Did FBI Pay Twitter to Censor Content as Elon Musk Claims? What We Know

A trove of communications leaked this month from behind the scenes of Twitter has revealed in new detail the company's relationships with a number of government officials and agencies such as the FBI.

Known as the "Twitter files," these threads have unveiled conversations that show security officials were in contact with the social media giant before its takeover by the company's new CEO Elon Musk.

Promoted by Musk, the conversations have been presented in chapters by a team of freelance journalists in an attempt to shine a light on the company's decision-making, including the suppression of news stories and the suspension of public figures like Donald Trump.

Newsweek recently explored some of the "Twitter files" allegations surrounding the platform's role in inhibiting the proliferation of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, a story that has been repeatedly mentioned across many of these threads.

Among the most recent releases, journalist Michael Shellenberger again refocused attention around that story and the requests made by the FBI to review content shared on the platform.

In one of the 49 tweets posted by Shellenberger on December 19, 2022, one even suggested that a financial motive may have influenced Twitter's decision-making.

Referring to an email between Twitter executives, Shellenberger tweeted: "The FBI's influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time."

The email, purportedly sent to former Twitter official Jim Baker, said: "Jim, FYI, in 2019 SCALE instituted a reimbursement program for our legal process response from the FBI.

"Prior to the start of the program, Twitter chose not to collect under this statutory right of reimbursement for the time spent processing requests from the FBI.

"l am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019! This money
is used by LP for things like the TTR and other LE-related projects (LE training, tooling,
etc.)."

The email was sent in February 2021, four months after the release of the New York Post's first exposé of the Hunter Biden laptop details.

Shellenberger's speculative suggestion—that the FBI's "influence campaign may have been helped" by the millions of dollars it paid—was interpreted as fact by some observers.

Many public figures, including Elon Musk, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), Donald Trump Jr., and Fox News Host Sean Hannity, all tweeted messages claiming summarily that the FBI paid Twitter to censor content.

Quoting Shellenberger's thread, Elon Musk tweeted that "government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor info from the public" in a post receiving more than 440,000 engagements in two days.

As Shellenberger highlights, and as Newsweek has previously stated, the FBI was in contact with Twitter and social media companies in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

The bureau and other agencies warned these companies of potential misinformation campaigns that could disrupt the election, citing fears of interference from foreign actors.

However, the claim that the FBI effectively paid Twitter to censor content, based on the available evidence, is misleading.

Firstly, the Shellenberger thread does not provide sufficient evidence of a quid pro quo relationship between the FBI and Twitter, only the contact that the bureau had with the social media company and a "reimbursement" mentioned separately.

The thrust of Shellenberger's tweets is that communications between the FBI and Twitter around the time of the Hunter Biden story (and the warnings it received prior to its publication) could be interpreted as an attempt to influence the company to suppress the story.

This, combined with the money the company was said to have received, ultimately leads Shellenberger to suggest that the "FBI's influence campaign" was made successful through financial incentives.

However, there are also details that show executives at Twitter were not unduly pressured by the bureau either.

Even one of Shellenberger's tweets states that former Twitter official Yoel Roth told the FBI, after it asked the company to change data sharing arrangements, that it would need to use "normal search warrant" processes to do so.

Later in the thread, Shellenberger suggests Roth had sided with security advice, attaching an email from him that detailed some of the company's response to the Hunter Biden story, recommending warning + deamplification."

The email also stated that the "key factor informing our approach is consensus from experts monitoring election security and disinformation."

Shellenberger later tweeted: "In the end, the FBI's influence campaign aimed at executives at news media, Twitter, & other social media companies worked: they censored & discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story."

Whether or not one views this as proof that the FBI was directly responsible for the story's suppression, the suggestion that Twitter was reimbursed to censor it is still not sufficiently evidenced.

The emails about "reimbursement" do not state the finances were part of a quid pro quo arrangement or if they were directly related to the Hunter Biden story.

There are also few details of what the "reimbursement" process mentioned in the thread pertains to and Newsweek could find no evidence that Twitter ran a premium service to moderate or investigate content. Its moderation tools are available for free to anyone.

So why was there "reimbursement"?

An analysis of Shellenberger's thread by the technology blog Techdirt, published on December 20, 2022, states that under U.S. law, companies receiving requests from legal authorities "can be reimbursed for fulfilling them."

As noted by Techdirt, under U.S. Code 18 §2706 "a governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information under section 2702, 2703, or 2704 of this title shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary and which have been directly incurred in searching for, assembling, reproducing, or otherwise providing such information.

"Such reimbursable costs shall include any costs due to necessary disruption of normal operations of any electronic communication service or remote computing service in which such information may be stored."

There is no further information under the U.S. Code about the exact calculation for requests and no information in the Shellenberger tweets about how Twitter calculated the "reimbursement".

As Techdirt also mentions, there appear to be no grounds for a request to be made to censor accounts or material being shared on social media: "The reimbursement that is talked about in that email is about complying with these information production orders that have been reviewed and signed by a judge."

It's worth noting that Techdirt's article does not provide primary source evidence that this was the reimbursement process which Twitter sought payment for.

Newsweek has contacted Twitter and former executives Yoel Roth and Jim Baker to ask if U.S. Code 18 §2706 was engaged.

In its "Guidelines for law enforcement," Twitter's website notes under the heading "Cost reimbursement": "Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706)."

As mentioned earlier, Shellenberger's inference between the reimbursement process and the FBI's communications could be taken as speculative, not confirmatory.

However, based on the current public evidence, there aren't sufficient grounds to conclude that the FBI successfully requested by way of payment the censorship of the Hunter Biden story or other stories.

While the absence of evidence does not mean that a financially-motivated relationship or contract didn't exist, the details in the Twitter files, alongside U.S. Code that mentions a reimbursement process backed by law (which doesn't mention censorship of content), for now, raises significant doubts about such a relationship between Twitter and the government purported by Musk and others.

Newsweek has contacted Twitter, Michael Shellenberger, and the FBI for comment.