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.
10. Stacia Cardille, another Twitter attorney, replied that the Pentagon wanted a SCIF & may want to retroactively classify its social media activities “to obfuscate their activity in this space, and that this may represent an overclassification to avoid embarrassment.” pic.twitter.com/lTNshDKOBv
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
12. In a May 2020 email, Twitter’s Lisa Roman emailed the DoD w/two lists. One list was accounts “previously provided to us” & another list Twitter detected. The accounts tweeted in Russian & Arabic on US military issues in Syria/ISIS & many also did not disclose Pentagon ties. pic.twitter.com/oANuodYwsN
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
14. In August 2022, a Stanford Internet Observatory report exposed a U.S. military covert propaganda network on Facebook, Telegram, Twitter & other apps using fake news portals and deep fake images and memes against U.S. foreign adversaries. https://t.co/dNH175YZmo
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
16. The Stanford report did not identify all of the accounts in the network but one they did name was the exact same Twitter account CENTCOM asked for whitelist privileges in its 2017 email. I verified via Twitter’s internal tools. The account used an AI-created deep fake image. pic.twitter.com/ODLvK7eFlH
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
In case you had any questions about whether or not the liberal mainstream media played a role, Fang gets to that towards the end of his thread, especially when it comes to how "Twitter was cast as an unbiased hero for removing" fake accounts. "Media covering the story described Twitter as evenly applying its policies & proactive in suspending the DoD network." Of course they did. It would be funny if not dealing with such a serious matter.
Fang's subsequent tweet again emphasizes how Twitter, despite being aware of violations, "waited years to suspend" these accounts.
18. The reality is much more murky. Twitter actively assisted CENTCOM’s network going back to 2017 and as late as 2020 knew these accounts were covert/designed to deceive to manipulate the discourse, a violation of Twitter’s policies & promises. They waited years to suspend.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
In case you need any more of a recap of how Twitter has acted with impunity, Fang's last tweet before sharing his work in The Intercept highlights how the social media platform claims and even boasts otherwise.
20. The conduct with the U.S. military’s covert network stands in stark contrast with how Twitter has boasted about rapidly identifying and taking down covert accounts tied to state-backed influence operations, including Thailand, Russia, Venezuela, and others since 2016.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
21. Here is my reported piece w/more detail. I was given access to Twitter for a few days. I signed/agreed to nothing, Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by a Twitter attorney, so what I saw could be limited. https://t.co/AgcFy71fE3
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
This really is huge. It may sound like that every time, but what comes out of these Twitter Files is truly revealing and damning. It's also no longer just about punishing the conservative viewpoints that Twitter disagrees with, or about censorship and free speech. Something tells us that liberals will still find a way to spin it and ratchet up their hatred towards Musk.
Fang is no stranger to this subject, as he had also revealed details in late October about "an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms" from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to police and even censor speech over social media.
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