News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

Meta confirms U.S. military involvement in sprawling phony social media operation

People associated with the U.S. military were behind dozens of phony Facebook accounts, more than a dozen pages, a pair of groups and 26 Instagram accounts that pushed pro-U.S. messaging while attempting to hide their real identities, Facebook’s parent company Meta said in a report published Tuesday.

After researchers first exposed the decade-long operation in August, the Pentagon ordered “a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare,” The Washington Post reported in September. Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the paper reported that U.S. Central Command was among the entities under scrutiny as part of their potential role in the operation.

Tuesday’s report is the latest evidence pointing the finger at the U.S. military for its role in an operation that targeted audiences in the Middle East and Central Asia.
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Meta confirmed to CyberScoop at the time that the network originated in the U.S., while Twitter listed the presumptive “countries of origin” as the U.S. and Great Britain.
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The activity in question included “several clusters” of activity focused on Iran, the Gulf, Central Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa, Meta said in Tuesday’s report. “Typically, each cluster posted about particular themes, including sports and culture in a particular country; cooperation with the United States, including military cooperation; and criticism of Iran, China, or Russia.”

Twitter erupts after Elon Musk mocks CNN
with satirical chyron about threats to free speech

Musk posted a picture of CNN’s Don Lemon on Monday alongside a satirical chyron that read, "Elon Musk could threaten free speech on Twitter by allowing people to speak freely."

Some Twitter users were confused about whether the meme was from an actual CNN broadcast. The image is originally from Geniuses Times, a satirical website that describes itself as "the most reliable source of fake news in the planet."
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Ronald Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic, claimed that Musk was simply repackaging hate speech as free speech to empower extremism on the far right.

"Simple equation: Musk repackages hate speech racism anti-semitism homophobia and far-right intimidation as ‘free speech’ & any effort to hold him accountable for injecting it into US society as the ‘woke mob.’ On both ends, same goal: amplifying & empowering far-right extremists," he tweeted.

Meanwhile, The Jewish Voice, a news and opinion site dedicated to promoting classical Judaism, asserted that Don Lemon’s continued presence on CNN would ensure most Americans would click off the channel.

i can't blame Musk on this one. CNN and other leftist venues love to call censorship "free speech" even if that's exactly the opposite.