Thread by @nailheadparty

hang on. what was "BRIXTON ENDEAVOURS LIMITED", which changed its name to "Centre for Countering Digital Hate" in August 2019?

did any of the hacks writing uncritical puff pieces on this thing actually bother to look into it, at all? @CCDHate

@CCDHate could it be that the whole thing is a dark op by the Labour right? make your own mind up



suite.endole.co.uk/insight/compan…
uk.linkedin.com/in/morgan-mcsw…

@CCDHate can someone follow this up please? i'm at work lol

@CCDHate "Building the case for an evidence-based approach to campaigning" campaignlab.london

@CCDHate McSweeney ran Liz Kendall's failed 2015 Labour leadership bid telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/…

@CCDHate womp womp theguardian.com/politics/2015/…

@CCDHate i'm getting more of a sense of why they think the only people that can be "abusive" are members of the public, not people with verified twitter accounts.

@CCDHate is it that they can;'t call out Kuenssberg for fear of blowing their cover as a Labour op, or do they just not care?

@CCDHate standing by silent as they monster one of your own. that's cold.

@CCDHate the chief executive and main public face of CCDH is Imran "Imi" "i will block you if you question me" Ahmed. here are his credentials.

@CCDHate here is the other public face of the group, a TV pop psychologist.

@CCDHate i question the credentials of these people to be able to write "a study" that comes to these conclusions. what is their relevant expertise? what is their methodology? isn't this at least worth questioning rather than just cut-and-pasting their press release?

@CCDHate so are you guys in on all of this? don't you think it's weird to take part in a big weird pantomime lie about "online abuse"? it doesn't make you appear like you take it very seriously. @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard i mean, if i were a cynical man, i'd say you were all pretending to care about "online abuse" as an excuse to brief against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. but i'm not, so i sha'n't @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard you shouldn't have blocked me for asking a polite, sincere question. that was rude

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard in fact, the gormless Stuart Heritage is almost directly quoting from the "study" here. Ahmed and Papadopoulos specifically cite David Lammy and this case as proof of their point. all Heritage has done is swallow it whole

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard Heritage has reworded it into his usual tedious jokey-jokey-matey-matey style, but here's the Independent's coverage of the same bit. independent.co.uk/life-style/onl…

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard "there is literally a playbook for trolls" is a line that's evidently been rolled out for them to repeat.

is there? what's it called? who wrote it? is it online? can i see it? should a journalist have asked these questions before Ctrl+C'ing the press release? aurora borealis?

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard there is not, in fact, literally a playbook for trolls.

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard for reference, here is what copped me (and @AndrewBartletta) a block from @Imi_Ahmed. ok, the sarcastic "pal" was incivil; but if it constitutes blockworthy "trolling", i think your definitions might be off

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard @AndrewBartletta @Imi_Ahmed the optics of a bunch of celebrities rich in both money and social capital labelling a whole swathe of people who ask them difficult questions "trolls" and holding them up to others as an example of Bad People are... not good, to me

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard @AndrewBartletta @Imi_Ahmed further questions.

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard @AndrewBartletta @Imi_Ahmed seems like there might be further questions yet.

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard @AndrewBartletta @Imi_Ahmed thanks, Angela Nagle. thanks for everything. you really helped.

@CCDHate @GaryLineker @RachelRileyRR @eddieizzard @AndrewBartletta @Imi_Ahmed if there's no academic basis for the "study", it's... marketing.

they’re really calling us Nazis huh. why are you calling me a Nazi, Gary Lineker

the CCDH share office space with a firm of debt collectors. i don’t draw any conclusions from that, it’s just funny

several people have now questioned the spelling of “Center”, as well they might

i'm just not sure i trust this man to define a troll for me.

building a consensus among celebrities is a great way to make a sort of vague feelgood niceness the story and deflect any attention as to who's running this campaign or to what end. it's worked. that's why no-one's written about this yet.

charity and celebrity are both great ways to shut people up, as we've seen over and again in the past few years

i mean, here's the poop on what this really is. "populist politicians", is it. counterhate.co.uk/about-us

the quotes in the newspaper pieces ("it's totally changed the way i interact on Twitter") are just lifted from these weird flashcard things counterhate.co.uk/dftt-endorseme…

(with the best will in the world – Nick Hewer, i saw an episode of Countdown where you reminisced about how you missed the Queen's Coronation because you were poking a spider in a bathtub with a stick. you've never used the internet, dude)

(laughing to myself imagining Nick Hewer explaining the difference between trolling, flaming, fisking and doxxing)

why do your jokes read like ad copy

i read the report. it's facile

unless something really unlikely happens like CCDH actually replying to me, i'm going to wrap up the thread here. no-one wants to be reminded of Eric Garland.

i lied, here's another post. read this thread of smart, salient, well-reasoned argument about why CCDH's strategy is misguided.

then ponder that even *this* gets you blocked.

when you combine the poorness of the strategy, the inflexibility to listen to counterpoints, the recruitment of celebrities to sell it disingenuously to the public, and the fact that this is most likely cover for a party political destabilisation campaign: we have a problem here

maybe they'll block David Lammy too

i guess if enough of us ask questions, they'll eventually have to block everyone on twitter and the problem will resolve naturally

interesting minor correction: having now read the report, the example of ~David Lammy boosting a racist by 14%~ is NOT actually in the report. which makes me think it was just something that was in the press release, which wasn't even supported by the report.

so far i've seen this uncritically repeated in the Guardian, the Independent, the Guardian again in Stu Heritage's muggy jokester piece, ITV, and a large amount of local and regional newspapers who picked up the story from aggregators. there is no citation for it.

i mean, maybe someone with @DavidLammy's ear should point out to him that the Labour right are essentially briefing against him here

@DavidLammy never mind, i can just do that too

@DavidLammy from a correspondent: Dr Siobhan McAndrew, who sits on the CCDH Board of Directors, and Daniel Allington, who "provided valuable feedback" on the report, previously co-authored a document called "Violent extremist tactics and the ideology of the sectarian far left"

@DavidLammy you can see that document here.

now, if i were a cynical man, this might raise a red flag for political partisanship for me. but i am not, so i'm sure this is fine and normal.gov.uk/government/pub…

@DavidLammy people who wrote research papers for the literal incumbent Conservative government about how to combat the violent threat of the "far left", defining what "trolls" are for the public, this is perfectly fine and normal to me

@DavidLammy sorry, i lapsed into sarcasm because i'm starting to get genuinely freaked out. this is a Labour right–government–celebrity–media partnership to monster the left and nothing more. and people are buying it.