Left-wing think tank responsible for thousands of fake Russia stories

2,106 Views | 22 Replies | Last: 1 yr ago by stetson
captkirk
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Twitter files uncovers possibly the greatest media fraud yet. The 1000s of articles about the influence of Russian bots were completely made up.
Quote:


A left-wing think tank erroneously claiming to track Russian online activity was responsible for thousands of bogus stories asserting the nation's influence in US politics, according to the latest batch of Twitter Files.

The Hamilton 68 "dashboard" was the brainchild of former FBI special agent and MSNBC contributor Clint Watts and operated under the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank founded in 2017 shortly after former President Trump took office.

The ASD Advisory Council included such figures as top Clinton ally John Podesta, Obama-era acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, and former conservative activist Bill Kristol.

The latest Twitter Files disclosure, the 15th so far, revealed how Hamilton 68's Russian bot dashboard repeatedly insisted there was widespread and deep Russian penetration of social media and unveiled that Twitter executives frequently challenged those claims internally.

"I think we need to just call this out on the bullst is," Twitter's then-head of trust and safety Yoel Roth wrote in an October 2017 email. "Hamilton dashboard falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots," he added in January 2018.

Emails in the disclosure show that Twitter's own internal audits repeatedly showed that accounts flagged by Hamilton 68 were not Russian bots.

"It was a scam. … Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming," wrote Matt Taibbi, who released the latest tranche of files Friday.

Hamilton 68's pronouncements were used to allege a hidden Russian hand in US politics from hundreds, and possibly thousands, of news stories during the Trump years.

While Roth wanted to publicly push back against Hamilton 68, he was warned against taking on the politically connected group by Twitter's then-head of global policy communication, Emily Horne.

"We have to be careful in how much we push back on ASD publicly," she wrote.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/28/left-wing-think-tank-responsible-for-fake-russia-stories/
Squadron7
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"Ex-FBI agent".

I laughed.
Bird Poo
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I bet Russia is looking at our media frauds like we look at China's media frauds.

The entire world is controlled by lies.
Demosthenes81
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Take a look at their advisory council https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/about-us/advisory-council/

Quite a few of the "usual suspects"

Also a whole lot of white privilege showing up.
JamesE4
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Once more confirming what most thinking people already knew
whatthehey78
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Bird Poo said:

I bet Russia is looking at our media frauds like we look at China's media frauds.

The entire world is controlled by lies.
Probably true...I think we can blame WWII, the OAS/CIA and all intelligence operatives for that.
schmellba99
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Is anybody actually surprised by this?
captkirk
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schmellba99 said:

Is anybody actually surprised by this?
Not surprised. Wish the GOP was even 1/10th as clever.
captkirk
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From Matt Taibbi who broke the story:

Quote:

I asked for comment from a huge range of actors -- from the Alliance for Securing Democracy to Watts and McFaul and Podesta and Kristol to editors and news directors at MSNBC, Politico, Mother Jones, the Washington Post, Politifact, and others. Not one answered. They're all going to pretend this didn't happen. The few reporters who got this right contemporaneously, from Glenn Greenwald to Max Blumenthal to Miriam Elder and Charlie Wurzel of Buzzfeed to sites like Moon of Alabama, can take a victory lap. Almost every other news organization ran these stories and needs to come clean about it.

The Hamilton 68 tale has no clear analog in media history, which may give mainstream media writers an excuse not to cover it. They will be under heavy pressure to avoid addressing this scandal, since nearly all of them work for organizations guilty of spreading Hamilton's "bull****" stories in volume.

Quote:

Levich's tale is at the heart of what is so sinister about the Hamilton 68 campaign. This was digital McCarthyism, taking people with dissident or unconventional opinions and mass-accusing them of "Un-American activities." The peculiar twist of the Hamilton 68 version of McCarthyism is that instead of targeting leftists (although there are several self-professed left-leaning accounts on the list), the bulk of the real accounts involved conservatives, with handles like ULTRA MAGA Dog Mom and @ClassyLadyForDJT.

Even at Twitter, where there were basically no open conservatives in the email record, it was recognized that Hamilton 68 (and at least two other research institutes using similar methodology) were simply taking organic Trumpish chatter and describing it as Russian scheming.

The site "falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots," as Roth put it, getting "traction around partisan trends, to assert that any right-leaning content is propagated by Russian bots."


Jack Squat 83
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All this stuff is happening so fast it's hard to grasp. I'm sure it had always been going on to some extent, but this is the first "busted" episode.

There are so many "media" sources now washing each other out, the MSM still rules the day and are all-in teammates of the left.

Congressional hearings might educate a small fraction of the folks, but is there really anything that can be done?
Pretty sure most of you don’t know me.
MouthBQ98
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Start openly calling the media liars and propagandists to their faces live on the air, and if they object, summarize this story and others.
Rockdoc
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MouthBQ98 said:

Start openly calling the media liars and propagandists to their faces live on the air, and if they object, summarize this story and others.

Not nearly enough of this going on.
Maroon Dawn
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Oh look

Another example of the collusion between leftist political operatives and media where they make up an accusation that one media source runs on without any evidence or support and then all the other media cites that story as proof for their stories creating a whole circle jerk cycle of propaganda built on nothing but lies
policywonk98
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This is likely one of the most successful counter-intelligence misinformation operations of all time. Perpetuated by former and current CIA and FBI operatives.

Not really sure what other conclusions can be drawn. These conclusions were certainly being talked about within the Mueller thread.

Each passing year since 2020 seems to confirm the analysis going on from 2017-2020 based on things that happened from 2015-2020.

Truly frightening what a relatively small group of people were able to do inside the most powerful country in world history without any accountability for their actions against a presidential candidate and then office holder.



Some Junkie Cosmonaut
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policywonk98 said:

Truly frightening what a relatively small group of people were able to do inside the most powerful country in world history without any accountability for their actions against a presidential candidate and then office holder.


And they're still doing it seemingly without any resistance.
AggieVictor10
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Buck Turgidson
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Everyone involved should be chucked out of helicopters. Right above the DNC headquarters.
TexAgs91
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Demosthenes81 said:

Take a look at their advisory council https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/about-us/advisory-council/

Quite a few of the "usual suspects"

Also a whole lot of white privilege showing up.
These people need to be executed for treason
I identify as Ultra-MAGA
CDUB98
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I'll bet every one of our resident leftists flogged their dolphin over each and every one.
Funky Winkerbean
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schmellba99 said:

Is anybody actually surprised by this?
I'm actually wishing the Republicans would get this crafty.
LOYAL AG
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Good time to remind us that the political elite and the news media are two members of the political establishment. We The People are their enemy.
A fearful society is a compliant society. That's why Democrats and criminals prefer their victims to be unarmed. Gun Control is not about guns, it's about control.
fasthorse05
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Okay legals, since this is a private company, albeit interwoven into a government establishment, would Trump, or anyone else wounded by this have standing to sue?

I'm asking because I'm very aware of how difficult it is to sue these types of operations, and for good reason, but in this case, "malicious intent" is clearly .identifiable.
stetson
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FJB
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