The social network’s boss says the US government had “full access” to everything
Billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk has said he was shocked to learn the true scale of US government involvement and access to Twitter communications when he bought and took full control of the social media giant last year.
“The degree to which government agencies had complete access to everything that was happening on Twitter surprised me,” Musk told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, claiming he was “not aware” of it until he eventually bought Twitter for $44,000. millions of dollars. last October
Musk confirmed that “everything” includes supposedly private direct messages from users, but Sunday’s brief teaser of the upcoming interview did not show whether Musk called out any particular agency or its methods. It’s also unclear what has changed since then to limit the scope of government access to people’s private communications.
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— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 16, 2023
Since buying Twitter in October and installing himself as the platform’s new CEO, Musk has been releasing regular batches of documents and internal communications aimed at clarifying its previously opaque censorship policies and its cozy ties to federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, recruiting independent agencies. journalists to break through each dump of documents.
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Twitter files revealed growing government control: Matt Taibbi
Journalist Matt Taibbi, who reported on the first batch of files in December, recently described the collusion between social media platforms, non-governmental organizations and the US government to suppress information they didn’t like as the “industrial complex of censorship”. it is “a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in the service of larger narrative goals,” and the very opposite of a free press as envisioned in the US Constitution.
Last month, along with Twitter Files reporter Michael Shellenberger, Taibbi was called to testify before the Select Subcommittee on Armaments of the Federal Government.