Hacker News Reader

I think the Iraq invasion of 2003 is what really set us down the path of ISIS.

The spread outside of Iraq to the rest of the Levant is most certainly due to neighboring countries being destabilized.

Seems kind of a wild leap to blame the rise of ISIS on Twitter.

ISIS came from the events in Iraq and is an offshoot of "Al Qaeda in Iraq". It even stands for "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant". They existed long before the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring started in 2010 and ISIS didn't enter Syria (which I think is the connection you're making?) until well after that.

Twitter, and others, is a tool of the government, and national security state, and was weaponized multiple times to overthrow governments, institute color revolutions, allow terrorists to flourish etc... The Obama administration even bragged about it:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/17/obama-iran-twi...

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/middleeast/17media....

PSYOPs existed long before Twitter and others. Social networks and ML just made the tools more powerful and precise.

Why not against Western countries who did far more to create ISIS then merely be a passive communication platform?

Algorithmically tailoring feeds is not passive.