Newly released internal documents suggest that Twitter's former head of safety Yoel Roth was meeting weekly with the FBI, and show instances of the FBI flagging tweets related to the 2020 election for deletion.
Journalist Matt Taibbi shared the claims in a new Twitter thread on Friday night, one week after sharing the first tranche of so-called 'Twitter Files' turned over by the company's new owner Elon Musk.
In an undated chat on the messaging app Slack that Taibbi says took place after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, Roth is seen joking about a mysterious meeting on his calendar, saying it is 'DEFINITELY not a meeting with the FBI I SWEAR’.
Other messages show Roth mentioning a 'weekly sync with FBI/DHS/DNI' regarding election security in October 2020.
A separate message mentions 'a report from the FBI concerning 2 tweets,' which appeared to relate to false claims about ballot fraud in the November 2020 election.
Newly released internal documents suggest that Twitter's former head of safety Yoel Roth was meeting weekly with the FBI, and show instances of the FBI flagging tweets for deletion
One exchange (left) shows Roth explaining he will miss 'the FBI and DHS meetings.' Roth is also seen joking (right) about a mysterious meeting on his calendar, saying it is 'DEFINITELY not a meeting with the FBI I SWEAR’
One message, apparently from October 2020 following Twitter's two-day ban on a story about Hunter Biden's business dealings, mentions a 'weekly sync with FBI/DHS/DNI'
Roth, who quit his role at Twitter last month following Musk's takeover, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com on Friday evening.
Taibbi said the new release of files was part of a three-part series about the events surrounding then-President Donald Trump's ban from Twitter, which Musk lifted last month after buying the company.
Prior to the ban, days after the Capitol riot, the internal document also show staffers at the company argued that 'historical context' and 'current climate' should factor into the decision.
One message from an unidentified Twitter staffer appears to acknowledge the historic nature of the ban, asking: 'Is this the first head of state ever to be suspended?'
'The world knows much of the story of what happened between riots at the Capitol on January 6th, and the removal of President Donald Trump from Twitter on January 8th,' Taibbi wrote.
'We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies,' he added.
The documents released Friday primarily related to the months prior to the January 8, 2021 decision to ban Donald Trump from Twitter. Trump is seen on January 6 prior to the Capitol riot
Staffers at Twitter argued that 'historical context' and 'current climate' should factor into the decision to suspend Trump's account
One screenshot showed a Twitter staffer acknowledging the historic nature of Trump's ban
Taibbi said that on October 8th, 2020, Twitter executives opened a Slack channel devoted to high-profile moderation actions related to the election, which was then a month away.
He describes this group as a 'a smaller, more powerful cadre of senior policy execs' that included Roth and Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's former head of legal, policy, and trust.
Taibbi claimed the group operated as 'a high-speed Supreme Court of moderation, issuing content rulings on the fly, often in minutes and based on guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President.'
Screenshots show the group debating what to do about Trump's frequent attacks on absentee voting procedures in the lead-up to the election.
One in the group exchange also hints at a broader role of the FBI and Department of Homeland Security in Twitter's approach to moderating misinformation.
An unidentified staffer is seen asking whether Twitter should publicly describe its approach to misinformation as relying on machine learning, human review, and 'partnerships with outside experts'.
Nick Pickles, Twitter's senior director of global public policy strategy, development and partnerships, refers to partnerships with the FBI/DHS in one exchange
Nick Pickles, Twitter's senior director of global public policy strategy, development and partnerships, is seen responding: 'can we just say "partnerships"'.
He then adds: 'not sure we'd describe the FBI/DHS as experts, or some NGOs that aren't academic.'
Taibbi said that his posts on Friday would primarily cover the period between the 2020 election and January 6, to be followed by additional publications of internal Twitter documents by Michael Shellenberger on Saturday and Bari Weiss on Sunday.
Shellenberger is an author who focuses on contrarian views on climate change, and Weiss is an independent journalist who runs the Substack newsletter Common Sense, which she recently rebranded as The Free Press.
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