Headline Roundup • August 29th, 2024
Pentagon Runs Intimidating Tinder Ads in Middle East
Defense And Security,Middle East,Pentagon,Lebanon,Israel Hamas Violence,Hezbollah,Technology,Advertising,Iran
Summary from the AllSides News Team
The U.S. Department of Defense was running ads on the dating app Tinder in the Middle East, encouraging users to “not take up arms against the United States or its partners” as recently as last week.
The Details: The discovery was made by independent journalist Séamus Malekafzali, an American living in Lebanon, who shared the ads on X. The ads included photos of warplanes and CENTCOM’s logo and read, in Arabic, “CENTCOM is fully prepared with F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters and supersonic A-10 Thunderbolt fighters already in the region.”
For Context: Israel and Lebanon have a history of fighting and have been in a border conflict since October 2023, when the Lebanese militia Hezbollah took up the Palestinian cause. Earlier this week, Israel and Hezbollah exchanged heavy fire, sparking fears of a wider war.
Reason Report: Reason (Lean Right bias) published a story on August 22, the same day Malekafzali shared his reporting. Reason said CENTCOM's media team declined to comment and that Tinder did not respond to its request.
WaPo Report: The Washington Post (Lean Left bias) published a story on August 27 and reported quotes from several intelligence community members. The Post wrote that CENTCOM “declined to comment, saying it generally does not discuss information operations,” and that the Pentagon “had no comment on the specific post.” Tinder reportedly removed the ad after The Post inquired about it on August 22.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Illustration: Lex Villena; adapted from Davide Bonaldo, Ddkg | Dreamstime.com
Independent journalist Séamus Malekafzali, an American who lives in Beirut, wanted to make some plans for the weekend. So he opened up Tinder, the location-based dating app. But instead of interested singles, he found an apparent ad from his own government threatening to bomb his city.
"The United States will protect its partners in the face of threats by the Iranian regime and its proxies," the ad read in Arabic, along with images of warplanes and the logo of CENTCOM, the U.S. military command responsible for the Middle East and...
Screenshot by Séamus Malekafzali
The ad on the U.S.-based dating app, which gave the world the phrases “swipe right” (to approve a match) and “swipe left” (to reject), has raised fresh questions about the U.S. military’s online information operations, which are aimed at influencing the views of overseas audiences and countering what the government perceives as misleading narratives from foreign adversaries. Part of a broader campaign in what is commonly called psychological operations or military information support operations, the ad belonged to Centcom, according to one U.S. official familiar with the matter, who like...
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