Twitter is under scrutiny after investigative journalist Lee Fang released the latest edition of the “Twitter Files,” a series of reports that examine the social media platform’s actions and policies.
In a thread unraveling “TWITTER FILES: PART 8,” Fang wrote that Twitter “has claimed for years that they make concerted efforts to detect” and “thwart gov-backed platform manipulation,” including in testimony to Congress, but he claims that his findings indicate that this is not the case.
According to Fang, Twitter “quietly aided the Pentagon’s covert online PsyOp campaign” and directly assisted the US military in its efforts to shape public opinion in the Middle East and beyond. He wrote that Twitter “gave approval & special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological influence ops.”
Fang disclosed that he was “given access to Twitter for a few days” but did not sign or agree to anything specific. He also stated that Twitter “had no input” into his reporting, but searches were carried out by a Twitter attorney, which may have limited what he was able to see.
The journalist provided examples of Twitter’s alleged assistance to the US military, including a 2017 email from US Central Command (CENTCOM) listing 52 Arab-language accounts that it used to “amplify certain messages.” Fang wrote that Twitter “helped give the accounts additional visibility and made them exempt from spam and abuse flags.” These accounts, which tweeted about “U.S. military priorities in the Middle East,” were initially openly affiliated with the government, but the relationship was eventually hidden from users, according to Fang. He wrote that “CENTCOM then shifted strategies & deleted disclosures of ties to the Twitter accounts.”
Fang also shared emails from other Twitter lawyers and executives, including speculation that the Pentagon wanted to retroactively classify its social media activities “to avoid embarrassment.” He wrote that “in several other 2020 emails, high-level Twitter executives/lawyers discussed the covert network and even recirculated the 2017 list from CENTCOM and shared another list of 157 undisclosed Pentagon accounts, again mostly focused on Middle East military issues.”
The investigator stated that “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, according to records I reviewed.” He added that “in August 2022, a Stanford Internet Observatory report exposed a U.S. military covert propaganda network on Facebook, Telegram, Twitter & other apps using fake news portals and deep fake images and memes against U.S. foreign adversaries,” including Russia, China, and Iran. Fang was able to confirm that Stanford correctly identified one account from CENTCOM’s 2017 email.
Fang wrote that “in subsequent reporting, Twitter was cast as an unbiased hero for removing ‘a network of fake user accounts promoting pro-Western policy positions.’ Media covering the story described Twitter as evenly applying its policies & proactive in suspending the DoD network.” However, he argued that “the reality is much more murky. Twitter actively assisted CENTCOM’s network going back to 2017.
