Matt Taibbi shares details on government, NGOs and FBI's role in censorship
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi joined 'Unfiltered with Dan Bongino' to discuss his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee about the Twitter Files.
Journalist Matt Taibbi joined "Unfiltered with Dan Bongino" for his first interview since Thursday’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee about the Twitter Files.
Taibbi shed light on the network of organizations and NGOs he says are responsible for censoring content on social media platforms.
He spoke about his work on the Twitter Files and claimed that state-funded organizations are sending lists of names to companies like Twitter, resulting in accounts being taken down.
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"Originally what we thought was going on was that only the FBI and DHS maybe, and maybe a few other agencies, were directly telling companies like Twitter to pull down a few accounts here and there, but as time went on, we learned that actually there's a whole complex of organizations and NGOs," Taibbi said.
"A lot of them are state-funded, some of them are entirely state-funded that are sending huge lists of names to these companies. That's the primary route by which people are taken off places like Twitter or Facebook or any social media site."
Democratic Congresswomen Stacey Plaskett and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz both questioned journalist Matt Taibbi during a House hearing on March 9, 2023. (House Judiciary )
Bongino shared how libertarian-leaning conservatives have long-held concerns about the Patriot Act and how efforts to combat foreign interference in elections had turned into an effort to censor domestic content.
Taibbi said Bongino's analysis was correct, as the government's efforts had progressed from counterterrorism to Russian interference, domestic extremism and censoring stories about vaccine side effects.
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"This effort actually began with counterterrorism in 2015," Taibbi said. "Then it progressed to Russian foreign interference in 2016, 2017, and the next thing you knew, it was domestic violent extremism, and then what we found just this week, we found memos talking about the desire to strike down true stories of vaccine side effects or true stories that might encourage hesitancy, vaccine hesitancy."
"So they went from counterterrorism to going after true material within the space of a couple of years. So it's a small group of people at first, and now it's a really, really big pool of people that they're looking at."
Taibbi noted his experience testifying on Capitol Hill and the "outrageous" treatment he and fellow witness Michael Shellenberger received from Democratic lawmakers.
He added that these Democrats would never treat a reporter from outlets like The New York Times or Washington Post in such a manner and that the language used to describe them as a "direct threat" was ominous.
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Despite his concerns, Taibbi maintained his commitment to his work as a journalist.
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