(Reclaim The Net) New information published by journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger ahead of their testimony to the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government today has revealed that government entities flagged “anti-Ukraine narratives” to Twitter for censorship. Additionally, it revealed that a project which has partnered with several state entities and urged tech platforms to take action against “stories of true vaccine side effects” was onboarded to Twitter’s Jira ticketing system.
The new information was provided in a new batch of “Twitter Files” (internal documents that highlight how Big Tech often censored at the behest of the federal government, state-affiliated entities, or the legacy media) and their opening statements.
The new Twitter Files thread thread included a previous email from the “The Virality Project” urging action against “stories of true vaccine side effects” and “true posts which could fuel hesitancy.”
It also contained emails showing The Virality Project being onboarded to Twitter’s Jira ticketing system.
The Virality Project was previously known as the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a coalition of research entities that push for censorship. The EIP previously claimed to have successfully pushed for almost 22 million tweets to be labeled in the run-up to the 2020 United States (US) presidential election and that tech companies take action on 35% of the URLs it flagged.
According to Taibbi, the EIP has partnered with state entities. It was created by the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) — an entity that Taibbi described as the “the ultimate example of state, corporate, and civil society organizations.”
The thread also noted that Twitter was “like a partner to government” and provided more evidence of the federal government flagging content for censorship.
Some of the content being flagged by the federal government included “anti-Ukraine narratives.”
The thread also described how non-governmental organizations (NGOs), some of which receive state funding, pushed for censorship and how the legacy media “repeatedly” acted “as proxy for NGOs.”
In addition to publishing a new Twitter Files thread, both Taibbi and Shellenberger shared their opening statements.
