Twitter colluded with Pentagon to run network of fake accounts around the world

Twitter worked with the Pentagon to promote fake accounts in the Middle East that praised US policy, despite the social media company insisting it made “concerted efforts” to “detect and thwart platform manipulation.” backed by the government.”

The collusion spanned at least four years, from 2017 to 2020, and saw top Twitter executives contacting military intelligence in “a covert online PsyOp campaign,” promoting accounts that included one that claimed that the bombings by planes American drones in Yemen killed only terrorists.

The revelations were made by Lee Fang, who on Tuesday posted the eighth installment of what is being called Twitter Files.

Fang, a San Francisco-based journalist writing for The Intercept, has been following stories published by reporters Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss since the beginning of the month.

“Despite promises to shut down covert state propaganda networks, Twitter documents show the social media giant directly aided US military influence operations,” Fang wrote.

“Behind the scenes, Twitter gave its approval and special protection to the US military’s online psychological influence operations.

“Despite the knowledge that Pentagon propaganda accounts were using cover identities, Twitter did not suspend many for around 2+ years. Some remain active.

Fang pointed to emails showing that cooperation with the Pentagon began at least five years ago.

A US Central Command, CENTCOM, official wrote to the executives on Twitter on July 26, 2017.

The executive, on the public policy team, was asked by Nathaniel Kahler to approve an account verification and “whitelist” a list of Arabic-language accounts that “we use to amplify certain messages.”

Kahler wrote: “We have some accounts that aren’t indexed on hashtags, maybe they were flagged as bots.”

‘Some of these had built a real track and we hope to save.’

Kahler added that he was happy to provide more paperwork from his office, or SOCOM, the acronym for US Special Operations Command.

At that time, according to sources who spoke with the interceptionTwitter was working to mark as spam any accounts that engaged with extremists, particularly those affiliated with Islamic State.

Kahler sent a spreadsheet to the Twitter team with 52 accounts and requested “priority service.”

Among the accounts selected for preferential treatment was the since-deleted @yemencurrent, which claimed US drone strikes were “precise” and killed terrorists, not civilians.

The account also praised the US- and Saudi-backed attack on Houthi rebels in that country.

Other accounts supported US-backed armed groups in Syria and promoted anti-Iran messages in Iraq; another discussed legal issues in Kuwait, Fang reported.

The same day that Kahler submitted his request, Twitter engineers discussed creating a separate label for the accounts, a move Twitter insiders told Fang was highly unusual.

Kahler told Twitter that all of the accounts would be “US Government-attributed Arabic accounts that would tweet about relevant security issues,” but many of the accounts did not actually mention that they were being run by the US government. Joined.

At least one of the accounts, @mktashif, now deleted, was a ‘deep fake’, with a computer-generated profile picture and AI-made content.

Another account, @althughur, now also deleted, posted anti-Iran and anti-ISIS content focused on an Iraqi audience, The Intercept reported.

The account initially stated its link to CENTCOM, but later changed to an Arabic phrase meaning “Euphrates pulse.”

The former Twitter employee said the interception who were surprised to learn of the changing tactics of the Department of Defense.

“It appears that the DOD was doing something shady and it was definitely not in line with what we had been presented with at the time,” they said.