www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/december/19/twitter-files-make-it-clear-we-must-abolish-the-fbi/
Ron Paul -- ‘Twitter Files’ Make it Clear: We Must Abolish the FBI
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Excerpt:
As we learn more and more from the “Twitter Files,” it is becoming all too obvious that Federal agencies such as the FBI viewed the First Amendment of our Constitution as an annoyance and an impediment. In Friday’s release from the pre-Musk era, journalist Matt Taibbi makes an astute observation: Twitter was essentially an FBI subsidiary.
The FBI, we now know, was obsessed with Twitter. We learned that agents sent Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth some 150 emails between 2020 and 2022. Those emails regularly featured demands from US government officials for the “private” social media company to censor comments and ban commenters they did not like.
The Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), a US government entity that included the FBI as well as other US intelligence agencies expressly forbidden from domestic activities, numbered 80 agents engaged regularly in telling Twitter which Tweets to censor and which accounts to ban. The Department of Homeland Security brought in outside government contractors and (government-funded) non-governmental organizations to separately pressure Twitter to suppress speech the US government did not like.
US Federal government agencies literally handed Twitter lists of Americans it wanted to see silenced, and Twitter complied. Let that sink in.
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The ONLY way any of this matters, and I say this with utmost sincerity, is if, IF, we allow ourselves, as a collective, to be defined by the number of likes/dislikes associated with ANY of the "social media" platforms we find ourseles on.
These platforms, owned by the ultra-rich, seem to be designed to keep us fighting over scraps while those who benefit from our hatred of each other continue to profit.
It should be no surprise that any government is using these tools to push whatever agenda they deem fit. Don't blame the institution, it exists as a means unto itself in this way.
No message of "unity" or "greater good" can truly land until we're able, as a collective, to agree to the core principle of the sanctity of life. It's the reason any of us who are lucky to be alive at this moment are still here, and for my money is as noble a reason as any to keep fighting for our right as a species to exist.
tldr: don't hate the player, hate the game.