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THREAD: This is harrowing. Saudi Arabia wanted the names of 6000 anonymous Arab Spring dissidents from Twitter. At first, MBS tried to get their names using EDRs - requests under emergency circumstances. When that proved cumbersome, KSA basically bought Twitter.

▪️They did so by threatening to pull twitter out of their market (biggest in the Middle East) and by offering to invest in heavily in Twitter. They also positioned two spies inside Twitter who helped funnel the personal information on dissidents out of Twitter to KSA

▪️In 2011, they invested $300M. In 2022, MBS bought that investment for $1.5B, worth $1.9B later that year, making KSA (The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) the biggest shareholder of Twitter behind Elon Musk.

▪️The two KSA spies inside Twitter INFORMED Twitter that the personally identifying information they were gathering was for the Saudi Government. One received money and gifts from the KSA in exchange for the user data including $300K and a nice job after he fled the US.

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