Lee Fang ✓
@lhfang · San Francisco · joined 02 Aug 2007
Independent Journalist. Reporting primarily on Substack via https://t.co/6OY0EhDPV8 Contact email on my website.
329 608Followers
2 977Following
21 964Posts total
63.1MViews on collected posts
Latest posts
Looking for new posts…
@lhfang We can't defund the police
how else would they afford the rollout of the Flock or Axon surveillance state.
3.7K views · 58 likes
· 0 reposts · 1 replies
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@lhfang This is only controversial online. Everywhere else, especially in normieville, this is just considered common sense.
2.5K views · 43 likes
· 0 reposts · 4 replies
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Roy Cooper, the Democrat with the highest polling lead in the country in a swing state (+13) is flooding TV and online with ads explicitly about prosecuting criminals and opposing defund police lunatics. This is what voters everywhere want. It's not complicated. https://t.co/W5yn
219K views · 1.5K likes
· 163 reposts · 156 replies
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I’ve met many socialist political streamers and influencers who talk endlessly about the need for government to own everything yet abolish police, who haven’t stepped foot in a housing project to interview people about their lives and daily concerns.
25.1K views · 961 likes
· 82 reposts · 42 replies
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A disproportionate number of political influencers are elite prep school-educated weirdos who have never practiced actual journalism (gathering facts, challenging assumptions, talking to normal people) or complete shut ins who barely leave home, or a combo of both. Ignore them.
34.7K views · 1K likes
· 96 reposts · 35 replies
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If you want details about how I go about my reporting, a little more about myself, and further documentation & discussion, I just started a Substack. Sign up here: https://t.co/OS0VJ0CYfz
437.8K views · 8.6K likes
· 1.2K reposts · 297 replies
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21. Here is my reported piece w/more detail. I was given access to Twitter for a few days. I signed/agreed to nothing, Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by a Twitter attorney, so what I saw could be limited.
https://t.co/AgcFy71fE3
1.4M views · 18.5K likes
· 5.2K reposts · 495 replies
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20. The conduct with the U.S. military’s covert network stands in stark contrast with how Twitter has boasted about rapidly identifying and taking down covert accounts tied to state-backed influence operations, including Thailand, Russia, Venezuela, and others since 2016.
655.9K views · 13.4K likes
· 2.6K reposts · 105 replies
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19. Twitter’s comms team was closely in touch with reporters, working to minimize Twitter’s role. When the WashPost reported on the scandal, Twitter officials congratulated each other because the story didn’t mention any Twitter employees & focused largely on the Pentagon. https:
872.2K views · 14K likes
· 3.1K reposts · 114 replies
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18. The reality is much more murky. Twitter actively assisted CENTCOM’s network going back to 2017 and as late as 2020 knew these accounts were covert/designed to deceive to manipulate the discourse, a violation of Twitter’s policies & promises. They waited years to suspend.
666.9K views · 14.4K likes
· 3.2K reposts · 128 replies
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17. In subsequent reporting, Twitter was cast as an unbiased hero for removing “a network of fake user accounts promoting pro-Western policy positions.” Media covering the story described Twitter as evenly applying its policies & proactive in suspending the DoD network.
603.9K views · 12.7K likes
· 2.3K reposts · 91 replies
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16. The Stanford report did not identify all of the accounts in the network but one they did name was the exact same Twitter account CENTCOM asked for whitelist privileges in its 2017 email. I verified via Twitter’s internal tools. The account used an AI-created deep fake image.
827.5K views · 14.3K likes
· 3K reposts · 159 replies
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15. The U.S. propaganda network relentlessly pushed narratives against Russia, China, and other foreign countries. They accused Iran of "threatening Iraq’s water security and flooding the country with crystal meth," and of harvesting the organs of Afghan refugees.
860.1K views · 14.9K likes
· 3.2K reposts · 203 replies
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14. In August 2022, a Stanford Internet Observatory report exposed a U.S. military covert propaganda network on Facebook, Telegram, Twitter & other apps using fake news portals and deep fake images and memes against U.S. foreign adversaries. https://t.co/dNH175YZmo
889.4K views · 15.2K likes
· 3.5K reposts · 117 replies
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13. Many of these secretive U.S. military propaganda accounts, despite detection by Twitter as late as 2020 (but potentially earlier) continued tweeting through this year, some not suspended until May 2022 or later, according to records I reviewed.
760.7K views · 14.2K likes
· 2.7K reposts · 84 replies
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12. In a May 2020 email, Twitter’s Lisa Roman emailed the DoD w/two lists. One list was accounts “previously provided to us” & another list Twitter detected. The accounts tweeted in Russian & Arabic on US military issues in Syria/ISIS & many also did not disclose Pentagon ties. h
748.5K views · 13.5K likes
· 2.6K reposts · 85 replies
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11. In several other 2020 emails, high-level Twitter executives/lawyers discussed the covert network and even recirculated the 2017 list from CENTCOM and shared another list of 157 undisclosed Pentagon accounts, again mostly focused on Middle East military issues.
716.5K views · 13.8K likes
· 2.5K reposts · 72 replies
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10. Stacia Cardille, another Twitter attorney, replied that the Pentagon wanted a SCIF & may want to retroactively classify its social media activities “to obfuscate their activity in this space, and that this may represent an overclassification to avoid embarrassment.” https://t
1.1M views · 14.9K likes
· 3.1K reposts · 163 replies
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9. For example, Twitter lawyer Jim Baker mused in a July 2020 email, about an upcoming DoD meeting, that the Pentagon used "poor tradecraft" in setting up its network, and were seeking strategies for not exposing the accounts that are “linked to each other or to DoD or the USG.”
923.3K views · 15.7K likes
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8. One Twitter official who spoke to me said he feels deceived by the covert shift. Still, many emails from throughout 2020 show that high-level Twitter executives were well aware of DoD’s vast network of fake accounts & covert propaganda and did not suspend the accounts.
1M views · 17.8K likes
· 3.9K reposts · 149 replies
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7. CENTCOM then shifted strategies & deleted disclosures of ties to the Twitter accounts. The bios of the accounts changed to seemingly organic profiles. One bio read: “Euphrates pulse.” Another used an apparent deep fake profile pic & claimed to be a source of Iraqi opinion. htt
934.6K views · 15.1K likes
· 2.8K reposts · 101 replies
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6. The CENTCOM accounts on the list tweeted frequently about U.S. military priorities in the Middle East, including promoting anti-Iran messages, promotion of the Saudi Arabia-U.S. backed war in Yemen, and “accurate” U.S. drone strikes that claimed to only hit terrorists. https:/
1.4M views · 17.4K likes
· 3.7K reposts · 180 replies
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5. The same day CENTCOM sent the list, Twitter officials used a tool to grant a special “whitelist” tag that essentially provides verification status to the accounts w/o the blue check, meaning they are exempt from spam/abuse flags, more visible/likely to trend on hashtags.
1.1M views · 17.4K likes
· 3.4K reposts · 106 replies
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4. In 2017, a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official sent Twitter a list of 52 Arab language accounts “we use to amplify certain messages.” The official asked for priority service for six accounts, verification for one & “whitelist” abilities for the others. https://t.co/LuMbMZD
1.9M views · 19.3K likes
· 4.5K reposts · 241 replies
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3. But behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval & special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological influence ops. Despite knowledge that Pentagon propaganda accounts used covert identities, Twitter did not suspend many for around 2 years or more. Some remain active.
2M views · 21.3K likes
· 4.9K reposts · 206 replies
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@lhfang Oh, the Pentagon was in on it too. Great.
228.4K views · 9.6K likes
· 1.1K reposts · 176 replies
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2. Twitter has claimed for years that they make concerted efforts to detect & thwart gov-backed platform manipulation. Here is Twitter testifying to Congress about its pledge to rapidly identify and shut down all state-backed covert information operations & deceptive propaganda.
1.7M views · 21.6K likes
· 4.5K reposts · 293 replies
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1. TWITTER FILES PART 8
*How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon’s Covert Online PsyOp Campaign*
Despite promises to shut down covert state-run propaganda networks, Twitter docs show that the social media giant directly assisted the U.S. military’s influence operations.
41M views · 77.3K likes
· 32.7K reposts · 3.6K replies
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Against accounts of the same size
7 posts from the last 90 days, next to the 100K–1M follower range. shown far beyond its own audience, and the audience reacts.
Median views11 177this account5 983median for 100K–1M
Reach, %3.39%this account1.49%median for 100K–1M
Engagement, %1.88%this account0.93%median for 100K–1M
| Metric | This account | Median for 100K–1M | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median views per post | 11 177 | 5 983 | 1.87× |
| Reach (views ÷ followers) | 3.39% | 1.49% | 2.28× |
| Engagement rate | 1.88% | 0.93% | 2.03× |
Others in this range → Compare with another account → How these benchmarks are built →
Growth & engagement
How the posts we collected actually performed: views and reaction rate post by post, what the audience did with them, and where the follower count goes.
Views per post
827.5K20 Dec
603.9K
666.9K
872.2K
655.9K
1.4M
437.8K
34.7K12 Aug
25.1K
219K14 Aug
2.5K
1.7K
3.7K
11.2K23 Aug
Last 14 collected posts, oldest on the left. The scale is logarithmic: one post can outrun the rest a hundred times over.
Engagement rate per post
2.14%20 Dec
2.50%
2.67%
1.99%
2.46%
1.69%
2.31%
3.29%12 Aug
4.35%
0.86%14 Aug
1.88%
4.83%
1.58%
0.48%23 Aug
Reactions — likes, reposts, replies and quotes — divided by views. Median for 100K–1M accounts is 0.93%.
What the audience does
Likes76.4%418 670 in total
Reposts18.8%102 946 in total
Replies1.4%7 487 in total
Quotes1.7%9 356 in total
Bookmarks1.7%9 348 in total
Share of every reaction we collected for this account. Replies mean argument, reposts mean endorsement, bookmarks mean the post was worth keeping.
The follower curve appears once this account has two daily snapshots — we take one a day, and this one is on its first.
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