{"id":362213,"date":"2018-05-22T00:19:41","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T23:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/media-ignore-government-influence-on-facebooks-plan-to-fight-government-influence-2\/"},"modified":"2018-05-22T00:19:41","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T23:19:41","slug":"media-ignore-government-influence-on-facebooks-plan-to-fight-government-influence-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/media-ignore-government-influence-on-facebooks-plan-to-fight-government-influence-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Ignore Government Influence on Facebook\u2019s Plan to Fight Government Influence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Medium:<\/p>\n

Medium<\/strong> (5\/17\/18<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Facebook<\/b> announced Thursday it was partnering with DC think tank the Atlantic Council to \u201cmonitor for misinformation and foreign interference.\u201d The details of the plan are vague, but Atlantic Council\u2019s Digital Forensic Research Lab wrote in a non-bylined Medium<\/b> post (5\/17\/18<\/a>) that the goal was to design tools \u201cto bring us closer together\u201d instead of \u201cdriving us further apart.\u201d Whatever that means, exactly.<\/p>\n

Behind its generic-sounding name and \u201cnonpartisan\u201d label, the Atlantic Council is associated with very particular interests. It’s funded <\/a>by the US Department of State and the US Navy, Army and Air Force, along with NATO, various foreign powers and major Western corporations, including weapons contractors and oil companies. The Atlantic Council is dead center in what former President Obama’s deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes called<\/a> \u201cthe blob\u201d\u2014Washington\u2019s bipartisan foreign-policy consensus. While there is some diversity of opinion within the Atlantic Council, it is within a very limited pro-Western ideological framework\u2014a framework that debates how much and where US military and soft power influence should be wielded, not if it should in the first place.<\/p>\n

When a venture that\u2019s supposedly meant to curb \u201cforeign influence\u201d is bankrolled by a number of foreign countries\u2014including the United Arab Emirates, Britain, Norway, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea\u2014one would think that would be worth noting. Nor should US government money be exempt from the \u201cforeign\u201d qualifier with its suggestion of malicious influence; to most of Facebook<\/b>\u2019s 2.2 billion users, after all, the United States is a foreign country. (It should be noted the US government reserves the right <\/a>to run unattributed propaganda on Facebook<\/b>, and there\u2019s much<\/a> evidence<\/a> they have. Needless to say, the Atlantic Council\u2019s Digital Forensic Research Lab hasn\u2019t done any work in this space.)<\/p>\n

\"Gizmodo:<\/p>\n

Gizmodo<\/strong> (5\/17\/18<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The major outlets who covered the story, however, didn’t mention this glaring conflict of interest. Instead, they issued repackaged press releases on the partnership, never examining the motives of the DC think tank, its funders, or the broader premise that \u201cfake news\u201d and \u201cforeign meddling\u201d were something in need of combating:<\/p>\n