Clint Watts Profile picture
Aug 7, 2019 11 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Hope there is a public discussion about how this White House summit and government interaction with big tech is contradictory & unproductive
1- it’s been only a month ago that President Trump claimed the tech companies were biased without offering evidence & he routinely attacks them despite these platforms being the center piece of his campaign and support washingtonpost.com/technology/201…
2- Last month, Trump hosts social media summit, does not invite companies, but invites people who’ve been removed from platforms for threats of violence mediamatters.org/donald-trump/h…
3- the social media summit, which the companies were not invited, nearly broke out into a physical confrontation npr.org/2019/07/13/741…
4- President said on Monday wanted to partner w/tech to find violent extremists, if I were Big Tech on Friday, I’d say - we’ve pushed extremists off our platform, and we’ve seen where they went, they were out there in your yard
5- when President engaged social media before at White House, he worried most about his follower count Twitter declining as company reduced bots. He was either disingenuous about his claims, or not smart enough to realize many of his followers were fake thedailybeast.com/trump-gets-gen…
6- with false claims of bias, excessive worry about certain groups of extremists but not other groups of extremists, executive branch partnering fairly w/big Tech is impossible, especially when DOJ is pursuing anti trust review of Big Tech foxnews.com/politics/doj-o…
7- Part anti-trust pursuit has been allegations Big Tech squelches competition, while we rightfully want to shutdown extremist on small platforms, this also squashes competition as white supremacists descend on understaffed/resources small platforms vice.com/en_us/article/…
8- political left also being unreasonable on competition & privacy balance with security, expect preemption of attacks, but don’t want to allow information to be seen. politico.com/story/2019/03/…
9- Big Tech & law enforcement could both say, “I’m mandated to police extremism, but what do you want me to police?” And “our motto was ‘see something, say something’ but if ‘we can’t see anything, we can’t do anything”
10- in sum, we were able to do counterrorism last decade because we had agreement in mission, unity in purpose, trust between institutions & public - we don’t have those ingredients today

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More from @selectedwisdom

Dec 27, 2022
Musk - the owner of this platform with the largest following on Twitter - is boosting an enduring Russian propaganda & disinformation campaign into nearly all Twitter feeds tonight.
The Kremlin has covertly and more recently overtly tried running CALEXIT and TEXIT campaigns on social media in america since at least 2014. texasmonthly.com/news-politics/…
Kremlin’s active measures strategy seeks to break unions, “win through the force of politics rather than the politics of force” it hasn’t worked, but, Medvedev could only dream of having millions see this narrative, today is the day kqed.org/news/11217187/…
Read 5 tweets
Dec 7, 2022
Surprising and not surprising at the same time. For those interested, NYT did an excellent broadcast “Day X” about similar extremism in Germany nytimes.com/2022/12/07/wor…
Again, not a surprise. They wanted to make contact with Russia. Image
Germany is a pivotal partner for holding together NATO/EU and support to Ukraine through the winter. Deeply alarming and not surprising based on recent indicators.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 7, 2022
ok, let's take a breath on Russian meddling in election via social media. The website here hosts american content gets little to no traction, the account posting memes is well known, extremely low traction nytimes.com/2022/11/06/tec…
At present, this is least Russian influence activity I've seen in 4 election cycles. Unless strategic hack on election day, see no evidence Russia tipping any election outcome.
More importantly for journalists, when IRA-Prighozin noisy & overt, they are doing little covert & achieving less. Putin's chef is achieving effects here, while not doing much of anything. apnews.com/article/2022-m…
Read 4 tweets
Nov 3, 2022
Summary: “Americans use Iranian disinformation about election 2020 to create American disinformation about election 2022” this is foreign disinfo being re-used by Americans - #NotLegit
This is a fake video the US Treasury said Iran "made in an attempt to undermine faith in the election by implying that individuals could cast fraudulent ballots."
Video created by Iranian state-sponsored actors executing a digital influence operation to intimidate and influence American voters. home.treasury.gov/news/press-rel…
Read 4 tweets
Nov 1, 2022
week until Election Day 2022, regarding foreign influence & interference, my general assessment is same as 2020 “what could a foreign country do to America that America is not already doing to itself.” However, a few things we’ve seen, few to look for nytimes.com/2022/10/31/tec…
2 parts to foreign election meddling; 1) influence of the outcome 2) interference in the conduct. On #1 - foreign has been light & weak. Seen no signs that of the outcome of any contest being tipped by those outside the U.S., but one interesting highlight...
China finally jumped into social media influence ops in U.S. election. An escalation for them, past elections had been CCP had been overt or sloppy or both. This time they tried to play like the Russians, except, lucky for the U.S., China sucks at it.
rollingstone.com/politics/polit…
Read 13 tweets
Oct 23, 2022
There it is. Kremlin using same strategy as February, telling on themselves. Watch the dam on Dnipro river, chemical weapons use, nuclear plants.
Russian troop in/around Kherson are in retreat. Kremlin taking heavy losses, realize they will not take Ukraine they are resorting to targeting energy infrastructure inside Ukraine. Also expanding cyber/sabotage on Europe. Escalating to deescalate, settle for ground before defeat
Read 4 tweets

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