Opinion: The Pentagon’s Alleged Secret Social Media Operations Demand a Reckoning

• Opinion: The Pentagon’s Alleged Secret Social Media Operations Demand a Reckoning
  by https://www.washingtonpost.com/
  The U.S. military has apparently adopted a new national security strategy: internet trolling. The Post reports that the Pentagon will conduct a sweeping review of its policies regarding clandestine information warfare, after Facebook and Twitter removed fake accounts suspected of being run by the Defense Department.
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  The news raises the question of whether social media companies should crack down on fake accounts that exist for benign purposes, such as promoting democracy. On the other hand, it is also reasonable to ask whether the U.S. government should conduct offensive cyberoperations to influence foreign peoples. Though it seems contradictory, the answer to both questions is yes.
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  Social media sites need rules against platform manipulation, and those rules need to have a bright line: A site can’t pick and choose which false personas it likes and which it doesn’t based on the countries they come from or values they promote — doing so would make effective enforcement nearly impossible.
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