Musk sees US meddling in social media as rife

After a series of "Twitter Files" over the weeks disclosing the United States government's involvement in the social media company's content moderation, the latest installment came as Twitter owner Elon Musk said last week that the same is happening in "every social media company".

"Google frequently makes links disappear, for example," said Musk, who purchased Twitter two months ago and later decided to release the Twitter Files, namely internal documents such as emails and chat logs between employees.

He made the claims in response to Matt Taibbi, one of the freelance journalists to whom Musk gave the files exclusively to delve into and publish excerpts and their findings on Twitter.

As the massive files unfold how Twitter handled high-profile events like the 2020 presidential election, the Jan 6 Capitol riot and the COVID-19 pandemic, US government agencies such as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are reported to have long and deep involvement in Twitter's content moderation.

Dubbing Twitter "the FBI subsidiary", Taibbi said the FBI, with "constant and pervasive" contact with Twitter, gave the platform "a surprisingly high number" of requests to take action on "election misinformation", even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.

Agencies like the FBI and the DHS regularly send social media content to Twitter for moderation, he added.

The FBI also pushed Twitter to suppress a news story about the laptop of Hunter Biden, son of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, during the 2020 election by warning it could be part of a Russian trick, said Michael Shellenberger, another journalist with access to the files.

In a statement, the FBI said: "It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency."

Taibbi revealed on Dec 25 that the US government was "in constant contact not just with Twitter, but with virtually every major tech firm", including Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit and Pinterest.

'Formalized' censorship

The interference may not be an incident, but a result of institutionalized government censorship. An October report by news site The Intercept has found that government officials directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram through "a formalized process", and request that it be throttled or suppressed.

In the coming years, the DHS plans to target information it deems "inaccurate" on topics including the origins of the pandemic, efficacy of vaccines, racial justice, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and US support for Ukraine, the report said, citing a leaked draft copy of the DHS.

The "inaccuracy" identification may provide a broad opening for DHS officials to "make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech", the authors said.

"Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the US government has used its power to try to shape online discourse," said the report, which analyzed years of internal DHS documents.