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It’s time again, gentle readers, to update you on the latest Twitter files release.   The SMM Twitter Files archive may be found here.  I’ll not post enormous numbers of graphics, expecting you instead to take the links are discover the finer points for yourself. I’ll give you the biggest revelations in the sure conviction you’ll take it from there. We begin with release 14, by Matt Taibbi. The Twitter thread is here. 

This release is primary about exposing the efforts of D/S/Cs and the media—I know: same thing—to claim Russian “bots” were influencing elections and Americans generally.  And of course, ORANGE MAN BAD!

Surprisingly, at least some at Twitter admitted no such thing was happening and tried to tell the media and politicians. They ignored them and kept on lying.

Devin Nunes, one of the good guys, tried to expose the abuses of the FBI and its fellow travelers.

Knowing they were lying and Nunes was right—an inspector general’s report confirmed it–the usual congressional suspects—Schiff, Feinstein, Blumenthal, etc.–kept lying.

You’ll hear more about “Hamilton 68” shortly.

The thread talks about a variety of ways Twitter executives tried to tone down D/S/C lies, but without success. So they fell back into their default pattern of suppressing the truth and allowing D/S/C lies to go unchallenged:

Scott Johnson at Powerline quotes Taibbi in summing it up:

Remember this one? Russian bots and trolls were blamed by virtually every major news organization in the country for amplifying the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo. The files contain a mass of emails from executives blowing up this ridiculous story, once and for all.

The #ReleaseTheMemo scandal was one of the more shameful episodes in the recent history of our media, but taken seriously by all but one or two mainstream editors at the time. All citing the same dubious source — the Hamilton 68 ‘dashboard’ trumpeted by former FBI counterintelligence official and current MSNBC contributor Clint Watts — they insisted Russians deployed Twitter bot-armies to whip up cyber-support for Republican congressmann Devin Nunes. Nunes had just released a classified memo alleging Democrats and the FBI used the infamous paid oppositional research dossier of ex-spy Christopher Steele to obtain secret FISA surveillance authority on Trump-connected figures like Carter Page, amid other improprieties.

We now know Twitter internally found no evidence, as in zero, that Russians were anywhere near this story.

Taibbi added a supplement, which was about Adam Schiff’s constant demands of Twitter to erase, ban and “deamplify” all manner of tweets. Though Twitter didn’t outright ban everything Schiff demanded, they usually took measures to make it harder to find, at the least.

Twitter was far from the only social media outlet banning the truth, as the Daily Signal reports:

Facebook told an official at the Biden White House that the Big Tech company not only suppressed misinformation but took action against the ‘virality’ of ‘often-true content’ regarding the COVID-19 vaccines.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey released the documents earlier this week. Bailey obtained them through a court case, Missouri v. Biden, alleging that some of President Joe Biden’s top officials ‘colluded with Big Tech social media companies to violate Americans’ right to free speech under the First Amendment.’

What a surprise. Robby Soave at Reason reports on how Anthony Fauci and the CDC used a willing Facebook to hide the truth about Covid and the government’s response to it.

Indeed, the U.S. public’s understanding of COVID-19—its virality, how to prevent its spread, and even where it comes from—was largely controlled by Fauci and bureaucrats like him, to a greater degree than most people realize. The federal government shaped the rules of online discussion in unprecedented and unnerving ways. [skip]

But Twitter was hardly the only object of federal pressure. According to a trove of confidential documents obtained by Reason, health advisers at the CDC had significant input on pandemic-era social media policies at Facebook as well. They were consulted frequently, at times daily. They were actively involved in the affairs of content moderators, providing constant and ever-evolving guidance. They requested frequent updates about which topics were trending on the platforms, and they recommended what kinds of content should be deemed false or misleading. “Here are two issues we are seeing a great deal of misinfo on that we wanted to flag for you all,” reads one note from a CDC official. Another email with sample Facebook posts attached begins: ‘BOLO for a small but growing area of misinfo.’

These Facebook Files show that the platform responded with incredible deference.

Newsbusters reports on the Lamestream media’s lack of Twitter Files coverage:

The bombshells from the Twitter files keep on coming, yet the liberal media elite keep ignoring them. Last month when Tesla founder and Twitter owner Elon Musk began tweeting out former Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibbi’s explosive reporting on how Twitter (under pressure from government agents) suppressed the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in the final days before the election.

It was an exhaustive and shocking account that confirmed what Republicans, conservatives and Donald Trump supporters had suspected all along, that Big Tech and Big Media had joined Big Government in rigging the 2020 election for President Joe Biden.

So how much time did the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks devote to Musk and Taibbi’s exposing how Twitter hid Hunter’s laptop scandal?

A miniscule 128 seconds (2 minutes and 8 seconds). 

The entirety of the coverage was on CBS. Not a single journalist on ABC or NBC has even touched the story. 

I know: you’re shocked, shocked! Margot Cleveland at The Federalist provides reasons why the media is ignoring the Twitter files revelations. I know you can think of plenty, gentle readers, but the article is worth your time.

We move on to Twitter release 15:

This thread exposed Hamilton 68, run by a former FBI hack—interesting how active and former FBI and CIA types keep cropping up in suppressing American’s constitutional liberties, isn’t it? And of course they’re all depicted in front of the flag they despise.  Who was involved in Hamilton 68?

They had enormous influence in spreading lies and pushing a coup against Donald Trump:

Here’s the head of Hamilton 68:

Interesting how an agency whose motto is “fidelity, bravery, integrity,” produces so many liars and traitors.

Was anything they said true?

 Hamilton 68—yes, it still exists—responded to the Twitter release, as Racket explains:

Finally I want to note a passage from the Friday ‘fact sheet’ I somehow overlooked:

Individual accounts were algorithmically selected based on analytic techniques developed by J.M. Berger that were used to identify the most influential accounts within those networks. The Hamilton 68 team did not individually review or verify all accounts because the focus of the dashboard was to analyze behavior in aggregate networks, not specific accounts.

Translating: individual accounts were chosen through a method developed by J.M. Berger, a writer and think-tanker whose usual specialty is extremism (he’s written about ISIS and domestic white nationalism in the U.S.). Still, it wasn’t even Berger’s fault that ordinary Americans ended up in the list, since said people were chosen ‘algorithmically.’ The Hamilton 68 team also ‘did not individually review or verify’ all the names, because their ‘focus’ was “aggregate networks,” not “specific accounts.”

So, nobody looked at the list.

The list that was “the fruit of more than three years of observation and monitoring.”’

Sounds solid.

As you’ll see if you take the link, Hamilton 68 identified all sorts of people as Russian bots, people who were no such thing. As always, gentle readers, I provide attribution—links—to everything so you can read and make up your own minds. You need not rely on my analysis, though I hope you find it insightful and backed by fact.

Finally, take this link to a Redstate article that chronicles Dave Rubin’s recent visit to Twitter Headquarters. An excerpt:

Rubin said they found a lot of ‘secret labels’ designed to reduce people’s traffic. His account had all three: ‘Recent abuse strike,’ ‘Recent misinformation strike,’ and ‘Recent suspension strike.’ Rubin had ‘innocuous tweets’ that were labeled NSFW or NSFA (not safe for ads), which would affect visibility in the timeline. He said there was a whole ‘keyword database’ of words that could affect your visibility and make you not advertiser friendly, including the word ‘gay.’ Rubin found out that the ‘recent suspension strike’ came from July 2022 because he objected to the suspension of Dr. Jordan Peterson. Even though Peterson’s account has now been unsuspended, the strike on Rubin’s account was still there.

Is there hope for Twitter? Rubin thinks so:

More as it develops; I suspect we’ll be at this for a long time to come.