SAN FRANCISCO — In response to a 2017 request from the Pentagon, Twitter kept online a network of accounts that the U.S. military used to advance its interests in the Middle East, according to internal company emails made public Tuesday by The Intercept, a non-profit publication.
One counter-terrorism department on Twitter knew about the arrangement, but others did not, five people with knowledge of the matter said. As it became more widely known within the company, executives rushed to undo it. But they wrestled with whether to make military-run Twitter accounts public, the people said.
Some accounts were deleted, but others remained online for years. Twitter finally announced the American influence campaign this year.
The situation was unusual because Twitter normally removes government influence campaigns and makes them public. Since the 2016 US presidential election, when Russia abused Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to influence American voters, social media companies have spoken out strongly against state-sponsored influence campaigns. But in this case, Twitter’s transparency efforts were slow and the company showed respect for the US government.
The internal documents published by The Intercept were provided by Twitter under its new owner, Elon Musk. Mr. Musk has made an archive of documents available to selected journalists to scrutinize the decisions of the company’s previous leaders. He did not respond to a request from The New York Times for access to the files.
On Elon Musk’s Twitter
It’s unclear whether Twitter, under Musk’s leadership, will continue to reveal influence campaigns on its platform. The billionaire has fired many employees who worked to track down foreign influence on Twitter and has questioned the level of cooperation between the government and the company under the previous management.
Mr Musk did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the US Central Command declined to comment on the matter.
The situation began in 2017 when an official working with the US Central Command requested that Twitter verify some military accounts, according to an internal company email.
The accounts had been flagged by a Twitter system used to automatically detect terrorist content and were not easy to find in searches. The Pentagon asked Twitter to “whitelist” the accounts, which would prevent the automatic tools from flagging them and making them more widely visible on the platform. Twitter’s counter-terrorism team complied, two people familiar with the matter said.
Twitter executives became aware of the situation when a member of the counter-terrorism unit asked the broader security team for help automating the whitelisting of the US government accounts, three people with knowledge of the discussions said. Surprised by the request, the security team asked to see the accounts, the people said.
Twitter allows governments to manage accounts on its platform as long as the accounts clearly identify who controls them. Accounts impersonating citizens are prohibited. Some accounts in the Pentagon’s 2017 request were clearly government-controlled, three people who participated in discussions said, while others were not.
Twitter executives then removed some of the military accounts that were not clearly labeled, three people involved in the discussions said.
But while the company regularly disclosed other state-backed influence campaigns in transparency reports, the executives were hesitant in this case, the people said. Some feared they would violate national security laws by speaking publicly about stopping the campaign, they said.
Years later, some Twitter executives said they had discussions with the Department of Defense about deleting all accounts and releasing them, according to emails published by The Intercept.
“I think having a better understanding of what’s going on will help us make a better decision,” Jim Baker, an attorney for Twitter at the time, wrote in a 2020 email. He added that the accounts are relevant could be for a military operation that would be halted and that “closing it down at once could jeopardize other operations”.
In August, Twitter announced it had removed several accounts promoting US foreign policy interests abroad, the first time it had made such a campaign public. Accounts linked to the campaign were also removed from Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Eric Schmitt and Ryan Mac reporting contributed.
