Angus King’s list of ‘suspicious’ Twitter accounts included political critics
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Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on February 21, 2023 at 10:58am
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President Trump on How the Democrats Cheated Kari Lake in Arizona
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AUGUSTA, Maine — U.S. Sen. Angus King’s 2018 campaign flagged hundreds of social media accounts as suspicious in communications with Twitter, including those run by the Maine Republican Party and conservative activists.
The communications were made public on Saturday as part of an ongoing release of certain internal documents known as the “Twitter Files” overseen by new CEO Elon Musk and independent journalists who share his view that the site suppressed conservative viewpoints, even though Twitter’s own research shows right-leaning outlets see more amplification.
The files have shown the social media site dealing with thorny issues of censorship during a rise of online misinformation with campaigns lobbying Twitter on its policing of accounts. Musk’s critics worry that the documents are being selectively released to fit a narrative.
King’s example fits that on both counts. The files show a time-intensive effort by his campaign to flag more than 350 Twitter accounts as “suspicious” after a conversation with one of the site’s higher-ups. The senator’s office said one of the two lists his campaign provided to Twitter was released by journalist Matt Taibbi and the other included liberal sources of misinformation.
Almost all of the flagged accounts were conservative and appear to be under anonymous handles. Among them were legitimate accounts, including a “research” campaign run by the Maine Republican Party. There were also individual supporters of state Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, who ran a longshot campaign against King that year.
That group included conservative activists, including former Republican legislative candidate Matthew Maloney and real estate developer and former gubernatorial candidate David Jones.
The spreadsheet provided to Twitter by King’s campaign included justifications for flagging them, including those who shared messages critical of King. Maloney was among 50 or so deemed a “troll.” Jones was a “local troll.” Many others appeared to be bots. King’s team called the Republican account “SO WEIRD.”
Jones said he was surprised and disappointed in his appearance on the list, adding that while he rarely agrees with King, he has always respected him.
“It’s not like Eric was going to beat him. Why would he even do it?” Jones said. “Is he insecure?”
Twitter got the spreadsheet in September 2018 after King’s campaign manager, Toby McGrath, had a conversation with Kevin Kane, a former Republican congressional staffer who led the company’s public policy arm, according to an internal email published by Taibbi.
That followed a conversation about “a doctored and misleading video” that the King campaign flagged for Twitter’s internal review, King spokesperson Matthew Felling said in a statement. Staff responded by inviting the campaign to share other accounts that raised alarms.
King’s campaign later shared two internal lists “flagging misleading information coming from both sides of the political spectrum, not just from conservative sources,” Felling said.
The senator’s office did not say what the video was, but many of the spreadsheet entries are dated around the same time that Brakey’s campaign released an edited video of King that the Republican tried to use to allege the senator was comparing Russian hacking to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Felling said King’s campaign did not refer accounts to Twitter for the express purpose of banning them, but that they were flagged for review. Brakey compared King’s activity to “ black lists of dissidents for censorship and monitoring” in a Sunday tweet and said he was considering a Federal Election Commission complaint against King, though he did not cite any area of law.
“I think it’s wrong to censor people who are critical of him, whether they’re coming from the left or the right,” Brakey said in an interview.
King has been outspoken in the realm of disinformation, questioning representatives from Twitter, Facebook and Google in 2016 on the subject of interference in that year’s election by singling out a Columbia University report on Russian troll farms, bots and other accounts.
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Comment by Willem Post on February 21, 2023 at 7:15am
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Angus King is doing a financial and environmental disservice to Maine and Mainers.
He does not belong in the U.S. Senate
Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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