Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: Twitter helped Pentagon in its online propaganda campaign about the United States military’s activities in the Middle East despite claims by the social media giant of shutting down covert state-run manipulation campaigns, according to an investigation by Lee Fang, a reporter with The Intercept.
The social media giant provided direct approval and internal protection to the US military’s network of Twitter accounts and online personas to assist its psychological operations (PSYOP) in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and beyond.
On the request of the US government, Twitter also whitelisted a number of accounts secretly run by US Central Command (CENTCOM), exempting them from spam and abuse flags, and granting them greater visibility on the platform, revealed the investigation into the company’s internal files.
The social media platform secretly introduced the feature in 2017 after Pentagon asked the company to enhance the visibility of 52 Arab language accounts used to “amplify certain messages”.
The probe revealed that CENTCOM had hidden its ownership of the Twitter IDs which also involved the use of fake profile pictures and bios to put an impression that the accounts were being run by civilians in the Middle East.
Twitter helped US PSYOP despite claims of halting govt-run propaganda
In 2020, the company’s spokesperson Nick Pickles, in a testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, claimed that Twitter was taking aggressive efforts to curb “coordinated platform manipulation efforts” attributed to government agencies.
However, despite, Twitter’s denial of allowing any deceptive state-backed influence operations, Fang said that the social media firm was aware of CENTCOM’s covert activity and still let it continue until at least May 2022.
