The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government witnessed a testimony on Thursday by two of the authors of the Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, on the matter of strife between the US government and Twitter concerning censorship on the social media platform.  

“Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government,” Taibbi stated, adding that “For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps twenty quasi-private entities doing the same thing.”  

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Taibbi confirmed while testifying that moderation requests were submitted by agencies including the CIA, FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, while private entities included the National Endowment for Democracy, Alliance for Securing Democracy, and Stanford Internet Observatory.  

What stood out was Taibbi's nicknaming of the group of tech firms, government agencies, and private organizations as the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.” 

This "complex" flags posts considered as misinformation with examples like the Hunter Biden laptop case. Taibbi illustrates the "essence" of the "complex" as the following: “... a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in service of broader narrative objectives. It’s the opposite of what a free press does.”

'Estrangement from reality'

Taibbi's and Shellenberger's motives behind launching the Twitter Files were questioned by the Democratic side of the panel and were asked to identify the anonymous sources they cited but they both refused.

The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government was established to look into claims by the US government for alleged abuses of constitutional rights in technology.

Thursday marked the second hearing after the first focused on the alleged politicization of the FBI and Justice Department. In his testimony, Taibbi delivered a statement describing the group as a major source of disinformation, and claims that US taxpayers fund their own “estrangement from reality,”

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, is the mastermind behind the so-called Twitter Files. He has stated that he wants to demonstrate "what really happened" about behind-the-scenes content moderation choices at the social media business before he acquired it in October.

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Three journalists, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger, have been delving into internal documents and conversations to highlight the company's decision-making process surrounding some high-profile actions, such as banning former President Donald Trump in January 2020. The Twitter Files have been released in bits and pieces throughout December.