Slashdot Mirror
Google Removes Accounts Tied To Iran-Led Misinformation Campaign (engadget.com)
In a blog post, Google shared an update regarding its efforts to combat state-sponsored phishing attacks and to remove accounts associated with an influence operation linked to Iran. Engadget reports: The company said that in recent months, it has detected and blocked state-sponsored groups from targeting political campaigns, journalists, activists and academics with phishing attempts. Google has also been working with the cybersecurity group FireEye, which has been providing Google with information on an Iran-based misinformation operation. FireEye identified three email accounts, three YouTube channels and three Google+ accounts linked to that operation, which Google subsequently took down.
In conjunction to the intelligence provided by FireEye, Google also investigated other suspicious groups linked to Iran. The company identified and removed 39 YouTube channels, six Blogger blogs and 13 Google+ accounts it believed to be connected to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. Relevant videos on the now-terminated YouTube channels had garnered 13,466 views in the U.S. Facebook and Twitter were also made aware of the Iranian operation. Twitter announced that it suspended 284 accounts believed to have originated from Iran for "engaging in coordinated manipulation." Meanwhile, Facebook said it removed "652 pages that it says were linked to a campaign originating in Iran, as well as an unspecified number of accounts liked to Russian military intelligence services," reports Engadget.
In conjunction to the intelligence provided by FireEye, Google also investigated other suspicious groups linked to Iran. The company identified and removed 39 YouTube channels, six Blogger blogs and 13 Google+ accounts it believed to be connected to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. Relevant videos on the now-terminated YouTube channels had garnered 13,466 views in the U.S. Facebook and Twitter were also made aware of the Iranian operation. Twitter announced that it suspended 284 accounts believed to have originated from Iran for "engaging in coordinated manipulation." Meanwhile, Facebook said it removed "652 pages that it says were linked to a campaign originating in Iran, as well as an unspecified number of accounts liked to Russian military intelligence services," reports Engadget.
We are told fake news were removed, but we have no sample of the suppressed speech so that we can make up our own mind about it. It looks a lot like censorship.
https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/fireeye-www/blog/pdfs/rpt-FireEye-Iranian-IO.pdf
Seems like the main crime they committed was supporting Palestine, and opposing human rights violations in Saudi Arabia.
"Multiple regionally focused Liberty Front Press Twitter accounts
have retweeted content from the original affiliated Twitter
accounts (@libertyfrontpr and @libertyfrontp) that contained,
for example, anti-Saudi, anti-Israel, pro-Palestine, and antiTrump
sentiments."
Oh no, how ever shall our democracy survive an anti-Saudi tweet! SHUT IT DOWN!
"South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa announced earlier that the ruling political party, the African National Congress, had agreed to a proposal to alter the country's constitution and allow for land expropriation, or seizure by the government, without compensation", reports ABC News.
The official South Africa government Twitter account added:
"South Africa will speed up the pace of land reform"
It seems someone told you some fake news.
Instead of sending all these Facebook/Twitter postings down the memory hole, they should just flag them: "These are posts which we have reason to believe originated with Iranian operatives" (or Russian military, or whatever they think it is). Give people the option to hide these posts, or to browse them, or whatever they want to do. Personally, I'd be curious to look at them, at least briefly. It could perhaps lead me to be better informed about what the various state actors are up to on social media. It would certainly do a lot to raise public awareness of that problem.
The current solution sucks, since it does nothing to raise awareness of the problem, and raises the possibility that Facebook is engaging in censorship for their own reasons. As others have observed on this thread: it smells a little gamey when Facebook says "We're going to delete all these posts because we think they originated with [x]. No, we're not going to tell you why we think that".
The solution to speech you don't like is to add more speech of your own. The solution is never to suppress the speech you don't like.
at least one US-lead disinformation campaign, this is censorship on behalf of the US government, and nothing else.
Remember Iraq having nukular weapons, ready to strike in under 4 hours? Remember "Alkaida operating out of Baghdad"? Remember "Syria chemical weapons facilities bombed", when the said facilities were inspected by OPCW months early and declared clean? Remember Hans Blix?
All these lies were used as excuses for massive wars, which brought an enormous amount of suffering. In combination, the propaganda and the wars are a crime against humanity.
But where's the outrage?
Washington loves the two most depraved states on the Earth equally, Isr-el and Saudi Arabia. And the z-onists and wahhabis are blood brothers. Slashdot is just another media mouthpiece for the one, and thus the other. Every day Slashdot tries to demonise Iran.
The excuse given by the z-onist owners of Facebook for banning the 'Iran' accounts was that they dared to support the Iran nuclear treaty.
I'm reminded of when Tony Blair blew up the Serbia equivalent of the BBC HQ (civilian TV centre) because the station dared to run programs criticising Tony Blair's Kosovo War, and dared to show images of the thousands of civilians Blair murdered in Serbia. The actual BBC stated the bombing was justified (many many civilian workers were slaughtered) because the Serbs had no right to tell the truth when it ran against 'british' propaganda interests. Indeed it was a BBC foreign correspondent who phoned back to confirm all the foreign journalists had left the target building for the night, so the RAF could then murder ever civilian Serb who remained in the HQ. Jill Dando- a BBC journalist who fronted the anti-serb war propaganda- was murdered at her home in revenge shortly afetrwards.
Or perhaps you prefer the example of Loony Tunes cartoons that used nazi-style racist imagery to demonise the people of Japan during WW2.
In a time of WAR, the 'enemy' is to be denied a voice regardless of truth. The tech giants know the war on Iran has actually begun, and are acting accordingly.
I hardly see it as convincing anyone and all it does is put forward the question, are the corporate douche bags censoring US government propaganda in other countries to protect those countries citizens from the mountains of bullshit coming out of the US. Are the winning the censor law, nope, they are just crippling their businesses. They are simply pushing the censorship button as hard as they can until the public react.
Of course the typical complain but the mug punters will be mislead. Reality is, mug punters don't give much intellectual thought to anything and vote with the dumb gut, for whom ever. The smart campaigns, they involve people who want to be involved and who want to be informed and they drag along the rest. You simply can not censor them over the long term. You only need to fail to censor them once, censor their ability to access the truth, and you lose them forever.
All Google and Facebook are doing right now is showing how weak they are, how little influence they have in reality. The reality is, it is the people that use Google and Facebook who have the influence, lose them and you lose that influence.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
helping Trump collude to disenfranchise US voters
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disenfranchise
so are Republicans ready to admit the fact that Iran is attempting to influence us?
Everyone tries to "influence" everyone, Russia included. Remember when Obama flew to London to try to "influence" the brexit vote by threatening Britain? Or when Mexico "influenced" every election in living memory by shipping millions of their citizens here to produce millions of voting-legal children? Or when the CIA tried to "influence" dozens of countries since WW2 through everything from media propaganda campaigns to coups to full-blown military invasions?
(It's hard to keep up with their bullshit platform frankly)
Because apparently you're only learning about it through third-hand twitter accounts, deranged cable news personalities, and the voices in your head. The "platform" - agreed to by everyone with the psychological capability to look halfway objectively at the evidence, including Comey and, as far as we know, Mueller - is that of course Russia tried to "influence" the election, but that neither Trump nor anyone on his staff had any role in it. Moreover since this "influence" seems to amount to little more than some facebook posts and twitter bots, the fact that anyone even gives a shit is fucking bizarre.