One human rights campaigner said the military’s failure to provide a timely response to Democratic lawmakers’ questions “does not bode well for the U.S. government’s expressed commitment to transparency and accountability.”
Twitter has reportedly collaborated with the Pentagon for at least five years to wage a secret “PsyOps campaign” across West Asia, in a scheme to sway public opinion in favor of Washington’s military interests in the region.
So when the Intercept’s Lee Fang kicked off the 8th installment of the Twitter files, I was not expecting much at all. After all, Fang was one of the authors of the very recent garbage Intercept story that totally misunderstood the role of CISA in the government and (falsely) argued that the government demanded Twitter censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. The fact that the evidence from the Twitter files totally disproved his earlier story should at least result in Fang questioning his understanding of these things.
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LibsOfTikTok was ‘whitelisted’.
Thus, it’s not at all surprising that Twitter clearly has a similar whitelist feature. This was actually somewhat revealed in an earlier Twitter File when Bari Weiss, thinking she was revealing unfair treatment of the @LibsOfTikTok account, actually revealed it was on a similar Xcheck style whitelist that clearly showed a flag on the account saying DO NOT TAKE ACTION ON USER WITHOUT CONSULTING an executive team.
Twitter’s most recent transparency report, published in July, shows that it took action on 4.3 million accounts in the second half of 2021 and removed 5.1 million pieces of content. You could cherry-pick a few of those decisions to fit almost any ideological narrative. Right-wing commentators aren’t the only people complaining about platforms’ actions. Some Black and LGBTQ social-media users have also objected that they’re being unfairly moderated, as automated tools take down posts containing words and phrases deemed offensive. Distrust of Big Tech’s power is universal.
Well. Just after finishing that last post about Twitter banning the official Mastodon account on Twitter for tweeting about the ElonJet tracking account existing on Mastodon, it seems that whatever brakes or controls were in place at the new “free speech absolutist” Twitter have really come off. In quick succession, a whole bunch of high profile reporter accounts were suspended, including Aaron Rupar (who famously covers and quotes videos of high profile politicians), Drew Harwell from the Washington Post, Ryan Mac from the NY Times, Donie Sullivan from CNN, and Matt Binder from Mashable.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Tuesday night withdrew his request to vote on the Yemen War Powers Resolution that would end US support for the Saudi-led war and blockade on Yemen, citing White House opposition to the bill.
A Washington DC-area Anomaly 6 firm is marketing illegal spy tech that can scrape an individual’s most sensitive personal data by tracking their smartphone. The British Ministry of Defence and GCHQ are potential buyers.
Biden’s election proved the usefulness of such a tool. The campaign against Musk’s Twitter will thereby likely intensify. So will his effort to fight back.
More popcorn please.
MoA links to an article by Matt Taibbi re: Hunter’s laptop. Matt points the NYT story, Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch, which claims that Mykola Zlochevsky was the owner of Burisma Holdings. Zlochevsky did not own Burisma, at the time, Ihor Kolomoisky did! In 2012, Burisma changed owners to Privat Group, which was owned by Kolomoisky. On another note, the following video is interesting (despite Elon’s Starlink connection cutting out often). He claims that Twitter will be dedicated to the truth. Let’s see if he continues censoring people (re: Scott Ritter, Garland Nixon, etc). Like MoA asks, please pass the popcorn!
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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