Quinta JurecicLatest ~~~Twitter Files~~~~ is a step up from the others insofar as it actually has some new-ish and somewhat interesting information ... albeit information that's really just filling in some details about reporting that the Washington Post already did https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-accounts/
Here is the Post's reporting (which, to be fair, the Intercept story links to) https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/19/pentagon-psychological-operations-facebook-twitter/
All this is further demonstration of why, imo, the US government running information operations like this is a really bad idea
Jonathan Massaquoithe intercept story is so eager to present twitter's actions as nefarious that it ironically backs into the trap of framing information operations as more effective than they necessarily are—eg referring to "the CENTCOM psyop campaign" (lol). I say ironic because, when it comes to eg Russian election interference, leftists tend to play down the effects of such measures. (imo skepticism is good, but we should apply it across the board!)
FWIW, in contrast, the Post story is pretty good about clarifying that there's no evidence that CENTCOM's efforts had any effect. (I still think centcom shouldn't have done this.)
i'm kind of impressed by the chutzpah of the intercept in attempting to make a Big Scandal out of a story that already struggled to get traction the first time around ... a fact the intercept itself notes https://mastodon.social/@qjurecic/109549133098025760
David Kubat@qjurecic I'm actually quite suprised to see the backend comms on this being direct from the SOCOM J3 office to [email protected].
I'd bet a lotta dollars against a lotta doughnuts that all of the other communications regarding the use of these accounts was highside if not JWICS. MISO has this weird blend that sorta requires some unclass coordination to do very not unclass things, but I wonder how much they thought through "here is out list and how we want them" coming through email.
@davidkubat that's interesting—what would you have expected to see?
this is really chef's kiss DOD stuff right here
@qjurecic I never was in the ops shop side of things, so maybe this just isnt as weird to leave an unclass paper trail atrributable to the unit and general idea of what you wanted to do. But i'd have put my money on the ops side making non-attributable accounts and then not asking twitter for help at all (ala the russians).
Or if they did need help, then securing some sorta NDA for the info that would prevent this sorta thing from being publicized a few years later.
@qjurecic Honstely from the story, it just seems sorta like a short cut that relies entirely on just assuming that twitter aint gonna tell anyone out of like patriotic duty. Which makes me think that perhaps this was learned behavior cause they've done similar things with other tech companies and it wasnt a problem.
billy@qjurecic Lee Fang, man
Sophie Zhang (张学菲)@qjurecic I mean, if Twitter had in fact knew that CENTCOM was running fake accounts and let it happen, that would be a news story of some significance. However, it sounds from the descriptions more like CENTCOM took advantage of Twitter officials' trust and they didn't look into it too hard though some were suspicious.
@szhang_ds it seems from the reporting that twitter was irate when they discovered it but it's not clear what their response was because the intercept only shows emails leading up to the mtg with DOD. per the Post, Meta seems to have reached out to DOD to tell them to knock it off: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/19/pentagon-psychological-operations-facebook-twitter/
to be clear, if Twitter used a lighter hand with DOD than they do with other state actors running information operations, that strikes me as bad!
My guess is that they did, in the sense that they do for everyone based on political importance of the country to their usage audience, potential for public backlash, and desire to avoid political trouble. For the same reason FB refused to take down the fake accounts run by MP Vinod Sonkar (BJP Kaushambi), Indian parliamentary ethics chair, and refused to announce known attribution in several cases. It's the flip side of importance - it gets priority (compared to putting off Azerbaijan/Honduras forever), but it's subject to heavy political interference.
The Big Fox@qjurecic it’s Lee fang. Every piece of his is a noun, a verb and how can he help trump.
Joey Fishkin