Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by quotz » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

input_sh wrote: post #79

bjourne wrote: post #73

Recently the Chinese government ran a full-page ad in a national newspaper explaining "their view" of "the Hong Kong situation." The newspaper got a lot of flack for publishing the ad, but I think neither they nor the Chinese government did anything wrong. Because the sender of the ad was clearly identified people could judge for themselves. While the ad was propaganda it wasn't manipulative or underhanded. But what…

> 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…

They are real humans in the sense of that they're made of flesh, but their actions and opinions are clearly fabricated. Combine that with the fake engagement so that it looks legit to the average Joe and boom you have the perfect robot army.

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

#92

Post by altendo » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:21 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #48

cameronbrown wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except almost every mainstream news source.. ever? Have you seen the amount of wrong information be blamed on Tweets?

Perhaps this is why the mainstream news sources are considered by many (most?) to be disreputable now.

This completely disregards the number of politicians and newsmakers using Twitter as a platform to share information. The US President has been the first president to announce major policy changes over Twitter without any consultation with his own administration.

News outlets cover Twitter precisely because people are making news on the platform. There is a lot of misinformation out there (especially from the President), and major news outlets make bad calls when running stories (affecting their reputation), but their insistence on using Twitter for news isn't a part of that.

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

#93

Post by cwkoss » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

octosphere wrote: post #36

You need more than one single solitary account to do psyops on Twitter (I know - I regularly play around with Twitter sockpuppet accounts because I have inordinate amounts of free time to do research on the effects of a campaign, albeit small experimental campaigns :p). Twitter have since made it very difficult to keep an account in good standing if you are suspected of doing psyop-type things like auto-liking specif…

Probably-not-ethical study I'd like to try. Pick two innocuous subject that somewhat uncommon. Pick a group of target accounts, randomly divide in two, assign each group of accounts a 'target subject'. Whenever you see a tweet from one of these accounts that mentions target subject, have a bot network like the post. After running experiment for a period, measure whether the relative frequency of posting about each subject is different between groups.

Would be interesting if previously unrelated accounts in same targeting group would find each other. I suspect you could make a weird cult of 'asparagus enthusiasts' or something if you worked at it.

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

#94

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #32

pdpi wrote: post #3

This is... tricky. There's two ways you can interpret the situation. One is that Twitter has a desire to use the information warfare skills directly to manipulate the narrative on its platform. The other is that they recognise external actors are very likely to want to do exactly that, and this sort of hire is a great defensive move. Twitter will never admit to the former and will always publicly state the latter. I…

There's two ways you can interpret the situation. No there are 3 ways, the third being that the guy’s day job and his reserve role are unrelated. What if he had been say a Chef in the Army and a Chef in a restaurant? No one would think that was weird.

So you'd be happy with a high level Chinese party member, perhaps an "ex" People's Army psy-ops guy (or whoever), being in charge of USA's Twitter accounts, for example, because "it's just a job"?

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

#95

Post by bjourne » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

input_sh wrote: post #79

bjourne wrote: post #73

Recently the Chinese government ran a full-page ad in a national newspaper explaining "their view" of "the Hong Kong situation." The newspaper got a lot of flack for publishing the ad, but I think neither they nor the Chinese government did anything wrong. Because the sender of the ad was clearly identified people could judge for themselves. While the ad was propaganda it wasn't manipulative or underhanded. But what…

> 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 are not affiliated with the Israeli state in any way. Just "normal" people who happen to be very pro-Israel, I guess.

So is that underhanded or not? It is not completely different from Amnesty who occasionally sends out emails asking you to sign some list of signatures or to send complaint letters to some third world despot. There are very few rules in this area so it is hard to say what is fair and what isn't. Even if there were, there's no way the rules will be enforced. I'm pretty sure that all these "scandals" are just the tip of the iceberg. The dumb ones are getting caught. More refined state actors (not Russia or China) already have way better methods that Twitter and Facebook can't (or wont!) detect.

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

#96

Post by bigYahnz » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

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…

Any concern with JIDF?

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

#97

Post by Mikeb85 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

cameronbrown wrote: post #10

krona wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm aware, nobody is using Twitter as a reputable source of information.

Except almost every mainstream news source.. ever? Have you seen the amount of wrong information be blamed on Tweets?

Which is why mainstream news is viewed as untrustworthy by most people.

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

#98

Post by Mikeb85 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

And people wonder why so much of the world is distrustful of western media. It's been obvious for a long time that western media corporations are propaganda outlets for governments that hide behind a thin veneer of 'independent' ownership.

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

#99

Post by navigatesol » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

nyolfen wrote: post #83

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…

there are also many, many sincere chinese nationalists, some of whom use twitter. people forget that the number of chinese people on the internet is substantially larger than the entire US population, even if most don’t hang out in the same places

People on the internet seem regularly shocked to learn that there are real-life individuals who support Trump, are pro-CCP and don't consider every interaction with a Russian national to be treason.

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

#100

Post by gnu8 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

CharlesColeman wrote: post #54

gnu8 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes complete sense for a reservist with a day job. I got the impression that this guy is doing his military psyops duty by working at Twitter, thus doing both jobs at once.

> I got the impression that this guy is doing his military psyops duty by working at Twitter, thus doing both jobs at once. I think the article tries to create that impression, but it doesn't actually say so. Maybe it's just an attempt to make the story more sensational for clicks.

I guess today I’m the victim of the psyop, heh.