Twitter ‘helped’ Pentagon with secret online campaign in Middle East

Twitter allegedly helped the Pentagon push its covert ‘PsyOps’ marketing campaign that promoted Washington’s army pursuits within the Middle East, an investigative journalist has claimed within the newest launch of what’s referred to as the Twitter Files.

“Despite promises to shut down covert state-run propaganda networks, Twitter docs show that the social media giant directly assisted the US military’s influence operations,” investigative journalist Lee Fang of The Intercept tweeted on Tuesday. 

PsyOps – the army jargon for psychological operations – is outlined as targetting overseas adversaries “to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately, the behaviour of foreign governments, organisations, groups, and individuals.”

Fang’s revelations are the newest in a collection of Twitter inner paperwork and communications launched by Elon Musk, the platform’s present CEO. 

Fang mentioned Twitter had “no input” on his report and added {that a} Twitter official instructed him he felt “deceived by the covert shift”.

Musk – who had earlier mentioned that Twitter was a “crime scene”, shared Fang’s thread on Twitter as he has with different Twitter Files experiences.

“Yikes!” Musk tweeted.

In 2017, Fang mentioned, Twitter created a particular “whitelist tag” that treats accounts with out the platform’s blue examine as verified accounts, that means they’re extra seen and exempt from spam flags. 

This characteristic was created the identical day US Central Command (CENTCOM) despatched Twitter a listing of over 50 Arabic-language accounts the army used to “amplify certain messages”, in line with Fang’s investigation. 

The US army official requested for precedence service for six accounts, verification for one and “whitelist” skills for the others, the thread defined.

“The CENTCOM accounts on the list frequently tweeted about US military priorities in the Middle East, including promoting anti-Iran messages, promoting the Saudi Arabia-US backed war in Yemen, and ‘accurate’ US drone strikes that claimed to only hit terrorists,” Fang claimed.

READ MORE: New Twitter Files declare Trump was censored ‘without basis’

Promoting US army priorities

The report detailed how Twitter labored with the Pentagon regardless of Twitter claiming for years that they “make concerted efforts to detect & thwart gov-backed platform manipulation”.

In 2020, a Twitter spokesperson testified earlier than the US Congress in regards to the platform’s efforts in opposition to authorities affect operations.

“Combatting attempts to interfere in conversations on Twitter remains a top priority for the company, and we continue to invest heavily in our detection, disruption, and transparency efforts related to state-backed information operations,” Nick Pickles mentioned on the time.

Fang added that the social media big outlined “state-backed information operations” as “coordinated platform manipulation efforts” that might be attributed to state-affiliated actors.

“But behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval & special protection to the US military’s online psychological influence ops,” Fang wrote in his thread.

“Despite knowledge that Pentagon propaganda accounts used covert identities, Twitter did not suspend many for around 2 years or more. Some remain active.”

READ MORE:
Elon Musk reveals particulars on Twitter censorship of Hunter Biden scandal 

Source: TRTWorld and businesses