Twitter Files: Twitter and the FBI 'Belly Button'
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Another edition of the Twitter Files, this one posted by Matt Taibbi. I’ve lost track of which installment this is but it might be number nine. Today’s report is once again about the FBI and how it gradually became a clearing house for official takedown requests from all over the place.

Twitter was clearly frustrated by the reports.

Twitter’s Yoel Roth saw the State Dept. activity as an attempt to “insert themselves” into content moderation.

This led to a public spat between State and Twitter.

Twitter tried to push back on the GEC’s efforts to insert itself, in part because they seemed to think they were too political.

The FBI proposed a compromise.

Roth asked if the FBI would be the “belly button” for industry partners.

In addition to government requests there were also personal ones, like this one from Rep. Adam Schiff complaining about QAnon. As you can see in the bold responses, Twitter said no.

But most requests were rubber-stamped.

Here’s how Taibbi sums up this installment on his Substack site:

These episodes from the Twitter Files show how the digital censorship system evolved from 2017. Early on, company emails were entirely internal and requests about, say, “Russia-linked” accounts came on a case-by-case basis, in some cases through physical meetings with officials at places like the Senate Intelligence Committee.

By 2020, the moderation machine was a high-speed, formalized information highway, with federal and international requests passed through the FBI via Signal and Teleporter, and domestic asks funneled upward through Homeland Security mechanisms like HISN. The $3 million tab Shellenberger revealed Twitter was paid by the state looks like a bad deal for the company, the more you examine the documents. Twitter had to assign reams of personnel to deal with these requests, and during the election season there were clearly too many “reports” to handle.

Moreover the FBI and DHS stopped asking Twitter, and soon simply sent long lists with the expectation of fulfillment. If Twitter didn’t act fast enough, they got quick follow up emails from the Bureau. “Was action taken…? We wanted to get process served.” Or: “Any movement?”

Working through the “belly button,” Twitter was an involuntary subcontractor. And an underpaid one.

It’s good to see that Twitter said no to Rep. Schiff but it seems they didn’t say no very often.

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