Hundreds of Propaganda Accounts Targeting Iran and Qatar Removed from Facebook

[panpanna]

The article points out PR firms in Nigeria, Egypt and UAE.

> Increasingly, we're seeing more PR firms or strategic communication firms offer computational propaganda as a service for all sorts of clients, including governments.

Now consider this, if this happens at this scale for the small cost of $150.000 how many pr-firms are engaging in propaganda against some commercial target right now without your ever noticing?

[save_ferris]

Reminds me of a recent New Yorker piece where a local oversight group in a small California town tried to push out corrupt healthcare managers through elections, only to be subjected to massive online influence operations. Fascinating and terrifying[0]

0: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/private-mossad...

[Faark]

Notably absent in heap of recent articles about social media manipulations are western governments. I have a hard time believing that everyone is doing it but us, and our guys don't want/have that capability. This is hardly something that can be brought up to speed anywhere but in the field, so I'd expect there to be traces.

Now there could be many of reasons for that absence of news. Media could be constrained by gov. More likely is social networks being forced to keep silent. Soft power of / direct access to those US companies might be good enough for US intelligence to not warrant further actions risking trust in the platforms. Actions might take place on battlefields far away & not observed by western media (like, how would you even start getting around e.g. ID requirements in china... seems kind of hard).

Anyway, I just found noteworthy how well this one fits US geopolitical interests.

[Razengan]

Samsung for example was caught at it:

https://www.google.com/search?q=samsung+paid+students+for+re...

Happens on Reddit all the time once you know how to notice it, e.g. posts about the same topic on multiple subreddits getting over 10,000 upvotes in less than 3 hours, sometimes more than there are users of that subreddit!

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bb7t71/reddit_for_s...

[reaperducer]

Now consider this, if this happens at this scale for the small cost of $150.000 how many pr-firms are engaging in propaganda against some commercial target right now without your ever noticing?

You mean like the way certain east (and probably west) coast billionaires spending millions to influence elections in the flyover states?

[bilbo0s]

I think everyone has taken notice. The propaganda right now is too all encompassing so we can't help but to take notice.

Even on HN the past few years the number of propaganda posts and comments has gone up and up and up. Continues to increase right now.

What can people do though? Other people have the right to free speech. You just have to try to tune out all of the Anti-Tech, Anti-China, Anti-US, Anti-Amazon, Anti-Iran, Anti-Trump, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Obama, Anti-minority, Anti-etc etc etc blather.

[jjtheblunt]

Your point to consider made me think how curiously common negative mention of Apple is in Forbes, for example.

[pnako]

I would not even be surprised to learn that billionaires buy newspapers to push their views.

[josefresco]

So propaganda is not allowed, by political ads that contain lies are allowed. Aren't lies in political ads by the ruling party or candidate ... propaganda?

[mywittyname]

Yes.

And there should be facilities in place to punish those who push knowingly false narratives, but that's a damn-near impossible task to achieve.

[vkou]

It's about as consistent as people complaining about the Kremlin lying on Facebook, but not some billionaire lying on Facebook.

Bonus points when you don't even know who he is, because his money has been laundered through a PAC. Oh, and we get to subsidize his speech, because it's tax-deductible for him.

Double bonus points if, in a slightly different situation, that billionaire has been borrowing money for his various business ventures from friends of the Kremlin, and happens to look a wee bit orange...

[dillondoyle]

political ads have reporting and disclaimers, or minimally an attempt at transparency. Bots/propaganda online pretends to be someone else, does not proclaim the source.

[aritmo]

In the military, this is also called PSYOPS.

[throwaway672]

The problems on Twitter are worse. There are networks of verified accounts pumping out orchestrated propaganda on this topic, and others. A blue check mark seems to be a license to generate money with impunity. There are networks operating out of first world countries with verified accounts, that have third-world minions that amplify their messages through retweets and likes. It is surprising that corporations continue to associate with the open sewer of propaganda, hate and harassment that Twitter is. Has the time come for a clean clone of Twitter for business to interact with their customers?

[zarro]

"The censor was a magistrate in ancient Rome who was responsible for maintaining the census, supervising public morality, and overseeing certain aspects of the government's finances.

The power of the censors was absolute: no magistrate could oppose their decisions, only another censor who succeeded them could cancel it.

The censors' regulation of public morality is the origin of the modern meaning of the words censor and censorship."

[zachguo]

Is it really appropriate to let platforms determine what is propaganda or not?

[sharkjacobs]

Maybe not to determine what "propaganda" is, but I think it's reasonable, and necessary for them to determine what real accounts are.

> The accounts, which have now been taken down, appear to have been professionally run by PR firms

These aren't real users and presumably violate the terms of service.

[empath75]

What's the alternative? Forcing them to publish material that they don't want to?

[pooya13]

It’s odd that in the entire article they don’t mention anything about the actual content of this propaganda against Iran. I wonder for example, was the current news about Iran attacking oil tankers part of this campaign?

[ianai]

You can probably assume it’s whatever Russia and Putin would want it to be.

[ilaksh]

Does Facebook take down the propaganda accounts linked to the US? Or we are all still supposed to believe that the "good guys" stopped using propaganda after WWII?

[klingonopera]

Taking down anti-Iran propaganda would be something that does not align with US goals. I find it quite surprising that Facebook's doing this, to be honest.

[Udik]

I just checked, these "official" [1] propaganda pages for Israel are still there:

https://www.facebook.com/DailyCupOfJane/

https://www.facebook.com/HistoryBites/

https://www.facebook.com/ThisExplainsThat/

https://www.facebook.com/WeOnlyHaveOneEarth/

[1] https://www.theisraelproject.org/socialmedia

"The Israel Project has developed a cutting edge production shop to inform the 21st century media and public conversation. Using videos, memes, infographics and other original productions – TIP is ensuring social media users know the truth about Israel and the Middle East."

"the Facebook page Cup of Jane. Serving the young women’s community, it has built up over 450,000 followers in that short time. ... Since then, we have launched multiple communities including HistoryBites for history fans, This Explains That for news junkies and We Only Have One Earth for environmentally-minded folks"

[throwaway122378]

Individuals posting propaganda is far less concerning to me than a private company deciding what propaganda is.

[ianai]

Wake me up when it’s the hundred of thousands that are on there.

[markdown]

And WEST PAPUA!!! Frustrating to see the Indonesian genocide of the West Papuan people is ignored.

There is far far worse going on in West Papua then is going on in Iran or Qatar, but Buzzfeed chooses to write about them instead.

The FB press release clearly mentions Indonesia and West Papua but it's ignored yet again by the western press.

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/10/removing-coordinated-in...

[jin7]

I did nothing, but my account has been deleted. Of course, I rarely use Facebook.

[aritmo]

Did you post anything political?

[benkarst]

Buzzfeed eliminating the competition.

[ru999gol]

and whats the difference to this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/31/us-cuts-fund...

in truth of course the US government is doing exactly the same thing all the time, standard practice.