{"id":259741,"date":"2021-08-01T11:00:41","date_gmt":"2021-08-01T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=365157"},"modified":"2021-08-01T11:00:41","modified_gmt":"2021-08-01T11:00:41","slug":"a-government-that-has-killed-people-for-less-pro-saudi-social-media-swarms-leave-critics-in-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/08\/01\/a-government-that-has-killed-people-for-less-pro-saudi-social-media-swarms-leave-critics-in-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"“A Government That Has Killed People for Less”: Pro-Saudi Social Media Swarms Leave Critics in Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geoff Golberg watched<\/u> his own face flicker across the screen in disbelief. A short video clip posted to YouTube and Twitter this March characterized him as a mortal enemy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The narrator, Hussain al-Ghawi, alleged Golberg\u2019s \u201centire work aims at smearing Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE\u201d \u2014 the United Arab Emirates \u2014 \u201cby publishing fake analytics banning patriotic accounts and foreign sympathizers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Posted in Arabic with English subtitles, the eight-minute video, overlaid with fiery graphics and sound effects, was part of a regular series posted by al-Ghawi, a self-proclaimed Saudi journalist. A clip showed a photo of Golberg\u2019s face, incorrectly describing him as a CNN journalist. Al-Ghawi said that Golberg\u2019s work mapping state-directed social media manipulation had put Golberg in league with the kingdom\u2019s top adversaries \u2014 namely the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. It was an accusation that Golberg found shocking, as well as frightening.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made me feel like it\u2019s not safe for me to be doing the type of work that I do, even in the United States.\u201d<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cSeeing that video, with those types of accusations against me, it made me feel like my life might be in danger,\u201d said Golberg, an expert on tracking social media manipulation and the founder of Social Forensics, an online analytics firm. \u201cAt the very least it made me feel like it\u2019s not safe for me to be doing the type of work that I do, even in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the hands of an authoritarian state, social media can indeed be deadly. No more harrowing example of this\u00a0was seen in the campaign of Saudi state-directed online attacks that preceded the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. In the months before he was killed inside Istanbul\u2019s Saudi consulate, Khashoggi was the subject of an intense campaign of online harassment orchestrated by a Saudi government-backed network of political influencers and bots.<\/p>\n

Referred to inside the kingdom as \u201cthe flies,\u201d the network swarmed Khashoggi with threats and defamation, an effort that was documented in the 2020 documentary \u201cThe Dissident.\u201d They painted him on social media as a treasonous enemy of the Saudi state \u2014 no small matter in a country where public discourse is tightly controlled and Twitter is the primary outlet<\/a> for political conversation. Al-Ghawi\u00a0himself has been accused of helping instigate the online campaign that marked Khashoggi as an enemy of the state.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The avalanche of attacks online culminated with Khashoggi\u2019s murder at the consulate by an assassination squad believed to have been dispatched directly by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.<\/p>\n

Golberg was well aware of the history. So when he showed up in al-Ghawi\u2019s video, he was deeply alarmed: The threatening manner of the message felt not so different from the way Khashoggi was discussed before his death. Coming from a state where all media is tightly controlled, Golberg thought al-Ghawi\u2019s video seemed calculated to send a message on behalf of the Saudi government to its perceived enemies in the United States.<\/p>\n

Golberg said, \u201cCharacterizing my work as defending Hezbollah or Qatar \u2014 these are the types of baseless accusations from a government that has killed people for less, that make me want to look over my shoulder when I\u2019m walking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\"Sarah\n

Sarah Leah Whitson from Human Rights Watch offers her report at U.N. headquarters in New York City on April 27, 2016.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Albin Lohr-Jones\/Pacific Press\/LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Golberg wasn\u2019t the<\/u> only one to come in for al-Ghawi\u2019s ire. The same clip characterized several Saudi activists with ties to the West as traitors and denounced a number of American activists and think-tank experts. Sarah Leah Whitson,\u00a0the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, also known as DAWN, a Washington think tank focused on democratic norms in the Middle East, made an appearance, as did Ariane Tabatabai, a State Department official and American academic of Iranian descent who had worked for the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit that does frequent research work for the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

Online harassment and disinformation have become political issues in the U.S., but in authoritarian countries the threat can be more immediately grave. Under the control of ruling regimes, the public sphere, including social media, can be completely weaponized. Saudi Arabia, ruled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has in particular demonstrated a willingness to go the distance and back up its online threats and intimidation by actually abducting and killing its perceived critics, even those living abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn important thing to keep in mind is that free expression in Saudi Arabia has been totally crushed under MBS,\u201d DAWN\u2019s Whitson said, referring to the crown prince by his initials. \u201cThese online messages are not coming from independent actors inside Saudi Arabia. There are no independent voices left coming out of that country today.\u201d (Neither al-Ghawi nor the Saudi embassy in Washington responded to requests for comment.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThese online messages are not coming from independent actors inside Saudi Arabia. There are no independent voices left coming out of that country today.\u201d<\/blockquote>\n

For Whitson, the burden is particularly heavy: DAWN was Khashoggi\u2019s brainchild and created in the wake of his assassination<\/a> to carry the deceased dissident\u2019s banner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere had been on a campaign to harass me for a long time even before the murder of Jamal, but it is has only escalated since then,\u201d said Whitson. \u201cThere have been very coordinated attacks against our organization and against individual staff members.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many cases, such attacks start with al-Ghawi, one of a number of major pro-government Saudi influencers whose messages are amplified and shared by a network of pro-Saudi nationalists, bots, and other inauthentic accounts online.<\/p>\n

Al-Ghawi\u2019s video<\/u> denouncing the likes of Golberg, Whitson, and others is part of a regular series posted on Twitter and YouTube called \u201cJamra,\u201d or \u201cthe hot coal.\u201d The short-form show, narrated as a monologue, is focused entirely on naming lists of enemies of the Saudi regime around the world.<\/p>\n

There is little information online about al-Ghawi himself, whose bio on Twitter identifies him simply as a \u201cSaudi Journalist.\u201d The Jamra program, broadcast in Arabic with English subtitles, is published on al-Ghawi\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>. Boasting over 120,000 subscribers, Jamra describes itself as \u201ca political program that connects you with hidden information.\u201d Al-Ghawi promotes the videos from the series on his verified Twitter account, where he has over a quarter of a million followers.<\/p>\n

For Golberg, who says he does not have any interest in Middle Eastern politics, his appearance in a Jamra video indicated that he had provoked the anger of powerful people in Saudi Arabia. These actors, he suspected, were upset about his work tracking social media activity in support of the kingdom. Golberg had found analytic data showing widespread manipulation<\/a> by bots and other inauthentic accounts on Twitter promoting pro-Saudi government messages.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Saudi Arabia was just one interest among many \u2014 Golberg previously published analytics studies of social media manipulation by supporters of XRP, a popular cryptocurrency, as well as supporters of President Donald Trump \u2014 but the kingdom\u2019s pushback proved different. Nothing has triggered as much backlash or fear as his work on the Saudis, Golberg said. Worse still, when faced with these threats, which included a previous tweet from al-Ghawi in September 2020 accusing him and others of working for the government of Qatar and Hezbollah, the platforms themselves did nothing to help him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish that I were a celebrity or someone with a large, verified account, so that if I were to start sharing information about attacks against me on Twitter and YouTube, the platforms would feel compelled to remove it,\u201d Golberg said. \u201cPeople with big platforms have the power to get things like doxxing and death threats removed. But for the average person, when this happens, there is not much they can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Golberg, for now, plans to keep documenting the phenomenon of online harassment networks. Yet the threats and attacks against him have had a deep psychological and emotional impact and left him conflicted about whether to continue. \u201cI feel it\u2019s important to keep shining light on the underbelly of platform manipulation,\u201d Golberg said, \u201cbut the work I have been doing the past few years has really started taking a toll on me. It can be harrowing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\"Former\n

Former FBI agent Ali Soufan speaks during an interview with Agence France-Presse in New York City, on April 23, 2018.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Hector Retamal\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

In the summer<\/u> of 2020, a report<\/a> published in the New Yorker highlighted another target of al-Ghawi: former FBI agent Ali Soufan. After Soufan was alerted to credible threats against his life by the CIA that May, he also found himself being targeted by a virulent campaign of online threats and defamation. Soufan hired a cybersecurity firm that determined at least part of the online campaign involved officials of the Saudi government and that \u201cthe effort was started by Hussain al-Ghawi, a self-proclaimed Saudi journalist.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the New Yorker, the analysis found that al-Ghawi had also played a key role in leading the online campaign against Khashoggi in the months before his death.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Soufan, who declined to comment for this story, is a decorated former FBI agent with close ties to current and former U.S. government officials. His stature and relationships might make Soufan a costly target for the Saudis. Other Americans who have come onto the radar of their defamatory social media campaigns, however, are more vulnerable, as are their families.<\/p>\n

Mohamed Soltan is an Egyptian American who spent nearly two years<\/a> in an Egyptian prison in the aftermath of a 2013 military coup, coming to the brink of death behind bars during a hunger strike that lasted over a year. Following an international outcry, he was finally released and returned to the United States in May 2015.\u00a0Despite being a U.S. citizen living at home, his freedom from prison has not meant freedom from further harassment and threats, he said, whether by Egyptian officials or their Saudi allies \u2014 including Hussain al-Ghawi.<\/p>\n\n

This March, al-Ghawi released a video on Twitter and YouTube as part of the Jamra series that described Soltan as an extremist who had plotted to carry out attacks against the Egyptian government. Al-Ghawi also painted Soltan as an enemy of the Saudi kingdom who was defaming its rulers through his support of U.S.-based human rights organizations. As evidence, al-Ghawi displayed an old photo of Soltan with Qatar-based cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a cleric often associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which Saudi sees as a threat.<\/p>\n

Soltan, who had been personal friends with Khashoggi in Washington and has familiarity with the modus operandi of dictatorial Arab governments, viewed the character attacks against him by al-Ghawi and others as a straightforward attempt to retroactively justify any future harm that he may suffer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese attacks are pretexts that they create so that later it plants seeds of doubt in the mind of the public,\u201d Soltan said. \u201cThey pick a target and then character assassinate them to such a degree that if anything happens later, people will refrain from speaking about it. This is what they did to Jamal. They paint as much of a negative picture as they can in order to make people later say, \u2018It\u2019s complicated\u2019 \u2014 if and when something does happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\"FAIRFAX,\n

Mohamed Soltan, a U.S. citizen who became a prominent Egyptian political prisoner, at his home on May 31, 2020, in Fairfax, Va.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Pete Marovich for the Washington Post via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Twitter\u2019s ties to<\/u> Saudi Arabia have come under scrutiny in the past. In 2020, two employees at the company were the subjects of an FBI complaint: They were accused of spying inside the firm\u2019s office on behalf of the Saudi government, including passing along the phone numbers and IP addresses of dissidents.<\/p>\n

Twitter periodically launches removal campaigns of pro-Saudi accounts found to be abusing the platform. In December 2019, several thousand pro-Saudi accounts were removed for violating Twitter\u2019s \u201cplatform manipulation policies\u201d shortly after public allegations<\/a> about the two spies came to light. Last year, another 20,000 accounts said to be linked to the Saudi, Egyptian, and Serbian governments were also purged from the site.<\/p>\n

Both Twitter and YouTube, however, seem content to allow ongoing campaigns of pro-government platform manipulation in English. The lack of moderation is even more pronounced in Arabic and other non-English languages. Golberg, the social media analyst featured in one of al-Ghawi\u2019s videos, estimates that the ongoing pro-Saudi information campaigns on Twitter involve \u201ctens of thousands of inauthentic accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve identified entire Saudi-based marketing firms that are helping run inauthentic accounts for the Saudi government,\u201d he said. \u201cJudging from the messages they\u2019re amplifying, they are working with the government to not just push certain narratives but also to continue character assassinating journalists and members of civil society that the government dislikes. With those prior suspensions of pro-Saudi accounts, Twitter wanted to give the appearance that they cleaned up their platform a little bit. And they did, but there is still an incredible amount of the same activity taking place today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Al-Ghawi has continued to regularly broadcast his Jamra program, posting it on Twitter and YouTube. In early July, he released another video targeting the Quincy Institute, a noninterventionist think tank based in Washington, D.C. Like many of the other Jamra videos, the one on Quincy obsessively listed off individuals working for the organization who al-Ghawi said were of \u201cIranian-origin.\u201d He also maintained his characteristic looseness with facts, falsely accusing at least one Quincy Institute employee, Eli Clifton, of having previously worked in the Iranian capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s concerning to see a prominent Saudi Twitter troll, who played a central role in the social-media campaign against Jamal Khashoggi, targeting staffers at a U.S.-think tank with outright lies and fabrications,\u201d Clifton, who has contributed to The Intercept, said in response to his inclusion in the latest episode of Jamra. \u201cBut it’s downright shocking that American tech companies \u2014 Twitter and Google \u2014 are knowingly hosting and assisting in the dissemination of this content.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cProtecting the safety of people who use Twitter is of paramount importance to us,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “We have clear policies in place on abusive behavior, hateful conduct and violent threats on the service. Where we identify clear violations, we will take enforcement action.” According to Twitter, al-Ghawi’s tweets did not violate any policies. (YouTube did not respond to a\u00a0request\u00a0for comment.)<\/p>\n

In the video on Whitson, al-Ghawi accused the DAWN executive director of taking \u201c$100,000 to criticize Saudi Arabia and Egypt\u201d \u2014\u00a0an accusation that she described as ludicrous. Whitson said that the online campaign directed by al-Ghawi and others has been a clear attempt to silence outside criticism of the kingdom over its foreign policy and human rights abuses, including the murder of Khashoggi.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The Biden administration has made public some of its own intelligence pointing to the Saudi crown prince\u2019s role in the Khashoggi murder, but earlier this year stopped short<\/a> of directly imposing sanctions on\u00a0Crown Prince Mohammed\u00a0and other high-level officials believed responsible for the killing. The failure to impose serious accountability, alongside the continued threats<\/a> leveled by the Saudi regime against Americans and Saudi dissidents abroad, appear to be signs that\u00a0the crown prince is unchastened and potentially willing to strike out at his critics with violence again. Pro-government influencers, prominent among them Hussain al-Ghawi, seem to be favored tools.<\/p>\n

In one Jamra video, responding to allegations that he was marking out enemies of the kingdom for future harm, al-Ghawi characterized himself as merely a journalist performing a public service. \u201cA journalist does not threaten, nor assassinate, nor kill,\u201d al-Ghawi said. \u201cA journalist\u2019s ammunition is information, and their weapon is words.\u201d<\/p>\n

The language of al-Ghawi\u2019s reassurance did little to comfort the Americans and others who are on the receiving end of his online campaigns, broadcast from an authoritarian country with a track record of killing its critics, wherever they may be.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Biden administration should ask itself what it is going to do to protect Americans from these attacks,\u201d said Whitson. \u201cAs long as the Saudis feel that they have this uncritical U.S. backing, they\u2019re going to continue to believe that they have a license to attack their critics in whichever way that they like. These coordinated attacks against people they dislike that begin online have already proven that they can be deadly in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post “A Government That Has Killed People for Less”: Pro-Saudi Social Media Swarms Leave Critics in Fear<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on The Intercept<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before he was murdered by Saudi Arabia, Jamal Khashoggi faced online harassment from influencers and bots. Their new targets are worried.<\/p>\n

The post \u201cA Government That Has Killed People for Less\u201d: Pro-Saudi Social Media Swarms Leave Critics in Fear<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[383,369,340],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259741"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259741"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259985,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259741\/revisions\/259985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}