It's utterly predictable and depressing how the left (of which I'm increasingly embarrassed to admit I'm one) have moved immediately to dismiss the revelations - which we would not have had without the change in leadership - as a "nothingburger"<p>Extraordinarily negligent or baleful of the mainstream press to try and bury this as well.<p>For <i>years</i> right and centrist claims of bias and censorship in the defacto public square were dismissed as conspiracy theories, and warnings that a change in leadership would carry the risk of equal partisanship the other way glibly dismissed.<p>Depressing.
What a Fiasco.
Does this make Elon a whistleblower?
It was because of his purchase we see these right?<p>Also
<a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-accounts/" rel="nofollow">https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-...</a>
For those of us with, like, day jobs, can someone summarize what damning discoveries were actually revealed in the "Twitter Files"?<p>My impression is:<p>1. These "independent journalists" like numbered lists instead of prose (OK?)<p>2. I find numbered lists a bit hard to read.<p>3. There's no headline or lede that suggests...anything? But I keep reading the numbered lists out of morbid curiosity.<p>4. At some point it's revealed that, shockingly, an American tech company was in contact with American government officials.<p>5. Those officials spoke to the tech company about known or suspected foreign influence operations that might affect that tech company.<p>6. The tech company expressed gratitude for those tips.<p>Like, honestly, isn't the reason the "mainstream media" hasn't reported on this because they're in the business of reporting on things that their viewers would find interesting, and this is a super boring story?<p>Yes, if you name anything "the [something] files" and label it "suppressed knowledge now come to light", it sounds sexy. But is there anything actually significant here? If so, can someone summarize it for me in a numbered list?
><a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701519486988288?cxt=HHwWgMDRkZ6hk8wsAAAA" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701519486988288?cxt=H...</a><p>>The CIA has yet to comment on the nature of its relationship to tech companies like Twitter. Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by third parties, so what I saw could be limited.<p>><a href="https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605304933242343426" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605304933242343426</a><p>>Here is my reported piece w/more detail. I was given access to Twitter for a few days. I signed/agreed to nothing, Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by a Twitter attorney, so what I saw could be limited.<p>Still not clear to me who is doing the searches and why we should trust that this isn't the tip of the iceberg. Matt Taibi says it was a third party. Lee Fang says it was a Twitter attorney.
<a href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/12/twitter-and-the-cia-twitter-files-8-10.html#comment-3830270" rel="nofollow">https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/12/twitter-and-the-cia-...</a><p>Re-posting comment from above because it was good, (not mine).<p>" The perfect unison of the mainstream news in response is itself an interesting news story. They say it is not newsworthy, and smear the journalists who say it is. How does this unanimous pronouncement of an absurdity arise? What a perfect model of the Herman-Chomsky propaganda model. A few outsider journos point at a monstrous 1984-like mass mind-control operation and all the insider journos nervously cough and change the subject. Hm. "
Not part of the Twitter Files, but Glenn Greenwald's article from yesterday is a nice addition to the story about government involvement in social media. He had a video about Ukraine's Zelensky that was taken down from TikTok (a Chinese company), and he has reason to believe this was because of US government pressure: <a href="https://greenwald.substack.com/p/reflecting-new-us-control-of-tiktoks" rel="nofollow">https://greenwald.substack.com/p/reflecting-new-us-control-o...</a>