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The latest internal communications released by new Twitter owner Elon Musk show the FBI had regular contact with the social media giant, proposing bans on users, including actor Billy Baldwin and satirical accounts.
« Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary, » wrote journalist Matt Taibbi in a thread Friday afternoon.
He said that between January 2020 and November 2022, there were more than 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
« But 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, » he said.
On Nov. 6 – two days before the midterm elections – FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan forwarded to Twitter staff a long list of accounts that, according to the bureau, were « disseminating false information about the time, place or manner of the upcoming elections. »
Baldwin and a number of satirical accounts were on the list, but they were not suspended after a review.
Internal Twitter communications previously released by Musk – dubbed the « Twitter Files » – show Joe Biden’s president campaign had a direct line to the social media giant to censor the Hunter laptop story.
