Swarms Of Saudi Twitter Trolls Worked To Silence Voices Like Khashoggi’s

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Legions of Twitter trolls working on behalf of the Saudi government targeted critics of the regime, like the allegedly murdered journalist Jamel Khashoggi, and may have even planted one of their own inside the company itself.

In a Saturday New York Times report, details surfaced of attempts to intimidate dissidents and silence criticism as Saudi Arabia’s economic future looks uncertain, thus its place on the world stage threatened.

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  1. Avatar for cinfl cinfl says:

    Hey M.B.S., Here’s a tip exporting violence is not a good alternative to exporting oil.

  2. Avatar for sanni sanni says:

    Sorry to start off, off topic (but there haven’t been new items with active conversations/comments this Saturday.) Just read this article that was very hopeful about grassroots organizing that has been going on, with so many various groups. More folks need to see/read.

  3. NYT

    Twitter has had difficulty combating the trolls. The company can detect and disable the machine-like behaviors of bot accounts, but it has a harder time picking up on the humans tweeting on behalf of the Saudi government.

    (currently)

  4. The vigorous push also appears to include the grooming — not previously reported — of a Saudi employee at Twitter whom Western intelligence officials suspected of spying on user accounts to help the Saudi leadership.

    So twitter, do you have any internal controls that would detect and stop your employees from doing this, or should we abandon your platform en masse?

  5. And lose Dotard’s bon mots & Tweetsplats?

    Tough choice…

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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