{"id":183142,"date":"2019-02-03T07:53:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T07:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=183142"},"modified":"2019-02-06T05:00:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T05:00:46","slug":"facebooks-troll-hunter-in-chief-nathaniel-gleicher-tied-to-neocon-think-tank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=183142","title":{"rendered":"Facebook\u2019s Troll Hunter in Chief Nathaniel Gleicher Tied to Neocon Think Tank"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander Rubinstein \u2013 Mint Press Feb 1, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"Nathaniel<\/a>

Nathaniel Gleicher. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

After Facebook purged thousands of independent media pages<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>from its platform in October, one may be forgiven for thinking that Facebook couldn\u2019t go any lower. But in the company\u2019s second purge of 2019, the social media giant may have done just that.<\/span><\/p>\n

The round of bans \u2014 doled out on Thursday to more than a thousand pages \u2014 was revealed in two blog posts: one<\/a><\/strong><\/span> focusing on pages that allegedly originated in Iran and another<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that took aim at activity in Indonesia. Not to be outdone, on Thursday Twitter also banned<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>more than 2,500 accounts that it \u201cbelieves may have origins in Iran.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, 418 accounts that Facebook says \u201cit cannot render definitive attribution to the [Internet Research Agency] for \u2026 although most appear to originate in Russia,\u201d were also banned. Then 764 accounts \u201clocated in Venezuela,\u201d a country in which the United States has been backing a coup attempt<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in since last week, were banned; and another 1,196 accounts \u201cwhich appear to be engaged in a state-backed influence campaign\u201d in Venezuela were also shuttered.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Facebook bans are much like the other rounds issued by the company since it came under scrutiny on Capitol Hill following the 2016 elections for supposedly allowing a private Russian company, the Internet Research Agency, to run a campaign of desultory<\/a><\/strong><\/span> disinformation on its platform.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past \u2014 specifically, in the first round of bans on the platform that targeted Iran \u2014 Facebook relied on a cybersecurity firm called FireEye, which tipped them off<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to the accounts. FireEye has been funded by the CIA\u2019s strategic investment arm In-Q-Tel, which describes FireEye as a \u201ccritical addition to our strategic investment portfolio for security technologies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Facebook has also partnered with the Digital Forensics Research Laboratory<\/a><\/strong><\/span> (DFLR) \u2014 the cyber arm of the neoconservative Atlantic Council, a D.C.-based think tank funded by defense giants, Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia, and NATO \u2014 in order to weed out \u201cmisinformation\u201d from its platforms, including Facebook subsidiary Instagram.<\/span><\/p>\n

But with the Thursday bans, Facebook\u2019s troll hunter<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>in chief, Nathaniel Gleicher, who commands a 30,000-strong<\/a><\/strong><\/span> cyber warrior unit, cited no supposed authorities such as FireEye or the Atlantic Council\u2019s DFRL.<\/span><\/p>\n

Broadening the brush<\/h2>\n

While reporting on the bans in the mainstream media has been loaded with innuendo, Gleicher himself admitted<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>in a conference call with reporters that he wasn\u2019t able to determine whether the Iranian government was behind the \u201ccoordinated inauthentic behavior tied to Iran,\u201d as he called it in Facebook\u2019s blog post. The post also called Facebook\u2019s \u201ccollaboration\u201d with \u201claw enforcement, security experts and other technology companies \u2026 critical to this investigation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A sampling, hand-picked by Facebook, of posts made by the pages Facebook \u201ctied\u201d to an entire country, promote women\u2019s rights in Saudi Arabia; Palestinian\u2019s yearning for the return of their former capital, Jerusalem (al-Quds); information pertaining to a UN session on the situation in Idlib (formerly a \u201crebel\u201d enclave in Syria recently taken over in its entirety<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by al-Qaeda); and a report on human-rights violations and ill-treatment of black Africans in Libya in the seven years since NATO-backed ruffians sodomized Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to death.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Facebook, the posts \u201cincluded commentary that repurposed Iranian state media\u2019s reporting on topics like Israel-Palestine relations and the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, including the role of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Russia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But before you jump to any conclusions about geopolitical partisanship at the Silicon Valley behemoth, Gleicher assures us that the purge was \u201cnot [in response to] the content they post.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He sure doesn\u2019t look <\/em>impartial<\/h2>\n

A cursory look at Gleicher\u2019s resume reveals a massive conflict of interest, as he is also a senior associate<\/a><\/strong><\/span> at the hawkish foreign policy think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The think tank is funded by oil and gas companies and leading firms in the military industrial complex. It is also funded<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by the governments of Japan, United Arab Emirates, the U.S., and Taiwan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier this week, CSIS hosted a pro-regime-change conference on Venezuela that was disrupted by anti-war protesters. Codepink national co-director Ariel Gold was manhandled by CSIS-contracted security guards on video<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, and later said that the guard choked her and tried to throw her down a set of stairs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I'm still trying to get accountability from @CSIS<\/a> their security guard who seen here – Sergeant Dixon – choked me up against the wall, tried to throw me down set of concrete stairs <\/p>\n

In meantime tell Dems in congress speak out No coup in Venezuela https:\/\/t.co\/ufQpf9TX6K<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/rUpVa8OBjF<\/a><\/p>\n

— Ariel Gold \u05d0\u05e8\u05d9\u05d0\u05dc Nice Jewish Girl for BDS \u262e\ufe0f?\u2721\ufe0f (@ArielElyseGold) January 30, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n