Twitter was censoring American citizens at the same time that Chinese intelligence agents were employed at the company and officials of the Chinese regime were given uncensored use of the social media platform, John Mills, former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Department of Defense, told The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD Television in an interview on Dec. 10.
“MSS [Ministry of State Security] agents, Chinese Foreign Intelligence Agents were working at Twitter and Twitter didn’t care. Jack Dorsey didn’t care. The number one priority of the FBI should be the foreign intelligence threat inside of America,” Mills said, adding that instead of handing down a list of American citizens to be censored, the FBI should have immediately arrested the MSS agents.
Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press, was given access to Twitter’s internal documents by Musk and worked with a team of independent journalists including Matt Taibbi to reveal the censorship carried out by Twitter.
Twitter’s censorship methods, according to Weiss, included placing specific users on a “Trends Blacklist” or a “Search Blacklist.”
“A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss said on Twitter while releasing the second installement of the Twitter files.
“Twitter once had a mission ‘to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.’ Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected,” she added.
Mills warned that the Chinese communist regime has been operating on American soil through Twitter, which he described as a “Disneyland of opportunity” for foreign intrigue.
Free Speech
Mills said that he hopes America returns to what free speech originally meant in the country.Those who are being the most totalitarian today are essentially those who grew up in the United States in the 60s and 70s demanding free speech, he said.
“Now that they retain these lofty positions, they are trying to silence everybody. They really are not true to their words and they don’t really care about free speech. They just care about power,” he said.
Mills believes American citizens need to be more assertive about their rights and should applaud the citizens of China for protesting against their leaders over the regime’s “zero-COVID” policy.
“It’s a little unclear about what’s going on but it seems the mass citizens’ uprising in China has had an effect. I’m sure there has been a cost; I’m sure there has been pain and suffering. We don’t know about but in the end, it does seem like the CCP in many ways was overwhelmed,” he said.
He compared the situations in the United States and China, and said U.S. citizens also can’t “relent” or “give up,” and should hold their government officials accountable.
“This is what happens when citizens lock shoulders and assert their rights,” he said about the recent mass public protests in China.
