中文
By Zhang Zhouxiang
"Twitter aided the Pentagon in its covert online propaganda campaign". This screaming headline, in bold upper case, in a report in US-based website The Intercept, exposes the irony of the West's hollow claim that the press, the fourth pillar of society, should be independent.
On the one hand, Twitter itself claims it curbs government-backed propaganda. However, The Intercept has reported in detail how the CIA and the FBI meddled in Twitter's content moderation, how it colluded with the Pentagon to run fake account networks around the world, and how it blacklisted or whitelisted certain accounts at the request of the US government.
The widely quoted report tells how Twitter is colluding with the US government to selectively oppose "government-backed propaganda". Which is in keeping with US politicians' plan both at home and abroad to paint any nation they dislike as evil. It is for this reason that Western politicians played certain young people in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region against their country in 2019, fabricated "labor camp" lies about the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in 2020 and poured dirty water against the non-Western world whichever way they liked.
The relationship between Twitter and the US government makes one see political bias in quite a high percentage of news posted on the platform. In fact, this is how Twitter is losing its credibility.
Some might argue that Twitter is not a news body like New York Times or CNBC. However, unlike other social media sites, Twitter features accounts of almost all mainstream media outlets and many quote Twitter accounts as serious news sources. But, since 2021, Twitter has labeled Chinese news agency and personal accounts as "Chinese State-affiliated media" and further warned against links to Chinese media outlets since March 2022, reportedly under guidance from the US government.
So here's propaganda itself crying "stop propaganda". What could be more ironical?
