reSee.it - Tweets Saved By @FFO_Freedom

FFO_Freedom
Posted - December 5, 2022 at 9:15 PM
Saved - July 19, 2023 at 4:30 PM
reSee.it AI Summary
The extensive censorship operation on Twitter during elections involves coordination among the government, tech platforms, academia, and NGOs. Initially aimed at countering foreign disinformation, it shifted to a domestic focus after Russiagate. Key figures like Kate Starbird and Vijaya Gadde played significant roles in censoring stories like the Hunter Biden Laptop scandal. The censorship framework explicitly aimed to hinder populist mobilization and mainstream coverage. Additionally, the Twitter Files revealed the involvement of former FBI General Counsel James Baker, who also led the National Task Force on Election Crises. The Transition Integrity Project, linked to NTFEC, planned to provoke a constitutional crisis if Biden lost the election. They even considered using Black Lives Matter protesters to force Trump out of office. TIP sought to reduce Trump's media access and end the tradition of legal immunity for past Presidents. NFTEC, where Baker was involved, pressured news media to cover election crisis events favoring the Biden campaign.

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TWITTER FILES 1.0 THREAD: A comprehensive breakdown of the first release 👇 Twitter's election censorship operation is far more extensive than yet reported. Here's how it works:

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2. The first thing to understand is that the Censorship Industry has been constructed using a "Whole-Of-Society" model. That means censorship is coordinated through the government, the private sector (tech platforms), and civil society (academia, NGOs) working together:

Video Transcript AI Summary
Addressing disinformation requires a whole of society approach. It's not something that can be fixed by governments alone. This is a challenge recognized by some countries in Europe and North America. To combat disinformation, governments, multilateral institutions, social media platforms, and political leaders need to work together. Democracy relies on a healthy information space achieved through a collective effort. Countering disinformation requires a whole of society response, involving the private sector, public sector, and civil society. Cooperation from tech platforms and enforcement of terms of service are crucial, but government involvement is also necessary. The solution lies in a comprehensive approach that acknowledges the problem and involves all stakeholders.
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Speaker 0: From a systems standpoint, and we hear this term all the time, a problem like disinformation, fighting disinformation really requires a whole of society response. And I know whole of society is a little bit cliche and a term that gets thrown around a lot. Speaker 1: Addressing disinformation requires a whole of society approach. This information is not going to be fixed, by governments acting alone. I think, we've seen that a whole society effort, is really key to the solution. Speaker 2: There are some countries, more so in Europe or up in, in, in, in other parts of North America that are more progressive in recognizing that this is a whole of society challenge. Speaker 1: Whole of society approach and what would be your wish list if you if you could if you could implement anything. Or to be able to trust When somebody tells them it's fake. Is there anything that governments can do on that front? Absolutely. This is a whole of society problem. So There's things that governments can do, you know, individual, national governments, and and multilateral institutions. Speaker 3: Disinformation challenges to democracy require that we work together as a community to share our experiences and to hold governments, social media platforms, and political leaders accountable for making sure that people are empowered with information that is real and accurate. Democracy depends on a healthy information space that can only be achieved through a whole of society effort. Speaker 1: Countering disinformation. We often talk about a whole of society response. Of course we need disinformation. Speaker 3: A whole of society approach. I wanna get into the whole of society response, the whole of society networked response, private sector, public sector, civil society. Speaker 1: The means that we're circulating, And that, to me, is the whole of society approach. I think the solution has to be whole of society, which is the word that we throw around a lot, Especially in venues like these, right? We need cooperation from the tech platforms, good faith cooperation and enforcement of terms of service. But we also need people in the government who are willing to say, yes. This is a problem, and it's not just about foreign

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3. The "Whole-Of-Society" censorship model was cobbled together after the 2016 election under pretext of fighting "foreign disinformation" on Twitter and Facebook. But after Russiagate fell apart in summer 2019, the entire infrastructure was shifted to a "domestic" focus:

Video Transcript AI Summary
The Russians have weaponized social media by manipulating public opinion through biased or fake stories. However, domestic disinformation is also a significant issue. In 2016, the Russian efforts may not have been very sophisticated, but they learned that they don't need to create the content themselves as there are people in the US who will do it. There were two types of disinformation attacks in 2016: the Internet Research Agency created personas to take over existing US groups and push radical positions. However, the majority of these problems are domestic, related to how we interact online, political speech, amplification, and how politicians use platforms. The domestic threat of disinformation is the most significant immediate threat to the 2020 election.
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Speaker 0: What the Russians have done is weaponized, social media. The issue is not just the Russians, but frankly, domestic disinformation. Speaker 1: How do you think that they've weaponized social media? Speaker 0: Literally using it to manipulate public opinion, to put stories out that are biased or phony in order to drive public opinion a certain way. Probably more domestic generation of disinformation content is occurring in foreign. Frank, I think in in 2016, it wasn't that clear that the Russian efforts in terms of the actual persuasiveness of the content was all that sophisticated. I think what the Russians may well have learned is they don't have to make the content up. We have people in the US who will do it. Speaker 2: There's really 2 totally different disinformation attacks in 2016. The Internet Research Agency created these personas to, Take over existing groups in the United States. And then once they had established that, they would then try to push the most radical possible position. I think we talk way too much about foreign influence. I'm gonna be honest. I think we talk way too much about it because it's sexy and it's fun and it's it's a little bit cold worry. But the truth is that the vast majority of these problems, okay, the problems are information environment are domestic problems. They're problems in how, We interact with each other of the norms that have been created about online political speech, about amplification issues, about how now politicians are utilizing platforms. And so I think, we we have like an 80 20 breakdown of 80%. We talk about foreign and 20 domestic. I think that needs to be Speaker 3: The Kremlin's influence operations has a particular resonance for me because in June of 2016, I broke the story of the Russian hack of Speaker 4: the Democratic National Committee. Even though I'm sort of a national street reporter and a little more focused on the foreign side, I think the most significant immediate threat to the 2020 election is the domestic threat, domestic disinformation, domestic influence, whatever you want to call it. Speaker 1: We are lost. It's just because of this little pity pinprick that was put in by a foreign country. It's overwhelmingly more domestic And foreign, this time around in 2020, they must wonder what they could possibly say that would change anyone's mind that's not already being said in the American landscape.

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4. Kate Starbird, head of the UW disinfo lab and major censorship coordinator with both Twitter and the US government, lays out how her hivemind saw the operation here: Note she explicitly targets "everyday people" and concedes that there wasn't the political will at first:

Video Transcript AI Summary
In this video, the speaker discusses the evolution of disinformation in the context of the 2016 and 2020 elections. In 2016, the focus was on foreign disinformation, primarily from Russia, spread through fake accounts and coordinated efforts. However, in the 2020 US election, the disinformation was mostly domestic, originating from authentic accounts, including verified pundits and everyday people. While there were some foreign activities, they played a minor role. The disinformation campaign was not entirely coordinated but rather cultivated and organic, with blue check accounts being major spreaders. This shift highlights the changing nature of disinformation and the need to address it from a different perspective.
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Speaker 0: I wanna talk a little bit about, a tale of 2 elections. I wanna set up 2020, but first I wanna go back a little bit in time to 2016 in the United States, because I think it kind of reveals a little bit in the evolution of the story of this information, and how we as a research community are thinking about disinformation. And so 2016, we had Brexit, there were some other things going on. And when we think in the U. S. About the U. S. Election in 2016, when we think about the story of disinformation in that election, we think of it predominantly as one of of disinformation that was foreign in origin, perpetrated by inauthentic actors, networks of fake accounts, and coordinated by various agencies in Russia. The social media port part of that disinformation campaign was foreign, inauthentic, and coordinated. You know, bots and trolls. It was a really easy focus for us, that allowed us to kind of, isolate this external problem that we have to come together to solve. And I think it was very, simplistic and strategic and politically easier to discuss in those terms. Now fast forward to 2020, we saw a very different story around disinformation in the US election. It was largely domestic coming from inside the United States. There were foreign activities that are part of these conversations, but they weren't playing a major role. Most of the accounts perpetrating this in this not even the accounts, most of the entities perpetrating this disinformation campaign as as we and and Banco and colleagues saw it, where, they are authentic accounts. They were often blue check and verified accounts. They're pundits on cable television shows that were who they said they were along with, you know, some other anonymous members of the connected crowd online. But a lot of the major spreaders were blue check accounts And it wasn't entirely coordinated. But instead, it was largely sort of cultivated and even organic in places with everyday people creating and spreading Disinformation about the election.

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5. The Twitter Files 1.0 release from @mtaibbi show Vijaya Gadde coordinated the censorship of the Hunter Biden Laptop story before the 2020 election. In 2021, after the election, Gadde was tapped by Biden's DHS to run its censorship advisory committee, alongside Kate Starbird:

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6. This is important: the formal framework Starbird and Gadde worked under to censor the 2020 election explicitly set out censorship as a way to stop populists from mobilizing "protests," "legal action" and "mainstream coverage": Source: https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:tr171zs0069/EIP-Final-Report.pdf#page=169

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7. The Twitter Files 1.0 release focus was on the FBI, and specifically former FBI General Counsel James Baker, who was then hired by Twitter as its Deputy General Counsel. @JonathanTurley had an excellent write-up here of Baker's backstory here: https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/04/six-degrees-from-james-baker-a-familiar-figure-reemerges-with-the-release-of-the-twitter-files/

Six Degrees from James Baker: A Familiar Figure Reemerges With the Release of the Twitter Files Below is my column in the New York Post on the reemergence of James Baker, the former FBI general counsel, at the center of the Twitter suppression scandal. Here is the column: As thousands of Twitter documents are released on the company’s infamous censorship program, much has been confirmed about the use of back channels… jonathanturley.org

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8. What is lesser known about Jim Baker, and which mainstream news is not currently appreciating, is that in the run-up to the 2020 election, Baker was also leading the National Task Force on Election Crises (NTFEC).

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9. NTFEC was a sort of 'sister organization' to a notoriously shady outfit also created at the same time called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP). TIP spent summer 2020 wargaming how to overturn election results if candidate Trump won the election: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7013152-Preventing-a-Disrupted-Presidential-Election-and

Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition 8 3 20 documentcloud.org

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10. Incredibly, TIP, which shared the same explicit aims and many overlapping members with NTFEC, premeditated a scenario in summer 2020 in which the Biden team would provoke a constitutional crisis on January 6 if Biden lost the election:

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11. Even more incredibly, Jim Baker's sister network at TIP explicitly plotted to use Black Lives Matters protesters as a battering ram for the Biden faction to force Trump out of office, had Trump won the electoral college on Election Night 2020:

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12. Just so no one misses the fine print, TIP sought to mobilize "racial justice activists" for "a Biden call to take to the streets," probing "the Biden campaign's ability to control these actors" if street muscle was needed to destabilize a Trump election win:

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13. TIP, using the same "securing elections" pretext as Jim Baker's NFTEC, similarly threw off their nonpartisan cloak with inserts about how to stop "Trumpism" after the election. They specifically plotted how to reduce Trump's access to media to stop him from running again:

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14. Even in August 2020 (when TIP published their election crisis blueprint), they were plotting "investigations and possible charges" against Trump and ending the "the tradition of offering legal immunity" to past Presidents. This was 3 months *before* the 2020 election:

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15. What was Jim Baker, star of Twitter Files 1.0, doing over at NFTEC while TIP was cooking up an election crisis blueprint? NFTEC was pressuring news media and journalists on *how to cover* election crisis events in the Biden campaign's favor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2JmWUP1qOE

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