47 ms·

Pro-Soleimani messaging floods Twitter following general's drone strike

11 points by notlukesky 7y ago

nopriorarrests 7y ago
idk man... "Twitter accounts claiming to be located in Iran and throughout the Middle East pushed out many thousands of tweets under a handful of hashtags, such as #HardRevenge and #DeathToAmerica", well, Iran has population of 81 mln people. I can easily see 'many thousands of tweets' by legit real supporters of Iran regime, considering that Soleimani was considered a war hero. Honestly, for a country with 81 mln population, 'many thousands' does not sound like a lot. It's not even 'tens of thousands'.
- prpl 7y ago
  Well, all of those accounts might be flagged for further investigation. Of the premise is they are not legitimate, then Iran just burned a large quantity of propaganda assets. Some amount is legitimate and some amount is propaganda, it’s just hard to know where that line is drawn without analysis
  - nopriorarrests 7y ago
    Again, idk, but I would not consider 5-9 thousands of fake accounts 'a large quantity of propaganda assets'. You can probably buy that amount of accounts for 10K, or 50K USD, or some similar sum. Chump change for a state actor, and commercial twitter farms existed for a better part of this decade, so there are, probably, 10's of millions of fake accounts to buy. Iran can probably rotate them daily for the whole year. (And I'm not sure that these accounts, being fake, can really influence people opinion).
- defertoreptar 7y ago
  > The company in June 2019 removed 4,779 accounts it said we linked to the Iranian government. Most of those accounts tweeted international news stories with an angle that portrayed the government in a positive light, while others were focused on engaging in conversations about Israel, and another subset used false identities to target global conversations about Iran, Twitter said at the time. Also, I can't find a recent source, but Iran censors their people's internet, including Twitter and Facebook. This article from 2013 says they lifted the ban, but then shortly after re-banned it. So it's not even clear to me if legitimate users can even use Twitter. https://mashable.com/2013/09/16/twitter-facebook-iran/ https://mashable.com/2013/09/16/twitter-facebook-iran/
  - smnrchrds 7y ago
    Everyone and their grandmother (literally) uses proxies and VPNs in Iran. Telegram is also banned and censored, yet it remains the most popular messaging/social network in Iran.
    - nopriorarrests 7y ago
      yeah, interesting tidbit about Iran and telegram is that russian telegram channels who monetize themselves with ads can easily buy tens of 10k's of fake iran followers to boost their 'social capital'. And since telegram does not allow to check the geolocation of channel followers, some channels are growing from like 3K followers to 100K overnight.
      - smnrchrds 7y ago
        I don't know about the fake accounts. But (almost) every real person I know in Iran is on Telegram.
        nopriorarrests 7y ago
        Yes, this surprises me too, since telegram accounts are tied to SIM cards, and my best guess was that it's not easy to get a bunch of SIM's in Iran. But for some reason, Iran bots are considered the cheapest ones out there...
        phreeza 7y ago
        Very easy to get SIM cards in Iran when I was there some months ago.
  - nopriorarrests 7y ago
    What bothers me is that one can easily enter the realm of complete and total paranoia and disregard every opinion he does not like as a 'foreign state propaganda', be that Russia, China, Iran or some other country. Removing 5K accounts for a nation of 81M people is like removing 15-20K accounts for the US, so it is basically nothing, IMO. Consider that back in 2017, there was an article stating that "As many as 48 million Twitter accounts aren’t people, says study" [0]. Until we speak about millions of accounts, these 4,779 are nothing in terms of influencing public opinion. I will happily sell a Brooklyn bridge to any authoritarian leader who believes that 5K fake twitter bots that are not followed by real people can make a difference. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-accounts-could-be-bots-says-study.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-ac...
notacoward 7y ago
How many anti-Soleimani messages have been posted from within the US? Are those all going to be investigated as propaganda assets too? Any rational person knows Soleimani was a dangerous person whose orders caused significant instability and death throughout a large swath of Asia (minor and major). Any rational person also knows that that alone does not make his assassination legal. (It also does not make that assassination prudent or effective, but that's a different discussion.) When a senior leader within a nation is murdered by agents of a foreign government without even the decency of declaring war first, of course there will be calls for revenge. I'd expect no different from my fellow Americans if Pence or Esper or Milley had been targeted in a similar way. Heck, I'd expect worse. One cannot conclude that there's an organized propaganda effort until the "natural" level of such sentiment is accounted for.
- defertoreptar 7y ago
  > When a senior leader within a nation is murdered by agents of a foreign government without even the decency of declaring war first, of course there will be calls for revenge. I don't see why whether there was a declaration of war or not should matter if people want revenge. However, since you brought it up, Trump did tweet this all-caps tirade: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1021234525626609666?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/10212345256266096... . I remember being very concerned that a president would post something like that. Anyhow, you have to admit that it shows how Trump wasn't keeping retaliatory plans hidden from Iran.
  - notacoward 7y ago
    You're right that it might not affect people's impulsive desire for revenge, but a declaration does affect whether the US or Iran can claim any moral high ground that would sustain such an impulse. Targeting foreign leaders is only permissible in war. The legal term is "jus in bello" but it's not applicable without a declaration. Trump's tweet, belligerent as it was, wasn't even structured as a declaration and wouldn't have counted if it was. By violating both international law and our own law (congress's sole prerogative to declare war plus EO12333 explicitly forbidding assassination), we have magnified the threat to the people of Iran and bolstered any claim they might make that their response is justified as self-defense (which international law allows even outside of formal war).

11 points by notlukesky 7y ago

idk man... "Twitter accounts claiming to be located in Iran and throughout the Middle East pushed out many thousands of tweets under a handful of hashtags, such as #HardRevenge and #DeathToAmerica", well, Iran has population of 81 mln people. I can easily see 'many thousands of tweets' by legit real supporters of Iran regime, considering that Soleimani was considered a war hero. Honestly, for a country with 81 mln population, 'many thousands' does not sound like a lot. It's not even 'tens of thousands'.

prpl 7y ago
Well, all of those accounts might be flagged for further investigation. Of the premise is they are not legitimate, then Iran just burned a large quantity of propaganda assets. Some amount is legitimate and some amount is propaganda, it’s just hard to know where that line is drawn without analysis
- nopriorarrests 7y ago
  Again, idk, but I would not consider 5-9 thousands of fake accounts 'a large quantity of propaganda assets'. You can probably buy that amount of accounts for 10K, or 50K USD, or some similar sum. Chump change for a state actor, and commercial twitter farms existed for a better part of this decade, so there are, probably, 10's of millions of fake accounts to buy. Iran can probably rotate them daily for the whole year. (And I'm not sure that these accounts, being fake, can really influence people opinion).
defertoreptar 7y ago
> The company in June 2019 removed 4,779 accounts it said we linked to the Iranian government. Most of those accounts tweeted international news stories with an angle that portrayed the government in a positive light, while others were focused on engaging in conversations about Israel, and another subset used false identities to target global conversations about Iran, Twitter said at the time. Also, I can't find a recent source, but Iran censors their people's internet, including Twitter and Facebook. This article from 2013 says they lifted the ban, but then shortly after re-banned it. So it's not even clear to me if legitimate users can even use Twitter. https://mashable.com/2013/09/16/twitter-facebook-iran/ https://mashable.com/2013/09/16/twitter-facebook-iran/
- smnrchrds 7y ago
  Everyone and their grandmother (literally) uses proxies and VPNs in Iran. Telegram is also banned and censored, yet it remains the most popular messaging/social network in Iran.
  - nopriorarrests 7y ago
    yeah, interesting tidbit about Iran and telegram is that russian telegram channels who monetize themselves with ads can easily buy tens of 10k's of fake iran followers to boost their 'social capital'. And since telegram does not allow to check the geolocation of channel followers, some channels are growing from like 3K followers to 100K overnight.
    - smnrchrds 7y ago
      I don't know about the fake accounts. But (almost) every real person I know in Iran is on Telegram.
      - nopriorarrests 7y ago
        Yes, this surprises me too, since telegram accounts are tied to SIM cards, and my best guess was that it's not easy to get a bunch of SIM's in Iran. But for some reason, Iran bots are considered the cheapest ones out there...
        phreeza 7y ago
        Very easy to get SIM cards in Iran when I was there some months ago.
- nopriorarrests 7y ago
  What bothers me is that one can easily enter the realm of complete and total paranoia and disregard every opinion he does not like as a 'foreign state propaganda', be that Russia, China, Iran or some other country. Removing 5K accounts for a nation of 81M people is like removing 15-20K accounts for the US, so it is basically nothing, IMO. Consider that back in 2017, there was an article stating that "As many as 48 million Twitter accounts aren’t people, says study" [0]. Until we speak about millions of accounts, these 4,779 are nothing in terms of influencing public opinion. I will happily sell a Brooklyn bridge to any authoritarian leader who believes that 5K fake twitter bots that are not followed by real people can make a difference. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-accounts-could-be-bots-says-study.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-ac...

notacoward 7y ago

How many anti-Soleimani messages have been posted from within the US? Are those all going to be investigated as propaganda assets too? Any rational person knows Soleimani was a dangerous person whose orders caused significant instability and death throughout a large swath of Asia (minor and major). Any rational person also knows that that alone does not make his assassination legal. (It also does not make that assassination prudent or effective, but that's a different discussion.) When a senior leader within a nation is murdered by agents of a foreign government without even the decency of declaring war first, of course there will be calls for revenge. I'd expect no different from my fellow Americans if Pence or Esper or Milley had been targeted in a similar way. Heck, I'd expect worse. One cannot conclude that there's an organized propaganda effort until the "natural" level of such sentiment is accounted for.

defertoreptar 7y ago
> When a senior leader within a nation is murdered by agents of a foreign government without even the decency of declaring war first, of course there will be calls for revenge. I don't see why whether there was a declaration of war or not should matter if people want revenge. However, since you brought it up, Trump did tweet this all-caps tirade: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1021234525626609666?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/10212345256266096... . I remember being very concerned that a president would post something like that. Anyhow, you have to admit that it shows how Trump wasn't keeping retaliatory plans hidden from Iran.
- notacoward 7y ago
  You're right that it might not affect people's impulsive desire for revenge, but a declaration does affect whether the US or Iran can claim any moral high ground that would sustain such an impulse. Targeting foreign leaders is only permissible in war. The legal term is "jus in bello" but it's not applicable without a declaration. Trump's tweet, belligerent as it was, wasn't even structured as a declaration and wouldn't have counted if it was. By violating both international law and our own law (congress's sole prerogative to declare war plus EO12333 explicitly forbidding assassination), we have magnified the threat to the people of Iran and bolstered any claim they might make that their response is justified as self-defense (which international law allows even outside of formal war).