
Twitter exec for Middle East is also part-time British army 'psyops' officer - FDS
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/twitter-executive-also-part-time-officer-uk-army-psychological-warfare-unit
======
noego
This is a conflict of interest, which should erode the trust that anyone would
have on twitter. The man is simultaneously responsible for editorial
decisions, while also serving in a brigade that _" uses social media platforms
such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook ... to wage what the head of the UK
military describes as “information warfare”._

Imagine finding out that the executive in charge of editorial decisions for
Twitter in Hong Kong, is also serving in the Chinese military's department of
"information warfare". As a Hong Konger, you'd have to be an idiot to continue
trusting twitter at that point. The fact that Twitter is well aware of this,
and didn't see a conflict of interest, makes me question their neutrality and
effectiveness as a platform for online discussion.

~~~
thrower123
Who has any trust in Twitter?

~~~
pembrook
Exactly.

Twitter is not an open protocol for sharing information. _Thats what the
internet is for._ Twitter is just an advertising company that allows you to
post content in exchange for hosting ads on that content.

Who they hire, is their business. If you don't agree with their (inconsistent
and haphazard) editorial policies, just host your content elsewhere.

I think we need to stop giving Twitter so much power over the world by talking
about it so much and start creating and using other platforms. Twitter has
only 20% market penetration in the US.

------
bjourne
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 is going on these days is that governments are engaging in propaganda
where the identity of the sender is shrouded. For example Twitter accounts
controlled by the Chinese state pretending to be common citizens. I think such
propaganda is not ok and also that it is not only China and Russia doing it
but also Western states and states that are supposed to be friendly to the
West.

~~~
input_sh
> 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 by an actual human, and there are guidelines as to how they need to
respond to different stories. It's not like there's one human in charge of
posting to 100s of accounts.

~~~
bjourne
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.

~~~
jdc
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.

~~~
sittingnut
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.

~~~
jdc
Source? They don't come off especially muted on the USA. On this one page they
mention:

* civilian drone-strike killings

* suspension of travel from Muslim-major countries

* attacks on rights of women & girls

* new Guantánamo Bay transfers

* gun violence

* death sentences

[https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/americas/united-
states-...](https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/americas/united-states-of-
america/)

~~~
sittingnut
that is in fact extremely muted (and mostly about things that are not in line
with ideology of west's elites) compared to their condemnation of 3rd world
authoritarians or adversaries of west. especially so because west is now the
biggest rights violators, including biggest mass murderers and perpetrators of
illegal wars.

------
leroy_masochist
One thing that mystifies me is why the general population thinks that
uniformed PsyOps people are like a real-life version of Kilgrave from Jessica
Jones. They're basically the military's version of PR reps; most of their time
is spent doing stuff like making fliers and taking photos of bags of rice
being handed out. Maybe once in a while they get to blast Slayer at a building
of holed-up insurgents. Meanwhile all the HN comments treating this guy like
he's using Twitter as a cover to put LSD in the Saudis' water supply or some
shit.

~~~
5trokerac3
PsyOps main job is convincing occupied peoples that the occupier is their
friend. _One_ of the ways they do that is by taking photos of bags of rice
being handed out. They also actively work to spread (dis)information.

~~~
doktrin
So, like a PR rep?

~~~
ratacat
The term public relations was actually an explicit rebranding of the term
Propaganda after it started to develop a negative association in the public
eye. Look up Edward Bernays, it's a fascinating bit of history that's not
really talked about much.

[http://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-
american-...](http://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-
mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393)

~~~
throwaway829
If you're into documentaries, "The Century of the Self" covers this subject
excellently:
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=century+of+self](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=century+of+self)

~~~
news_hacker
One of my favorite documentaries! It didn't just give me new knowledge, but
re-framed the way I view & process future knowledge.

------
pdpi
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 don't think there's a real way to tell what the truth actually is —
arguably it might actually be "a bit of both" — and I suspect most people will
see this as proof of whatever theory they already believed in.

~~~
goatinaboat
_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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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"?

~~~
goatinaboat
Sure people will ask questions but there is a non-zero possibility that it is
above board. That is all I’m saying.

------
octosphere
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 specific keywords, 'pouncing' on tweets
that have just been sent so that you have the first few replies, constantly
monitoring their search feature for specific keywords and engaging with others
and spreading some sort of repeated message. Gaming the retweet and like count
with several bot-accounts that all use the same IP and useragent will surely
get you banned.

I think over the last few years Twitter have done a good job at filtering out
bad actors, though like some game of whack-a-mole - bad actors continue to
crop up and game Twitter using more novel methods. 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 device fingerprints due to
different Android versions in use. Then it's a case of constantly feeding the
sim-cards with credit (to keep them registered on the network) and if prompted
to verify a Twitter account with a phone number, you have a dedicated device
for that.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> 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 just steal any
needed IPs from legitimate organizations using BGP (I understand the hosters
used by spammers already do this).

The only benefit I could think of for using actual smartphones is that they'd
provide different, legitimate device fingerprinting results.

~~~
octosphere
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 resolution for example) which is why I would suggest
getting a variety of different phones like a mix of legacy Android, newer
model Samsungs, iPhones, etc So you have different screen resolutions (which
are not trivial to spoof) even different timezones, along with a mix of other
unique specs

One caveat to using hundreds (if not thousands of phones) is the cost. I get
that. But remember these are the _army_ we are talking about that have a large
budget to spend on psyops and can actually pull something like that off.
Another caveat to using phones is the lack of dexterity; using a phone is
slower than using a desktop environment with keyboard, mouse, et al, although
you can extend a phone with a keyboard for faster typing.

~~~
concordDance
> 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.

~~~
ryacko
You can spoof device fingerprints, but you can't spoof the top 100 common
devices easily.

------
muglug
Great to see a Twitter exec who actually uses the platform!

------
johnnybaptist
"His involvement with the 77th Brigade was made public when he disclosed it on
his page at LinkedIn, the online professional networking site."

Doxing yourself on Linkedin seems like a pretty amateur psyops move.

~~~
chrisseaton
Many reservists are public about what they do. I have my military affiliation
in all my profiles. He's not in some kind of secret special forces unit or
anything like that.

Ultimately, being a reserve officer is a matter of public record, as you are
formally gazetted and there is no point trying to pretend it is secret.

------
dlgeek
Even if they wanted to, is there anything Twitter could do about the
(potential/perceived/choose-your-own-narrative) conflict of interest?

I don't know anything about British labor law, but in the US it's illegal to
discriminate, fire, etc. a person because of service in the armed forces,
including reserves. I'm pretty sure taking any action on the basis of their
role in the reserves would be illegal.

------
Mikeb85
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.

~~~
mieseratte
> outlets for governments that hide behind a thin veneer of 'independent'
> ownership.

Considering how much of US media regularly pillories Trump, I'm skeptical that
of the claim of government control. I'm certain they do, however, serve as a
PR mouthpiece for various moneyed interests.

~~~
Mikeb85
Trump is the leader of a single branch of government, meanwhile the
Republicans and Democrats have pursued the same neo-con policies for years.
Trump is going against the grain with his protectionist policies, so it's
entirely predictable that he'd receive criticism from established government
officials. Also keep in mind that 2/3 branches of government are still
controlled by entrenched Democrats and Republicans.

------
angry_octet
Another total beatup. This guy is an Army Captain, a very junior officer in
the reserves. He has a journalism background, and while on reserve time he is
probably pulling his hair out trying to explain what a tweet is to people who
were really comfortable with Blackberry, and dealing with RoE and approvals
chains that make doing anything more than writting puff pieces about Change of
Command ceremonies or HADR impossible.

I only wish the UK and others would get serious about countering Russian /
Iranian/Syrian / GCC/Egyptian / Chinese / ISIS bad actors by unmasking their
influence campaigns, educating their populace (at schools and whereever old
people can be reached), and generally stop being complacent about it.

Also, it's not call psyops now, it's Information Ops (IO), and if the UK are
doing anything it will be at GCHQ, not the Pashtun DJs at 77 BDE.

------
dragonwriter
If you think it's problematic that a Twitter exec is also a reserve psyops
officer, you probably shouldn't think about how many corporate (and nonprofit,
and non-federal government) cybersecurity officials at all levels are military
reservists whose military role is cyberwarfare.

------
umeshunni
By "Executive", they mean a PR Editor.

------
jessaustin
Is this any different? Maybe it's worse? Previously he was in charge of USA
propaganda focused overseas. Now he's in charge of USA propaganda focused on
USA residents:

[https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758047287/npr-names-
veteran-m...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758047287/npr-names-veteran-
media-executive-john-lansing-as-its-new-ceo)

------
gnu8
Does he get two paychecks?

~~~
EliRivers
He gets paid the daily rate for his rank (and any applicable modifiers) for
each day on duty. So if he spends a weekend at 77 HQ or some training location
or other such, on duty, he'll get two days' pay for that (potentially a smidge
more if he can claim travel time on the Friday, but you get the idea).

Also, reservists attract a tax free bounty each year if they complete their
agreed training requirment.

~~~
gnu8
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.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> 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.

~~~
gnu8
I guess today I’m the victim of the psyop, heh.

------
mothsonasloth
In the article they describe them as "Facebook Warriors", does that mean they
are exempt from the British Army's basic combat fitness test?

------
whenchamenia
Reminds me of Disney, which has long employed DOD Psyops in high positions.

------
bryanrasmussen
I'm thinking he may actually be full time though.

------
searine
This hire was probably an over-correction after the Saudi's got busted with
spies inside twitter.

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/20/18003644/saudi-arabia-
tw...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/20/18003644/saudi-arabia-twitter-
jamal-khashoggi-twitter-employee-spy)

~~~
vonmoltke
> The [Saudi-groomed] employee was fired in 2015

> Gordon MacMillan, who joined the social media company's UK office six years
> ago [2013]

Er, how does that work?

