Congressional trolls and social media censorship
Twitter informed Democratic leaders like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that the Russian influence narrative they pushed was not supported.
The latest Twitter Files #14 reveal evidence that Democratic Party leaders pressured social media companies to censor and cancel voices that did not align with their approved narratives. This was done to smear Trump and others to help Biden win the election. The latest release of Twitter Files from Matt Taibbi shows that Democratic leaders like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) were aware that they were pushing a likely false story of “Russian bots” to discredit a report on FBI abuses. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) are also mentioned by Twitter as part of what staff called “congressional trolls” who did not seem to care if the allegations were true and only wanted Twitter to say they were true.
Twitter initially found little evidence of Russian influence operations targeting Americans on its platform, but later altered its approach to appease Democratic politicians and left-leaning corporate media. Schiff and Blumenthal have been outspoken advocates for censorship on social media, often using “conspiracy theories” by Republicans to justify limits on free speech.
According to files published by journalist Matt Taibbi, in August 2017, after Facebook suspended 300 accounts with “suspected Russian origin,” Twitter employees initially decided that they did not have the same problem Mark Zuckerberg’s platform had.
The following month, Twitter informed the U.S. Senate that it had only 22 potential Russian accounts, as well as 179 others with “possible links” to those accounts. But after Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), a ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, held a press conference to denounce Twitter’s report as “frankly inadequate on every level,” Colin Crowell, the company’s Vice President of Public Policy, warned that they could be pressured to “keep producing material.” After meeting with congressional leaders, Crowell wrote in an email to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that “Warner has a political incentive to keep this issue at top of the news, maintain pressure on us and the rest of industry to keep producing material for them,”
Democrats denounced a report about flaws in the Trump-Russia investigation, saying it was boosted by Russian “bots” and “trolls.” Twitter officials were aghast, finding no evidence of Russian influence: “We are feeding congressional trolls.” “Not any…significant activity connected to Russia.”
“Putting the cart before the horse assuming this is propaganda/bots,” Twitter warned politicians and media they not only lacked evidence but had evidence the accounts weren’t Russian – and were roundly ignored.
Some of the communications refer to a classified memo prepared by former Rep. Devin Nunes, which was addressed to the House Intelligence Committee, regarding abuses by the FBI in its use of the FISA courts. The memo turned out to be well-based, including the long-denied surveillance of Trump, his campaign, and campaign associates. It also highlighted how the Steele Dossier was discredited by U.S. intelligence officials despite being pushed by people like Schiff. Schiff was secretly pushing for censoring critics, including a columnist, while publicly denying that he supported any form of censorship.
At the time, Yoel Roth, the former head of Trust & Safety, wrote “I just reviewed the accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with #releasethememo and… none of them show any signs of affiliation to Russia. We investigated, and found that engagement was overwhelmingly organic, and driven by [Very Important Tweeters] VITs.”
Blumenthal appeared not to care if the claim was true. After being told that there was no evidence that the story was being propelled by Russian bots and trolls, Blumenthal responded with a letter declaring that “we find it reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans.”
Twitter officials compared Blumenthal and Schiff to the mouse in the children’s story “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” In other words, by trying to appease them, they demanded more – in this case, confirmation of false claims.
Blumenthal has long demanded censorship to combat Republican “conspiracy theories.” As previously discussed, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appeared at a key hearing in which he followed up his apology for censoring the Hunter Biden story by pledging more censorship.
Instead of raising concerns about censorship based on such a vague category, Democratic senators called for the expansion of censorship to prevent the sharing of any views that they consider to be “climate denialism.” Senator Blumenthal expressed concern that social media companies were “failing to take action against dangerous disinformation” and demanded that they commit to a “robust content modification playbook” for the upcoming elections, including fact-checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation, and other measures, even for politicians in runoff elections. Accordingly, he demanded an answer to this question: “Will you commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election, including fact-checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation, and other steps, even for politicians in the runoff elections ahead?”
Despite media outlets promoting the false claims made by Schiff and Blumenthal during the Russian collusion investigation, there has been little attention given to the recent Twitter Files and the fact that Twitter informed them that their claims lacked support.