secret blacklists
Part 2. Dec. 9
Bari Weiss
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601007575633305600?lang=en
Twitter colluded with governmental authorities to blacklist people warning about negative effects of covid lockdowns. For example, Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who argued that the lockdowns endangered children, was placed on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending.
The company, which was overwhelming staffed with liberals, even placed rightist commentator Dan Bongino on a search blacklist. Another conservative, Charlie Kirk, was placed on a "do not amplify" shadow ban.
Another tweeter, Chaya Raichik, who had 1.4 million followers, was suspended multiple times, not because her content violated company guidelines on incendiary speech, but because top officials did not like her attitude on transgender issues. But Twitter refused to do anything about a tweet that published Raichik's home address, as if any potential danger to her was just too bad.
Such blocks are not out of line with media practice or law but struck many as an infringement of the whole point of social media. But, the toeing of a governmental line on covid speech has raised concerns, especially in light of other Twitter Files stories showing federal collusion with and even arm-twisting of Twitter executives.
Muzzling the President Part 3. Dec. 9
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601352083617505281
During the 2020 presidential election, both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign team were able to influence Twitter to curtail or block some tweets. But the Democratic Party influence was much more pervasive, as Twitter staff members were overwhelmingly liberal.
Some of Trump's tweets were blocked, but Biden faced no muzzling.
In the final three months of the election campaign, anxious Twitter executives were seeking pretexts to slant Twitter dialogs in favor of Biden and against Trump, but the Jan. 6, 2021, demonstration and mob scene at the Capitol, spurred an intensive internal debate, which resulted in President Trump being locked out of Twitter.
Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” That is, Twitter people did not like him.
Jockeying for a permanent muzzle
Part 4. Dec. 10
Michael Shellenberger
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1601720455005511680
Two days after the Jan. 6 Capitol demonstration and uproar, President Trump was permanently blocked from Twitter on ground that his tweets to followers were inciting violence. Twitter's top censor, Yoel Roth, had been lobbying his boss, chief executive Jack Dorsey, for the power to ban Trump and others.
Roth's anti-Trump attitude was shown in 2017 when he tweeted that the White House contained "actual Nazis." His activism as a political censor was shown in April 2022, Roth told a colleague that his goal “is to drive change in the world,” which is why he decided not to become an academic. Twitter employees recognized the difference between their own politics and Twitter's terms of service but they engaged in complex hair-splitting in order to shadow ban or ban politically disfavored tweets.
Double standard on Trump shutoff
Part 5. Dec. 12
Bari Weiss
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1602364197194432515?lang=en
After the Jan. 6, 2020, Capitol confrontation, hundreds of Twitter employees pressed to have President Trump permanently muzzled. But no incitement of violence could be found in Trump's tweets. Top executives then decided that he could be banned under the standard of "glorification of violence."
Other world leaders who had advocated genocide and terrorism had not been banned by the San Francisco firm.
Part 6. Dec. 16
Matt Taibbi
twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857534737072128
The FBI was highly influential in censoring Twitter, targeting a "surprisingly high number" of accounts over electioneering content. Even joke tweets from low-follower accounts drew the attention of FBI censors.
The bureau's 80-member Foreign Influence Task Force, which was established by Director Christopher Wray in 2016 over allegations of Russian election meddling, specialized in monitoring social media. In addition, federal intelligence and law enforcement agency clout at Twitter included the Homeland Security Department, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to censor content.
The FBI, Homeland Security and other federal units regularly sent social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points as items that needed to be blocked. Twitter obligingly censored even joke tweets. The cozy relationship between Twitter and the FBI was illustrated when the FBI gave a Twitter exec blank-check authority to share classified information "with industry."
FBI's gaming of Hunter news
Part 7. Dec. 19
Michael Shellenberger
twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604871630613753856?lang=en
Top FBI and intelligence officials moved to discredit the New York Post's bombshell story concerning Hunter Biden's laptop well before the Post published it. The FBI knew of the potential story from a wiretap on Rudy Giuliani, a top aide to President Trump's re-election campaign. The laptop drive includes emails exposing Joe Biden as a player in a money-laundering operation.
Giuliani had been contacted by a Delaware computer repair shop owner, Mac Isaac, after the FBI's prolonged silence about Hunter Biden's laptop, which he had turned over to the bureau. After Isaac contacted the FBI, the bureau and other security agencies began priming media and social media executives to be prepared for "hack-and-leak operations." Thus, when an FBI agent pushed Twitter and other social media companies to block the Post story, executives at those platforms had already been braced to see the story as Russian disinformation.
They did the same to Facebook, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The FBI "was like, ‘Hey... you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in 2016 election. There's about to be some kind of dump similar to that.'"But, for all that, the FBI couldn't find anything to back up this claim of Russian meddling.
Boosting Pentagon misinformation
Part 8. Dec. 20
Lee Fang
https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605292454261182464?lang=en
Tho Twitter was supposedly very concerned about the spread of misinformation, disinformation and mal-information, it was happy to go along with a U.S. government operation to spread misinformation.
The Pentagon's U.S. Central Command had Twitter "whitelist" and authenticate a swath of Arab-language accounts -- thus exempting them from being suppressed as spam.The tweets gave the military's point of view on Mideast combat operations, but once the accounts were cleared by Twitter, any ties to the Pentagon vanished. Hence, the tweets were misinforming readers about their origin. A top Twitter counsel and former FBI official, Jim Baker, mused in a July 2020 email that the Pentagon used "poor tradecraft" in setting up its network. Covert propaganda operations are routine in wartime -- except that the United States was not in a declared war.
Helping Dems rig covid debate
Part 9: Dec. 26
David Zweig
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867
Twitter cooperated with federal officials in censoring information that was true but politically inconvenient, helped to discredit doctors and other experts who disagreed with health officialdom, and even blocked users who shared official data.
In addition, government pressure tactics worked to elevate favored viewpoints about covid.Tho the Trump administration contacted Twitter about covid tweets, it was the Biden White House that pressed for the takedown of vaccine critics -- especially Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter.In August 2021, Twitter permanently suspended Berenson for what it said were repeated violations of its policy on covid misinformation, but after Berenson sued, he was reinstated. Berenson had tweeted that covid vaccines are 50 times more dangerous than flu vaccines.
But Berenson was far from the only target of White House takedown efforts for those questioning Joe Biden's stance on the purported urgency that everyone be vaccinated.In particular, the views of doctors and scientists questioning the official line were stifled by Twitter. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing. The throttling of dissent was a big job. It was offshored to low-wage workers who had to follow computerized "decision trees," following a mechanical procedure to decide whose copy should be spiked and whose should be spared.
Playing doormat for gumshoes, spooks
Part 10. Dec. 24
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701397109796866?lang=en10
The FBI's social media task force and its San Francisco office were portals for other no-name government agencies that were also getting in on the Twitter censorship act.A substantial CIA role was uncovered at Twitter.The FBI had a friend in Twitter's top tier, where a former bureau official, Jim Baker, was deputy general counsel.Security officials were in constant contact with Twitter and with every major social media platform, includingFacebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit and Pinterest, among many others.Despite the FBI's social media monitors being tasked with countering foreign influence, that unit and the bureau's San Francisco office became conduits for mountains of domestic censorship requests coming from state government units and even local police forces.
FBI activity within Twitter reached flood stage as the 2020 election campaign heated up. Twitter scrambled to deal with the blitz of FBI demands with a triage system.Twitter staffers observed that the FBI had assigned people to look for violations of Twitter's terms of service in order to try to get tweets and accounts blocked.“They have some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations," said one Twitter staffer.
Strong-armed to 'see the light' on Russia bots
Part 11. Jan. 3
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372352872783872?lang=en
Worried by threats of harsh headlines, Twitter went from seeing no problem with Russian interference in its activities to permitting more and more U.S. government interference in its operations.
After the election of Donald Trump as president, Twitter came under furious fire from his opponent Hillary Clinton, and lawmakers, for reportedly permitting Russia to meddle in the election via Twitter. So Twitter named a "Russia task force" to look into claims that Russian botnets had been used to undermine Clinton's election.
Altogether, the team found 37 suspicious election accounts, with only 17 linked to Russia. Only two accounts were deemed significant, including one for Russia Today. A Democrat-fueled backlash arose and Twitter was accused of deleting evidence of botnet activity.
Lawmakers soon discovered that political blackmail worked against Twitter. Leaks to the press would yield unpleasant headlines that made Twitter's Jack Dorsey cringe and so the platform became more pliable to Democratic demands for blocking tweets. Federal influence was later formalized into a security agency system of flagging disfavored tweets and writers.
Hardball tactics against political dissent
Part 12. Jan. 3
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394197730725889
A U.S. agency under President Donald Trump attempted to put the squeeze on Twitter to blackball disfavored writers. But Twitter's top censor dug in his heels and refused, citing the 2020 presidential election. Yet, Twitter had been caving to Democrat-inspired demands to block accounts that were said to be Russian proxies throughout Trump's time in office.
In February 2020, as covid became a major national concern, a U.S. government unit began blacklisting accounts as Russian disinformation tools. These were deemed “Russian personas and proxies” based on criteria like, “Describing the coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,” blaming “research conducted at the Wuhan institute” and “attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.”
Tho the State Department's Global Engagement Center was issuing its judgments while Trump was president, many federal bureaucrats had joined "the resistance" against him. Even so, Trump's top health expert, consummate bureaucrat Anthony Fauci was eager to throw cold water on the Wuhan bioengineering suspicion.
The federal agency also flagged anyone that retweeted a report that Twitter had banned ZeroHedge, which had been supporting the lab leak possibility.
GEC eventually agreed to alert Twitter before publicizing blacklists, but the government employees gave very short notice, which had the effect of a squeezeplay. “The delta between when they share material and when they go to the press continues to be problematic,” said one observer.
Even so, after spending years rolling over for Democratic Party requests for “action” on “Russia-linked” accounts, Twitter was suddenly playing tough. Why? Because, as Roth put it, it would pose “major risks” to bring the GEC in, “especially as the election heats up.”
Pfizer's clout at stifling covid debate
Part 13. Jan. 9
Alex Berenson
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/thread/1612526697038897167
Berenson's full report on Substack
https://twitter.com.alexberenson.substack.com/p/from-the-twitter-files-pfizer-board
In August 2021, a Pfizer director acted swiftly to blackball an accurate tweet by a former Food and Drug Administration chief, a tweet with the potential to hurt sales of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, also a former FDA head, pressed Twitter to shadow-ban the tweet by Dr. Brett Giroir, a physician who had briefly followed Gottlieb as FDA chief for a tweet that explained correctly that natural immunity after covid infection was superior to vaccine protection. It called on the White House to “follow the science” and exempt people with natural immunity from upcoming vaccine mandates.
But by suggesting some people might not need covid vaccinations, the tweet could raise questions about the shots.
Gottlieb was in a position to promote the Pfizer line as a CNBC contributor and as a tweeter with more than 550,000 followers. He was a senior board member at Pfizer, which depended on mRNA jabs for almost half its $81 billion in sales in 2021.
Russiagate lies
Part 14. Jan. 12
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589031773769739?lang=en
Pro-Trump tweeters who used a politically charged hashtag were accused by top Democrats of being Russian agents.
Twitter executives were acutely aware that the claims were based on nebulous data coming from a political outfit called Hamilton 68.
All too eager to denounce Twitter over such claims were top Democrats, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, both of California, and Sen. Rick Blumenthal of New York.
The hashtag at issue reads "@ReleaseTheMemo" and concerned a report by another Californian, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, which said the FBI "may have relied on politically motivated or questionable sources" to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in October 2016 and in three subsequent renewals on Trump adviser Carter Page in the early phases of an FBI probe of reputed Russian meddling in U.S. elections.
The memo was released in 2018 by a GOP-controlled House.
The idea that the hashtag was part of a Kremlin plot was viewed within Twitter with scorn. The platform responded with polite, but vacuous statements about the purported Russian bots and trolls.
15. The 'Russian bot' smear
Part 15. Jan. 27
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105?lang=en
Politicians followed the lead of sectors of the media on the hue and cry about "Russian bots" intruding in U.S. elections via Twitter. The information came from a political group composed of strident critics of Donald Trump.
The Alliance for Political Democracy's advisory council includes Bill Kristol, the neoconservative writer; Michael McFaul, Barack Obama's ambassador to Russia; John Podesta, who headed Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign; and former heads or deputy heads of the CIA, NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security. The alliance promoted a tool -- which it called a “dashboard” -- for reputedly ferreting out Russian bots and trolls on Twitter. Called Hamilton68, the "dashboard" was headed by Clint Watts, a former FBI counterintelligence official, who went on to become a contributor to the leftwing MSNBC television outfit.
Hamilton 68 was the source for stories asserting that Russian bots pushed terms like “deep state” or hashtags like #FireMcMaster, #SchumerShutdown, #WalkAway, #ReleaseTheMemo, #AlabamaSenateRace, and #ParklandShooting, among many others.
Twitter's experts were able to recreate Hamilton’s secret list, reverse-engineering it from the site’s requests for Twitter data. Twitter determined that the accounts targeted for blacklisting were "neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots.” In fact, Twitter executive said there was no evidence to support any claim that Dashboard had its "finger on the pulse of Russian information ops."
The notion of a "massive influence operation" was unproved, Twitter said.
But Twitter feared to confront the ASD publicly, and as a result Americans were left unenlightened about the Russian bot flimflam perpetrated via mass media.
Media fronting for the Deep State
Part 16. Feb 18
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1627098945359867904?lang=en
The press went ballistic over a request by President Trump to ax a critical tweet, but was lethargic about the sensational disclosures of federal meddling in the speech of Americans.
Matt Taibbi, the main Twitter Files writer, pointed out that the Files have revealed "thousands of moderation requests from every corner of government," with "feds mistaking both conservatives and leftists for fictional Russians. Twitter, he said, even put down on paper a decision deciding to cede moderation authority to the “U.S. intelligence community.” But mainstream media had ignored those stories and at least a dozen other newsworthy revelations.
In 2023, a GOP-led Congress has brought to light the fact that American corporate media go silent on behalf of security agencies that meddle in the speech of Americans. The media have mostly ignored or panned the disclosures of security bureaucrat control of speech, in a shadowy attack on the First Amendment guarantee of speech and press free of federal infringement.
The Trump White House had requested Twitter take down a tweet by the model a September 2019 tweet by Chrissy Teigen calling the President a "pussy ass bitch." Far more egregious than Trump was Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent, demanding Twitter blackball some 300 accounts. King's grounds for suspicion included “Rand Paul visit excitement,” “Bot (averages 20 tweets a day),” Being followed by rival Eric Brakey, and “Mentions immigration.”
Atlantic Council's Hindu bot fears
Part 17. March 2
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1631338653707378702
On June 8, 2021, an analyst at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab wrote to Twitter: “Hi guys. Attached you will find… around 40k twitter accounts that our researchers suspect are engaging in inauthentic behavior… and Hindu nationalism more broadly.”
The council is a think tank that lobbies for close ties between the United States and Europe, and is involved in the diplomatic world.
Its forensic lab suspected 40,000 accounts of being “paid employees or possibly volunteers” of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, a major nationalist party that leans right. Apparently the council was worried about nationalism, which was seen as a threat that Twitter should counteract. Donald Trump is seen by many as a nationalist bogeyman and a representative of nationalist trends globally which are seen as threats to world peace. But, Twitter's top censor, Yoel Roth, "spot-checked a number of these accounts" and "virtually all appear to be real people.”
Hindu nationalist ideology would not have violated Twitter guidelines under Jack Dorsey, Twitter's chief at the time.
The federal censorship octopus
Part 18. March 9
Michael Shellenberger
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1633821648464879618?lang=en
There is a large and growing network of government agencies, academic institutions, and nongovernmental organizations that are actively censoring American citizens, often without their knowledge, on a range of issues.
That is the testimony of Twitter Files reporter Michael Shellenberger at a congressional hearing.
Highlights of his testimony: ✓ Government officials have been caught repeatedly pushing social media platforms to censor disfavored users and content.
✓ The U.S. government has funded organizations that pressure advertisers to boycott news media organizations and social media platforms that a) refuse to censor and/or b) spread disinformation, including alleged conspiracy theories.
✓ Holding "inadequately-disclosed ties" to the Pentagon, the CIA and and other intelligence agencies are the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and Graphika, which "leverages the power of artificial intelligence to create the world’s most detailed maps of social media landscapes"
✓ In many instances, censors target social media posts with the goal of discrediting factual information. The "censorship industrial complex "combines established methods of psychological manipulation, some developed by the U.S. military during the Global War on Terror, with highly sophisticated tools from computer science, including artificial intelligence. ✓ Government-funded censors frequently invoke a supposed need to prevent real-world harm to justify their demands but the censors define harm far more expansively than does the Supreme Court. The censors have defined harm so broadly that "vaccine hesitancy" is used as a reason for blocking Facebook posts containing accurate information about covid vaccines.
Big tech, big government, big censorship
Part 19. March 17
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1636729197707100162
Twitter was an accessory of a huge covert program to control the covid debate.
Government officials, academia and corporations rapidly deployed a censorship apparatus that sifted millions of messages about covid, targeting even accurate materials under the newly coined rubric of "mal-information." For example, discussion of health czar Anthony Fauci's recently released emails was seen as a threat to the covid status quo promoted by people such as Fauci.
Mal-information covered factual material that might mislead readers. This standard would require that most of the press and most politicians be muzzled, along with all sorts of advertising professionals. Anyone who emphasizes his or her particular point of view at the expense of other viewpoints could be placed under the "mal-information" interdict.
Soon after Joe Biden took office as president, Stanford University mounted the Virality Project -- which would have been more accurately named the Anti-Virality Project -- as a weapon in its war against what organizers seemed certain was misinformation, disinformation or true, but unwanted, "mal-information."
Tho the Virality Project reviewed content on a mass scale for Twitter, Google/YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, Medium, TikTok, and Pinterest, it knowingly targeted true material and legitimate political opinion, while often being factually wrong itself. The project also gained influence in a number of other platforms.
The project includes the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics and Tandon School of Engineering, Graphika, and the National Conference on Citizenship. The group says its members had previously collaborated on the anti-Trump Election Integrity Partnership which, during the 2020 Election, coordinated the work of 120 analysts who pressured social media platforms to "respond to" some 800 complaints of "election-related disinformation."
Stanford worked with federal agencies and numerous "non-governmental organizations" -- activist lobbies that often have some government funding.
Katie Couric and the censorship complex
Part 20. March 9
Matt Taibbi
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1633830104144183298
Highlights of Matt Taibbi's congressional testimony:
Twitter was like a partner to government. With other tech firms it held a regular “industry meeting” with FBI and Homeland Security officials, and developed a formal system for the handling of thousands of content reports from every corner of government:, especially security agencies.
Even media stars like NBC's Katie Couric fell in with the censorship crowd.
Targeted materials often had a shaky rationale for censorship. For example, a "disinformation" list of 378 “Iranian State Linked Accounts” includes an Iraq war veteran once arrested while in service for blogging about the war, a former reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, which has a leftwing tilt, and the news and opinion aggregator Truthout, a left-tilting site that publishes Noam Chomsky.
The posting on YouTube of anti-Ukraine narratives, which tend to undermine U.S. foreign policy, was another way to get flagged by the feds.
But it was not only feds pushing to clamp down on Twitter speech. Various non-governmental organizations were also highly involved. Taibbi and fellow journalist Michael Shellenberger dubbed the censorship-minded bundle of federal and private organizations the "censorship industrial complex" -- after the military-industrial complex first highlighted by President Dwight Eisenhower.
The complex includes the FBI, Homeland Security, the State Department's Global Engagement Center and "NGO's that aren't academic," along with an "unexpectedly aggressive partner, commercial news media." By "NGO" Taibbi means think tanks, such as the Aspen Institute.
Couric, an NBC News personality, led an Aspen team that found that the federal government should have total access to data to make searching speech easier, that speech offenders should be put in a “holding area" and that government should probably restrict disinformation, “even if it means losing some freedom.” The report was backed by U.S. tax dollars.
The Twitter Files "repeatedly show media acting as proxy for NGOs, with Twitter bracing for bad headlines if they don't nix accounts.
