Twitter Files: FBI flagged content on social media giant – Saudi Gazette

Twitter Files: FBI flagged content on social media giant – Saudi Gazette

HOUSTON — Before Twitter was bought by billionaire Elon Musk in October, the FBI used to send it messages flagging tweets for suggested moderation, according to an ongoing release of internal documents by Musk.

Among contacts with the FBI’s social media task force FTIF, staffed with some 80 agents, some were mundane, 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,” said Matt Taibbi, a journalist who has been working with Musk to release the internal documents, which have been dubbed the Twitter Files.

“The Twitter Files show something new: agencies like the FBI and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation,” Taibbi said on Twitter late Friday.

“Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” he said.

Taibbi showed a number of email exchanges between FBI officials and Twitter, mostly the FBI flagging tweets or accounts for "possible violative content," but said many of the accounts or tweets were actually satire or simple jokes.

“Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents – lots of