The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

Independent research. Not affiliated with any government, agency, or company.

Company

Twitter, Inc. (renamed X)

Documented money flows

Findings that rest on exhibits naming this entity

  • POL-3.6: Twitter's own audit found that the mainstream political right was amplified more than the mainstream left in six of seven countries and found no evidence that algorithms amplify extreme groups more than moderate ones. An analysis of 208 million U.S. Facebook users found that ideological segregation rises from potential exposure to engagement, and that most misinformation identified by Meta's fact-checking program sat in a homogeneously conservative corner with no liberal equivalent.
  • POL-3.7: A preregistered audit of Twitter's engagement-based ranking, published in PNAS Nexus in 2025, found that it amplified emotionally charged, out-group hostile content that users said made them feel worse about their political out-group.
  • POL-3.9: A preregistered 10-day field experiment on X in 2024 with 1,256 participants, using a browser-side reranking method independent of the platform, found that reranking posts with partisan animosity shifted out-party feelings by more than 2 points on a 100-point scale.
  • POL-3.11: Whether engagement-optimizing ranking causes lasting polarization, as distinct from what it amplifies and what users see, is unresolved in the peer-reviewed record.
  • INF-4.1: FBI, DHS and ODNI officials met regularly with platform staff about election content from 2017 and 2018, under the Trump administration, and the meetings continued through the 2022 midterms under the Biden administration.
  • INF-4.2: The FBI agent who ran the Bureau's platform contacts testified, from recollection, that about half of the items the FBI flagged led a platform to act under its terms of service. Twitter told a court in 2023 that its employees reviewed the FBI's flagged tweets independently.
  • INF-4.3: CISA's head of its misinformation team testified that CISA forwarded election officials' reports about posts to platforms in the 2020 election, and the record differs on whether it did so in 2022. The district court wrote in 2023 that no evidence produced in the case tied the Trump administration to the switchboarding, and a 2025 Senate Commerce majority report dates DHS's election-disinformation task force to March 2018.
  • INF-4.4: Twitter's chief executive told the Senate Judiciary Committee on 17 November 2020 that Twitter's 2018 hacked-materials policy was informed by conversations with the U.S. government. Twitter's head of Site Integrity stated in a declaration to the Federal Election Commission that Twitter's Trust and Safety leadership decided on 14 October 2020 to enforce the policy against the New York Post articles.
  • INF-4.6: Google's U.S. table lists 717 court and government requests naming 6,991 items in 2021, mostly for defamation, trademark and privacy, with no misinformation category. Meta's report excludes government reports handled under its Community Standards and lists 3 U.S. items for the first half of 2021 and 21 for the second, and X's report for January to June 2024 has no separate U.S. line in its removal table.
  • INF-4.7: No public dataset states how many government reports to platforms from 2017 to 2024 led to removal, by agency, platform and administration. The only figure in the record is the FBI agent's recollection of about half.
  • INF-4.9: California's Office of Elections Cybersecurity stated that it flagged nearly 300 posts to Facebook and Twitter after the 2020 election and that 98 percent were promptly removed for violating the platforms' community standards. The Ninth Circuit held in 2023 that Twitter's compliance with such a flag was optional, and held in 2024 that the content-category reporting provisions of California's AB 587 likely violate the First Amendment.
  • INF-4.10: On 12 August 2024 Commissioner Breton wrote to X's owner that the European Commission would not hesitate to make full use of its toolbox, including interim measures, and on 18 February 2025 the Commission wrote that the Digital Services Act does not regulate speech. The Commission's first non-compliance decision under the Act, against X on 5 December 2025, fined X 120 million euros for blue-checkmark design, its advertising repository and researcher data access, and did not concern the removal of any post.
  • INF-4.11: Justice Alexandre de Moraes of Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal ordered X suspended in Brazil on 30 August 2024 until X complied with the Court's orders, paid fines and named a legal representative in Brazil.
  • INF-4.12: Executive Order 13925 (Trump, 28 May 2020) was revoked by Executive Order 14029 (Biden, 14 May 2021). Executive Order 14149 (Trump, 20 January 2025) directs that no federal officer, employee or agent engage in or facilitate conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.
  • INF-4.13: The 2026 consent decree in Missouri v. Biden bars the Surgeon General, the CDC and CISA from threatening platforms with punishment unless they remove or reduce protected speech, and records no admission (para. 17). The Ninth Circuit held in O'Handley (2023) that compliance with a California office's flag was optional for Twitter, with no intimation of adverse consequences, and that Twitter's moderation was not state action. Twitter's 2023 brief in Trump v. Twitter, a litigation position, argues that coercion requires the threat of a government sanction and that the FBI's emails were advisory.

Exhibits naming this entity

  • Exhibit 722 21 December 2021. Huszar, Ktena, O'Brien, Belli, Schlaikjer, Hardt (PNAS; Twitter authors): Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter
  • Exhibit 723 27 February 2025. Milli, Carroll, Wang, Pandey, Zhao, Dragan (PNAS Nexus): Engagement, user satisfaction, and the amplification of divisive content on social media
  • Exhibit 729 27 November 2025. Piccardi, Saveski, Jia, Hancock et al. (Science): Reranking partisan animosity in algorithmic social media feeds alters affective polarization
  • Exhibit 1103 2 December 2022. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story (thread, 2 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1104 24-25 October 2020. Twitter, Inc. (internal email, as screenshotted by Matt Taibbi): Twitter internal emails of 24-25 October 2020: 'More to review from the Biden team' and 'An additional report from DNC' (screenshots in Twitter Files Part 1, posts 8 and 9)
  • Exhibit 1105 9 December 2022. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files, Part Three: The Removal of Donald Trump, October 2020 - January 6th 2021 (thread, 9 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1106 16 December 2022. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files, Part Six: Twitter, the FBI Subsidiary (thread, 16 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1107 19 December 2022. Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD), Twitter thread: Twitter Files Part 7: The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop (thread, 19 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1108 20 December 2022. Lee Fang (@lhfang), Twitter thread: Twitter Files Part 8: How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon's Covert Online PsyOp Campaign (thread, 20 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1109 24 December 2022. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files: Twitter and "Other Government Agencies" (thread, 24 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1110 3 January 2023. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files: How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In (thread, 3 January 2023)
  • Exhibit 1111 3 January 2023. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files: Twitter and the FBI "Belly Button" (thread, 3 January 2023)
  • Exhibit 1112 13 January 2023. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: Twitter Files Supplemental: More Adam Schiff Ban Requests, and "Deamplification" (thread, 13 January 2023)
  • Exhibit 1113 18 February 2023. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: Twitter Files #16: Comic Interlude: A Media Experiment (thread, 18-19 February 2023)
  • Exhibit 1114 2 March 2023. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: Twitter Files #17: New Knowledge, the Global Engagement Center, and State-Sponsored Blacklists (thread, 2 March 2023)
  • Exhibit 1115 26 December 2022 (posted 14:10 UTC per the post ID; the capsule index lists 28 December). David Zweig (@davidzweig), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files: How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate (thread, 26 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1116 29 November 2022. U.S. District Court, W.D. La. (deposition taken by plaintiffs, 29 November 2022; filed 3 March 2023): Deposition of Elvis Chan (FBI San Francisco), Missouri v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-01213 (W.D. La.), Doc. 204-1
  • Exhibit 1117 12 January 2023. U.S. District Court, W.D. La. (deposition taken 12 January 2023; filed 4 March 2023): Deposition of Brian J. Scully (CISA), Missouri v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-01213 (W.D. La.), Doc. 209-1
  • Exhibit 1119 17 December 2020 (response letter of 21 December 2020). Twitter, Inc. (counsel Covington & Burling) to the Federal Election Commission: Declaration of Yoel Roth (Twitter Head of Site Integrity), 17 December 2020, Exhibit A to Twitter's response in FEC MUR 7821 / MUR 7827
  • Exhibit 1120 1 June 2023. Twitter, Inc. and Jack Dorsey (WilmerHale), filed in the U.S. District Court, N.D. Cal.: Defendants' Opposition to Plaintiffs' Motion for Indicative Ruling under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60, Trump v. Twitter, No. 21-cv-08378-JD (N.D. Cal.), Doc. 195
  • Exhibit 1121 10 March 2023. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit: O'Handley v. Weber, 62 F.4th 1145 (9th Cir. 2023), No. 22-15071
  • Exhibit 1122 4 February 2026. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Chief Judge Boasberg): Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 23-3004 (JEB) (D.D.C.), Memorandum Opinion, Doc. 27
  • Exhibit 1127 4 September 2024. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Judge M. Smith): X Corp. v. Bonta, No. 24-271 (9th Cir.) (California Assembly Bill 587)
  • Exhibit 1128 30 August 2024. Supremo Tribunal Federal (Brazil), Justice Alexandre de Moraes (rapporteur); joined by the First Panel on 2-3 September 2024: Supremo Tribunal Federal, Pet 12.404/DF, Decision of Justice Alexandre de Moraes (suspension of X in Brazil), 30 August 2024
  • Exhibit 1129 October 2024. Global Freedom of Expression, Columbia University: The Case of the X Ban in Brazil (Columbia Global Freedom of Expression case page)
  • Exhibit 1132 26 June 2023. House Committee on the Judiciary and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government (majority staff): The Weaponization of CISA: How a "Cybersecurity" Agency Colluded with Big Tech and "Disinformation" Partners to Censor Americans (interim staff report)
  • Exhibit 1134 25 July 2025. House Committee on the Judiciary (majority staff): The Foreign Censorship Threat: How the European Union's Digital Services Act Compels Global Censorship and Infringes on American Free Speech (interim staff report, with appendix of exhibits)
  • Exhibit 1136 September 2025. U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (Chairman Ted Cruz, majority): The Mechanics of Government Censorship: How the Biden Administration Converted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency into the Thought Police (report)
  • Exhibit 1141 17 November 2020. Twitter, Inc. (written testimony to a Republican-chaired Senate committee): Testimony of Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Inc.) before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 'Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election'
  • Exhibit 1142 8 February 2023. Yoel Roth (former Twitter Head of Trust and Safety), as posted by the Committee's Democratic staff: Opening statement of Yoel Roth, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing 'Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter's Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story'
  • Exhibit 1143 8 February 2023. Engadget (Karissa Bell), reporting testimony of Anika Collier Navaroli to the House Oversight Committee: Trump White House asked Twitter to take down Chrissy Teigen's mean tweet about him (Engadget, 8 February 2023)
  • Exhibit 1144 March 2019 (Wayback capture of 17 July 2019). Twitter, Inc.: Distribution of hacked material policy (Twitter Help Center, version of March 2019)
  • Exhibit 1150 September 2024 (covers January to June 2024). X Corp.: X Global Transparency Report, H1 2024
  • Exhibit 1151 28 July 2022 (covers July to December 2021). Twitter, Inc. (X Corp.): Transparency Center: United States, removal requests (Jul-Dec 2021) and Legal Demands overview (published 28 July 2022)
  • Exhibit 1153 5 December 2025. European Commission: Commission fines X EUR 120 million under the Digital Services Act (press release IP/25/2934)
  • Exhibit 1155 12 August 2024. European Commission (Commissioner for the Internal Market): Letter from Commissioner Thierry Breton to Elon Musk (X Corp.), 12 August 2024 (Exhibit 16 to the House Judiciary report of 25 July 2025)
  • Exhibit 1157 28 May 2020 (published 2 June 2020). President Donald J. Trump: Executive Order 13925, Preventing Online Censorship (85 Fed. Reg. 34079)