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Comment by halkcyon | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised they're not disclosing the US ones.

AFAIK twitter doesn't even ban US state operated psy-ops, not even ones targeting US citizens.

They should require all parties posting on behalf of a state or as part of a contract for a state identify themselves...

Given the revolving door at Twitter, or other mainstream media outlets for that matter, this isn't surprising.

It's easy and safe to disclose networks of states that have no power over you. The information operations that are not disclosed are the ones you really need to worry about.

Or the Mexican ones, who even tag themselves with the #RedAMLO hashtag.

Yes, the greater context is that there are many entities exhibiting this sort of behavior online, not just countries and not just those three countries.

Do you mean the ones promoting this or that cause and who are normally aligned with one or the other major parties or significant pols?

Whatabout... the US.

Wouldn't disclosing any US sponsored psy-ops be illegal by US law?

The press is protected by precedent (and the first amendment in general); they can publish any material they want, no matter how classified it is. The person who gets in trouble is the one who broke the laws and gave the material to the press.

The government has asked things not to be published in the past, particularly in the aeropspace sector. Sometime the press has complied, sometimes it hasn't.

Hell, the organization I used to work for has at least 3 pieces of TS material on their wikipedia page. Years back I brought my concerns to the security manager and they said "the worst thing you can do with classified material is try to remove it, because you're just validating that it's classified and correct."

> The press is protected by precedent

Is journalism a protected profession? In my country journalists are not, so they have the same rights/obligations as anyone.

> The person who gets in trouble is the one who broke the laws and gave the material to the press.

What if the information leaked contained evidence of crime? We have still people in prison for that...

I can't imagine US being all that significant.

Biden, Trump and various members of both camps command more than enough attention through their own Twitter accounts.

Likewise pushing political agendas is largely superfluous given you can just lobby politicians directly without needed public support.

You're not considering foreign operations. If included, I bet the US would be at the forefront.

If the US is conducting psy-ops on social media against adversaries, wouldn't they use media companies popular in that country? And, if that were Twitter, wouldn't the language barrier still make it relatively harder for Twitter (a company staffed predominantly by English-speaking employees) to investigate?

Additionally, does it merit discriminating between offensive and defensive psy-ops? Might there, for example, be government-controled bots injecting wholesomememes content into the feeds of depressed government employees? Does Twitter have a different obligation in that context?

> wouldn't the language barrier still make it relatively harder for Twitter (a company staffed predominantly by English-speaking employees) to investigate

That doesn't seem to have stopped them from banning accounts posting in Chinese.

> government-controled bots injecting wholesomememes content into the feeds of depressed government employees

That would still be "coordinated inauthentic behavior".

Luckily the censorship game in the US is strong, but not that strong. I read a book about propaganda written by someone who wrote it for the US in WW2, and he was able to explicitly state (a chapter or two in) that he only gave examples of axis propaganda in the book because his side's were classified, but to remember that everyone did the same things.

(he did leave for a footnote that for examples of pornographic propaganda one would have to visit archives at an address in Washington DC; guess that'd be the 1950's talking)

There’s fake ones like the @antifa_us account that was run by a white nationalist organization. It was promoting violence against white neighborhoods and was amplified by the Trump campaign and conservative media.

It has been verified by reputable media that twitter handle @antifa_us was a fake antifa poster organized by white nationalist group Evropa ([1],[2]). It's impressive there has been so much false action that is immediately discovered during this time.

In the small towns around the Seattle area there have been multiple false claims of antifa planned attacks, leading to lots of people pulling out their guns. Here's one where someone visiting from out of town took pics of kids walking around and made wild accusations that they were 'outsiders' who were threatening - yet he was the outsider who was making up threats. [3]

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/twitter-takes-down-was...

2. https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/06/01/antifa_...

3. https://www.issaquahreporter.com/news/how-a-man-from-califor...

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