Twitter Files: Twitter’s collusion with Pentagon for covert propaganda exposed [details]

Twitter Files continue to showcase the process of content moderation at the company prior to Elon Musk’s takeover. The eighth instalment of Twitter Files released by journalist Lee Fang on Tuesday made some shocking revelations about Twitter and Pentagon working hand-in-glove with each other to carry out covert propaganda campaigns in the Middle East.

As per the latest “Twitter Files”, the social media platform reportedly verified and “whitelisted” accounts affiliated with the US Central Command (CENTCOM) in 2017, secretly boosting US psyops in the Middle East. Though “whitelisting” isn’t something Twitter usually does, but in this case, it created a special exemption protecting the accounts run by CENTCOM from spam, and abuse flags, and granting greater visibility. Basically, the “whitelisted” accounts enjoyed the benefits of a verified account without the Blue Tick. The collusion spanned at least four years from 2017 to 2020.

This revelation comes as a shock as Twitter has claimed for years that concentrated efforts have been made to detect and thwart government-backed platform manipulation. In fact, Twitter testified before Congress about its pledge to identify and shut down all state-backed covert information ops and propaganda. The reality appears to be far from it.

“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,” Fang opined.

Behind the scenes

Despite the conscious testimonies, Twitter reportedly granted special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological influence ops. At the time, Twitter was also allegedly aware that Pentagon affiliated accounts used covert identities and let many of those propaganda accounts run unchecked for two years or more, the investigation by The Intercept revealed. These accounts used fake profile pictures and bios, which gave the impression that they were run by the civilians in the Middle East. The ownership of the accounts was naturally concealed.

CENTCOM used these “priority accounts” to promote information favouring US military narratives, including criticising Iran, supporting US-Saudi Arabia backed war in Yemen and claims of superior accuracy of US drone strikes.

In a series of tweets, Fang also shared a screenshot of an email sent by a CENTCOM official, asking Twitter to improve visibility of 52 Arab language accounts used to amplify certain messages.

“Many of these secretive U.S. military propaganda accounts, despite detection by Twitter as late as 2020 (but potentially earlier) continued tweeting through this year, some not suspended until May 2022 or later,” Fang revealed.

Fang also exposed some of the activities the US government was involved in during its covert psyops. “The U.S. propaganda network relentlessly pushed narratives against Russia, China, and other foreign countries. They accused Iran of “threatening Iraq’s water security and flooding the country with crystal meth,” and of harvesting the organs of Afghan refugees,” Fang added.

Twitter Files

Twitter Files are internal Twitter documents shared by CEO Elon Musk with various journalists in December. The idea is to boost transparency about the platform’s operations under previous management, whom Musk has accused of censorship and favouring liberal views and persons.