Twitter, Fb, TikTok, more are run by the FBI, CIA, and NATO
A new report has found that Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, and various other platform hire ex-spies and thus make the platforms they work for effectively less neutral and more biased.
After conducting an analysis of employment and recruitment websites, MintPress News found that Twitter has hired “an alarming number” of ex-FBI agents and other former “feds and spies.”
According to MintPress News report, “dozens of individuals from the national security state” have been hired in recent years “to work in the fields of security, trust, safety, and content.” Furthermore, it is stated that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the chief among the places where Twitter finds future recruits. While the FBI is largely known as “a domestic security and intelligence force,” however, the report highlights that “it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace.”
For example, the report showed that Mark Jaroszewski, the current director of corporate security and risk at Twitter, had previously worked for 20+ years at the FBI. Also, there is Karen Walsh, director of corporate resilience at Twitter after 21 years as a special agent with the FBI.
Agencies such as NATO and the Central Intelligence Agency have also been named as key apparatus for personnel higher at Twitter.
“Twitter also directly employs active army officers. In 2019, Gordon Macmillan, the head of editorial for the entire Europe, Middle East and Africa region was revealed to be an officer in the British Army’s notorious 77th Brigade – a unit dedicated to online warfare and psychological operations. This bombshell news was steadfastly ignored across the media,” the outlet stressed.
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According to MintPress, Twitter's claims of neutrality are undermined by the reality that the majority of its candidates come from US national security groups which in itself “is the source of some of the largest and most extensive influence operations in the world.”
The report discussed other risks such as Twitter dealing with global topics and possibly controversies the same way the FBI views them. To prove this claim, the report analyzed a list, as compiled by Twitter, of the countries supposedly leading disinformation campaigns.
“One cannot help noticing that this list correlates quite closely to a hit list of US government adversaries. All countries carry out disinfo campaigns to a certain extent. But these ‘former’ spooks and feds are unlikely to point the finger at their former colleagues or sister organizations or investigate their operations,” MintPress explained.
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Furthermore, the report highlights that Twitter adds cautionary messages to the tweets and accounts of the state-affiliated media agencies of Russia, China, Iran and Cuba, thus echoing “US hostility.” On the other hand, no warning signs are highlighted when it comes to pages of state-affiliated media of US, EU, or allies, read the report.
It is also important to note that Twitter, is not the only social media platform that is “cultivating such an intimate relationship with the FBI and other groups belonging to the secret state,” adding that “One of the media’s primary functions is to serve as a fourth estate; a force that works to hold the government and its agencies to account. Yet instead of doing that, increasingly it is collaborating with them. Such are these increasing interlocking connections that it is becoming increasingly difficult to see where big government ends and big media begins."
The report found that Facebook, with approximately 2.9 billion users whose feeds are affected by the company policy, “has entered into a formal partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab.” This means that the choice of employees creates an entire and cumulative atmosphere that actively helps “decide what content to promote and what content to suppress.” In addition, Facebook also hired former NATO Press Secretary, Ben Nimmo, as its head of intelligence.
Furthermore, and according to the MintPress report, TikTok, Reddit, Thomson Reuters, and a variety of US media outlets have also been filling their organizations with alumni from US national institutions such as the Atlantic Council, NATO, CIA, and the State Department.