TEHRAN (Iran News) –Since February 1979 and victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the country has been the target of disinformation and misinformation of the hostile countries, especially the U.S, which is known as the Great Satan in Iran because the victory of revolution and emergence of new type of anti-U.S. ruling was something bitter to swallow by the West and Americans.
So in recent years enemies of the Islamic Revolution have tried to mislead the people either in Iran or abroad and everyday a new TV channel or website emerges to propagate against the Islamic Republic of Iran through disseminating false reports and news or exaggerating any insignificant event in the country.
On Friday the result of a research revealed that Iran has been the target of disinformation for years. Researchers say the U.S. has been running a disinformation campaign through Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to propagate pro-Western narratives while trying to discredit Iran, Russia, and China.
Recent research has revealed details of what appears to have been long-running U.S. disinformation campaigns aimed at Iran, Russia, and China on social media platforms, as well as the use of dozens of fake accounts to propagate pro-Western narratives.
According to a study carried out by researchers from the Stanford Internet Observatory and the research company Graphika, the pro-U.S. covert influence operations ran for almost five years and used “deceptive tactics” to shape public opinion in the Middle East and Central Asia.
The accounts behind the operations often posed as news outlets or took on the personas of people who didn’t exist, posting content in at least seven languages, including Farsi, Russian, Arabic, and Urdu.
In some cases, the accounts shared news articles from Washington-funded media outlets, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and links to websites run by the US military.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, said the “country of origin” of the accounts was the United States, while Twitter said the “presumptive countries of origin” for the accounts were the United States and Britain, according to the report.
The report added that Twitter and Meta removed dozens of fake accounts in July and August as they were pushing the deceptive pro-US influence campaign.
The other platforms that were used in the operations were Telegram, Google’s YouTube, and the Russian social media networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.
YouTube said it had terminated several channels posting in Arabic, Farsi, and Russian to promote U.S. foreign affairs, including channels linked to a US consulting firm.
The New York Times — the “Typhoid Mary of American journalism” — rages against nations on the U.S. target list for regime change, writes Stephen Lendman.
A set of 21 Twitter accounts, six Instagram accounts, five Facebook profiles, and two Facebook pages targeted Iranian audiences between November 2020 and June 2022, according to the report.
It disclosed that some of the personas used profile pictures that were likely created using artificial intelligence.
Many tried to present themselves as real people by interspersing Iranian poetry and photos of Persian food between political messages.
On Facebook and Instagram, dozens of posts also negatively compared opportunities for Iranian women with those for women abroad.
Moreover, 12 Twitter accounts, 10 Facebook pages, 15 Facebook profiles, and 10 Instagram accounts were created between June 2020 and March 2022 to focus on Central Asia.
Those accounts then published posts in bitter criticism of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and cheered on pro-Ukrainian protests in Central Asian countries.
This report is an endorsement to Tehran’s claim that the West still continues its hostility against Iran and it has turned into the den of anti-revolutionaries and anti-Iran grouplets.
The interesting thing is that the U.S. jumps to defend anyone who is arrested in countries for violating citizenship rights under the name of freedom of speech but it does not tolerate websites or media outlets which criticize them in other countries.
Americans through the years have tried to change the truths through their media network and have tried to paint picture of them as savior and paint picture of Iran as terrorist and uncivilized nation while the truth is something else and people in the world is gradually is waking up and realizing who is right and who is wrong and rain of disinformation and negative propaganda against the freedom-seeking countries is losing its effect.
But some people who are still interested in the West and think the West is always right by reading such reports which come from Western countries themselves are gradually realizing what is going around them and how the American officials tell lies and try to paint negative pictures of other countries in order to justify their presence and occupation of those countries.
Unfortunately the owners and companies which run the social media platforms all play in the team of the American officials and they cannot claim that they are supporter of freedom of expression because they are not even able to tolerate any simple criticism or claim by their opponents, and therefore world people are better not to expect too much of these platforms which all try to please the U.S. officials and the Zionists and all these platforms are to shape the public opinion in favor of the West and making money and not for the sake of dissemination of truths.
