Twitter Files: Elon Musk says US govt agencies demanded suspension of over 250k accounts

San Francisco: Elon Musk, in the latest set of revelations under ‘Twitter Files’, claimed that the US government agencies had asked the microblogging site to suspend more than 250,000 accounts.

Commenting on Twitter thread of journalist Matt Taibbi, Musk wrote: “US government agency demanded suspension of 250k accounts, including journalists & Canadian officials!”

The request to suspend Twitter accounts of users allegedly came from the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Global Engagement Centre which had apparently prepared a lots of accounts that “displayed inorganic behaviour” and had accounts of “two or more” Chinese diplomats.

US govt agency demanded suspension of 250k accounts, including journalists & Canadian officials! https://t.co/kcEMMCzF7d

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 3, 2023

In 40-post-long thread, Taibbi shared an image of an email to Twitter employees Nick Pickles, who worked as the Head of Global Government Affairs, and Yoel Roth, who was the Global Head of Trust & Safety, at the social media platform. The mail, however, showed that the list was being shared with Twitter for their “situational awareness and no action is requested”.

Taibbi also highlighted how the US Intelligence community was putting pressure on the social media giant to suspend accounts and restrict information.

Notably, it was during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the relationship between the US intelligence community and Twitter under the Trump administration blossomed.

Taibbi’s thread also highlighted how Twitter was fielding suspension requests from agencies including GEC, DHS, FBI, NSA, CIA.

In the latest release of ‘Twitter Files’, Taibbi also claimed that the microblogging site was pressurised to work hand-in-hand with the US government agencies to search for Russian meddling.

“The GEC flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria like, ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA’,” Taibbi wrote in a tweet.

Taibbi also shared an email in which Democratic representative and House Intel Committee Chief Adam Schiff’s office’s requested to ban journalist Paul Sperry “related to alleged harassment from QAnon conspiracists.”

Schiff's office also requested that Twitter "stop the spread of future misinformation" on the social media platform regarding committee staff and "label and reduce the visibility of any content."

"Even Twitter declined to honor Schiff's request at the time," Taibbi wrote, noting Twitter's responses to Schiff's office repeatedly saying "we don't do this." As Taibbi noted, though, Sperry was later suspended.

For the unversed, journalist Bari Weiss has helped author ‘Twitter Files’ that began in December 2022 along with Taibbi, a former Rolling Stone writer, and author Michael Shellenberger besides other journalists.

With inputs from agencies

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