#the call 2020 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ms-demeanor · 6 months ago

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making my own post because nobody needs my bullshit on their post:

OP:

Reblog 1:

Reblog 2:

My response:

The IRA blogs were here and they were active and they were quite popular; their posting patterns did not match normal tumblr users (i was followed by lagonegirl and followed back only to be put off by the account reblogging the same five or ten posts every hour for a day before selecting another five or ten posts to reblog hourly the next day - it was clear engagement bait).

Tumblr has never been as transparent about these accounts as both Twitter and Facebook were, but several of the accounts had shared names across platforms and you can find a significant amount of data that was released by both facebook (ex: ads purchased by the IRA accounts) and twitter (over three million tweets from IRA accounts). Academic researchers have published papers on the data released from facebook and twitter. Several papers. So many papers. Soooooo many papers. We have a LOT of direct evidence that you can explore for yourself that there were hundreds (possibly thousands) of IRA accounts that were created on Facebook and Twitter. Of those accounts, some shared usernames across platforms, and of those accounts, a few had tumblr accounts that posted the same content on twitter and tumblr.

To quote a buzzfeed news article from the time:

The Russian-run Tumblr accounts used the same, or very similar, usernames as the account names contained on a list of confirmed IRA accounts Twitter submitted to congressional investigators. In some cases, the Tumblr and Twitter account has the same profile image or linked to each other in their bios. Some IRA Tumblrs and Twitter accounts also cross-promoted content between platforms, further linking them together.

Current tumblr user @ alwaysbewoke (who I don't want to tag because I'm sure he's got better things to do) is interviewed in that article and talks about following one of the blogs identified by tumblr as an IRA blog that had a matching account on twitter identified as an IRA account but unfollowing when the left-leaning blog supposedly run by a black creator started rooting for trump in the election.

Dr. Jonathan Albright is heavily quoted in the article; the data review he collaborated on is one of the only reviews of this subject that includes data from Tumblr and Reddit.

One of the claims that I've seen is that tumblr just deleted funny black people, but these were blogs with thousands of followers on tumblr who never recreated, never popped up on another social media site, never started a reddit account after getting banned; nobody ever showed up saying "hey this is 4mysquad, I got banned on tumblr and twitter, follow me to pillowfort". These very popular blogs got deleted and, as far as I know, nobody ever popped up claiming to be a person who was deleted - and it's not like tumblr users haven't figured out how to evade bans.

What you are doing when you make posts saying that the IRA accounts on tumblr never existed is *absolving tumblr of guilt for their utter lack of transparency.*

Tumblr is not the only tech company that has tried to fly under the radar as its larger counterparts face regular scrutiny in Congress and in the press. Earlier this month, Reddit revealed it too had deleted hundreds of accounts with ties to the Internet Research Agency. A WIRED investigation found more than a thousand links to Russian propaganda websites are still live on Reddit, and unearthed two suspicious accounts that Reddit immediately shut down.

So should you believe what Tumblr says? No, because Tumblr has been functionally fucking silent on this issue and the information about this subject aside from the list of blogs has come from the hard work of data scientists, journalists, and researchers.

(For the record; some of those bot accounts that were recorded by Dr. Albright also had Google+ accounts in 2017 - there is every possibility that they had myspace accounts).

Now, the reason that I'm popping onto this post as an annoyed anarchist is that I was tracking a similar group of blogs for a while and was discussing them and I stopped precisely because of the galaxy-brained liberals who are now trying to dunk on communists for criticizing electoralism. One of the people who was following my project was one of the ones who started calling out the "joe biden kills dogs" posts as disinfo and I realized they were using some of the guidelines I'd written up to "identify" misinformation and that is very a rock fucking stupid approach to what was clearly a leftist making jokes and was horrified and realized there was no way that I could continue documenting what I was documenting without someone attempting to call actual leftists russian bots.

I've seen the post that OP is referencing [it's one where someone makes a very obvious joke about the democrat presidential ticket and people jump on to call them a bot and then someone tries to do the "AI tell me a story" thing and OP is just like "I don't want to :(", proving that they are in fact a person and not an AI] and have deeply enjoyed the humor of watching liberals a) not understand a very, VERY obvious joke and b) become the unwitting butt of a joke they were trying to make, but also I am so exhausted by watching normie dems call leftists AI bots after years of watching normie dems call real live actual leftists who hold actual political views that real people actually have, like prison abolition, russian bots.

But I am also so fucking tired of left conspiracism and how stupid it sounds when leftists dismiss a preponderance of evidence that is easily accessible and publicly available for analysis as "lol so you just trust everything tumblr tells you?"

No, dipshit, learn to click a fucking link or twelve.

#because i have to clarify before somebody calls *me* a bot: i vote as harm reduction #I've voted in every presidential election since 2004 #i voted dem in 2016 and 2020 even though i loathed the candidates for a number of reasons #so don't blue no matter who me #and maybe after the election try doing some jail support

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dreamsteddie · 13 days ago

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This is a second love Omegaverse au inspired by @lexirosewrites fanfiction, Sometimes Goodbye is a Second Chance. It is one of my personal favorites and I have read it many a time and was inspired by it. This is meant to be a part of Slick Sunday but it got really long so I decided to post it like this instead.

------

They both find themselves suddenly alone in the world with little notice.

Steve thought he was in love. He was in love. But it turns out she wasn't. At least not anymore.

There had been a single moment of elation when she told him she was pregnant. That joy was quickly and brutally squashed by the admission that the pup was not his, and better yet, she was leaving him for the sire. They were going to take the chance of having her take a competing bond, hopefully beating out the strength of the old one to eliminate it completely. It's dangerous. If it doesn't go right the Omega will likely drop, maybe even lose the child from the shock of two bonds not willing to coexist but not being strong enough to eliminate the other

Apparently, moving on from Steve is enough of an incentive to risk it all.

Two nights later, he feels the bond dissolve. Gone, just like that. Empty where he had once been full. He turns into the pillows, the ones that still smell of her, and weeps. He reaches up to cradle his mating mark, now an empty scar with no meaning.

Eddie knew what he had wasn't love. He doesn't know if he'd ever been in love, but he knows it's not what he has with his Alpha. Without even realizing it, he had fallen into the same patterns of life his parents had tread before him. He met an Alpha at a bar, thought he was the best kind of wild, stayed with him just long enough to think that this was as good as it was going to get, and resigned himself to a bond. His Alpha wasn't the worst, but he was far from nice. He was a bartender who took advantage of his proximity to alcohol with a kind of reckless abandon that Eddie used to indulge in himself.

Then, all of a sudden, Eddie was pregnant. He didn't know how to tell his Alpha. Didn't know how he would react. Would he be excited? Mad? Indifferent? At the end of the day, he never gets to find out. By the time the call comes in to tell him his Alpha had had enough alcohol in his system to wrap himself around a pole, he's already felt the bond break. He thinks he should be sad. He should be devastated, it's the natural way to react, but all he feels is scared.

What is he supposed to do now?

----------------

They're both there to get their scars removed.

It's not a completely unusual procedure, common enough that there are a handful of clinics in town to choose from.

Steve hates it here. He hates the beige walls and the beige chairs and the smell of artificial air meant to cancel out the smell of distress that would no doubt be filling up the space otherwise.

He clocks Eddie first. He looks...vacant in a way that Steve can't help but feel is unnatural for him. He's dressed in all black but not like a widow. Chains and rings and a baggy hoodie brandishing the logo of some metal band he doesn't recognize. He doesn't know why, but something compels him to reach out.

He gets up, "this seat taken?" he asks.

The Omega looks up and, Jesus Christ, he has pretty eyes. Steve doesn't know if he's seen eyes quite like his before.

"Guess not," he says, voice deeper than any Omega Steve has ever met before.

For a while, they just sit. Everyone at these clinics is given a window of time to come in, so they could be stuck in this waiting room for five minutes or two hours. It all depends on how bad the cases before them are.

It's the Omega who breaks the silence.

"So, what are you in for?" he asks, looking at Steve with a little bit of that mischief that looks so natural on him. It makes Steve smile for the first time in weeks.

"Isn't it obvious?" he asks, turning up his wry smile just a little bit "I got dumped. She cheated on me, got pregnant, and now she's gone. Gotta figure out where to go from here, I guess."

If Steve wanted to flatter himself, he would say that Eddie looks shocked at the admission. In reality, he doesn't know what to call that look. He just stares at Steve for a long moment and then says, "Huh, wasn't expecting that one." It's enough to pull a startled little laugh from Steve.

"I'm Steve." he holds out his hand

"Eddie." he takes it.

"So Eddie," Steve says as he releases his hand, "what are you in for?" That, apparently, is the wrong thing to say because the Omega goes from quietly amused to averting his eyes and slumping in his chair.

"My Alpha died last week."

Oh.

Before Steve can think of anything to say to try and spit out the massive foot he just put in his mouth, Eddie is pulling at the collar of the hoodie and tilting his head slightly to reveal his mark. It's different than Steve's which has been red and irritated since the bond broke, upset at not having a match. Eddie's is dull, to say the least. It's like a grey film has been placed over the whole area. He hides it away as quickly as he'd shown it off.

"The wild thing is I don't even miss him. I didn't even really like him!" he says a little too loud for the low buzz of the waiting room, but he doesn't seem to care. "I didn't even like him but then he went and got himself killed and left me alone with a pup I didn't even want! And now I can't bear to give it up even though I know I should because I have no fucking Alpha and no job and I'm going to be a shitty fucking mom and-" By now he's definitely too loud for the waiting room and people are starting to look around like they're waiting for someone to do something and Steve really does not need to be kicked out right now so he does the only thing he can think to do.

Steve wraps Eddie up in an incredibly awkward side hug and starts crooning at him, trying to gentle him into relaxing a little bit. He subconsciously tries pumping out calming pheromones but with the clinic purifiers, it's probably not doing what it's supposed to. He half expects Eddie to push him away. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who appreciates random Alphas invading his space, but to his surprise, Eddie melts into his side almost too easily. He puts his head right over Steve's sternum, getting as close as he can to that gentle rumbling purr.

"Fuck, sorry, that was too much," Eddie says, voice muffled by Steve's shirt.

"Hey, hey, don't worry about it. That sounds really rough, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about your Alpha." he soothes.

Eddie just lets out a little sigh, clearly not planning to extract himself from Steve's hold any time soon. "Like I said, it's not even the Alpha. Honestly, he kind of really sucked. It's just...It all seems so big right now, y'know? I never planned on pups, but now I've got one growing in my belly like some kind of parasite and all I want is to see their little face and hold them in my arms and keep them safe. I want this baby, but I don't know how I'm going to do it."

Once again, Steve doesn't know what to say. He's been abandoned more times than he cares to think about, but never in the same way Eddie has been. He doesn't know what to do, what to say, where this whole thing goes from a kind stranger offering a little comfort to an Alpha trying to insert themselves into a vulnerable Omega's life. He should say nothing. He should hold Eddie for as long as he wants to be held and get the last of his bond removed and start thinking about what to do with his life next.

In fact, that's exactly what he's planning to do, but in the course of step one -comforting Eddie- Steve makes the mistake of leaning his head on top of the Omega's. This close to the source, not even the extra strength air purifiers in the clinic are enough to hide Eddie's scent from him.

Steve has never really believed in scent mates, always thought they were an old wives tale, but he thinks Eddie might just change his mind. Steve has never smelt anything quite it. It's muskier than most Omegas tend to smell but with sweet notes of basil and peaches. It takes every ounce of self-control and a reminder to himself that he has been without a mate for less than a month for him to not start huffing at the poor guy's hair like a lunatic.

All that really means is that rather than continuing to hold Eddie in silence like a normal fucking person, he instead blurts out "I could help you!"

Startled, Eddie backs up enough to look Steve in the eye, his own eyes wide in surprise. He doesn't completely leave the circle of Steve's arms which he counts as a small win.

"What?"

This is Steve's chance to back out. To back peddle and make up something, anything, except for what he's really thinking which is something along the lines of "please be my mate and let me help you raise a child. I think we might be soul mates!"

What he actually says isn't all that better.

"I mean, I could help you with the pup, you know?" Eddie just continues to look at him, eyes getting impossibly wider, "I mean, we just met and that's crazy but I just got a new apartment with an extra bedroom and you seem like a nice guy and..." Steve deflates a little bit, letting the silence linger.

"Steve?" Eddie prompts. A little bit of hope peaking through his words. Just enough to give Steve the push he needs to tell to truth.

"...and I don't know what I want to do with my life anymore. I don't know what to do next. All I ever wanted was a family, but no one ever wanted one with me. So, if you want, you can stay with me. It doesn't have to be permanent but...maybe it could be. Eventually. Your choice." and he means it, is the thing. As bat shit insane as it sounds Steve is suddenly so sure that he could make a life with Eddie. That they could be happy together. Mates.

Eddie is, once again, silent. He's still just staring, jaw dropped searching Steve's face for something. Steve doesn't know what it is he needs to see, so he just lets him look.

"Eddie Munson?" a nurse calls out, breaking the bubble they've built around them. They both startle, instinctively scrambling out of their chairs so she doesn't pass over Eddie for the next patient.

Steve starts to panic as he feels this opportunity start to slip through his fingers. Once Eddie passes through those doors, there's no guarantee that they'll ever see each other again, but he won't push him. What he's asking for is crazy, he knows, and Eddie has every right to flee from him and never look back.

Instead, Eddie whips around. There's more life in him than there has been since Steve first spotted him. There's fear and hope and joy all dancing across his beautiful eyes as he surges back to grasp Steve's hand from where it was lying limp at his side.

"Yes!"

"Yes?"

"Yes! To all of it! Fuck!" Eddie is, once again, being way too loud for this waiting room, but Steve doesn't give a damn about that. How could he care about anything else at all when Eddie is smiling at him like that? "Just, wait for me ok? Or, I guess I'll wait for you since I'll be out first?" he says it more like a question than a confirmation, like he's suddenly scared Steve is going to take it all back.

"I'll look for you." is all he says, suddenly aware of the nurse making her way toward them, clearly impatient to get things started. He wishes he could go in with Eddie. Wishes he could hold his hand through the inevitable pain of the removal and soothe the pup growing in belly reacting to their mother's pain, but he has his own appointment to wait for.

Eddie nods, squeezing his hand just once before finally allowing the nurse to usher him back toward the offices in the back, never looking away from Steve as he does so. Steve gives him a little wave as he passes through the door before collapsing back into the seat behind him.

All that's left to do now is wait for what comes next.

#posting this a little early #I actually wrote this late last sunday #and decided to hold on to it #for this week #steddie #slick sunday #omegaverse #alpha steve harrington #omega eddie munson #typing out alpha steve harrington felt so evil #not because of omegaverse #but because if he had been a teenager in the 2020s #instrad of the 80s #he may have legit been called Alpha Steve #which I hate #on a new level #stranger things #fanfic #dreamer speaks

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