This is the establishment's unifying achievement - a non-binding agreement that will nonetheless serve as a blueprint for future international regulation. If adopted, for most living in the West, there would be no escape.

It is very possible that these new tools will be used cautiously - filtering out only the guns and splatter. But with definitions of hate speech and what is considered extremist being systematically broadened, over time - years? months? - there will be appeals to use these technologies to suppress more and more voices.

And judging by the previous record of the social networks involved, the losers will be the "Islamophobes" and the "transphobes" and the "Russian trolls" - real or imagined - and not the radical feminists calling for all men to be castrated, nor Antifa protesters in balaclavas filming themselves disrupting a campus speech.

While the document talks about the need for "transparency" and "an efficient complaints and appeals process" for any censorship, it leaves both the decisions and the implementation to the tech companies themselves. "Enforcing community standards or terms of service" will still be king - so if a Twitter mod wants to close your account it will be his call and enshrined right.

This is also bound to have a chilling effect on contributors who know that one over-the-line video will exile them from all the biggest internet forums, and deprive them of their income streams.

Less clear is whether pushing the marginalized into the darker corners of the internet actually helps to prevent the flourishing of extremism, or will create a parallel underground network that will be far more radicalized. Imagine a bigger and more toxic 4chan for all the rejects, if you can.

What is certain is that any filtering, reporting and pre-moderation technologies developed as a result of the Christchurch Call will be adopted with enthusiasm by genuinely repressive regimes, and likely deployed by the California giants themselves at the request of such governments, who will cite their own anti-extremism legislation.

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Soaring tensions of the past nearly two weeks paving the way for a potential direct military clash in the Persian Gulf between the US and Iran could be de-escalating as rapidly as they began as the president attempts to reign in hawks in his own administration, per a new report in FT:

President Donald Trump said he hoped the US would not go to war with Iran, cooling tensions at the end of a week in which worries spiked over the risk of conflict between the US and the Islamic republic. As he stood outside the West Wing waiting to meet Swiss president Ueli Maurer on Thursday, Mr Trump was asked by a reporter whether the US was going to war with Iran. He replied: "I hope not."

This as the WSJ also reports Trump is fast reining in his two Iran hawk horsemen of the apocalypse Bolton and Pompeo: "There are sharply differing views within the Trump administration over the meaning of intelligence showing Iran and its proxies making military preparations, people familiar with the matter said," according to the report.

So Trump doesn't want war, and now with the Senate demanding it be given a comprehensive briefing on just what the increased Iran threat constitutes and the intelligence consensus behind it (or lack thereof), it looks like the war train could be grinding to a halt.

Bloomberg also agrees, per its latest report:

President Donald Trump is wary of drawing the U.S. into a war with Iran, in part out of concern that an armed conflict with the Islamic Republic would imperil his chances at winning a second term, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S.'s evidence of Iran threat readied for release by Pentagon.

But the Pentagon war machine's next move could hinge on what's been revealed as the initial key piece of intelligence "evidence" of Iran's "attack preparations" that got us here in the first place, starting with Bolton's May 5th announcement of a major Iranian threat escalation. The "smoking gun" that started it all apparently hinges on satellite photos showing Iranian paramilitary forces moving missiles on boats in the Persian Gulf (perhaps even in their own territorial waters!?).

The New York Times cited three defense officials who confirmed that,

"The intelligence that caused the White House to escalate its warnings about a threat from Iran came from photographs of missiles on small boats in the Persian Gulf that were put on board by Iranian paramilitary forces."

But crucially, according to US intelligence officials cited by the WSJ, the "missile movement" satellite photographs may have just been picking up on Iranian defensive measures that came in reaction to Tehran's belief that a US military attack was on the horizon.

"Intelligence collected by the U.S. government shows Iran's leaders believe the U.S. planned to attack them, prompting preparation by Tehran for possible counterstrikes, according to one interpretation of the information," reports The Wall Street Journal's Warren Strobel, Nancy Youssef, and Vivian Salama.

However, what was originally set in motion itself has momentum enough to spark confrontation, given on Thursday two Navy destroyers have entered the Persian Gulf as the American military continues to add to its assets in the region to head off any planned Iranian 'aggression', USNI reported.

The USS McFaul and USS Gonzalez traveled through the Strait of Hormuz Thursday afternoon without being challenged by IRGC forces. They joined the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is stationed in the Gulf of Oman, as well as a strike force that includes several B-52 bombers out of Qatar.

So there it is: formula for de-escalation; however, the chances of some "accident" happening which leads to clashes remains high and unpredictable, at which point the intelligence debate Congress is demanding could turn into a moot afterthought, as is the pattern with many US wars.

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"It's a real communications firm making money through the dissemination of fake news," said Graham Brookie, director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a think tank collaborating with Facebook to expose and explain disinformation campaigns.

He called Archimedes' commercialization of tactics more commonly tied to governments, like Russia, an emerging--and worrying--trend in the global spread of social media disinformation. "These efforts go well beyond what is acceptable in free and democratic societies," Brookie said.

Gleicher described the pages as conducting "coordinated inauthentic behavior," with accounts posting on behalf of certain political candidates, smearing their opponents and presenting as legitimate local news organizations peddling supposedly leaked information.

"Our team assessed that because this group is primarily organized to conduct deceptive behavior, we are removing them from the platform and blocking them from coming back," he added.

The activity appeared focused on ... what Brookie called a "staggering diversity of regions" that pointed to the group's sophistication. Thousands of people expressed interest in attending at least one of the nine events organized by those behind the pages. Facebook could not confirm whether any of the events actually occurred. Some 5,000 accounts joined one or more of the fake groups. The most significant audience engagement was generated in Malaysia, which has a vast media market and held a general election last year.

Facebook shared a few examples of the fake content, including one post mocking 2018 Congolese presidential candidate Martin Fayulu for crying foul play in the elections that vaulted Felix Tshisekedi to victory. Many governments and watchdog groups condemned the elections as rigged and declared Fayulu the rightful winner.

Given the geographical variety of Archimedes' operations, "it's impossible to determine a single ideological thread," said Brookie. "They weren't pushing exclusively far-right or anti-globalist content. It appears to be a clear-cut case of spreading disinformation through economic incentive."

He added that Archimedes-linked pages pulled from the playbook of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with widely amplified yet tailored messages targeting potential voters and "creating a specter of leaked information." Most impostor accounts shared a key tactic: posing as a campaigner for a particular candidate and then sharing opinions that actual supporters would find offensive.

It is as yet unclear, who launched the projectiles and what the target was. Damascus has repeatedly accused Israel of targeting the Syrian territory in air raids and missile strikes. Tel Aviv, however, rarely admits responsibility for the attacks, usually keeping silent about such incidents altogether.

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