Kit Klarenberg Profile picture
Investigative journalist. One half of @ActiveMeasures8. Tipoffs/leaks/hatemail: kitklarenberg@protonmail.com. Tip jar: https://t.co/WbsPZytISb.

Jul 15, 2022, 16 tweets

THREAD: Seeing quite a lot of people reporting - often with surprise as they've never interacted before - that disgraced former DHS 'disinfo expert' Nina Jankowicz has blocked them. It would be unsurprising if Amil Khan of Valent Projects gave her a blacklist to work from.

In wake of @MaxBlumenthal and I exposing how Khan and @PaulMasonNews conspired to get The Grayzone deplatformed, he took to Twitter to declare article had primarily been shared by "coordinated networks" of bots and trolls, and that information on these had been passed on...

These charges completely false. Khan was even repeatedly challenged on this nonsense by a supporter of his (in since deleted tweets). Assumed this to be a copium-inspired lie, but no - he truly believed this. And tens of thousands of people will have been put on lists as a result

Note Khan's invocation "information laundering", subject of infamous Scary Poppins video. Good reason to believe Khan and Jankowicz are familiar with one another too, because she sat on advisory board of Open Information Partnership. He is named as part of it in leaked documents

As I wrote for @MintPressNews, Open Information Partnership is a British Foreign Office information warfare operation acknowledged to be a "troll/disinfo factory". mintpressnews.com/uk-propaganda-… Some participating orgs have fascist ties.

It's sinister enough Khan - who has a history of running covert state propaganda campaigns - is compiling info on people online and passing it on to authorities because they shared an article, there is a high risk that many of them will be banned from social media as a result...

Khan's company Valent Projects receives millions from USAID - never been advertised publicly - for tackling 'disinfo' in various countries. In practice this entails approaching Facebook etc posing as independent researchers, and having government critics banned en masse.

A leaked Valent report on "inauthentic behaviour" and "coordinated networks" related to the Ethiopian civil war offers some insight into Khan's research methods. It's difficult to know where to start dissecting the idiocy and insanity contained in it...

For example, Valent identified 150 accounts that used hashtag #NoMore most, and assumed them to be primarily bots, but Botometer didn't validate this. Rather than conceding they were wrong, concluded the bots were in fact so "sophisticated" they escaped detection 🥴🥴🥴🥴

Khan then tracked where these users were based, finding some were in the same place, leading him to conclude a single person was running multiple accounts. In reality, these users just listed a particular city on their profile, not their precise coordinates...

I also make an appearance. Khan claims a thread I posted about him and his company suggested I have
"access to information obtained through espionage/security links". In reality, I just posted things I'd found via search engines, and LinkedIn...

This would be amusing, except a large number of activists, journalists and academics within and without Ethiopia flagged as suspicious/bots by Khan have been permanently suspended, or shadowbanned. This not only damages reputations and livelihoods, but even more sinisterly...

Serves as a tool of regime change. The mainstream media - in particular CNN - was tubthumping for US intervention in Addis Ababa, and whitewashing the brutality of the US-backed TPLF. Were it not for independent reporters and activists challenging this false picture, it is highly

Likely there would've been US boots on the ground eventually. Valent's work also serves to keep corrupt, unpopular, repressive Western-backed regimes in power by silencing legitimate criticism.

As such, Facebook and Twitter must never allow Khan's analysis to influence their decisions ever again, urgently review each and every suspension they have enacted due to Valent's interventions, and reveal what information and 'analysis' has been passed to them by the company.

Addendum: Very striking how many people are finding out they're blocked by Jankowicz as a result of this thread, particularly given many are highly obscure accounts. This is as good as proof Jankowicz was given a list. No way she came across these people organically.

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