International Politics

Twitter: Elon Musk Reveals US Demanded Suspension Of 250K Accounts, Including Journalist

Twitter chief Elon Musk on Tuesday disclosed that US Government demanded the suspension of 250k Twitter accounts, including those belonging to journalists and Canadian officials

Washington: Twitter chief Elon Musk on Tuesday disclosed that US Government demanded the suspension of 250k Twitter accounts, including those belonging to journalists and Canadian officials, reported Fox News.

He made the revelation while sharing the latest round of โ€œTwitter Files,โ€ which were made public by the journalist Matt Taibbi.

โ€œUS govt agency demanded suspension of 250k accounts, including journalists & Canadian officials!โ€ tweeted Musk.

The new release of internal Twitter correspondence details the relationship between the social media company and government agencies.
Taibbi revealed the US governmentโ€™s mounting and endless pressure on Twitter to work hand-in-hand with Congress to hunt for Russian meddling on the platform, reported Fox News.

The Global Engagement Center โ€” described by Taibbi as โ€œa fledgling analytic/intelligence arms of the State Departmentโ€ โ€” went public by releasing a report to media with a list of โ€œsuspect accountsโ€ which it said were โ€œRussian personas and proxies.โ€
However, Twitterโ€™s subsequent task force to hunt Russian influence on the platform showed โ€œno coordinatedโ€ effort and mostly โ€œlone-wolfโ€ accounts with low ad spends, reported Fox News.

These accounts were described based on criteria like โ€œโ€˜Describing the coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,โ€™ โ€˜blaming โ€œresearch conducted at the Wuhan institute,โ€™ and โ€˜attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIAโ€™,โ€ according to Taibbi.
The GEC report included a list of accounts that followed โ€œtwo or moreโ€ Chinese diplomatic accounts and was 250,000 names long.

Under U.S. government pressure, Twitter went on to suspend nearly 250,000 accounts, including accounts tied to journalists, some questioning the pandemicโ€™s origins, and accounts that followed โ€œtwo or moreโ€ Chinese diplomatic accounts, reported Fox News.
Notably, an earlier batch of the โ€œTwitter Filesโ€ showed former President Donald Trump was de-platformed after pressure from the social media companyโ€™s employees.
Off lately, there have been many changes on Twitter after Musk became the CEO of the microblogging site. Recently, he announced a change in the User Interface of the platformโ€™s โ€˜Bookmarksโ€™ feature.

Also, Read: Pakistan announces new restrictions on transit of Afghan commodities

Musk hinted that the upcoming changes would make it โ€œEasy to create folders to bookmark tweets into various categoriesโ€.
Musk had earlier announced โ€œSignificant backend server architecture changesโ€ on the platform.

The multi-billionaire announced earlier on that the new Twitter Policy will not only follow science but also question science, reasonably.
โ€œNew Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science,โ€ Musk tweeted.
Musk stated, โ€œAnyone who says that criticizing them is doubting science itself cannot be regarded as a scientist,โ€ in a follow-up tweet to his initial policy statement.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by HW News staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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