Twitter executives have long said that the business makes deliberate steps to identify and disrupt covert misinformation activities supported by governments on its platform, however according to the latest release from the so-called “Twitter Files” Twitter actively cooperated with the US government to help push a variety of deep state connected social media accounts.
Whitelisting a group of accounts at the government’s request, the social networking behemoth gave the U.S. military’s network of social media identities and online personas direct clearance and internal security behind the scenes.
The Pentagon has attempted to sway public opinion in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and other countries throughout the world via this network, which includes news portals and memes created by the U.S. government.
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.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
The aforementioned accounts once had a clear affiliation with the US government.
The Pentagon then seemed to change its strategy and start hiding its connection to some of these accounts, a move toward the kind of deliberate platform manipulation that Twitter has openly condemned.
After buying Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk started opening up access to corporate records.
The accounts in question were focused on pushing messages that were anti-iranian and also in favor of U.S. and Saudi drone strikes in Yemen.
The accounts were operated with the full knowledge of staff at Twitter, this in spite of the fact that Twitter had previously announced its intention to crack down on any and all state backed disinformation.
The emails discovered reveal that high-ranking Twitter personnel discussed the accounts as potentially troublesome in the years that followed, in addition to the fact that Twitter officially whitelisted these accounts in 2017 at the military’s request.
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