Elon Musk (pictured above) released the 8th installment of the Twitter Files on Tuesday. Twitter Files #1 through #7 detailed an incestuous relationship between Twitter and the Justice Department to squash the Hunter Biden laptop story before and after the 2020 election, to censor and shadow-ban specific accounts, to counter what Justice claims is "election misinformation," and to track and prosecute January 6th rioters. Twitter Files #8, however, showed another Cabinet-level agency – the U.S. Department of Defense – in bed with Twitter executives to assist with PsyOps campaigns and spread propaganda in foreign countries.
AFN spoke with Joseph Vazquez of Media Research Center who says it's another black eye for the social media giant.
"The debate on whether Twitter was acting as a purely private entity is officially over," Vazquez emphasizes. "Now we find out through The Intercept that Twitter was helping the Department of Defense with a propaganda campaign."
As with the first seven Twitter drops, there was hardly a ripple from the mainstream media over #8. Vazquez says with they won't be able to hide the news forever.
"This is too big of a bombshell to just sweep under the rug," he argues. "I mean, you're talking about big tech collusion with government on a completely different level."
He says heads need to roll and safeguards need to be put in place to protect Americans' First Amendment freedoms. "Congress needs to drag the clowns involved at Twitter, the FBI, and the Department of Defense, put them on public display, and let the American people hear them try to explain themselves and put this whole thing on blast," says Vazquez.
The Intercept reports that the direct assistance Twitter provided to the Pentagon "goes back at least five years" when an official working with U.S. Central Command emailed a Twitter representative, requesting that Twitter approve the verification of one account and "whitelist" a list of Arab-language accounts "we use to amplify certain messages."
