[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.

[JasonFruit]

I guess it makes sense that you'd want for a position like this to have someone with a deep understanding of social media in general, how Twitter is used in Middle Eastern cultures, how to discourage radicalization on the platform, that sort of thing — exactly the sort of thing you'd learn in the 77th Brigade. And yet — it's not a really comfortable sort of thing, is it? It's an admission that, at the very least, the platform is trying to manipulate its users, and at most, engaging in that manipulation on the behalf of governments it supports to the detriment of other groups.

[pjc50]

The Arab Spring both made and broke twitter, and for the same reason: it became very obvious that it now had the power to achieve massive social change.

That got a lot of people on board trying to achieve positive social change .. and a lot of people trying to achieve antisocial change (promotion of racism etc), states trying to neutralise it in their own politics, and states trying to promote it in the politics of their enemies.

The best ways to sabotage a social movement are with infighting, misidentification of enemies, and distraction with irrelevant goals. Twitter also provides a new one: arguing with trolls and sockpuppets. Hugely engaging, provides moral vindication, achieves less than nothing.

[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.

[Teever]

A chef in the army usually isn't trying to poison people's bodies so we would have little worry about them trying to do it in their private restaurant.

A propagandist for the military is charged with poisoning people's minds and so we should therefore be very worried if they take up similar positions in the private sector.

[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.

[tolstoshev]

It's called the Department of Defense, not Offense :)