"Sangar": This article is about how Twitter became an American propaganda tool in the Middle East. One of the reasons for the dispute between the US government and Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, is precise that Musk put an end to these abuses. Twitter as a tool against governments is also used in Afghanistan and Central Asia, but it is not clear how. Only God and the Pentagon (US Department of Defense) know what conspiracies are going on in the region.
Author: Telegram channel "Rybar"
In 2020, Twitter manager Nick Pickles spoke in the US House of Representatives. He stated that the fight against information operations supported by some states on social networks is a priority for the company.
However, he was cunning: all these years, the leadership of Twitter actively supported and disseminated the agenda necessary for the American government through a specially created bot farm.
The Intercept journalist Fan studied some of the company's documents, access to which was briefly provided by the new owner, Elon Musk. It turned out that for more than five years, the management of Twitter assisted the Pentagon in promoting the necessary narratives.
What exactly was found?
On July 26, 2017, Nathaniel Kahler of US Central Command (CENTCOM) sent a list of 52 Arabic-language accounts to the Twitter office with a request to whitelist them.
Some of them were previously marked as bots. The official said the Pentagon is using the accounts "to increase the outreach and dissemination of certain messages."
On the same day, according to the company's internal documentation, a special tag was applied to these accounts. A Twitter employee, on condition of anonymity, said that in this way the accounts received privileges in case of checks by moderators.
What thesis was promoted by the American government?
American bots covered information about several conflicts at once. In 2017, one of them claimed that US Air Force drones carried out precise strikes against terrorists in Yemen and did not harm civilians. The author also supported attacks on the Houthi rebel militias. The tweets were later deleted.
Another account (currently suspended) this year appeared with tweets directed against the government of Bashar al-Assad, although, since 2017, the same UAV strikes in Yemen have been the main newsbreaks on the page.
The American command was conducting an information campaign in another important direction - Iranian.
As an example, the article cites several accounts in which it was regularly stated that the policy of the Iranian authorities poses a direct threat to the security of neighboring Iraq. And it is the Iranian authorities that are responsible for destabilizing the situation in the region.
According to the author of the investigation, the existence of a network of Twitter accounts accountable to the Pentagon is indirectly confirmed by the Stanford University Internet Observatory report.
It does not list specific social media accounts, but the creators pointed to the regions in which US authorities conduct information operations: Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
The “leakage” of information about the activities of the Pentagon is just another episode in the struggle between the American authorities and Musk. Such information operations may resume within a few months - after new levers of pressure on the billionaire are found.