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> We learned nothing The following came to light as a result of Musk's release of the Twitter files: Covid-19 Drugmakers Pressured Twitter to Censor Activists

> We learned nothing The following came to light as a result of Musk's release of the Twitter files: Covid-19 Drugmakers Pressured Twitter to Censor Activists Pushing for Generic Vaccine -https://theintercept.com/2023/01/16/twitter-covid-vaccine-pharma/ https://theintercept.com/2023/01/16/twitter-covid-vaccine-ph... Twitter executives have claimed for years that the company makes concerted efforts to detect and thwart government-backed covert propaganda campaigns on its platform. Behind the scenes, however, the social networking giant provided direct approval and internal protection to the U.S. military’s network of social media accounts and online personas, whitelisting a batch of accounts at the request of the government. The Pentagon has used this network, which includes U.S. government-generated news portals and memes, in an effort to shape opinion in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and beyond. -https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-accounts/ https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-... Tangential, but it's educational to compare the NY Times headline for that story with the Intercept one: Twitter Is Said to Have Struggled Over Revealing U.S. Influence Campaign -https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/twitter-military-influence-campaign.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/twitter-milita... Twitter Aided the Pentagon in Its Covert Online Propaganda Campaign -https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-accounts/ https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-...

aww_dang 4y ago
Here's Wikipedia's coverage of Operation Mockingbird. The story broke in 1974 and continues to be relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird >Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. According to author Deborah Davis, Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA.[1] In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I will ask again: how much of this is new to the average informed citizen? Most people who've heard of PRISM before are well-aware that our intelligence agencies love to play net-nanny for social media. If you watched the Trump administration in realtime and still denied that Twitter had governmental influence, I don't know what to tell you. The whole thing was a 30+ course meal of nothingburgers, diluted by the fact that it was being released like the world's most crackpot version of Serial.
  - nhchris 4y ago
    There's a big difference between "the US government likes to do this sort of thing" and "here's evidence of something specific they did recently, that Twitter had publicly denied". If you're already starting with the assumption that social media is riddled with ("ex") intelligence agents doing the govt.'s bidding, and cooperating with (in this case pharma) companies to help their PR and profit, then yes, there was little that was new. But if you're not, or if you want to convince someone that stubbornly insists this is all a "debunked conspiracy theory of which there is no evidence", then having, you know, actual evidence, is a big deal, not a nothing-burger. You speak of well informed citizens - but how did they in the first place come to believe things such as those revealed in the Twitter files happen? By the exact same sort of revelations in the past. And there's always someone that will claim "that was long ago, times have changed, we don't do those kind of things anymore". And for some things, that is true. So it's important to periodically re-open people's eyes.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

aww_dang 4y ago

Here's Wikipedia's coverage of Operation Mockingbird. The story broke in 1974 and continues to be relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird >Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. According to author Deborah Davis, Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA.[1] In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups.

smoldesu 4y ago
I will ask again: how much of this is new to the average informed citizen? Most people who've heard of PRISM before are well-aware that our intelligence agencies love to play net-nanny for social media. If you watched the Trump administration in realtime and still denied that Twitter had governmental influence, I don't know what to tell you. The whole thing was a 30+ course meal of nothingburgers, diluted by the fact that it was being released like the world's most crackpot version of Serial.
- nhchris 4y ago
  There's a big difference between "the US government likes to do this sort of thing" and "here's evidence of something specific they did recently, that Twitter had publicly denied". If you're already starting with the assumption that social media is riddled with ("ex") intelligence agents doing the govt.'s bidding, and cooperating with (in this case pharma) companies to help their PR and profit, then yes, there was little that was new. But if you're not, or if you want to convince someone that stubbornly insists this is all a "debunked conspiracy theory of which there is no evidence", then having, you know, actual evidence, is a big deal, not a nothing-burger. You speak of well informed citizens - but how did they in the first place come to believe things such as those revealed in the Twitter files happen? By the exact same sort of revelations in the past. And there's always someone that will claim "that was long ago, times have changed, we don't do those kind of things anymore". And for some things, that is true. So it's important to periodically re-open people's eyes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]