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Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer

middleeasteye.net

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Re: Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer

#101

Post by navigatesol »

diminoten wrote: post #72
5trokerac3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I was stationed as security for a PsyOps team in Gardez, Afghanistan for four months in 2003.

Sounds like one particular viewpoint that, while somewhat relevant, doesn't actually shed much light into this vastly different (both geographically and temporally) situation. Don't close your mind just because you know of one instance of the thing being discussed; you anchor yourself to a specific point in time.

>Don't close your mind just because you know of one instance of the thing being discussed; you anchor yourself to a specific point in time.

Person with zero experience lecturing someone who actually performed the role, in service of the country, is such a HackerNews thing.

Bonus points for referring to their real-life experience as "somewhat relevant".

Re: Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer

#102

Post by diminoten »

navigatesol wrote: post #101
diminoten wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like one particular viewpoint that, while somewhat relevant, doesn't actually shed much light into this vastly different (both geographically and temporally) situation. Don't close your mind just because you know of one instance of the thing being discussed; you anchor yourself to a specific point in time.

> Don't close your mind just because you know of one instance of the thing being discussed; you anchor yourself to a specific point in time. Person with zero experience lecturing someone who actually performed the role, in service of the country, is such a HackerNews thing. Bonus points for referring to their real-life experience as "somewhat relevant".

The fact that you think this person performed the PsyOps role means your lack of reading comprehension undermines your scolding tone.

But please, tell me more about what a "HackerNews" thing this is.

Re: Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer

#103

Post by AaronFriel »

corodra wrote: post #87
AaronFriel wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be suggesting that we should just ignore conflict of interest concerns when the military is involved? Most jobs involve large periods of mind-numbingly boring work that's not important to the big picture. The problem is the small, sometimes minute, fraction of time spent where the work is important to the big picture and there is a conflict of interest.

So, do you believe the general public should create a list of past government employed individuals and ban them from accessing the job market? That completely has no chance, what so ever, to have any negative repercussions in time. But draws the line to solve the problem you're having. Then no one with a conflicting interest from the gov can persuade their opinion into the public through private enterprise means.

No, the issue here is that there's a concurrent conflict of interest where the same person has two jobs where it's clear they may need to recuse themselves from certain decisions.

I haven't said anything at all about:

1. banning 2. all 3. past government employees 4. from all jobs

Those were all generalizations you added.

I am talking about the need to:

1. scope recusals or avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest 2. For some jobs 3. For current government employees who have concurrent roles in which their interests could be misaligned 4. For some jobs where such a conflict of interest can occur

I hope you understand that some people might be frustrated with you when you turn a rather minimalist position into this maximalist nightmare that even past government employees should be considered unemployable.

Re: Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer

#104

Post by corodra »

AaronFriel wrote: post #103
corodra wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, do you believe the general public should create a list of past government employed individuals and ban them from accessing the job market? That completely has no chance, what so ever, to have any negative repercussions in time. But draws the line to solve the problem you're having. Then no one with a conflicting interest from the gov can persuade their opinion into the public through private enterprise means.

No, the issue here is that there's a concurrent conflict of interest where the same person has two jobs where it's clear they may need to recuse themselves from certain decisions. I haven't said anything at all about: 1. banning 2. all 3. past government employees 4. from all jobs Those were all generalizations you added. I am talking about the need to: 1. scope recusals or avoid the appearance of conflicts of intere…

Aye, but you also need to set a limit on such ideas. It's very easy for something like that to run away. Because you make it seem like a psyops reservist is out to persuade the public to goose step around. What if the ilks of Twitter bring those people in specifically to combat misinformation because that's what they're good at? Someone in that position is like a hammer. A hammer can be used to create or destroy. It's generally the company's responsibility to figure that out.

Moonlighting is a dangerous thing to regulate. It starts to impede on personal freedoms. Until social media is regulated as a public sphere, there's really no bearing for anyone to make judgement who work there with either current or past employment.

Oh, also, I hope you understand that other people's opinion of me don't affect me. The same as my opinion of you shouldn't concern you either.

Re: Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer

#106

Post by colpabar »

cwkoss wrote: post #82
rjf72 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that governments want and work to try to influence public opinion? I mean you don't need to rely on intuition here. As one fun example the current state of modern art is largely because the CIA used it as a propaganda weapon. [1] As the article mentions it was pushed heavily by their "Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information…

> And governments in general seem more obsessed with information manipulation than ever before. Consequently, I find it only logical to assume that all social media is currently being heavily utilized by government level actors to push their various propaganda and agendas. There is so much Twitter bot activity around politics. It is deeply troubling to consider that the intelligence agencies could be actively involve…

Nothing gets taken down faster than criticism of ANYTHING Israeli.

Re: Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer

#107

Post by jdc »

bjourne wrote: post #95
input_sh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example Twitter accounts controlled by the Chinese state pretending to be common citizens. Problem is that they are real citizens. In China, they're referred to as 50 Cent Army (or 50 Cent Party), because that's how much they're believed to be paid for every pro-government post. Their engagements are usually not. There are botnets upvoting/downvoting/liking/retweeting stuff, but each and every post is written b…

Yeah, that is a problem. The situation sounds similar to how the Act.IL app works, an app to counter criticism towards Israel online. The app publishes links to "hot pages" where users are supposed to post comments supportive of Israel and/or do the equivalent of down voting comments negative to it. The app itself is funded and, I believe, run by some Israeli government agency but the users who use it to coordinate a…

I can see where you're coming from, but in the Amnesty case it's fairly obvious that the communication originates from a campaign (due to timing if nothing else) and in the Israel case it's not.

Then there's a strong argument to be made that Amnesty gets the moral high ground because their goals are altruistic.

Either way, I think it's an apples to oranges comparison.

Re: Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer

#108

Post by AcerbicZero »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #59
dogma1138 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve seen one too many movies, mostly they are doing about the same job as brand influencers just their brand is HMAF in this case.

No, I was stationed as security for a PsyOps team in Gardez, Afghanistan for four months in 2003.

I suspect very few people have any first hand experience with "PSYOP" (MISO now). Its mostly reservists, they were kicked out of SOCOM for a reason (the reservists at least), and Civil Affairs does all the stuff people actually care about anyway.

The real manipulation of a population is being undertaken at levels so far outside that military structure, its almost unrecognizable.

Re: Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer

#109

Post by concordDance »

octosphere wrote: post #51
CharlesColeman wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect the new way of doing psyops is to buy multiple smartphones which all have separate IPs due to a GSM/4G network, and have different and distinct useragents due to different Android versions in use. That seems like a lot of enormously expensive trouble to do something that probably could be done a lot easier and cheaper: user agents are trivial to spoof and a sufficiently sophisticated attacker can probably…

I suppose it could be done a lot cheaper and easier, but don't forget the initial research required to figure out how to do it efficiently. All the trial and error required to create a set of OPSEC rules to abide by as you operate. In terms of useragents, you are right that they are easy to spoof; I actually meant the device fingerprints aren't easy to spoof (Twitter probably looks at heuristics like screen resolutio…

> I actually meant the device fingerprints aren't easy to spoof

Device fingerprints aren't easy to spoof for the average IT nerd, they are trivial to spoof for NSA.

I know enough that I could probably spoof most websites given a couple of days of research and poking. Now, don't get me wrong, my odds of convincing Google I'm actually two people are basically nil, even NSA might struggle to just manufacture Googleproof identities, but device fingerprints themselves are pretty spoofable.

Re: Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer

#110

Post by sittingnut »

jdc wrote: post #107
bjourne wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that is a problem. The situation sounds similar to how the Act.IL app works, an app to counter criticism towards Israel online. The app publishes links to "hot pages" where users are supposed to post comments supportive of Israel and/or do the equivalent of down voting comments negative to it. The app itself is funded and, I believe, run by some Israeli government agency but the users who use it to coordinate a…

I can see where you're coming from, but in the Amnesty case it's fairly obvious that the communication originates from a campaign (due to timing if nothing else) and in the Israel case it's not. Then there's a strong argument to be made that Amnesty gets the moral high ground because their goals are altruistic. Either way, I think it's an apples to oranges comparison.

altruism?! organizations like amnesty and human rights watch, regularly employee people in and out of western governments and are part of the governing western elite. no wonder that while they are always quick to call out and denounce some third world authoritarians, and adversaries of west, they are far more muted when it comes to rights violations by western leaders(even in minority of cases where they don't simply ignore). factually, greatest mass criminals and rights violators of 21st century, are presidents and other leaders of usa and it's allies. but you wouldn't know that, if your sources are amnesty and co.
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