Julian Assange wrote an excellent book on this topic called "when Google met wikileaks" about a decade ago which i found to be eye-opening. The backdrop is the "arab spring" uprisings of the early 10s, which were widely touted by leaders in both silicon Valley and Washington as an example of the positive impacts of social media, a mere five years before this opinion was suddenly reversed when some of these positive effects came home.

The titular event is an account of when one of Google's executives came to britain to meet him in person (at this point he's fighting extradition to the United States but has not yet sequestered himself inside the Ecuadorian embassy). From the conversation Assange gets the impression that the Google exec is acting as an unofficial envoy of the US state department in hopes of convincing him to "play ball" by publishing more and more information which will advance the arab spring narrative. The rest of the book is his own personal investigation into the incestuous links between US foreign policy, social media corporations and the so-called "arab spring".

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cmrdporcupine 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I didn't even have to go read it to immediately know that it was Eric Schmidt who was the Google executive in question.

He's a notorious fan of unbridled American imperial power and "realpolitik" and brought Kissinger in multiple times to Google for "fireside chat" sessions.

Which always went over very... poorly... with the broader set of employees who used to get seriously annoyed at this. The reception was never good.

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robocat 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Great summary article from Assange's POV about meeting Schmidt et al :

https://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-27...

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DANmode 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are great articles by him on these topics, too, for those without book-level time to commit to the topic.

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r721 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And after that he decided to become an ally of Russian government to help them spread conspiracy theories (about Seth Rich for example):

>In the end, the most charitable interpretation of Assange’s “dissembling” as Mueller calls it, in the Seth Rich hoax is that he genuinely couldn’t rule out the possibility that Rich was his source. The Mueller report demolished that final moral refuge. Rich had been dead four days when Assange received the DNC files.

https://archive.is/56RiI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#WikiLeaks_...

	▲	snickerbockers 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well I'm sure bob mueller would know a thing or two about disinformation given how he participated in the worst hoax in recent US history. >As director Tennant has pointed out, secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, and willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical, or radiological material https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTDO-kuOGTQ Anyways I might care more about Seth Rich "conspiracy theories" if anybody had bothered to investigate what happened to him instead of chalking it up as a "robbery gone wrong" (in which nothing of value was stolen) and calling it a day. In about six more months it will have gone unsolved for an entire decade.