What it was like when i started twitter. And it makes us want a question says crack our, whether whether the news that were getting is really news today. Words being influenced by some higher power. Exactly. By the way, the New York Times also wrote about my pioneering twitter at the time. And so it m p r, back here i am using twitter while i was doing the news. When i was back on the cnn to a twitter board, we go and see it goes a little shows in today by our intrepid staff. Not me. Oh, its all about all the way to go. Alley. For clarifying working people are not a special interest. Tired of part, us and hacks. I start with that and i want to do to see that only to dovetail into the economy of what twitter was compared to what twitter has become. Is a corner of the latest revelations of the National Controversy known as the twitter files installment of the twitter files has been released this time. Dealing has deal detailing, has several Government Agencies interacted with the platform. And thats how youd be saying, quote, the file show the f b i acting as dorman, to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship and compensating agencies across the federal government from the state department to the pentagon, to the c. I a 300000000 people, use twitter worldwide, and many considered in the hub for communication for news, for entertainment. However, these days, its taking a bit of a beginning, specifically because of the twitter files. So what are the twitter files that you may have heard about . Okay, it is a massive data, a leak of quitters internal documents revealed by a hacker group thats. Busy how big impacting these documents stay with me. They give us an inside look at the stuff about twitter that we never knew. How do we algorithms really work . Their policies, the procedures, their biases, the link included more than 1700. 00 files. It really is a, its like a peak right into our twitter operate behind the scenes. For example, what do they do with your data . When you get on to what, what do they do with you . Well, one of the things they say in this report is that twitter monitors direct messages and then shares their users location you. If youre in there putting in a direct message with 3rd party advertisers. So much for your privacy, right . Thats how they make money. At the expense of your privacy, thats what a file also reveals that twitter promoted users that had a lot of followers even if what they had to say was neither relevant nor engaging. The matter, as long as you get a lot of followers you, theyre going to put you up. Somebody whos a genius who has something to say, thats important, theyre not. So what is it more of a popularity contest, right . Thats part of what the twitter files is apparently revealing. What else . Well twitter or try to tackle hate speech. Good. But then comes the question of what is hate . Whos the hater . Who gets to the side . Did they share how they came up with that with us . These link documents have raised concerns about twitters commitment to free speech data protection, and its algorithmic biases. But maybe the real question is the, the one that we have to ask ourselves, why would we think this is almost primordial right . Why . Why do we think that a publicly traded company that is there only to make money . Would really give a quote about fairness or balance or even truth for that matter. Thats kinda not what theyre there to do. By the way, the twitter files are not a one shot deal. Its a series of reports that are released by journal. This map tie a be a cover or a series of events that twitter chose to moderate among the stories the twitter act at least suppressed or controlled the 100 by the laptop ground diversity. For example, the donald trump cancellation from twitter, the january 6th storming of the capitol, is also an installment of the twitter files that deals with how some users are shadow band. And yet another on how the u. S. Military st. Com to use as twitter, to run online, influence campaigns in other countries. And joining us now to talk about this is jamal ra thomas. Hes a video host. His show is called fault lines. Ive been on a couple of times as a matter of fact. And. Busy actually being here, im glad to be here. This is important. It is important. Yeah. And also, and by the way, just i want to go on the record with you as saying that i really, really like leaks. Yeah. You know, i dont understand how were living in a time when the people who criticize leaks the most. Our journalists, super weird. We kind of where we should live for leaks was internal. Its right. I mean the information, how do you know what your government is doing, what various elements of society is doing without knowing whats going on behind the scenes . This is the julia massage thing. Right. Exactly. I keep seeing the stories where uh, the amazon b cs of the world and the New York Times of the world and the see and ends of the world, the fox news of the world. All of them think the, the Corporate Media are angry when they see a report that gives citizens new information. They didnt know about their government. Right. And they take the side of the government. Its Something Weird you would think that media would be more inclined to, you know, we want this information, we want into what goes on behind the scenes. We want to know how to sausages basically made. And it was very weird. I mean, even with this on stuff, they covered the stuff and then somewhere along the way, it was like this guy for leasing information about the state secrets and all of that stuff. How do you know which a government is the one who can see behind the st . Exactly. So lets get to the twitter files. I know we, we kind of came in through the back door of it or say, but, but if its another case of somebody doing breakthrough reporting. Yes. Where we have an opportunity to see as you say, how the sausage is really made, right. What twitter really does that we didnt know about. Yes. And what weve learned is that they have if, if nothing else a very, what was the relationship with our government and maybe even part of our internal community . That is to put it mildly, i mean, a lot of people have suspicions about twitter or social media and everything is going to behind the scenes, especially with the reaction with us. But i mean if you notice everybody who has an upper or is like, well, wait a minute, is it just the social Media Company . Why all these people freaking out . And you know what the release of the sort of i was meant to ab schellenberg or im barry wice. All, it makes it very clear that yeah, they were freaking out because that was the incestuous relationship i think was where do you between the 2. That basically you ended up with the situation where these guys were having meetings with intel on information to either disclose information to keep people shuttle ban content meant by the way, was it bad contact, meaning the stuff was flu. They just just like the fact that the stuff would be exposed. So there are some of the parts to this, right . Lets, lets try and get through this before we get on the subject of the push back that the media and the government seems to be laying on people like matt, tie a be because one a hell of a good journalist. And it doesnt deserve to be talked about the way theyre talking about it, but well get to that. Uh, the 1st part, i guess is a big tech. Yeah. And of itself, weve always thought that big tech twitter i was one of the pioneers of actually usage of twitter. I believe in twitter. I thought twitter was going to help us democratize our society. Instead. Its now being partial about corporations by government. And i think what the story showed is that the government has access to twitter and can shop things down where the rest of us cant right. Now they will probably argue what we just suggested. But, you know, if the government is telling you, hey, we dont particularly like this information or this information, thats what this information is going on by the russians. Well, of course is putting a pressure on the people to do one thing or the other. Its kind of like mainstream either like radio or tv or any other medium you get, you need to control how information is being processed to the public itself, waiting, waiting to dictate, well, even if we cant necessarily control the entirely we need at the very least crowded in certain areas on to prevent it from going to places, we dont necessarily want people to find out. So somebody in the government can shut down information before it gets to me or even after its out there. Um, as theyve done. Yeah. Then its not free flow of information by definition, by definition, right . I mean, look at this point. So now i understand, by the way, if its something that is, you know, of, you know, state secrets, uh, you know, the code to the nuclear ball name and that Something Like that, i would say, okay, you know, National Security and stuff, real National Security. Its definitely not about not information about we found out that our government is planning to, to bomb somebody. No, no, i want to know. Yeah. I want to know if you got a bomb mexico or singapore or whoever the hell you got about. Well, theres over classification there what they, things they would call National Security that isnt necessarily National Security thats. Thats why i think we need to realize in this country that our social media is look at my comments. Like normally somebody will go up to dfcs, last streaming on a podium with some to that effect way beyond that point, we are at the point where if you mean something to say, what is you to facebook . So any of the social media is the way that people are accommodate information for one and explain it in another case. And so the same way that you may have influence on television, what influence on radio and this point you need to have this kind of influence. And so for media itself, because thats what people are getting the main part of this away from a lot of like a lot of the story that i read that was revealed by these folks who hacked the information from twitter. And, and i know the word hack me, so i might argue with sensitive apparently apparently mister musk right. Cooperated with it eventually and said look heres the information i want you to have. You hit them up and you just okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So, so thats still good journalism. Its not like somebody handed them something. Um i guess one of the big arguments was the coded that the way they treated the convent story, right . What, what is your take on . So one of the sales um would have been very Variety Institute or some to that effect. But basically for what they ended up with was the government was trying to change the information on certain if National Cove is going to particular up, there was a huge amount of push back on vaccines mass, all of that stuff. And so people were going after, lets say certain organizations were go up to, to, to say, hey, we dont like this particular information. We dont like that information didnt matter whether it was true, but it isnt didnt, didnt like, lets say the direction that the information, you know, is one of those like for the sake of mankind, the safety of the world. Exactly. You cant report that because its going to make people then think, yeah, that they shouldnt be vaccinated and etc, etc. But even it was pro. So they would say here, real vaccine effects will side effects. Now, of course, even like as a medical professionals that admit that the vaccine it had certain effects, but overall it was better, etc. Well, americans, it was like a, we shouldnt be the schools that we dont. We dont want that information out because people are going to use this information in order to take it in a particular right to go. It gets um, some of the, lets say measures that the government was using to try to deal with cobra. I think one of the things, and by the way, i think the whole coven thing just got away from us as a society. And it got to the point where cove it became a screaming match rather than a conversation. And what a shame because once it gets to that point, no ones going to listen and everyones going to be accusing the other side and thats actually. So the problem, a lot of problems i see with the twitter files, the quoted one is the least that makes me go, oh yeah, they were because that thing had no chance of work. Well, it gets credible. Thats kind of the problem, right . If she comes out and says, yeah, we shouldnt mess, going to be getting a bit later on. Okay. Yeah, we should use that. Well, he was saying that because we dont necessarily want to deal with people, go in and buying mask up in the medical professionals that have them, however it gets credibility or if it comes out initially. Yeah, this is, theres no way this is a lovely and then later on you find out, okay, that was when clarity about one way the other about with when he was look coleman, jamal colvin was politicized too soon and too much. And i think if we had as a society at the beginning said, weve got a problem, lets get together and try and fix it, press, but we didnt try and fix it. We tried to fix it to meet our and whether we were a democrat or republican. And i think once that the pony left the bar and it was gone and you werent going to get them back. Ill tell you what does bother me though you disagree. But it did become politicized. I mean, you can think of when trump was an Office Couple still trying to do the vaccine democrats on around. It was like, well, i dont know, i dont know that for us. But then of course someone go by and get said you want, everybodys right. So yeah, whats the level of whats politicized . I think my thing is we have that number of people dying that fast was like theres a fire. What do we do with fire . I want you not to move jamal, you got that right . Because when we come back, the story is taken on a life of its own value. Since weve been reporting on twitter, in fact, the people who wrote the twitter files have come under attack message board. So much so that there are now people in the media going after people let like matt tie a b. So mr. Ty ebby while were on, the air has been texting me. Oh, and im going to share when we come back, what matt is saying. So i want you to react to mats comment, so stay there. Were going to come back by the way. I have podcast. Were i, as a journalist, as a latino, as an entrepreneur, i tell my story. I share with you what ive learned my successes, my screw ups, lot of those. Its called the research because part cats, i invite you to check it out and i will see you there when we come back more on twitter. As i mentioned, people like matt, tell you the are being assailed. Right. A sale the good word choice good assailed and were going to visit that with comments from ty youd be who just texted the moments ago. Stay right there. The, [000 00 00;00] the with the discovery of the new world, at the end of the 15 center there appeared atlantics, laved ray, the slave traders from European Countries started building for its on the western coast of the african continent to transport the african inhabitants to america, to be forced into a hard labor until the middle of the 17th century, portugal had laid the main role in this atrocious business. Then great britain, france and the netherlands took the leadership for this fan of 400 years of legal and illegal slave trade. About 17000000 people were forcefully shipped across the atlantic. Not including those who died on the way due to unbearable living conditions. Modern historians estimate that for each slave ship to america, there were 5 who died while captured during transportation and cruel obliteration of rebellion. This ruth was the whole tre. Practiced by the leading European Countries, took away tens of millions of african lines. The organization of United Nations classifies the trans atlantic slave trade as one of the greatest human its abuses in the history of humanity. This is the biggest act of deep orientation of people ever seen by mankind. The so welcome back. Im rick sanchez. It seems to me that more more of what we read, what we are even allowed to have access to is controlled, probably more than it ever has been. Right. And heres what i mean. You see, its not just for twitter. When you google a story, the number of sources that youre allowed to read to get insight or context is limited to the collection of filter new sites. For example, you will get the cable carriers, youll get the whatever, see, and i dont want you to hear from the us. But the mean that works from top newspapers. And maybe maybe ill get a sprinkling of some independent news or some. Busy are and papers or outlets like the guardian, maybe the bbc, which is really not that much different from cnn. So if you really want a different perspective, one that is not filtered or controlled by bigger entities. Good luck. Good luck. So that means that controlled information flow is not just a twitter problem and its kind of a everywhere problem. So were back with general thomas and hes talking uh Twitter Twitter files to be exact kept. Can i share something with you . Absolutely. Look what i just got a little while ago. This is uh uh, you know, tv uh knows that weve been talking about this. He and i started up a conversation hes getting like i said earlier, really, i mean, attacked a sale this. Yeah. On the m. S. N b c, the media and, and so heres what he just wrote to me today. So why dont we publish a politician . It was in color, right . Yeah, they say all of a sudden they say, im a republican and im not, im a political independent. I have a long history of criticizing both party. Its my belief among other things, based on what ive seen in the twitter files. This is matt thought youd be texting me this morning. He says that the democrats are far more dangerous and more organized on this speech. Issue than republicans, but that doesnt make me a republican. Youll note that im not being allowed to make that case on the air. Hes right. What made is on you some of that, itd be with his on thats on attack. Basically came into the interview going after im tired, even said whats up select, this is going to be like a root canal. He was wrong. But when listen to what you just said, heres one of the best. I think one of the finest reporters that we have in the united states, and thats how youd be nominal. A phenomenal journal. Yes, real journalist detail do. And theyre attacking it is the weirdest thing in the world. He gets information to present information. This is what your government is doing on. So what . So for me to make you have intelligence services, working with social media behind the scenes in a way that you dont know anything ab