This is the least interesting tranche to me or any other conservative. It seems to be published chiefly to interest lefties.
Good luck with that. Lefties are champions of US government tyranny.
The new disclosures detail Twitter's active participation in CENTCOM/Pentagon propaganda efforts against Iran, China, Russia, and other miscreants.
While I don't object to propagandizing against foreign nations, it must be remembered that this propaganda is read by US citizens, too, so we are among the first to be infected by US-government-created disinformation.
In addition, a lot of this disinformation is specifically created for American audiences. It's not just incidental that US citizens get propagandized by covert US government disinformation; it's the whole point of it.
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Lee Fang @lhfang
1. TWITTER FILES PART 8*How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon's Covert Online PsyOp Campaign*
Despite promises to shut down covert state-run propaganda networks, Twitter docs show that the social media giant directly assisted the U.S. military's influence operations.
2. Twitter has claimed for years that they make concerted efforts to detect & thwart gov-backed platform manipulation. Here is Twitter testifying to Congress about its pledge to rapidly identify and shut down all state-backed covert information operations & deceptive propaganda.
3. But behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval & special protection to the U.S. military's online psychological influence ops. Despite knowledge that Pentagon propaganda accounts used covert identities, Twitter did not suspend many for around 2 years or more. Some remain active.
4. In 2017, a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official sent Twitter a list of 52 Arab language accounts "we use to amplify certain messages." The official asked for priority service for six accounts, verification for one & "whitelist" abilities for the others.
5. The same day CENTCOM sent the list, Twitter officials used a tool to grant a special "whitelist" tag that essentially provides verification status to the accounts w/o the blue check, meaning they are exempt from spam/abuse flags, more visible/likely to trend on hashtags.
6. The CENTCOM accounts on the list tweeted frequently about U.S. military priorities in the Middle East, including promoting anti-Iran messages, promotion of the Saudi Arabia-U.S. backed war in Yemen, and "accurate" U.S. drone strikes that claimed to only hit terrorists.
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