12.10.22 | Twitter Meddled in our Elections

The past couple weeks have been a vindicating experience for many Republicans who have repeatedly asserted they’d been shadow banned or suppressed on social media, eliminating them from the internet's public discourse, specifically on Twitter.

Following Elon Musk’s private acquisition of the social media company (for well above market value, claiming it was "not about the economics at all," and more about “building a town square” to encourage freedom of speech), internal communications between executive leadership, including screenshots of administrative systems used by Twitter employees, have been released.

Well, to be fair, this information wasn't made public, but rather given to a select group of independent journalists, specifically Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss. Both had been previously blacklisted by mainstream media outlets for the stories they tried reporting on. So, they began pursuing the stories they chose independently to get the attention and coverage they felt these stories deserved, which had been denied by the corporate editorial boards that control what makes it to print.

The information provided by Elon and reported on by Matt and Bari revealed a coordinated effort between the former leadership of Twitter and public officials, including the Biden campaign and even some Republicans, to suppress stories that would have a negative effect on public opinion. While both Republicans and Democrats were involved in these backroom dealings, the Twitter staff was composed of more than 95% Democrats, giving them the vast upper hand in getting their way.

SCREENSHOT 1 - Twitter employee political contributions for Democrats far outpaced that of Republicans:

SCREENSHOT 2 - “Biden Team” would send lists of tweets to be removed, to which Twitter employees would casually respond “Handled”:

During Taibbi’s first post, he revealed internal emails showing this coordination stemmed from the highest levels of Twitter, specifically Jim Baker, a former FBI agent and (since-former) Twitter legal counsel, and Vijaya Gadde, the former Head of Legal Policy and Trust. They were remarkably cavalier, as they directed multiple teams to carry out their enforcement actions, typically consisting of “de-boosting” or “shadow banning.” Additionally, one of the messages Taibbi shared showed this type of suppression was hidden from the former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, over fears he may end the practice as it would reflect negatively on the platform.

Recently, Jack Dorsey himself weighed in on the revelations by posting a tweet in which he suggested the full "Twitter Files" source material should be released to the public, rather than releasing parts of the story over time, and only by specific journalists hand-selected by Elon Musk. Perhaps a full public data-release will happen, but for now, we are left with the information as it is being presented by Taibbi and Weiss. (Thankfully, these two reporters have been proven to be trustworthy and are known for putting their names on the line for stories they believe in.)

Following Matt’s initial release a second story followed just a few days later, this time published by Bari Weiss, and included information on the "visibility filtering" that Twitter executives were undertaking despite repeatedly claiming this was NOT happening.

Visibility filtering, also known as “shadow banning,” is when Twitter moderators suppress specific tweets or entire accounts they purport to “violate Twitter’s Terms of Service,” without ever informing the user they've been blocked. If the moderators felt a story did not fit the narrative they (or their Democrat partners) wanted to push, they would simply mark it as "Do Not Amplify," or "Blacklisted," which would essentially wipe this tweet from the "public square.” These shadow banning actions prevented the spread of information and/or the ability to search for suppressed accounts.

Bari Weiss provided specific examples of conservative thought-leaders that had been blocked, including the exact labels that were used to suppress these accounts. These screenshots show the internal dashboard system used by Twitter employees, seemingly to this day.

SCREENSHOT 1 - Dan Bongino labeled “Search Blacklist” was unable to be found when searching for him:

SCREENSHOT 2 - Charlie Kirk labeled “Do Not Amplify” so his tweets would not trend or would be hidden:

So, what does this all mean?

Well, as stated, conservatives feel vindicated that all of this has been revealed as true. Tweets, and more importantly, information were being suppressed. Most notably, the Hunter Biden laptop story, which many believe would have thwarted Joe Biden’s chances of winning the 2020 election over Trump, had the story not been deliberately hidden and prevented from being shared, while simultaneously being labeled Russian disinformation (which has since been proven to be utterly false).

LINK TO NY POST HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY: https://t.co/q4zaMw6aVV

With all of this out in the open, one might call the election results of 2020 into question, seeing as how one of the social media platforms had coordinated directly with the Democratic candidate leading up to his own race. Can we go back in time? Should the election be repeated? Joe Biden removed from office? All of that is extremely unlikely to happen, if not impossible. But, we can prevent it from happening again... Or can we?

Sadly, there are more examples of this suppressive behavior continuing to this day. In fact, there was a tweet posted by Christina Bobb, formerly of OAN, just this week, showing an internal email thread she managed to acquire featuring Katie Hobbs… At the time of the email (Jan 2022) Hobbs was the Arizona Secretary of State, in addition to the state's gubernatorial candidate responsible for overseeing her own 2022 election. Based on the screenshot provided, the same Twitter leadership known to suppress negative information at whim was at it again.

Many have been following the results of the 2022 Arizona midterm elections, as there were myriad issues on that day:

• 50% or more of polling locations had faulty equipment preventing votes from being tallied properly, prompting the current AG to request an explanation.

• Early polling suggested Kari Lake was the far-and-away favorite to win the governors' race, in fact so much so that Katie Hobbs refused to debate.

• Katie Hobbs, the Secretary of State, was in a clear conflict of interest as she was both a candidate and the top administrator of the election.

• The Elections Supervisor of the state, Bill Gates (not the Microsoft guy) is the head of an Anti-Kari Lake political action campaign, yet calls himself a Republican.

The development involving Hobbs clearly details that collusion was happening down to a state level, well into 2022, and that government officials were able to tap into their connections at Twitter to control their own narrative.

At this time it is still unclear what Katie Hobbs' intentions were, or exactly what information was suppressed by Twitter executives; however, the evidence is clear that messaging was altered. The fact that voting machines were not working properly on election day in heavily GOP counties, information was provably suppressed in one direction, and polling indicated throughout the state that Kari Lake had a commanding lead yet still “lost”, are all indications that something was (and is) going on behind closed doors…

With these questionable actions taken by the former Twitter leadership (more accurately a handful of nefarious oligarchs) the 2020 election results awarding Joe Biden the presidency must seriously be questioned. We must also call the results of the 2022 election into question too. Thankfully, at least in Arizona, the official certification has not yet taken place and both Kari Lake (Gov Candidate) and Abe Hamadeh (AG Candidate) have filed individual lawsuits to contest the current results.

For now, Republicans have every right to be upset, since it has been unequivocally proven that election interference occurred at the highest levels completely at their expense.

These revelations have been a vindication for many who knew they were being unfairly censored and blocked from the “Town Square” that Twitter marketed itself as.

While the full scope of interference and the repercussions remain unclear, it is obvious that more transparency, honesty, and integrity is a must at Twitter and among other social media platforms. Most on the Right are optimistic Musk will make this happen while the Left and corporate media have doubled down on their attacks against him and his new company.

As the truth of these events continues to emerge (and much more has been promised, including DIRECT coordination with the FBI, CIA, DHS, and DNI), it is important that we ensure this type of manipulation never happens again, whether it is by Big Tech, the Mainstream Media, and especially not by prospective candidates or government officials. Let’s hope the active litigation in Arizona will be permitted to show evidence to a judge, and these races may be used as an example of how to reverse the results of a crooked election. By next week, hopefully we will have a more clear picture of the full scope of election interference carried out by bad actors at Twitter and who exactly they were taking orders from.

___

Thank you for reading! If you liked this article, please send it to someone else who may also enjoy it. You can also follow me on Twitter (@coopsimms) where I have much more information on the above topics. I am extremely grateful for your support! More to come…

-C. Cooper