"Today, American taxpayers are unwittingly financing the growth and power of a censorship industrial complex run by America’s scientific and technological elite, which endangers our liberties and democracy," Shellenberger explained. "The Twitter Files, state attorneys, general lawsuits and investigative reporters have revealed a large and growing network of government agencies, academic institutions and nongovernmental organizations that are actively censoring American citizens, often without their knowledge, on a range of issues."
The weaponization of the government already has been documented to include organized attacks by agencies such at the FBI and the Department of Justice on parents, on conservatives, on Catholics, on pro-lifers and more, including the vast scheme that was orchestrated against President Trump, before and while he was in office.
Taibbi, on social media, called out the web of censorship that features online speech monitoring programs, including those run by private groups that had direct access to Twitter's insider operations.
"This, ultimately, is the most serious problem with the censorship industrial complex," Taibbi reported, according to the Times report. "Packaged as a bulwark against lies and falsehood, it is itself often a major source of disinformation, with American taxpayers funding their own estrangement from reality."Joe Biden even tried to assemble a government "Disinformation Governance Board," which quickly was dropped from his plans when its agenda was revealed. The Twitter Files largely are from the platform's agenda before it was purchased by Elon Musk, who has since sought to restore a semblance of free speech there.
But Taibbi testified that he found Twitter, Facebook, Google and other tech companies had been using "a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government."
People of "all political persuasions" were under threat from that, he said."The First Amendment and the American population accustomed to the right to speak is the best defense left against the censorship industrial complex. If there’s anything that Twitter Files show is that we’re in danger of losing this most precious right, without which all democratic rights are impossible."
They were part of a contingent that months ago began exposing, from Twitter Files, "the extent to which the FBI worked with social media to control what Americans said there."