Meta Says It Plans To Add Labels For State-Run Media Outlets And Fact Checking On Threads
ForbesAPR 3 2023
This is a big win for America in the fight against foreign authoritarian propaganda campaigns. Countries like China and Russia are increasingly using Western-based social media platforms to insert upbeat messages about their own governments while sowing doubt about the democratic institutions of the West. This will be an indefinite fight against Beijing and Moscow, which means platforms like Meta must continuously improve their propaganda detection and removal mechanisms.
The US government has used certain atrocities committed by Beijing to blur the lines between being against war with China and in favor of its social policies. Just as McCarthyites did to anti-nuclear war activists during the Cold War, today, the media and government are working in tandem to paint anyone who wishes to avoid a world war as China apologist. The propaganda is just as strong in the West, and arguably even worse since its goal is to prop up a rampant military-industrial complex. So any panic over "influence campaigns" must be taken with a grain of salt.