Incuriosity of Librarians and Media in Non-Traditional Content and Sources: The Twitter Files as a Case Study

James E. Andrews, PhD
William W. and Judith A. Gaunt Professor of Library and Information Science

Kathleen de la Peña McCook, PhD
Distinguished University Professor

School of Information, College of Arts & Sciences
University of South Florida
Tampa, FL

Abstract

Not long after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, journalists, librarians, and academic scholars displayed a notable lack of curiosity toward significant investigative works on digital censorship, such as the "Twitter Files." These reports, which claimed to expose potential collusion between government officials and big tech companies, were largely overlooked by traditional media and information professionals, raising ethical concerns about censorship through selective omission. This paper examines how such incuriosity has limited public access to critical information and driven content creators to independent platforms like Substack. These platforms have become a sort of modern equivalent of samizdat. In addition, we argue there has been a failure of academic and library systems to integrate these non-traditional sources into the public record via indexed and accessible collections, which weakens intellectual freedom and the discoverability of diverse perspectives. A renewed commitment by journalists and librarians is needed wherein they engage with alternative media and content to uphold their roles as impartial gatekeepers of information that can foster a more inclusive discourse.

Introduction

“Stewardship in the Age of Algorithms,” a provocative article by Clifford Lynch, considers the dichotomy between content and context highlighting the U.S. elections of 2016. (Lynch, 2017). After the 2016 presidential election in the United States political considerations overcame information ethics and preferences of news sources became more divided along political lines (Pew 2017). An unintended halo effect eventually manifested as incuriosity and failure to report or analyze sources outside of traditional media. This became evident regarding coverage of digital censorship, a topic that emerged concomitant with the widespread use of social media generally as well as in political campaigns. When investigations into the potential collusion between the government and big tech was revealed in “the Twitter Files”, virtually no mention of these existed in the traditional media. By ignoring these reports, traditional media precluded sharing of this information via the public record, and information professionals similarly did not provide access to the information provided given it was not in mainstream publications. Limiting access to critical information potentially amplifies misinformation, or at least one perspective over another, thus raising ethical concerns stemming from censorship by omission (Usher 2020).

This paper explores the implications of selective omission in the public sphere focusing on the “Twitter Files,” as a case study. The incuriosity of traditional media to engage with non-traditional content reveal a change in the information environment with a rise in independent journalism on new media platforms such as Substack. However, new media are not only often overlooked, but therefore not curated in accessible databases for use by the public or in maintaining an historic record.

“Twitter Files” as Case Study

Twitter was officially launched in 2006 with a coming- out party at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and music festival in March 2007. Twitter was initially developed as a service for narrowcasting personal updates to friends, primarily via mobile phones (Burgess, 2020) yet quickly grew into a massively popular tool for news dissemination, public discourse, and social movements. In October 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter (renamed “X”) with a stated goal of promoting free speech, responding to concerns about the platform’s alleged suppression of high profile voices, from Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya to President Trump (Conger & Hirsch, 2022; Grynbaum, 2022). In addition, the previous practice by Twitter of labeling certain posts as dis- mal-and misinformation, often regardless of their veracity, further fueled perceptions of bias and censorship, particularly during the pandemic when dissenting views on vaccines and lockdowns were silenced and characterized as “information disorders.” (Maret, 2025).

To address these concerns and claims, Musk provided investigative journalist, Matt Taibbi, with internal Twitter documents that became known as the “Twitter Files.” Beginning December 2, 2022, Taibbi and other journalists (Alex Berenson, Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, and David Zweig) published reports on Twitter’s content moderation and related decision-making practices. These revealed high-profile events such as the 2020 presidential election, blocking the 2020 New York Post expose on the Hunter Biden laptop, decisions to suspend certain accounts, and interactions among Twitter employees and government officials (Taibbi, January 4, 2023). Despite the apparent significance of the “Twitter Files” findings, these were largely dismissed by traditional media with rare exceptions like Marcetic (2022), who noted in Jacobin, “On the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important, and the details are alarming.” (Marcetic 2022). The publication of these reports was done on the Twitter (“X”) platform itself, making the reports difficult to cite and integrate into the public record.

The dismissal of these investigative reports exemplify what Lester Asheim (1953) characterized as “Not Censorship But Selection.” This notion is not new to either journalism or processes in librarianship, where certain stories are given priority over others, and information objects are not selected based on any number of factors including biases. However, the intensity and consistency across media outlets in the case of the “Twitter Files” is hard to ignore. Because scholars, journalists, and librarians seemed to purposely eschew recognition of these investigations and reporting of “the Twitter Files” when they were revealed, there was almost no attention paid to this watershed series. The result (again, seemingly intentional in many cases) has been scant scholarly or journalistic records of this information source, thereby threatening accessibility and use via traditional means by future readers or researchers.

Taibbi eventually consolidated the reports on Substack’s Racket News (Taibbi 2023). However, mainstream outlets only acknowledged the importance of these several years later, prompted by congressional hearings on information weaponization (Lynch, 2024; Strassel, 2024; U.S. Congress 2024). A four-part series at the Columbia Journalism Review by Jeff Gerth (2023) gives some insight into media coverage during this time, and he noted that journalists he reached out to for interviews were reluctant to discuss their reporting. Gerth highlighted specific instances where journalistic standards were compromised or where retractions were necessary (2023). The series by Gerth was noted for its depth and the background of its author, making it a significant contribution to the discourse on journalism ethics and the relationship between the press and political figures during a highly polarized era. However, the reception underscored the ongoing debate about media bias, accountability, and the complex nature of covering political scandals. (Gerth, 2023).

Substack as Modern Samizdat

New media platforms such as Substack have emerged in part in response to the kind of lack of curiosity (or lack of “bandwidth) by traditional media. Substack is one example of new opportunities for content creators that aren’t congruent with other communications and media frameworks. In fact, some argue it is an example of the re-engineering of journalism (Bell and Owen, 2017). The Substack platform was founded in 2017 and is a subscription network for independent writers and creators with over 20 million monthly active subscribers and 2 million paying subscribers (Banklinko, 2024). The structure of the Substack platform allows both free and paid subscriptions (Hobbs, 2021). Readers participate in discussions with Substack writers through (usually) unmoderated comments which add value, support information sharing, and can allow users to question the writer on larger issues.

One case study examined how writers at the Substack platform relate to the broader media environment. (Zilberstein 2022). The authors assessed 2,686 Substack writers and highlighted how an expanded media environment that includes an array of journalistic opportunities presents both new potentials and pitfalls for empowering journalists and supporting their careers. The rise of such participatory platforms has been evaluated by Hurcombe (2024). The extent to which the “authentic” and relational characteristics of what Hurcombe characterizes as news influencers can help make journalism more accessible to young audiences, most of whom have departed from traditional outlets for more dynamic and varied digital content tailored to their own needs and information behaviors.

Such new media platforms can be thought of as modern-day Samizdat (self-publishing). Samizdat refers to the uncensored, grassroots system of self-publishing found in the Soviet Union after Josif Stalin and up until the period of perestroika. Samizdat was one of the most interesting phenomena in information creation and dissemination of the late Soviet period. The plurality of groups with distinctive voices (expressing varied styles and concerns) that emerged in samizdat by the 1970s widened and diversified the social room available to those in the late Soviet underground. (Komaromi, 2022).

Beyond being outside the traditional media environments, platforms such as Substack can be seen as 21st century samizdat given that libraries and indexing services have not incorporated contents of its writers into the broader information infrastructure. As a result, essays published on the Substack platform are seldom cited and, despite massive popularity and use, have yet to be indexed in common bibliographic databases. This is likely due to the nature of much of the Substack platform as facilitating counter public-like spaces by enabling individuals and communities to challenge dominant narratives and build alternative audiences.

Zilberstein (2022) further observed, “Substack writers most often link their work to existing dominant outlets creating webs of media production that include both institutional and independent forms of news centered on select core publications, themes, and figures. Furthermore, within that web, digital platforms themselves become central players as their tools, algorithms, and support shape the types of content produced and made visible.”

At the time of this writing, there appears to be some consideration and recognition through traditional academic sources regarding the impact of writers’ content on Substack. The open science movement is one example of the academic publishing system that is generally viewed as costly and restrictive; however, there are indications that the Substack platform provides an alternative (Brar and Hunt, 2024). For instance, First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life reports that the Substack platform newsletter, Archedelia, provides essays and related content on economics materials for success (Milovanska-Farrington, S. 2025).

Moreover, The Chronicle of Higher Education linked to The Free Press, which is published on the Substack platform, in an editorial about free speech at Columbia University in March 2025. (Gutkin, 2025). By 2025 so many writers across the political spectrum had launched newsletters at the Substack platform that Newsweek covered it enthusiastically noting, “Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, former New York Times opinion editor, Bari Weiss and Vox co-founder, Matthew Yglesias are all on Substack. So is FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver, Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer, veteran journalist Dan Rather. (Fung, 2025).

A central issue and theme of this paper is that very little of this torrent of information on digital platforms is visible to academic researchers, librarians, and those to whom they provide information. Without recognizing that independent voices on non-traditional digital media platforms can be serious contributors to the information and media landscape, there will remain a major blind spot for consumers that restricts intellectual freedom and diversity of discourse.

Librarians’ Historic Commitment to Alternative Media

Librarians have historically embraced alternative media, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s underground press era. Over fifty years ago during the period discussed in Smoking Typewriters : The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (McMillian, 2011) librarians were indeed aware of the need to collect alternative literature and underground publications. Ridgeway’s (1971) article in American Libraries, “The New Journalism,” examined the range of the alternative press and underground magazines as a collection challenge to librarians, and noted the provenance and variations in media as well as authoritativeness as among common issues (Ridgeway, 1971). Danky (1982) argued that alternative publications were essential for capturing diverse social and political debates (Dilevko, 2008). He viewed collecting alternative materials as the responsibility of all librarians if they wanted to give full meaning to concepts such as equality, diversity, and substantive neutrality. Collecting alternative materials—those on the margins of accepted contemporary discourse—was seen as a necessary aspect of librarianship’s commitment to substantive neutrality (Dilevko, 2008). Libraries at institutions like the Wisconsin Historical Society, University of Missouri (Underground Newspaper Collection), and the University of Michigan’s Joseph A. Labadie Collection are among the robust collections of underground literature, and also manifest a commitment to substantive neutrality (Herrada 2007; Charnigo 2012).

Unfortunately, many of today’s librarians seem to overlook popular platforms such as Substack. Perhaps this is due to their non-traditional format, wide range of perspectives published, or perceived misalignment with dominant cultural narratives. Indeed, choices are made by librarians each day based on some measure of quality, accessibility, usefulness, fit with the rest of the collection, etc., and non-traditional artifacts are often not within the range of sources under consideration. Thus, the case of alternative media and information might not be active censorship per se, but more a form of active lack of selection. However, such selective omission is orthogonal with past actions of information professionals, such as when librarians vigorously resisted the Children’s Internet Protections Act (CIPA) due to digital censorship concerns (Jaeger &Zheng 2009).

Unfortunately, whatever the motivations for developing alternative media collections in past decades has been absent in today’s information and media landscape. This means the growing number of journalists investigating current events and publishing on platforms like Substack are largely overlooked by libraries, potentially suggesting a departure from librarianship’s anti-censorship ethos and limiting public access to critical perspectives.

The Impact on Discoverability

The failure to integrate new media platforms like Substack into academic and library systems has implications for discoverability, a cornerstone of information access (Woolcott, 2023). Content from these outlets and sources often intertwine with broader trends in media, technology, and broader cultural discourse, so lack of attention to their organization and curation by librarians has potentially impeded access to current events. That is, non-indexed content is far more difficult to cite, which reduces its scholarly impact. For librarians, such lack of discoverability of information on digital platforms is a challenge that ought to be considered as an aspect of information ethics.

Investigative journalism—like Taibbi’s “Twitter Files”—stands out as a recent, egregious example of this as his articles were not covered by any academic outlet or even allowed to be cited in Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s heritage can be traced to the 20th century's encyclopedism (McCook, 2024) and was intended to be a vast warehouse of open knowledge improved upon by experts and laypeople who could actively improve, add to, and refine content. Currently, Wikipedia is the most used source for answers to questions or background on topics worldwide, and open access citations on Wikipedia have influenced the diffusion of science. (Teplitskiy, 2017). Wikipedia’s influence, amplified by its use in Google search results and various AI models, underscores the consequences to discoverability in excluding certain content (Teplitskiy, 2017; Spennemann, 2025; Gamero-Garrido, 2023).

Powerful traditional bibliographic tools of the library community have been leveraged in the new digital information landscape, as well. Specifically, the WorldCat database has now integrated its citation tool through the OCLC Linked Data initiative so that Wikipedia editors can type in an ISBN and get back a Wikipedia-ready book citation (OCLC, 2024). One result of this is that journals cited in Wikipedia articles reach the largest general audiences, as we are learning as the citation impact of Wikipedia references is the focus of current bibliometric research where findings show it is impactful on scholarship that is cited. A 2022 study made the same observation: “Thwarted by paywalls, not understanding the need to contextualize sources, and permeated by an ideology that sees the online world as containing all that is of value means that there is little or no incentive for users to explore original sources.” (Luyt, 2022). Thus, information found on Wikipedia has greater impact due to its wide accessibility and use, and its increasing influence in newer and more advanced information retrieval systems. One critical issue, however, is that Wikipedia’s coverage of issues has its own constraint. This is the restriction of citations to what Wikipedia allows as citations to “Reliable Sources.” (Wikipedia, “Reliable Sources”). Because Substack is a digital platform the writers are often not cited. In other words, potentially high impact information presented by independent journalists in alternative media is regularly overlooked.

Can Librarians Change Course?

Librarians’ historical advocacy for free speech and intellectual freedom, seen in their response to CIPA and earlier underground press collections, contrasts with their current apathy or silence on digital platform discoverability (Pinnell-Stephens, 2002; Jaeger, 2009).

Sadly, there has been almost no research or discussion in the peer reviewed academic literature of librarianship on how to address the challenges of working with new media and information. Still, there are indications that thoughtful discourse and action will be needed. For instance, writing at Axios Fischer noted "Substack is on track to more than double its politics and news subscribers in 2024.” The number of Substack journalists in news and politics making more than $1 million has doubled over the past year — and is now in "double digits."( Fischer, 2024). This growth in one platform will surely inspire more independent scholarship platforms and concomitant access and use by more people albeit outside of traditional systems and frameworks.

A 2025 study, “Neo censorship in U.S. libraries” focuses on digital censorship which obscures data without leaving a literal gap on the bookshelf (Library Futures, 2025). While the study addresses legislative pressure for schools and libraries to censor digital library resources, it is also pertinent to the samizdat literature of digital platforms like Substack. More such studies are needed and will help increase awareness and inspire novel approaches; rather than standing by and censoring through inaction or purposeful incuriosity, librarians might be leaders in this next challenge. A “better influencing” model suggested by Craig Gibson encourages more informed public discourse, of which viewpoint diversity is an essential element. In this way, Substack lives up to the values and precepts of free speech that are foundational to democratic discourse.(Gibson, 2025).

A good place to start would be investigative work such as the “Twitter Files,” done by seasoned and highly experienced researchers and that has consequences in our current culture, but which has been silenced and censored due to policies and processes in dominant systems. We believe that the findings published in the “Twitter Files” are highly consequential in understanding 21st century censorship. They are a landmark in understanding digital censorship by omission.

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Appendix- January 4, 2023

Published Open Access at Racket News

Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads to Date, With Links and a Glossary

By Matt Taibbi

Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads to Date, With Links and a Glossary

For those who haven't been following, a compilation of one-paragraph summaries of all the Twitter Files threads by every reporter. With links and notes on key revelations.

In order, the Twitter Files threads:

1. Twitter Files Part 1. December 2, 2022, by @mtaibbi.

TWITTER AND THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY

Recounting the internal drama at Twitter surrounding the decision to block access to a New York Post exposé on Hunter Biden in October, 2020.

Key revelations: Twitter blocked the story on the basis of its “hacked materials” policy, but executives internally knew the decision was problematic. “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” is how comms official Brandon Borrman put it. Also: when a Twitter contractor polls members of Congress about the decision, they hear Democratic members want more moderation, not less, and “the First Amendment isn’t absolute.”

1a. Twitter Files Supplemental. December 6, 2022, by @mtaibbi.

THE “EXITING” OF TWITTER DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL JIM BAKER

Bari Weiss discovers former FBI General Counsel and Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker was reviewing the first batches of Twitter Files documents, whose delivery to reporters had slowed.

2. Twitter Files Part 2, December 8, 2022 by @BariWeisse., TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS

Bari Weiss gives a long-awaited answer to the question, “Was Twitter shadow-banning people?” It did, only the company calls it “visibility filtering.” Twitter also had a separate, higher council called SIP-PES that decided cases for high-visibility, controversial accounts.

Key revelations: Twitter had a huge toolbox for controlling the visibility of any user, including a “Search Blacklist” (for Dan Bongino), a “Trends Blacklist” for Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and a “Do Not Amplify” setting for conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Weiss quotes a Twitter employee: “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool.”

3. Twitter Files, Part 3, December 9, 2022, by @mtaibbi.

THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP, October 2020 - January 6th, 2021

First in a three-part series looking at how Twitter came to the decision to suspend Donald Trump. The idea behind the series is to show how all of Twitter’s “visibility filtering” tools were on display and deployed after January 6th, 2021. Key Revelations: Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth not only met regularly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Also, Twitter was aggressively applying “visibility filtering” tools to Trump well before the election.

4. Twitter Files Part 4, December 10, 2022, by @ShellenbergerMD.

THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP, January 7th, 2021

This thread by Michael Shellenberger looks at the key day after the J6 riots and before Trump would ultimately be banned from Twitter on January 8th, showing how Twitter internally reconfigured its rules to make a Trump ban fit their policies.

Key revelations: at least one Twitter employee worried about a “slippery slope” in which “an online platform CEO with a global presence… can gatekeep speech for the entire world,” only to be shot down. Also, chief censor Roth argues for a ban on congressman Matt Gaetz even though it “doesn’t quite fit anywhere (duh),” and Twitter changed its “public interest policy” to clear a path for Trump’s removal.

5. Twitter Files Part 5, December 11, 2022, by @BariWeiss.

THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP, January 8th, 2021

As angry as many inside Twitter were with Donald Trump after the January 6th Capitol riots, staffers struggled to suspend his account, saying things like, “I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement.” As documented by Weiss, they found a way to pull the trigger anyway.

Key revelations: there were dissenters in the company (“Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation”), but are overruled by senior executives like Vijaya Gadde and Roth, who noted many on Twitter’s staff were citing the “Banality of Evil,” and comparing those who favored sticking to a strict legalistic interpretation of Twitter’s rules — i.e. keep Trump, who had “no violation” — to “Nazis following orders.”

6. Twitter Files Part 6, December 16, 2022, by @mtaibbi.

TWITTER, THE FBI SUBSIDIARY

Twitter’s contact with the FBI was “constant and pervasive,” as FBI personnel, mainly in the San Francisco field office, regularly sent lists of “reports” to Twitter, often about Americans with low follower counts making joke tweets. Tweeters on both the left and the right were affected.

Key revelations: A senior Twitter executive reports, “FBI was adamant no impediments to sharing” classified information exist. Twitter also agreed to “bounce” content on the recommendations of a wide array of governmental and quasi-governmental actors, from the FBI to the Homeland Security agency CISA to Stanford’s Election Integrity Project to state governments. The company one day received so many moderation requests from the FBI, an executive congratulated staffers at the end for completing the “monumental undertaking.”

7. Twitter Files Part 7, December 19, 2022, by @ShellenbergerMD.

THE FBI AND HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP

The Twitter Files story increases its focus on the company’s relationship to federal law enforcement and intelligence and shows intense communication between the FBI and Twitter just before the release of the Post’s Hunter Biden story.

Key Revelations: San Francisco agent Elvis Chan “sends 10 documents to Twitter’s then-Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter,” the evening before the release of the Post story. Also, Baker in an email explains Twitter was compensated for “processing requests” by the FBI, saying “I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!”

8. Twitter Files Part 8, December 20, 2022, by @lhfang.

HOW TWITTER QUIETLY AIDED THE PENTAGON’S COVERT ONLINE PSYOP CAMPAIGN

Lee Fang takes a fascinating detour, looking at how Twitter for years approved and supported Pentagon-backed covert operations. Noting the company explicitly testified to Congress that it didn’t allow such behavior, the platform nonetheless was a clear partner in state-backed programs involving fake accounts.

Key revelations: after the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) sent over a list of 52 Arab-language accounts “we use to amplify certain messages,” Twitter agreed to “whitelist” them. Ultimately the program would be outed in 2022 — two years after Twitter and other platforms stopped assisting — but contrary to what came out in those reports, Twitter knew about and/or assisted in these programs for at least three years, from 2017-2020.

Lee wrote a companion piece for the Intercept

9. Twitter Files Part 9, December 24th, 2022 by @mtaibbi.

TWITTER AND “OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES”

The Christmas Eve thread details how the channels of communication between the federal government and Twitter operated, and reveals that Twitter directly or indirectly received lists of flagged content from “Other Government Agencies,” i.e. the CIA.

Key revelations: CIA officials attended at least one conference with Twitter in the summer of 2020, and companies like Twitter and Facebook received “OGA briefings,” at their regular “industry” meetings held in conjunction with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI and the “Foreign Influence Task Force” met regularly “not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo!, Twitch, Cloudfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia.”

10. Twitter Files Part 10, December 28, 2022 by @DavidZweig .

HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE

David Zweig drills down into how Twitter throttled down information about COVID that was true but perhaps inconvenient for public officials, “discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed.”

Key Revelations: Zweig found memos from Twitter personnel who’d liaised with Biden administration officials who were “very angry” that Twitter had not deplatformed more accounts. White House officials for instance wanted attention on reporter Alex Berenson. Zweig also found “countless” instances of Twitter banning or labeling “misleading” accounts that were true or merely controversial. A Rhode Island physician named Andrew Bostom, for instance, was suspended for, among other things, referring to the results of a peer-reviewed study on mRNA vaccines.

11. and 12. Twitter Files Parts 11 and 12, January 3, 2023, by @mtaibbi.

HOW TWITTER LET THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY IN

and

TWITTER AND THE FBI “BELLY BUTTON”

These two threads focus respectively on the second half of 2017, and a period stretching roughly from summer of 2020 through the present. The first describes how Twitter fell under pressure from Congress and the media to produce “material” showing a conspiracy of Russian accounts on their platform, and the second shows how Twitter tried to resist fulfilling moderation requests for the State Department, but ultimately agreed to let State and other agencies send requests through the FBI, which agent Chan calls “the belly button of the USG.” Revelations: at the close of 2017, Twitter makes a key internal decision. Outwardly, the company would claim independence and promise that content would only be removed at “our sole discretion.” The internal guidance says, in writing, that Twitter will remove accounts “identified by the U.S. intelligence community” as “identified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.”

The second thread shows how Twitter took in requests from everyone — Treasury, HHS, NSA, FBI, DHS, etc. — and also received personal requests from politicians like Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, who asked to have journalist Paul Sperry suspended.

13. Twitter Files Part 13, January 9, 2023, by @AlexBerenson.

HOW TWITTER COVERED UP COVID TRUTHS

Alex Berenson details how Twitter throttled down or erased true information about COVID-19, with the help of a former Pfizer lobbyist, Scott Gottlieb.

Key Revelations: Twitter senior political liaison Todd O’Boyle feared that onetime acting FDA commission Brett Giroir’s correct observations about the effectiveness of natural immunity were “corrosive” and might “go viral,” and put a misleading label on the tweet. Gottlieb also pressured Twitter to remove Berenson himself.

14. Twitter Files Part 14, January 12th, 2023, by @mtaibbi.

THE RUSSIAGATE LIES

One: The Fake Tale of Russian Bots and the #ReleaseTheMemo Hashtag

Internal communications at Twitter show that Russian bots were not in fact hyping the classified memo of Republican congressman Devin Nunes in January of 2018.

Key Revelations: Three key Democrats — Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Blumenthal, and former House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff — cited a think tank called Hamilton 68 in denouncing a memo by Nunes as aided by “Russian influence operations.” Yet all three were told by Twitter executives there were no Russians in the picture. Said former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth, “I just reviewed the accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with #releasethememo and none of them show any signs of affiliation to Russia.”

Twitter Files Supplemental, to Part 14, January 13th, 2023, by @mtaibbi.

MORE ADAM SCHIFF BANS, AND “DEAMPLIFICATION.”

A brief thread of 10 tweets showing that the former head of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, sent repeated requests for bans of people critical of their office.

Key Revelation: Schiff and the DNC both not only asked for the takedown of an obvious satire by “Peter Douche,” but requested takedowns of accounts that were critical of the Steele dossier and outed the name of the supposed “whistleblower” in the Ukrainegate case, Eric Ciaramella. Schiff staffers said that while they “appreciate greatly” efforts by Twitter to deamplify certain accounts, they worried such effort s “could… impede the ability of law enforcement to search Twitter.”

15. Twitter Files Part 15, January 27, 2023 by @mtaibbi.

MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD Internal communication about Hamilton 68, a project by the Alliance for Securing Democracy purporting to track 600 account “linked” to “Russian influence activities.” Reporters used Hamilton 68 as the basis for countless news stories, from CNN’s “Russian bots are using #WalkAway to try to wound Dems in midterms” to the ., “After Florida School Shooting, Russia’s Bot Army Pounced”

Key Revelation: Twitter’s Yoel Roth was suspicious of Hamilton 68’s methodology and reverse-engineered their list, which he quickly discovered to be bogus, full not of Russians but “legitimate right-leaning accounts” who were being implicitly called Russian assets. “Virtually any conclusion drawn from [the dashboard],” Roth wrote, “will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.” Roth urged Twitter to “call this out on the bullshit it is,” but Twitter higher-ups worried about the political consequences, choosing instead to play a “longer game.” Neither the actors involved, nor any of the media outlets who ran Hamilton-based stories initially commented, though the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) later replied, prompting a back-and-forth to an external site with this site.

16. Twitter Files Part 16, February 18, 2023, by @mtaibbi.

COMIC INTERLUDE: A MEDIA EXPERIMENT

Mainstream outlets finally cover the Twitter Files with excitement, after House testimony elicited a claim that Donald Trump complained, unsuccessfully, to Twitter about a tweet by Chrissy Teigen (who in turn complained that she didn’t “know how to go on” after her tweet about Trump being a “pussy ass bitch” was read to congress). Irritated that this became the big censorship story after releasing thousands of takedown requests from government agencies involving people all over the world, I decided to do an experiment.

Key Revelations: We released a list of 354 names Maine Senate Angus King wanted taken down for reasons like “Rand Paul visit excitement,” “followed by [former Republican opponent Eric] Brakey,”

and my personal favorite, “mentions immigration.” For balance we also released a letter from a Republican official at the State Department, Mark Lenzi, who tells Twitter about 14 real Americans “you may want to look into and delete.” Surely, if the main objection to the Twitter Files is that they’re “one-sided,” someone will cover a Republican doing the bad thing? But no, more crickets. With help from @Techno_Fog

17. Twitter Files Part 17, March 2, 2023 by @mtaibbi.

NEW KNOWLEDGE, THE GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT CENTER, AND STATE-SPONSORED BLACKLISTS

A review of the activities of the Global Engagement Center, or GEC, what one source called “an incubator for the domestic disinformation complex.”

Key Revelations: A GEC-funded think tank, the DFRLab, sent Twitter a list of 40,000 names of people suspected of supporting “Hindu nationalism” that somehow had scads of ordinary Americans with handles like @mad_murican and @TrumpitC on the list; GEC sent Twitter a list of 5500 “Chinese accounts” that among other things had three CNN contributors on it (“Not exactly Anderson’s besties, but CNN assets if you will,” commented Twitter’s Patrick Conlon), GEC sent another list of 499 accounts deemed Iranian disinformation, using criteria like: used Signal and Telegram to communicate and used hashtags like #IraniansDebateWithBiden. Other GEC reports deemed various actors part of foreign propaganda “ecosystems” for offenses like following more than one Chinese diplomat, retweeting an Iranian-created “FREE PALESTINE” meme, and for retweeting material that was “anti-Macron in nature.”

18. Twitter Files Part 18, March 9, 2023 by @mtaibbi.

Statement to Congress

THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

On the day Mike Shellenberger and I testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, I released this thread on the theme of Michael’s inspired title for his statement, “The Censorship-Industrial Complex.”

Key Revelations: The thread focused on Stanford University, the Election Integrity Partnership, and the state funding of a slew of think-tanks, NGOs, and for-profit firms connected to the “anti-disinformation” movement. One of those, New Knowledge, was caught faking a Russian influence

campaign in an Alabama Senate race, pushing on reporters the false idea that Republican Roy Moore was being followed by a slate of Russian bots. “There have been other instances in which domestic actors created fake accounts,” Twitter’s Yoel Roth wrote. “Some are fairly prominent in progressive circles.” Just before the thread went live, @NAffects discovered a string of emails about the Virality Project that succeeded EIP, one of which talked about striking down “true stories of vaccine side effects.” With additional help from @ShellenbergerMD @Techno_Fog, @bergerbell, @SchmidtSue1, @tw6384, @AaronJMate., and @MikeBenzCyber

19. Twitter Files Part 19, March 17, 2023 by @mtaibbi.

THE GREAT COVID-19 LIE MACHINE: STANFORD, THE VIRALITY PROJECT, AND THE CENSORSHIP OF “TRUE STORIES”

Following up on the finding by Andrew Lowenthal (@NAffacts) from the week before, TF 19 recounts how Stanford worked with four think-tanks (several the recipients of state awards) and multiple government agencies to create a cross-platform JIRA ticketing system for seven major Internet platforms, including Twitter, Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Medium.

Key revelations: Multiple instances of the Virality Project (VP) recommending action against true stories deemed “standard misinformation on your platform,” from “celebrity deaths after vaccine” to a story about a school in Central New York that closed after teachers reported post-vaccine side effects. VP continually described opposition to Vaccine Passports as anti-vaccine behavior and would describe as disinformation “events” things like a news story that ‘increased distrust in Fauci’s expert guidance.” A report by Graphika forwarded to Twitter explained that “seeding doubt and uncertainty in authoritative voices” like Facui’s “leads to a society that finds it too challenging to identify what’s true or false.” Therefore, people need to be shielded from difficult truths. With additional help from @ShellenbergerMD., @Techno_Fog., @bergerbell, @, @., @AaronJMate., and @MikeBenzCyber.

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GLOSSARY OF “TWITTER FILES” TERMS

1. Government Agencies and NGOs

SIO: Stanford Internet Observatory

VP: Virality Project, also at Stanford

FSI: Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute

CIP: Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington

CISA: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

CENTCOM: Central Command of the Armed Forces

DARPA: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

ODNI: Office of the Director of National Intelligence

FITF: Foreign Influence Task Force, a cyber-regulatory agency comprised of members of the FBI, DHS, and ODNI

“OGA”: Other Government Agency, colloquially — CIA

GEC: Global Engagement Center, an analytical division of the U.S. State Department

USIC: United States intelligence community

HSIN: Homeland Security Information Network, a portal through which states and other official bodies can send “flagged” accounts

EIP: Election Integrity Project, a cyber-laboratory based at Stanford University that sends many reports to Twitter

EI-ISAC: Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center

DFR: Digital Forensic Research lab, an outlet that performs a similar function to the EIP, only is funded by the Atlantic Council

IRA: Internet Research Agency, the infamous Russian “troll farm” headed by “Putin’s chef,” Yevgheny Prigozhin

2. Twitter or Industry-specific terms

MDM: "“Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation.”

PII: Can have two meanings. “Personally identifiable information” is self-explanatory, while a “Public Interest Interstitial” is a warning placed over a tweet, so that it cannot be seen. Twitter personnel even use “interstitial” as a verb, as in, “Can we interstitial that?”

JIRA: Twitter’s internal ticketing system, through which complaints rise and are decided

PV2: The system used at Twitter to view the profile of any user, to check easily if it has flags like “Trends Blacklist”

SIP-PES Site Integrity Policy — Policy Escalation Support. SIP-PES is like Twitter’s version of a moderation Supreme Court, dealing with the most high-profile, controversial rulings