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Twitter Files part 14 sheds light on “Russian bots” and #ReleaseTheMemo
The Twitter Files part 14, written by independent journalist, Matt Taibbi, shed light on a false narrative of Russian bots and the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo. Taibbi, who was given access to the internal documents at Twitter by Elon Musk, released a new installment on Thursday.
1.THREAD: Twitter Files #14
THE RUSSIAGATE LIES
One: The Fake Tale of Russian Bots and the #ReleaseTheMemo Hashtag— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
It began in 2018 when Senators Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff wrote the platform a letter regarding trending hashtags and Russian disinformation campaigns. Twitter pointed out that both the politicians and the media didn’t only lack the evidence but had evidence the accounts were not Russian. However, the platform was “roundly ignored.”
Backtracking to a week before Twitter received the letter, Republican Devin Nunes submitted a classified memo to the House Intel Committee that detailed the abuses by the FBI in obtaining Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance authority against those connected to former President Trump. Included was the role played by the Steele Dossier.
Credit: Matt Taibbi
In December 2019, a report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz verified Nunes’ assertions virtually.
“We also found that the FBI’s interviews of Steele, his Primary Sub-Source, a second sub-source, and other investigative activity revealed potentially serious problems with Steele’s descriptions of information in his reports,” the report read. “Among other things, regarding the allegations attributed to Person 1, the Primary Sub-source’s account of these communications, if true, was not consistent with and, in fact, contradicted the allegations of a “well-developed conspiracy” in Reports 95 and 102 attributed to Person 1.”
The report also pointed out that the FBI filed three renewal applications with the FISC in 2017, repeating the seven “significant errors contained in the first FISA application.” Yet, the report found another ten errors in the three renewal applications. Taibbi noted that despite that, the national media denounced Nunes’ report in January and February 2018 in “oddly identical language, calling it a ‘joke.’
Senators Feinstein and Schiff also wrote an open letter claiming that the hashtag “gained the immediate attention and assistance of social media accounts linked to Russian influence operations.
The senators claimed that Nunes’ memo “distorts” classified information. “But note they didn’t call it incorrect,” Taibbi wrote.
Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal also wrote a letter. “We find it reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans citizens and undermined our democratic processes through our elections and public policy debates.”
The letter asked Twitter to notify users who interacted with tweets created by the accounts tracked by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD). The senators and members of the media pointed to the Hamilton 68 dashboard created by Clint Watts, a former FBI counterintelligence official, created The letter asked Twitter to notify users who interacted with tweets created by the accounts tracked by the Alliance for Securing Democracy.”
The Hamilton 68 dashboard was described as a project with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshal Fund and tracked around 600 accounts that it claimed were tied to Russian-sponsored influence and disinformation campaigns. Bret Schafer, an analyst who helped run the project, spoke about the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag.
“I’ve never seen any single hashtag that has had this amount of activity behind it,” he said. Taibbi noted that the dashboard “was vague in how it reached its conclusions.”
Twitter executives didn’t quite trust the dashboard and the key complaints were that Hamilton 68 seemed to be the only source of information and no one was checking with Twitter. Global Policy Communications Chief Emily Horne encouraged skepticism of the dashboard’s take. In the screenshots below, Horne pointed out that it was a comms play for ASD.
“They’ve made a very strong media push in the last week, piggybacking on Clint’s testimony.”
Off the record, she said, “I encourage you to be skeptical of Hamilton 68’s take on this, which, as best as I can tell, is the only source for these stories. 1) Hamilton 68 does not release the accounts that make up their dashboard, so no one can verify the accounts they include are, in fact, Russian automated accounts, and 2) it is extraordinarily difficult for outside researchers, who do not have access to our full API and internal account signals, to say with any degree of certainty that an account they believe is behaving suspiciously is 1) automated and 2) Russian.”
“If you speak with them, I encourage you to press them on how they can be sure of both of these claims when they do not have access to internal signals and data.”
Twitter’s former head of safety, Yoel Roth, wasn’t able to find any Russian connection to the hashtag and noted that after reviewing accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with the hashtag, none showed any signs or affiliation to Russia. Instead, Twitter found that the engagement was “overwhelmingly organing and driven by strong VIT engagement). VIT is an acronym for very important Tweeters, and these included Wikileaks, Donald Trump Jr., and Congressman Steve King.
When Twitter brought this up to a Blumenthal staffer, the staffer tried to wave them off “because we don’t believe these are bots.”
Another Twitter executive pointed out that if Blumenthal would lay off on this, “it seems like there are other wins we could offer him.” However, the senator published his letter, which led to the platform’s executives being frustrated over what they viewed as a circular process.
“Twitter spent a lot of resources to respond to the initial request, and the reward from Blumental shouldn’t be round after round of requests for user notice. It also doesn’t do anything to fix the problem. That distracts our team from the real iq fight.”
Twitter executives later realized that they were”feeding congressional trolls” and compared the requests to a popular children’s book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
Although Twitter believed that there were no Russians in the story, it stopped challenging Russia’s claims on the record. Outside counsel from firms advised Twitter to use language such as “With respect to particular hashtags, we take seriously any activity that may represent an abuse of our platform.”
This resulted in reports from several mainstream media outlets pushing the “Russian bots” story without any evidence. Taibbi noted that several media outlets that played up the “Russian bots” story declined to comment. So did the staff for Senators Feinstein, Schiff, and Blumenthal. Nunes shared a comment.
“Schiff and the Democrats falsely claimed Russians were behind the Release the Memo hashtag, all my investigative work… By spreading the Russia collusion hoax, they instigated one of the greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in U.S. history.”
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Tesla has expanded its Tesla Assisted Driving (TAD) suite to its tenth European country, as Latvia joined a growing list of European Union member states authorizing the company’s advanced driver assistance technology.
Tesla Europe announced this morning that the system is now approved in Latvia, with a software rollout to begin soon.
The approval and rollout follow recognition of a provisional European type approval originally granted by the Netherlands’ RDW authority on April 10.
🚨 Latvia has just received approval for Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised)
This is the 10th country in the EU to gain approval:
1. Netherlands — 10 April 2026 (original RDW approval)
2. Lithuania — 20 May 2026
3. Estonia — 29 May 2026
4. Denmark — 9 June 2026
5. Belgium — 10 June 2026
6. Slovenia — 7 September 2026
7. Czechia — 21 September 2026
8. Croatia — 29 September 2026
9. Slovakia — 16 October 2026— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 26, 2026
Latvia’s Road Traffic Safety Directorate (CSDD) evaluated the Dutch documentation, coordinated with the other national authorities, and reviewed updates from Tesla. These included tightened limits on speed offsets, automatic resets of any manual speed adjustments after each trip, and stronger driver monitoring.
In Europe, the feature is marketed as Tesla Assisted Driving after a recent rule change that labeled the name “Full Self-Driving” as misleading.
The system remains an SAE Level 2 driver assistance tool, not unsupervised autonomy. It can control speed, steering, braking, lane changes, and intersections while following a navigation route. Drivers need not keep their hands on the wheel at all times, yet they must continuously monitor the road and be prepared to intervene immediately.
The sequence of EU recognitions began with the Netherlands in April and continued through Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia, and Slovakia. Most have relied on mutual recognition of the single Dutch provisional approval rather than independent national testing.
These national clearances do not yet constitute bloc-wide authorization. An EU-wide decision requires a qualified majority in the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles: at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the EU population. Larger markets, like Germany, France, and Italy, remain under review, and a vote is expected this December.
However, for Latvian Tesla owners with compatible vehicles and software, the imminent rollout expands access to the supervised system while underscoring that attentive human oversight remains essential.
Tesla expanded its Robotaxi geofence in Houston, Texas, today, enlarging the service area and drawing a new rocket-shaped boundary across the city’s northwestern and central parts.
Although CEO Elon Musk said it was just a coincidence, the expansion seems to be an ode to SpaceX and its potential merger with Tesla.
🚨 Tesla has just expanded its Robotaxi geofence in Houston
It looks a lot like a rocket — we all remember the shape in Austin 🤣 https://t.co/cFOPEuiJ4u
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 26, 2026
The official Tesla Robotaxi account announced the change with the lines “Houston, we have liftoff” and “Bigger service area now live,” pairing them with a map overlay.
The prior white geofence, roughly 25 square miles covering Jersey Village, Harvest Bend, and the Willowbrook corridor along U.S. 290 and State Highway 249, now sits inside a larger blue zone that stretches southeast toward Bellair and closer to central Houston.
Houston’s Robotaxi service launched on April 18, 2026, the same day as Dallas, as Tesla’s first unsupervised public expansion beyond Austin. From the start, the vehicles were Model Ys running without anyone in the front seats, booked through the dedicated Tesla Robotaxi app and open to the public inside the geofence.
Trackers measured the initial zone at about 25 square miles; by late September it had not grown substantially. Community and registry data indicated a modest local fleet of unsupervised Model Ys, while dozens to nearly 200 Cybercabs, the purpose-built, steering-wheel-free two-seaters, have been spotted staging and testing in Houston lots, though public Cybercab rides remain limited to Austin for now.
Across the broader Robotaxi program, Tesla began public Robotaxi rides in Austin in June 2025, as a small geofence and vehicles with safety monitors became available for a ride-hailing service. Later on, Tesla removed the monitors and steadily expanded the service area until it covered most of the Austin metro area.
Unsupervised Robotaxi services now run in six cities: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. Cumulative driverless miles reported by the company have reached several million. The Cybercab entered public service in Austin in early September 2026 and has scaled rapidly there. The company has also said that Dallas is next for Cybercab rides in November, with further cities and 24/7 hours targeted by year-end, plus fleet-operator sales of the vehicle.
Waymo also operates a fully driverless service in Houston, which has been open to the public since August of this year.
The Houston expansion continues Tesla’s pattern of starting with tightly controlled validation zones before widening coverage as real-world data accumulates, while the rocket motif on the map underscores the company’s habit of injecting visual flair into its autonomy rollout.
Riders inside the new boundary can request unsupervised Model Y trips in the Robotaxi app; exact operating hours and further Cybercab availability remain subject to app updates and company statements.
News
Tesla Cybercabs take over Austin’s F1 weekend
Tesla Cybercabs swarmed Austin’s F1 Grand Prix as sightings hit a record during race weekend.
Tesla’s driverless Cybercabs used the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix in Austin as their biggest public stress test yet. On Sunday afternoon, Tesla head of AI software Ashok Elluswamy quoted a photo from X user Ben Steindl showing a long line of gold Cybercabs and Model Y Robotaxis stacked up on a road near Circuit of the Americas. “Robotaxis as far as the eye can see!” Elluswamy wrote. Steindl’s original post was more matter of fact: “@Tesla @robotaxi is busy for the Austin F1.”
The fleet also handled the trip home. The race started at 3 p.m. Central, and once it ended, Cybercab Spotter, an account that logs Cybercab sightings around Austin, posted that “People are requesting Cybercabs to get home.”
Robotaxis as far as the eye can see! 🤩
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) October 25, 2026
Tesla set this up days in advance without announcing it. Late on October 22, rider David Moss posted Robotaxi app screenshots showing the Austin service area wrapping around the track toward Elroy and FM 812, with ride requests open until 1 a.m. A banner in the app read “Last call is 1am · Limited to nearby dropoffs.” Austin rides ended at 11 p.m. as recently as early October, as Teslarati reported, before moving to midnight on October 17.
Not every rider got dropped at the gate. Early app searches showed spots like COTA Karting as “Service blocked,” and one rider who took a Cybercab to the track Friday said the rideshare area was less than a 20 minute walk from the front gate.
The weekend also produced a new activity record. Cybercab Spotter counted 1,250 Cybercab sightings in Austin on Saturday, qualifying day. The previous high was 1,072 on October 16. Sightings count the same car more than once, so they measure how busy the fleet is rather than how big it is. For size, the Texas automated vehicle registry listed 463 Cybercabs at midday Sunday, up from the 300+ Tesla claimed on October 10, when Elluswamy also said Dallas is next for Cybercab.
The track was out of reach for Tesla’s main rival. Waymo runs in Austin only through Uber, and its service area stops well short of COTA. Waymo did not announce any race day service.
Tesla has not said how many rides it gave to and from the circuit, or whether the expanded zone and 1 a.m. cutoff will stay after race weekend. On the third quarter earnings call, Elluswamy said 2 a.m. service is coming “pretty soon” and that Tesla plans to run Robotaxi around the clock before the end of the year. The company is also aiming to hand the first Cybercabs to customers before 2026 ends, which would put cars like these outside Tesla’s own fleet for the first time.
Tesla Assisted Driving expands to tenth EU country
Tesla expands Robotaxi geofence in Houston with an ode to SpaceX merger
