Writer and consultant Andrew Lowenthal dropped another
Writer and consultant Andrew Lowenthal dropped more of The Twitter Files on April 25, 2023: The Information Cartel” is Part 20 of The Twitter Files.
Andrew Lowenthal is a former non-profit founder and executive director working on issues of digital authoritarianism, free expression, and civil liberties. He writes and manages the Network Affects newsletter which explores the growing digital authoritarianism of our times – privacy threats, bio-metric ID, surveillance, programmable currencies, and attacks on digital civil liberties and free expression from the ‘anti-disinformation’ and ‘fact-checking’ fields.
"1.TWITTER FILES #20
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
The Information Cartel" pic.twitter.com/nVK5K1NElD
2. My name is Andrew Lowenthal. For almost 18 years, I was Executive Director of @EngageMedia, an NGO devoted to protecting digital rights and freedoms. In recent years, I watched with concern and then despair as a dramatic change swept through my field.
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
3. Organizations & peers began de-emphasizing freedom of expression, instead promoting surveillance & censorship to combat 'disinformation'. Here Automated Controversy Detection & the Center for an Informed Public boast of their online monitoring capabilities. pic.twitter.com/OuWH2t4gEg
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
4. I knew things were bad. When I started work on the #TwitterFiles, I learned: they're far worse. The Files show an uncanny alliance of academics, journalists, intelligence operatives, military personnel, government bureaucrats, NGO workers and more. Some I know personally. pic.twitter.com/iyzskcDaBh
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
5. I had always understood "civil society" to mean "not the military." The former exists to check the latter. So I was shocked to see the depth of collaboration. For instance, "civil society" groups coordinating with Pentagon officials in an "election tabletop" exercise. Why? pic.twitter.com/i6cw85tss0
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
6. Also startling: Twitter emails and Slack communications suggesting heightened levels of data access for the military. Or military contractors like Mitre being part of the Aspen Institute's "Information Disorder" report along with NGO and academic colleagues. pic.twitter.com/g3kPrIDvB7
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
7. In a functioning democracy there’s dynamic tension between government, civil society organizations, news media, and industry, all advancing their own interests, in theory keeping one another honest. In the #TwitterFiles we find them all working together, cartel-style. pic.twitter.com/9KAJj9tMxQ
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
8. In the #TwitterFiles, tech firms collaborate with each other, and the state. Companies organize "IndustrySynch," "Industry comms," "pre-sync," and "Multi-Party Information Sharing," collaborating on a "whole range" of subjects, from election security to state-media labeling. pic.twitter.com/3u4oBC2sR8
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
9. Tech companies not only collaborate on content, they gather regularly for "private sector engagement" with the FBI, DOD, DHS, House and Senate Intel Committees, and others, each agency getting its own meetings: pic.twitter.com/V3wb9KtrBe
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
10. Here Twitter staff ask for Twitter General Counsel (& former FBI Deputy General Counsel) Jim Baker's blessing for EIP and Virality Project partner Graphika to "inform their partners in USG 3-5 days before publication" of a report detailing Pentagon disinformation operations. pic.twitter.com/wCVQQqnU4N
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
11. Graphika receives money from the Pentagon, Navy, and Air Force, while simultaneously supporting human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Working with both the perpetrators & those representing the victims is very 2023. pic.twitter.com/o2UmQjB07q
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
12. During the War on Terror the DHS was harshly criticized by progressives for civil rights violations and targeting of Muslims. Now DHS sub-entities like CISA work closely with progressive tech. Here Twitter warmly welcomes a DHS/CISA staffer's job application. pic.twitter.com/8tqzTs0Xrw
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
13. Other DHS staff such as Matt Masterson become fellows at the Stanford Internet Observatory and work on the Virality Project's censorship of "true stories of vaccine side effects." The revolving door between academia, government, NGO's and BigTech is endless. pic.twitter.com/aKQMFDRqLb
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
14. As reported by @shellenbergerMD, The Aspen Institute combined WaPo, NYT, Rollingstone, NBC, CNN, Twitter, Facebook, Stanford, and "anti-disinfo" NGOs like FirstDraft to practice an oddly prescient "hack and leak" exercise on the Hunter Biden laptop BEFORE its release. pic.twitter.com/XGVyCHM94r
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
15. When the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, the existence of the recent tabletop exercise became instant important news – but the journalists who’d attended stayed mum, perhaps granting off-the-record privileges to the organizers. pic.twitter.com/hhocN6jHHc
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
16. "We totally blew it on our Burisma tabletop this summer — we didn't have Trump announcing "Lock him up" until day *nine* of the Burisma information operation" writes Garret Graff, the Aspen Institute’s Director of Cyber Initiatives. pic.twitter.com/xVkZ0xshV3
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
17. "LOL! Ok, off the record, what's our working theory here of what happened?" replies Noah Shachtman, current Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief. pic.twitter.com/tn4UhIVLmf
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
18. Last week Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was alleged to have instigated the "Russian" "hack" letter signed by 50 former intel officials. At RightsCon, civil society's biggest digital rights event, Blinken spoke on 'disinformation' with Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa. pic.twitter.com/Wu8zIdL8E1
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
19. See how it works? The people accusing others of "disinformation" RUN the biggest disinformation campaigns themselves.
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
20. Anti-disinformation conferences teem with Beltway journalists – the same names from the Post, Times, Atlantic, and NBC, over and over – but these proto-censorship workshops are often off the record, like defense or intel confabs. Reporters are participants, not adversaries. pic.twitter.com/BmExtHKsVW
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
21. The scale of funding is similarly beyond shocking. Governments and foundations pour millions – one company alone reportedly won $979 million from the Pentagon – into "anti-disinformation" firms and NGOs. pic.twitter.com/7YeBpxOMnW
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
22. Craig Newmark is reported to have given more than $200m to journalism projects, (by another estimate $338m) including the founding funds for the Stanford Internet Observatory. pic.twitter.com/HOh6CMMt8q
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
23. Whether it's the ADL with election miscreants, the Alethea Group counting China-linked accounts "amplifying known right-wing figures," or the Atlantic Council monitoring "opposition activity" around the Iran deal, the NGOs make blacklists of wrongthinkers: pic.twitter.com/w0qoPNdnpY
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
24. The #TwitterFiles are riddled with removal demands from opaque cut-out organizations like the Center for Countering Digital Hate, whose mysterious funding never troubles either Twitter execs or the reporters who transmit their demands. pic.twitter.com/ERAGsxe6TX
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
25. Media forwards the blacklist demands to industry: pic.twitter.com/IU5l6WFvY6
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
26. Industry folds, and all the people from these groups – the same names, over and over – get together for hors d'oeuvres at cozy conferences with NATO STRATCOM, the Center for European Policy Analysis, the Carnegie Endowment, etc. One big club. pic.twitter.com/Chv0qiDeqK
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
27. Here 12 Attorneys General ask Twitter to deplatform the 'disinformation dozen". Twitter jumps into action to help. pic.twitter.com/wFVZeQjASW
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
28. Nor was I prepared to read bluntly Orwellian communications like Twitter's cheery "Visibility Filtering Year in Review" Newsletter, boasting of new innovations in "soft intervention" and the "Visibility Filtering Library." pic.twitter.com/02pZ7viqXK
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
29. More surprising was the violation of commonly held privacy values. Meedan (one of Twitter’s 4 main 'anti-disinformation' partners on Covid) had an Omidyar funded project called CryptoChat that advocated peering into private, encrypted messages to weed out "misinformation". pic.twitter.com/0OQ0Xx7790
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
30. In a similar vein The Algorthmic Transparency Institute (a core Virality Project partner) conducted Stasi-style “civic listening” and “automated collection of data” from “closed messaging apps” to hunt down "problematic content" through its Junkipedia initiative. pic.twitter.com/ALUsAFuMc0
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
31. NGOs shill for corporate products. The Public Good Projects (a Twitter's COVID 'misinformation' partner) ran initiatives to "increase vaccine demand". @lhfang's #TwitterFiles revealed BioNTech sought Twitter's help to repress a vaccine equity campaign. https://t.co/C9P74aP6xf pic.twitter.com/xb9akqI0YY
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
32. The story of the #TwitterFiles and the Censorship-Industrial Complex (CIC) is really the story of the collapse of public trust in experts and institutions, and how those experts struck back, by trying to pool their remaining influence into a political monopoly:
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
33. In the #TwitterFiles we repeatedly see terms like "infodemic," "information pollution," and "information disorder," which express elite panic over the great technological explosion that has radically expanded the "contagion" of democratic participation. pic.twitter.com/D7lCZxdIVv
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
34. The Western "anti-disinformation" field, with its Government collaboration and calls for more state control over speech and expression, is betraying human rights activists around the world, who fight against online government repression.
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
35. Let's put the "non-government" back into NGO and defund the "anti-disinformation" industry. After all, the information control shoe will one day be on the other foot.
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
36. Read the full essay at https://t.co/62mHlZT6hq. With additional research from @mtaibbi and @bergerbell
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
