#bogus news sites

[tomorrowusa]

China is stepping up its manipulation of US public opinion. It worked well for Putin in 2016 so why would Xi Jinping ignore the potential?

A Chinese marketing firm likely organized and promoted protests in Washington last year as part of a wide-ranging pro-Beijing influence campaign, according to new research. The Chinese firm also used a network of over 70 fake news websites to promote pro-China content in an example of the more aggressive efforts by pro-China operatives to influence US political debate in recent years, according to security firm Mandiant, which analyzed the activity. One of the protests was against a US government ban on goods produced in China’s Xinjiang region, where US officials have accused the Chinese government of systematic repression of the Uyghurs. The other protest was on the sidelines of a June conference on international religious freedom, Mandiant said. One of the protests only attracted roughly a dozen people but it showed the scope and ambition of the pro-China efforts. The hired protesters, who included self-proclaimed musicians and actors in the Washington, DC, area, apparently had no idea they were being enlisted in a pro-China influence campaign, the Mandiant researchers said. The campaign backed by the Chinese firm, Shanghai Haixun Technology Co., Ltd., is “intended to sow discord in US society,” Ryan Serabian, a senior analyst at Mandiant, told CNN.

Rent-a-protester is nothing new. There are companies like this one which will create a scene for you — for a price.

A bigger problem is the proliferation of bogus news sites. They often have names and branding which look like (but aren't identical) to those of legit news organizations.

It doesn't help matters that Google News is way lax about what it considers a "news" site.

Of course the most fertile ground for fake news sites is social media. Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) is more interested in boosting activity than in accuracy of information. And Twitter (or whatever Elon is calling it today) these days has become a playpen for Nazis.

People need to SIMPLY STOP getting news from dubious social media sources.

There are plenty of respected sources for news. But it takes a bit more effort than just glancing at an unmoderated feed.

No source is 100% perfect; but a good news source will admit an error and then offer a correction.

Public broadcasters in liberal democracies are good sources. Even public broadcasters in some non-English speaking democracies may have English language content. Americans in particular need to get more news directly from reliable sources in other countries. It's a big world out there.

The corporatization and monopolization of local and regional newspapers in the US has been terrible news. However a lot of smaller excellent news sites have sprung up to fill the gap in local coverage in many municipalities.

So create your own news feed of legit sources – but keep it separate from strictly opinion sites.

If you do run across a dubious site pretending to be a news source, don't hesitate to call them out publicly. This "news site" may just be a propaganda boiler room operating in Shanghai or Saint Petersburg. It may seem like a game of whack-a-mole to some degree but keeping the lifespans of such sites short prevents them from building a base.

—··—— —··—— —··—— —··—— —··—— —··—— —··——

Speaking of China, apparently Foreign Minister Qin Gang has been purged.

China’s foreign minister Qin Gang ousted in surprise shake-up of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy leadership

[bloodsbane]

i think what ticks me off the most about recent changes staff have been making to tumblr is they keep insisting it's necessary bc they need to draw in and retain new users or they're NEVER going to keep things going, so their solution is to... add a bunch of annoying and unintuitive shit that A) isn't going to appeal to anyone, let alone new people, but also B) piss off the existing user base.

like, im sorry, between the two demographics who do you think is going to ACTUALLY care enough about tumblr to use it every day and pay for things like no ads, or your merch based off decade old memes? i give this site the 5 or whatever bucks it takes to get rid of its stupid ad posts in part bc they're annoying but also because i have been on this fucking webbed site for 12 years! and i don't mind giving it some money to keep it running. BUT. not if that's paying for staff's ability to add more useless/convoluted/unappealing features that dont have MY user experience in mind

[wetpapert0wel]

hey......what if. instead of tumblr making their own gaiaonline avi things......what if we just went to gaia online.......

[pastel-medic]

//TW brief artist vent you have been warned!!!

Ngl, I really hate tiktok as a platform for artists. While I do post some of my funny tiktoks there my blog here is my main focus because I just don't really feel mentally safe on that platform. The amount of first time artists (and even seasoned artists with years of experience) getting bullied off that platform for absolutely bogus reasons is beyond shameful and unacceptable, and yet I expect no less from any social media site.

This is why aspiring artists never get a chance to share and improve their art; They just end up quitting without further trying due to the overwhelming negativity and cruelty. Yes giving art advice or an opinion is fine, but don't be an absolute dummkompf about it. Be encouraging and kind! Patience and guidance can mean a LOT to new artists!

I'm so glad other artists on tiktok are defending these new artists too. Nobody starts off making flawless art. And even then that flawless art isn't so flawless, an artist can still look at it and say "I could have drawn this better". It takes time and practice to create art, the stuff I made when I was like 13 wasn't perfect or "pretty" either and that's normal! We all start somewhere, harassing or bullying others for being a beginner is just downright depraved.

Also to end this short rant off I want to say: always try to make an effort to say thank you and compliment any art you receive this year in Art Fight regardless of art skill! We all contribute for fun, don't forget to show gratitude to any artwork you receive! While you don't have to revenge attack an artist back for any reason, be it out of low energy, not feeling drawn to the artist's characters, or any other reason, a sincere thank you still goes a long way.

Thank you for your time! -Your local Shortcake Medic!!! 🍰💖

[opencommunion]

"The sight of hungry people scavenging through dumpsters and panhandling was once more common in cities in the United States and Europe than in Havana. But a series of quiet moves, first by Trump, and now by Biden, have produced a humanitarian crisis throughout Cuba.

... Joy Gordon, an expert on sanctions at Loyola University Chicago and author of Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, told Drop Site News that there has been a shift towards minimizing visible harm to civilian populations since the sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s, which resulted in widespread malnutrition and epidemics. 'There’s a strategy of trying to offload the enforcement to the private sector,' she said. 'U.S. policy has created conditions that make it commercially compelling for the private sector to withdraw from whole markets, resulting in severe and widespread economic harm, but in a form that is not directly attributable to US policymakers.'

... Perhaps the best example of an almost invisible but insidious sanction is designating Cuba as a 'state sponsor of terrorism.' Presented as a benign policy tool to make the world a safer place rather than an arm of economic warfare, it has contaminated the word 'Cuba' more than ever in the global economy. Almost overnight the label provoked both global banks and vital exporters to pull out of the Cuban market, according to diplomats and businesspeople on the island. ... The island had been on the State Department’s terror list before, up until 2015. But since the relisting in 2021 the effects have been fiercer.

... Most Cubans fleeing this misery head to America. ... By keeping the terror designation and other sanctions in place, the Biden administration has fueled this record-breaking wave of Cuban migration. Over the last three years, more than a half-million Cubans have arrived in the U.S., according to figures from the Customs and Border Patrol Agency. The whole dynamic has a whiff of madness: record Cuban migration stoked by the Biden administration plays into the broader 'border crisis' that is helping Trump as the election approaches.

... The list of state sponsors of terrorism has always stood on the frontier between analysis and propaganda. No matter how bad their records, U.S. allies never make the list; adversaries do. ... According to former intelligence and State Department officials, for the last three decades the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment has been that the island has not sponsored what even the U.S. would define as terrorism since the 1990s. ... From its first months in office, Biden’s team has repeatedly said—both publicly and privately to members of Congress—that it was carrying out a broad review of policy towards Cuba, including the terror designation. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in 2022 that the administration 'will continue as necessary to revisit those to see if Cuba continues to merit that designation.' But last year, that claim was revealed as bogus. In a private meeting, a State Department official privately told members of Congress that no review process had even begun, according to sources present.

... Analysts agreed that with political will, Cuba could have been taken off the list within weeks of Biden’s inauguration in 2021. Some 80 House Democrats sent Biden a letter urging him to do just that within weeks of his inauguration. Even if the administration carried out a six-month review as some argue the law requires, the designation could have been lifted by the middle of Biden’s first year in office. Had the White House done so, hundreds of thousands of Cubans might well  have been living at home with their loved ones today, living with better access to food and medicine, rather than fighting their way to the border and battling the byzantine U.S. immigration system.

The Biden administration’s position became even more tangled in May when it removed Cuba from the list of countries that are not 'fully cooperating' with the U.S. on counterterrorism. According to official designations, Cuba now 'fully cooperates' with counter-terrorism efforts while at the same time  'sponsoring' terrorism. How the same country could do both things remains unexplained. Asked why the State Department had not even begun a review, spokesperson Matt Miller told Drop Site at a press briefing that the U.S. policy was aimed at furthering 'the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people,' a reference to the U.S. goal of overthrowing the regime."

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

Congressional Republicans, always eager to show that they put pleasing Donald Trump far ahead of doing anything productive for their constituents, are calling for an investigation into the debate between Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Trump lost that debate badly. That loss is reflected in post-debate polls where Harris has seen a boost from a performance in which she was reassuringly calm while baiting Trump into dozens of unforced errors—including his baseless claims about immigrants eating pets. But Republicans are now claiming that ABC News, which hosted the debate, provided Harris with questions in advance and promised to fact-check Trump while leaving Harris unhindered. They’re also claiming that there is a “whistleblower” willing to detail how ABC helped Harris—though they can’t seem to decide if that whistleblower is dead or alive.

Trump’s real problem is that he’s a loser who never wants to admit he lost. That was true in 2020, and it’s still true today. To cover up his losing, Trump employs a three-part plan: insist in advance that his opponents will cheat, claim to have won no matter how badly he lost, and then spread conspiracy theories about why he lost. That certainly fits the pattern for the debate. Days before Harris and Trump met, Trump was already pushing his claim that ABC was going to provide Harris with the questions in advance. When Trump was shellacked on stage, he came down to the spin room to toss out a series of numbers that seemed made-up, claiming that polls showed he had won. “It was the best debate, personally, that I have ever had,” Trump said. “Polls are indicating that we got 90 percent, 60 percent, 72 percent, 71 percent and 89 percent.” He didn’t answer a reporter’s questions about where he got those numbers—though a review of his social media suggest he got them from some bogus right-wing “polls.” 

[...] There appears to be absolutely no evidence for this claim, or for the existence of this whistleblower, outside of some posts on Twitter. The claims originated from a Twitter account of an acknowledged MAGA supporter who wrote "I will be releasing an affidavit from an ABC whistleblower regarding the debate. I have just signed a non-disclosure agreement with the attorney of the whistleblower.” This claim was picked up and repeated by accounts with over 1 million followers.

On Friday, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall called for a congressional investigation and said he would demand “all correspondence, records, and potential coordination” between ABC and Harris ahead of the debate. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, always near the bleeding edge of any conspiracy theory, was quick to pile on in a series of tweets culminating with a Sunday claim that this unknown whistleblower had died in a mysterious accident.

Greene then had to walk back her claim after it became clear that the story she had cited came from a fake news site filled with stories written using AI—a site that also attempted to spread a virus to anyone who followed the link. But even if the whistleblower isn’t dead, there’s apparently no evidence that they have anything to do with ABC or any knowledge about the debate, or exist. ABC has denied the veracity of the right-wing claims. The same account that said it was in touch with the whistleblower released a portion of the claimed affidavit on Sunday. The affidavit includes claims that Harris was unfairly provided with a podium “significantly smaller than that used by Donald Trump” to make her look better and that there was an agreement to not ask her about “her brother-in-law, Tony West, who faces allegations of embezzling billions.”

House Republicans are calling for a partisan Keystone Kops investigation into ABC News over its handling of last Tuesday’s debate, a debate that Donald Trump lost handily to Kamala Harris fair and square.

[scummy-writes]

I can't find the post that explained this in depth, but a small reminder to disable Best Stuff First

The tldr of it, from my memory, is that you will miss posts from those you follow with this enabled. Obviously you can do what you want otherwise.

The explanation I remember is that tumblr implemented a weird algorithm thing and it promptly fucked over a lot of fandom blogs because of how tumblr has this set up, so since its not in a chronological order due to the bogus algorithm they made, you'll miss stuff easily since tumblr isn't showing it to you.

I've been on this site for a while, so I've absolutely forgotten that this isn't common knowledge for folks who are newer to tumblr. (I am not even sure if they still auto enable this for new users) but regardless, I encourage you to check your 'dashboard preferences' in settings! They have handy options there to turn on or off.

Also I had no idea they shared likes. I'm sorry to anyone who follows my main and had this enabled, you probably got blasted with horror related shit at times.

If you know what post I'm referencing, PLEASE send it to me, I'd rather reblog it than my pisspoor explanation because I may be forgetting something that it explaned.

[phoenixyfriend]

marriage of convenience and hair brushing/braiding for rexwalker, if you feel up to it?

Fanfiction Trope MASH-UP: Send me two (2) tropes from this list + a ship and I’ll describe how I’d combine them in the same story.

This ask meme is from over a year ago. Please don't send new prompts.

52. Marriage of Convenience 94. Hair Brushing/Braiding 

Is it bad that my first thought is actually inspired by the Ob*kin fic Their fragrance came from you? There's a whole thing about Tatooine marriage braids that my mind immediately jumps to lmao

I think... let's say modern AU. Anakin is a single dad, has been for a few years. Padme died in childbirth, and while her will was made out in favor of Anakin and the kids, the executor of her will was her lawyer-mentor, Palpatine, who couldn't touch the trust funds set up for the twins (which are very large, and will become available when they turn 25, but can only be accessed for education costs before then), but did manage to somehow take almost all the liquid assets left for Anakin in bogus fees.

Anakin's still got the house, but as time passes, he's having more and more trouble with paying the property taxes. He's still managing, but the money Padme left for him is slowly dwindling, and the kids are going to start costing more as they get older, and he's already got Ahsoka living with him (she helps out with the kids so he can work, coding from home, since he's paying for her college tuition; she doesn't have to pay rent since she's a commuter student, and she's got a partial scholarship, but that's still a few thousand a year coming out of Anakin's pocket to put his little sister through underrad). Obi-Wan offered to help, but Obi-Wan lives on the other side of town and even tenured professors don't earn that much, compared to Coruscant's standard cost of living, especially since Obi-Wan adopted recently, a little girl called Reva, and--

Anakin's struggling financially, basically, which isn't a new circumstance, but he really doesn't want to lose Padme's house. Worst comes to worst, he can probably sell it back to Sola so it stays in the Naberrie family, and she'll let him keep living there, but... that's not a sure bet. The Naberries are comfortably wealthy, but it's still an entire house.

Rex, a college friend of Anakin's that went to the same aerospace program, comes back to town. He was on a military tour overseas, but got honorably discharged due to a head injury. Anakin offers to let hm sleep in the guest room, since Padme's house (it's still Padme's, in Anakin's mind), is a lot bigger than Cody's apartment, even if there are toddlers at large. Rex initially promises that he'll only stay long enough to find an apartment of his own, except he overhears Anakin on the phone with Obi-Wan about the finance stuff one day, and reaches out to a few people who have been in town more consistently for a better idea of what's going on without getting too deep into Anakin's business.

Rex manages to get a job locally; there's an airfield for hobbyists a few miles out of town, and the place is looking to hire a new engineer on staff to do repairs and checks on the small planes they keep on site. He starts making noises about moving out, and then, 'subtly,' suggests he just stay at Anakin's place and pay rent.

Anakin does not like the idea of Rex paying rent; friends don't do that! Anakin isn't going to make Rex pay rent in Anakin's home.

They don't talk about it for a few days, and then there's... IDK a night 'off,' where Obi-Wan or Sola or Aayla or Beru takes the twins for an evening, and Ahsoka goes out with friends, so Anakin can take some time off from being a Dad and just Relax.

He and Rex break out the wine, get tipsy not truly drunk, and Rex pokes at the 'just stay here' option again. The house is closer to the airfield than most apartments, and Rex can help take some of the weight off of Anakin and Ahsoka's shoulders with regards to childcare! Even if Anakin won't accept him paying rent!

Anakin argues this. Anakin's kids aren't Rex's responsibility, and Anakin doesn't need his charity (which is, of course, how he views Rex's suggestion). They go back and forth on the topic a few times, and then Rex throws out something about getting married 'for lower taxes' and 'it's not rent if it's my house too, right?' and it's. It's a joke.

Except they're both still thinking about it the next morning, with faint (but not faint enough) memories of a tipsy kiss before bed, and--

Months pass with the two of them circling around each other and Rex never quite moves out, and tax season rolls around, and Anakin is stretched so thin, even with all the cuts for children and covering a dependent's tuition and so on.

Rex quietly floats the idea of a convenience marriage again. It doesn't have to mean anything, if Anakin doesn't want it to. It's not an insult to Padme's memory, just a way of keeping her children in the house she chose for them. And it's not charity, because Rex will get tax cuts too, and better health insurance once Anakin can put him on the family plan he's got. It won't do anything for this year, but by the time the next year rolls around, Anakin will have less of a problem paying those taxes, even if that promotion he's been hoping for doesn't come through.

Anakin, eventually, agrees.

Just four months later, they tie the knot. It's a small ceremony, more than just a courthouse and a paper, just to... well, Anakin wants Rex to have this. Leia and Luke don't entirely understand what's going on, but Ahsoka told them that it means Rex is going to be staying for a lot longer than they originally planned, and they're pretty excited about that part. They're four, and 'Daddy's friend that we like a lot is staying' is pretty clear.

They don't have a 'traditional' wedding night, because they're still both looking at this as a platonic thing (it won't stay that way, but it still is for now). They do share a bed, because someone is sleeping in their guest room (IDK who, maybe a guest was too drunk post-wedding to get home and they just offered the room). Anakin's hair is long enough for an evening of people and, importantly, sticky toddler hands to have tangled it. He washes it out, comes to the bed, and looks so tired--because he had to wash the toddlers first--that Rex offers to brush it for him.

It's intimate. Gentlemanly, but intimate. They go to bed with warm cheeks and pounding hearts, and eventually, one of them rolls onto their side to cuddle.

Neither of them get much sleep that night.

[david-goldrock]

that sort of makes like half sense to me, but it doesn't seem very democratic at all. it appears very insidious. while I support palestine, I appreciate your answer, and I hope you will choose to consume media of international sources, because I worry that this law is just a farce to push a narrative your government wants you to believe, you know? peace & love

lol an act against democracy in a time of crisis? with my bibi Netanyahu?? no wayyy.

Believe me, if this was a real news source, there would be mass demonstrations about it. nobody wants this organization here, it is nothing but bad for our country. the only reason this doesn't pass with 100 Knesset members is that it is a clear violation of the right to free press(I don't think foreign organizations are supposed to have that right anyway, but I digress)

anyway, I hope you don't use this absolutely bogus "news" organization, It's Qatari propaganda, to an extreme level. if you wanna see how much, get to the Arab version of this site.

I read everything from BBC to Israel hayom, and I also go around the country and talk with friends who are\were in there. the amount of misinformation you westerners are getting is insane, please for the love of god, Israel still has free press, the government didn't influence the media (at least as far as we know, at least in this subject, there is a reason our PM is up for trial), read times of Israel, the jerusalem post, or even Israel Hayom (yes, even they have a better track record to these Hamas spokespeople).

[calico-cows]

Is marching band a cult? here’s a list from site link

The group displays an excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader, and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.

the band directors word is law

Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

maintain morale, don’t question anything or complain, especially leadership

Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, or debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).

questionably applicable… it is very hard work but the goal is not suppression

The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (e.g., members must get permission to date, change jobs, or marry—or leaders prescribe what to wear, where to live, whether to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).

yeah absolutely. They tell us how to act and think and NO TOUCHING and professional learning environment and all that

The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and its members (e.g., the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).

well we ARE special

The group has a polarized, us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.

you cannot tell me the band doesn’t have this mindset about cheer and other sports kids

The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders, or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).

ok but is the band director actually held accountable

The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (e.g., lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).

eh not really unless you count exercise lol

The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and control members. Often this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.

not really unless you’re late

Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.

band camp. You’re never home. Debatably applicable

The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

have you seen our recruitment efforts? We’re not good at it but we’re trying very hard

The group is preoccupied with making money.

it’s expensive to run a band! And we need new uniforms eventually! So yes

Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.

haha absolutely

Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.

I mean no one says it out loud but yeah kinda

The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave—or even consider leaving—the group.

there is no leaving marching band

[anotherdayforchaosfay]

Russia’s attempts to influence the 2024 election in favor of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are accelerating, federal officials and researchers say, adding to a sea of misinformation about immigration and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, despite U.S. efforts to blunt the onslaught with indictments, seizures and public warnings.

After a group of prominent far-right influencers was exposed last month for taking money provided by Russian state media figures, they continued to promote falsehoods to their large followings, including debunked claims about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets.

Those tales originated with locals gossiping and were amplified online by figures on the American right, and eventually by Trump. But researchers say Russian actors have piled on with even more exaggerated claims intended to scare more citizens about immigration and race, even after two Russian nationals were charged in early September with laundering money to covertly influence public opinion.

The U.S. government’s seizure of 32 web domains hosting fake Fox News and Washington Post stories similarly did not put an end to that separate Russian caper, researchers say. The automated accounts that spread links to those stories are now sharing links to new “doppelganger” articles on faked versions of established outlets, including some asserting the Secret Service’s “criminal connivance” in the latest apparent attempt to kill Trump.

Other researchers said last week they have discovered another Russian network touting a parade of lies about Harris, including that she is showing signs of Alzheimer’s and that her family has secret ties to “Big Pharma” and so would push puberty-blocking drugs.

Clint Watts, who heads Microsoft’s efforts against government disinformation, said that Russian trolls have moved to new websites to host bogus news stories, and that such influence efforts might work better now than before, simply because the presidential contest is heating up. “The audience is much more vulnerable the closer we get to Election Day,” he said in an interview.

The worst is probably still to come, said disinformation and cybersecurity scholar Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He said his biggest concern is not false information but “a real, newsworthy leak of files on the Harris campaign that will drive the news cycle.”

Federal prosecutors took action in early September against both the web of fake news sites and the Russian funding of well-known influencers. The conservative commentators involved have not been charged and said they had not realized that the company paying them as much as $100,000 each week was backed by people at Russia’s state-controlled RT propaganda network.

The continuing efforts from the trolls and automated accounts add weight to a warning by U.S. intelligence officials last week that Russia is amping up its efforts to return Trump to the White House. Russia hopes Trump will cut support for Ukraine, its top priority, intelligence officials said previously.

Though U.S. officials seized website addresses that had been hosting the fake news sites, affiliated social media accounts are now pushing new links to similar sites, researchers said.

A Sept. 24 tweet linking to a fake Fox News story about Haitians, for example, had drawn more than 900 retweets and not a single like two days later, a pattern that misinformation researchers say strongly suggests automated amplification by bots rather than humans. The story - headlined “Watch out for Kids, Cats and Cars: Alien Haitians Want to Take Everything from You” - went further than the falsehoods spread by Trump, claiming that a cat reported missing to police “was later seen butchered like a calf carcass in a migrant den.” In fact, the cat emerged unharmed from its owner’s basement.

A fake Post story, tweeted the same day by another account in the network, described officials’ failure to stop Trump’s second alleged would-be assassin earlier as “true criminal connivance” and asserted than the suspect was “a fascist who shares the position of Ukrainian Nazis.” That post had more than 800 retweets and no likes. The accounts were identified by activist research group Antibot4Navalny.

Unusually, federal law enforcement authorities cited reams of internal Russian documents in their recent actions against Moscow’s disinformation campaigns, some of which had also been reported on by The Post. Rid, who analyzed the documents, wrote Monday in Foreign Affairs that architects of multiple social media blitzes complained that because Meta kept removing accounts, X has become “'the only mass platform that could currently be utilized’ in the United States.”

An X spokesman said the company “remains alert to any attempt to manipulate the platform by bad actors and networks,” adding its efforts to parry them had “led to over 460 million accounts being suspended through the first six months of 2024.”

Other documents showed that the Russian government contractors behind the fake-news campaign known as Doppelganger pointed to U.S. media coverage and tech companies’ actions against them as evidence that they were feared and deserved more Russian government funding, Rid wrote.

New propaganda networks are still being discovered, such as one identified by disinformation tracking company Alethea that includes 77 X accounts posting original content and more than 400 that amplify those posts. That network has claimed that Harris is showing signs of Alzheimer’s; that her family’s secret ties to “Big Pharma” give her a financial incentive to push puberty-blocking drugs; and that she is a Marxist because her grandfather taught Marxist theory, Alethea said in research shared with The Post.

Following the FBI explication in a 277-page affidavit of the contracted influence campaign, the network began asserting that experts had concluded Ukraine was behind it. On Sept. 10, for example, X user “Jhon Piell,” on now-suspended account @salman1212120, posted a video citing Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative collaborative Bellingcat, as calling the operation “a complex and dangerous project of Ukraine.”

“Less than half an hour after the video’s publication, it was retweeted at least 76 times in under 60 seconds by a network of accounts, all with Turkish names, that had been created in batches between Sept. 2 and Sept. 8, 2024,” Alethea wrote.

Russia has long targeted Bellingcat and Higgins, who have exposed intelligence agents involved in assassination plots and disinformation. But it now is trying to muddy their work and hurt Harris at the same time. Higgins posted Wednesday that a fake Fox video claimed Higgins had found that an immigrant had assaulted one of Harris’s aides. In that case, the tweet jumped to more than 16,000 views in less than five minutes without any retweets or likes.

The number of views by actual human beings is hard to discern, as is evaluating the posts’ impact on voters. But even when lies are obvious, their proliferation can make truths harder to believe, disinformation experts said.

Russia is having at least some hits, such as a viral video that falsely accused Harris of a hit-and-run car accident. That got more than 7 million views.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Former FBI official accuses Marjorie Taylor Greene of spreading foreign propaganda

Mark Alesia, Investigative Reporter

April 13, 2024 6:08AM ET

Marjorie Taylor Greene talking to reporters in February. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is spreading the propaganda of American adversaries on social media, knowing those countries will amplify her messages for impact they wouldn’t otherwise have, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s former assistant director for counterintelligence.

In Monday’s debut of The Defiant Podcast with Brooklyn Dad Defiant, shared in advance with Raw Story, Frank Figliuzzi tells host Majid Padellan, “What we’ve caught Russia and China doing … is they’ll take a statement from Marjorie Taylor Green — or someone like her, someone who doesn’t deserve a particular amount of attention — and then those foreign intelligence services amplify it across social media.

“So she has immediate amplifying support out there. She knows when she spouts something ridiculous there’s going to be foreign adversaries who blow up her message so we can’t avoid it.”

Greene’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Raw Story.

READ: A criminologist explains why Trump’s Manhattan trial is the biggest threat to his freedom

In the podcast, Figliuzzi, who works for NBC News, emphasized China’s role in spreading misinformation and disinformation.

“We focus almost exclusively on Russia at our own peril,” Figliuzzi said. “Because recent reporting, including from my outfit, NBC News, has pointed out that the Chinese are already at it — already fully engaged in attempting to mess with our next election. It’s chaos they want to sew.”

Padellan said Figliuzzi described the situation by using a phrase he coined: “spamoflage,” a cross between spam and camouflage.

“He said they’ll create a clone of, say, CNN’s website and post information that’s kind of true but kind of not true,” Padellan said. “He said by the time people figure out it’s a bogus site, it’s already done its damage.”

Figliuzzi told Padellan that China wants Trump to win.

“Because he is more easy to manipulate, he’s more susceptible to influence,” Padellan said.

Padellan is a staunch progressive and social media influencer who has 1.3 million followers on X, formerly Twitter. In 2021, the New York Post attacked him for taking money from a pro-Democrat political action committee, Really American, in 2020. FEC records show the total was $59,088.

Padellan responded that he was always open about the affiliation. He did design and social media work for the organization. FEC records show no payments since then to Padellan.

He said his motivation is his five children, three adults and two teenagers.

“I feel a very strong sense of responsibility about the kind of world I’m passing on to them,” Padellan said. “This is personal. I have skin in the game. I feel like it’s my civic duty to do everything possible to illuminate the truth, to make sure I do what I can to cut through the (bs).”

[simply-ivanka]

Breaking NEWS

[trumpamerica]

Breaking NEWS

[sapphia]

silicon valley had ai 15 years before they released it. everything we’re seeing is a decade old and scraped from the sites literally everybody uses. reddit has chat gpt 10 years ago. reddit had programmes to regurgitate arguments last time trump was elected. they tested it in New Zealand first and one of our journalists nicky hager wrote about it in a book all about political corruption and then those bots that were trained on what was good or bad with upvotes or downvotes or “likes” or “dislikes”. this self-selects which bots are most human-like and have the best ‘answers’. tumblr was the testing ground.

does anyone remember getting bogus asks that were made up of random punctuation and letters? bots. we taught bots to speak by replying to the ones that resembled words. then those bots went around messaging people and no one answered them except themselves. and these bots also had blogs that made posts to try and get upvoted (which told them they were a good tumblr human) and they’d send each other messages and their data centers would mine the messages they received and we’re all still using asks because staff won’t give us a chat for some reason but it’s mostly just porn bots mining data from other bots. silicon valley has to ban porn to deal with the rampant horny porn bots. it mostly works but some of the bots still carry on. yahoo sells us, the worthless userbase, at a massive loss. we laugh at them. they have all our data, hand-extracted.

they give us chat. they begin mining chat for data. it’s still pre-2016

they took the bots trained on our terfs and reddits dudebros and facebooks old people. and they used it in the 2016 election with full chat gpt capability and image generation so that when they released language bots in the future we are dazzled by the words ai and are impressed their at programmes who can by now fully impersonate a human, a thousand humans, but is just telling us wrong wikipedia facts. we laugh at the stupid ai. we continue to vaguely ignore the growing number of bot-like people infesting the internet.

trump just won an election over what the media tells us is a “culture war” while billionaires dripfeed us data mining tech to extract human traits for their ais. they learn through logic and iteration but can’t think for themselves. the right has stagnated, the left grow frustrated with people’s unbudging opinions. but most of the arguments being made are by bots. most people are arguing with bots, bots are arguing with bots. there is a disconnect where influence can be exerted politically.

no one irl wants to mention politics because it’s so divisive. the news talks politics, the bots talk politics. the people do not talk politics.

[snkrfnd]

Here is the 2024 Media Bias Chart.

It's not enough to check that there is a source these days with so many bogus sites churning out misleading or outright incorrect information. You should also check the bias and reliability of your sources.

Also - you can download this chart for free at the link.