(LibertySons.org) – Elon Musk took control of Twitter in late October 2022. He posted a tweet shortly after his takeover, declaring that “the bird is freed,” a reference to the platform’s logo and his promise to restore users’ free speech rights. True to his word, he started restoring accounts suspended for murky violations of Twitter’s rules. He also started releasing several batches of “the Twitter Files,” correspondence between site moderators and US officials working together to throttle certain voices. The latest round of disclosures details the efforts of a sitting US senator to target specific people for blacklisting.
TWITTER FILES #16
Comic Interlude: A Media Experiment pic.twitter.com/Knp0UjfaMp— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
On February 18, Musk released the sixteenth round of Twitter files to award-winning author and podcaster Matt Taibbi. The files detailed a disturbing exchange of communications involving several government officials and Twitter workers, including Senator Angus King (D-ME). For instance, he reported several accounts for “suspicious” reasons like
- Expressing excitement over a visit by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)
- Following fellow Senator Eric Blakey (R-ME)
- Mentioning “immigration”
King also reported accounts for being bots, based on his assessment that they averaged posting “20 tweets a day.”
Taibbi reached out to King’s office for a comment but reported they declined to answer.
Taibbi also detailed efforts by Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) to ban a reporter and former Republican State Department official Mark Lenzi’s attempt to have 14 Twitter accounts suspended for expressing skepticism regarding Russiagate, the mainstream media’s term for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s witch hunt.
Continuing, Taibbi explained that “the real story emerging [from] the Twitter files” involves the ballooning creation of a “federal censorship bureaucracy” aimed at throttling both conservative and liberal users “systematically defined as threats” by individuals like Senator King and Representative Schiff.
Taibbi concluded his thread by advising that starting in March, the Twitter Files would start revealing the “larger story” of Americans turning the nation’s “counterterrorism machinery against themselves” in a similar fashion on Twitter using little-known federal agencies.
~Here’s to Our Liberty!
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