Meta claims US military link to online propaganda campaign | Hacker News Reader

Meta claims US military link to online propaganda campaign

bbc.com

35 points3467914 comments

The article heading uses the word "claims" but it's a full report with all the evidence laid out and not even the Pentagon is playing it off like a just some accusation.

> The accounts targeting Iran had criticised Iranian authorities and their policies and posted about issues such as women's rights, researchers said.

> Meta's announcement confirms previous reporting by the Washington Post. Sources told the newspaper concern over the operation had made the Pentagon complete "a sweeping audit" of how the US military conducted clandestine information warfare.

This probably isn’t super well known to regular people but there are pretty strict laws in place in the US that actively prevent the US military or intel community from ever running psyop campaigns against a US based audience.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Un...

Unfortunately, language inserted into the NDAA changed that in 2012.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-s...

>The new law would give sweeping powers to the government to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. “It removes the protection for Americans,” says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”

That doesn't appear to have gone past a proposed amendment 10 years ago unless I am missing something those protections are still very much in place.

The amendment passed.

"US Government-Funded Domestic Propaganda Has Officially Hit The Airwaves"

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-domestic-propaganda-offic...

Reminds one of the now-deleted Reddit blog post naming Eglin Air Force Base as the most "Reddit-addicted" city.

"US military persons." Not necessarily an official military-backed campaign, but certainly could be.

The CIA has been planting stories in media as disinformation tactics since the Vietnam war: https://youtu.be/UwerBZG83YM

Drop in the ocean. I recall reading an article several years ago on how they publically announced job openings at a US Airforce base for _1000_ people, and they made it clear that the job was to maintain and operate multiple online accounts and personas.

Link?

I also remember reading several articles along the same lines mostly coming out of Eglin AFB. Due to the horrible state of search engines now I can't find the originals, but a saved paper I have in my bookmarks suggests similar: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf

It would take more searching of archives than I have capacity for, but I can at least anecdotally confirm GP's claim.

What paper of the paper is relevant to the claim that there were "publically announced job openings at a US Airforce base for _1000_ people" to "maintain and operate multiple online accounts and personas"?

> Due to the horrible state of search engines now I can't find the originals

Or it's hard to find because there is no original?

What a weirdly aggressive tone to take.

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