‘I Agreed to Nothing’: Investigative Journalist Lee Fang Drops Twitter Files on Pentagon ‘PsyOp’, Says Musk Had ‘No Input’ on His Report
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The latest chapter of the Twitter Files dropped Tuesday, courtesy of investigative journalist Lee Fang of The Intercept, who concluded based on internal documents from the social media platform that Twitter directly “aided” the Pentagon in a “covert online propaganda campaign.
Fang’s revelations are the latest in a string of reports as Elon Musk has granted reporters access to internal Twitter documents from before he took over the company. Fang revealed he had a period of time where he could request documents from Twitter, but insisted he agreed to no “conditions governing the use of the documents.” Fang said Twitter had no input on his reporting.
Fang reported in The Intercept about his access to files:
The revelations are buried in the archives of Twitter’s emails and internal tools, to which The Intercept was granted access for a brief period last week alongside a handful of other writers and reporters. Following Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the billionaire starting giving access to company documents, saying in a Twitter Space that “the general idea is to surface anything bad Twitter has done in the past.” The files, which included records generated under Musk’s ownership, provide unprecedented, if incomplete, insight into decision-making within a major social media company.
Twitter did not provide unfettered access to company information; rather, for three days last week, they allowed me to make requests without restriction that were then fulfilled on my behalf by an attorney, meaning that the search results may not have been exhaustive. I did not agree to any conditions governing the use of the documents, and I made efforts to authenticate and contextualize the documents through further reporting. The redactions in the embedded documents in this story were done by The Intercept to protect privacy, not Twitter.
Included in Fang’s thread is the accusation that Twitter gave “gave approval & special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological influence ops,” despite public promises to thwart “platform manipulation” from the government.
Among the documents presented by Fang are an alleged communication from defense officials to Twitter asking for “priority service” for dozens of Arab language accounts used to “amplify” certain messages.
4. In 2017, a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official sent Twitter a list of 52 Arab language accounts “we use to amplify certain messages.” The official asked for priority service for six accounts, verification for one & “whitelist” abilities for the others. pic.twitter.com/LuMbMZDv8i
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
5. The same day CENTCOM sent the list, Twitter officials used a tool to grant a special “whitelist” tag that essentially provides verification status to the accounts w/o the blue check, meaning they are exempt from spam/abuse flags, more visible/likely to trend on hashtags.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 20, 2022
Other documents show seeming frequent collaboration between the Department of Defense and Twitter with the social media platform providing services like granting a “whitelist” tag, which is essentially a verification badge without the actual badge.
Previous Twitter Files dumps have included documents showing the active suppression of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story, as well as communications between the company and the DNC about the story being promoted on Twitter. One document showing a tweet from actor James Woods being flagged sparked the outspoken conservative to promise a lawsuit in response as he was suspended from the platform following at the time of the communication.
Musk took to Twitter on Tuesday to share Fang’s thread as he does with the other Twitter Files, simply saying in reaction to the alleged cooperation between the Pentagon and Twitter on propaganda campaigns, “Yikes!”
