(TownHall) On Tuesday afternoon, yet another edition of the Twitter Files was released to highlight troubling revelations about the social media platform. The eighth edition was shared by investigative journalist Lee Fang, who also published a piece in The Intercept about the findings.
This edition is titled “How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon’s Covert Online PsyOp Campaign,” with Fang explaining that “Twitter docs show that the social media giant directly assisted the U.S. military’s influence operations.” Adding insult to injury to the whole scandal is that the social media platform has claimed, and even testified before Congress, that they do not engage in such efforts.
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. pic.twitter.com/2H2Sf49Xff
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
Twitter knew about the operations, and yet did nothing. They even let such accounts remain, with some still remaining active, according to Fang.
As was revealed in later tweets of this thread, the timeline involves “detection by Twitter as late as 2020 (but potentially earlier),” with “some not suspended until May 2022 or later.”
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. pic.twitter.com/LuMbMZDv8i
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
We’ve heard of accounts being blacklisted, which we all pretty much already knew before the Twitter Files were released, though this was confirmed in a previous edition released earlier this month. Fang details how there were “whitelist” accounts, which he describes as having the verification status without necessarily having the blue check mark, “meaning they are exempt from spam/abuse flags” and they are “more visible/likely to trend on hashtags.”
Hm, perhaps this is part of the reason as to why Elon Musk wants to reform the blue-check mark verification process?
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. pic.twitter.com/IhqUDWJjQ9
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
8. One Twitter official who spoke to me said he feels deceived by the covert shift. Still, many emails from throughout 2020 show that high-level Twitter executives were well aware of DoD’s vast network of fake accounts & covert propaganda and did not suspend the accounts.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
While Fang mentions one Twitter official who “feels deceived by the covert shift,” many other Twitter executives were aware. One name that keeps coming up is Twitter lawyer Jim Baker, who it was reported earlier this month caused a delay to the second edition of the Twitter Files. Musk relieved him around that time. There were more, though.
