Matt Taibbi released the most recent Twitter Files on Friday. The focus of this batch is the role a dubious source played in helping shape the false narrative of Russian influence on Twitter.
To some Twitter exec’s credit, they were uncomfortable with the dubious claims that pretty much anything a conservative, MAGA supporter, et al. said was considered “Russian misinformation.” Even accounts that had no ties to any known Russian bot or activity were deemed to be spreading Russian propaganda unknowingly and should therefore be silenced.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. This is the same “logic” used to assert that all white people are racists. Even if they don’t think they are, they are racist. Without knowing it on a conscious level. Or something. It’s an intentionally crafted no-win construct that is now being applied to “misinformation” as well as “white supremacy” and “systemic racism.”
The latest installment of the Twitter Files focused on the dubious source that the media and Democrats heavily relied on to peddle the false narrative of Russian bot activity on the platform. . . . . On Friday, [Matt] Taibbi did a deep dive into their source, Hamilton 68, a so-called “dashboard” that purportedly monitored Russian bot activity.Hamilton 68, which was spearheaded by former FBI special agent and MSNBC contributor Clint Watts, was operated by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a “neoliberal think tank” founded in 2017 with an advisory council that includes Clinton ally John Podesta, former Obama-era acting CIA director Michael Morrell, former Obama official Michael McFaul and The Bulwark editor-at-large Bill Kristol.Taibbi wrote Hamilton 68 “was the source of hundreds if not thousands of mainstream print and TV news stories in the Trump years.”But behind the scenes, Twitter executives trashed Hamilton 68 and deliberated whether they should publicly rebuke ASD.. . . . Taibbi continued, “Twitter didn’t have the guts to out Hamilton 68 publicly but did try to speak to reporters off the record… Again, even Roth, like most Twitter execs an ardent Democratic partisan, saw that the Hamilton scheme would lead people ‘to assert that any right-leaning content is propagated by Russian bots.’”. . . . Among the media outlets that refused to comment to Taibbi include MSNBC, The Washington Post, Politico and Mother Jones, all publishing “at least 14 Hamilton 68 stories” during the Trump years. In addition to Democrats like Schiff, Feinstein, Blumenthal, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, and Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford who elevated Hamilton 68, Taibbi also called out universities like Harvard, Princeton, and New York University (NYU) for citing the dashboard as a source.
As with all #TwitterFiles releases, this thread is lengthy, too lengthy to include here in full, so be sure to read it here (archive link). Here are some highlights from Taibbi’s latest Twitter Files installment:
The goal, of course, is to crush free speech, dissent, and wrongthink. The best way they could do that was to proclaim everything that strayed from the leftist narrative as Russian disinformation. And it was all a lie.
As noted above, some Twitter execs did see the problem and wanted to be transparent about what they found. But they lacked the courage of their convictions and/or didn’t want to risk their careers by telling the truth. It seems to have paid off for them, as many landed quite cushy jobs in the federal government.
As Taibbi notes in his substack post, this Hamilton 68 resource was used to make “ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork.”
It’s unclear to me if that was the goal at Hamilton 68 and at its parent organization the Alliance for Defending Democracy (ADD), but it is clear that it was used for that purpose by various media outlets (and the federal government) to push an entirely fictional narrative about the role of Russian disinformation in American politics.
For its part, the ADD responded to the Twitter Files release.
Taibbi writes in a separate substack post entitled “Responding to Hamilton 68”:
Days before yesterday’s Twitter Files report about Hamilton 68, I wrote the public relations officers of both of the sites’ parent organizations, the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) and the German Marshall Fund (GMF). I told them I was in possession of the Hamilton 68 list, which purported to track “Russian influence activities.” I said I had a slew of internal Twitter documents that among other things identified their project as “bullshit.” . . . . On the remote chance Hamilton 68 had inside information legitimizing the linking of Dennis Michael Lynch, David Horowitz, and @TrumpDyke to “Russian influence activities,” I not only reached out to Hamilton’s creators, but when they were quiet, threw a tantrum on Twitter, tagging every member of the ASD advisory board in an effort to hear from them pre-publication. I genuinely wanted to hear an innocent explanation if they had one. They still said nothing. Only after the story blew up online yesterday did they put out an explanation.“FACT SHEET: Hamilton 68 Dashboard (2017-2018)” is embarrassing. . . .
This post is behind a paywall, but the “fact sheet” to which he’s referring is not. And Taibbi’s right, it’s embarrassing.
Essentially, they are stating that they just put the information out there and aren’t responsible for people (in government, the media, etc.) misusing it.
The dashboard’s original methodology acknowledged that “the content within the network is complex and should be understood in a nuanced way.” Members of the media, pundits, and even some lawmakers often failed to include appropriate context when using the dashboard’s data, despite ASD experts’ extensive efforts to correct misconceptions at the time. Because the data was consistently misunderstood or misrepresented, we published multiple follow-up instructions clarifying key points, including: “Some accounts we track are automated bots, some are trolls, and some are real users. Some are in Russia, but many are not”.Unfortunately, the mischaracterization of the dashboard continues today. We compiled a list of false or misleading claims and have provided the facts here.
You can read the whole thing here (archive link).
Ultimately, the Hamilton dashboard was indeed used to silence the speech of normal Americans and to label anyone who disagreed with the going leftist talking point as a Russian bot or as spreading Russian propaganda.
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