Thread by @pepesgrandma

🔥🔥🔥Breaking! The Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) partnered with Restless Development (youth collective) to counter Covid Disinformation. And the best part? Restless Development is funded by the US government along the Obama Foundation, Gates, Clinton’s, and other foreign governments!

This joint effort bragged about getting conservative news orgs such as the Gateway Pundit, the Federalist, and Zero Hedge reported to social media AND demonetized! Especially from Google!

Organisers say the campaign was inspired by Sleeping Giants in the US, which persuaded brands not to advertise on Breitbart.

Restless Development is global, and promotes social justice, climate justice, UN developmental goals, feminism, inclusivity, gender transformation, and anti-racism.

Let’s start off with some of the Restless Development funding (see photo)

-Obama Foundation
-USAID
-US Department of Health and Human Services
-Clinton Health Initiative
-Bill and Melinda Gates
-United Nations
-The Swedish International
Development Agency
-Norwegian Agency For Exchange Cooperation (NOREC)
-Irish Aid
-Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office
-Ford Foundation
-Danish International
-Development Agency
-Plus more

Considering Bill Gates funds them, I can see why they were so bent on targeting information posted about him.

This also started running exclusively out of the UK in April/May 2020 and it expanded later.

Imran Ahmed, CEO, CCDH. May 6 2020:

“The initiative is currently working with volunteers in the UK, but their reach across social media is global. The project will be expanded to work with volunteers in different countries around the world.”

Let’s start off with how it’s organized.

♦️CCDH and Restless Development

1. Youth Against Misinformation (YAM) - name of project

A. Youth Against Fake News (Org used to do the work, and was later renamed to the below.)
B. Youth Against Misinformation (new name)

Now here’s how this works, and as for the blocklists, I have a few examples:

“The Record and Report team spent shifts combing through misinformation Facebook groups, Instagram and Twitter accounts, sourcing explicit examples of misinformation and reporting them to the respective platforms.

We would visit these websites and screenshot adverts next to the article headline, then contact the advertising brands via Twitter and email.

We included information from CCDH on the nature of the website and their content and requested that they blacklist those sites from featuring their adverts, therefore reducing the profitability of misinformation.”

“Since YAM volunteers began working on CCDH’s Stop Funding Fake News campaign we have contacted over 250 different brands, with around 40 responding that they’ve taken action.”

They also interacted with social media users.

“They began by identifying tweets that
contained misinformation, then tweeted the users to request their
deletion whilst sharing advice from CCDH on how to avoid spreading
it.”

“The reports produced from this collaboration have been used in
US Congress, UK Parliament, in gov briefings and media reporting across the world, particularly influencing the deliberations surrounding the Online Safety Bill and the scope of online harms.”

The Stop Funding Misinformation campaign also carries blocklists (see photo).

Here’s a sampling:

- Gateway Pundit
- Zero Hedge
- Federalist
- Breitbart
- Rebel News
- AM Greatness
-Etc..

Anyways, they are very proud of their successes.

“Since we launched, we’ve seen one of our target fake news sites completely shut down, and the capacity of several others reduce significantly as a result of us damaging their ability to raise revenue.”

Video: CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed brags to PARLIAMENT about using Stop Funding Misinformation to have Google stop monetizing The Gateway Pundit!

Sources to follow along with tons more information including more on affected US individuals and businesses such as Robert F Kennedy and Sayer Ji’s Green Med Info.

Let’s begin with a document which explains the Youth Against Misinformation campaign in detail. A partnership between the Center For Countering Digital Hate and Restless Development.

Youth Against Misinformation•:

A Young People’s Campaign Against Online Harms

“Youth Against Misinformation (YAM) was a unique and innovative programme created by Restless Development and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in April 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its aim was simple: to galvanise the energy and skills of young people to research and combat the growing mis-
infodemic around COVID-19, as well as other issues, on social media.”

“Over a period of eight months, 61 young volunteers were trained by CCDH to identify and act on dangerous misinformation online, particularly where it related to health, COVID-19 or vaccines. They collected data for research to be used by CCDH and successfully campaigned to make their findings heard at the highest levels of UK decision-making by tabling questions in the Houses of Parliament.”

“Volunteers were deployed into three targeted streams, each with their own objectives: Record and Report (RnR), Transcriber, and Stop
Funding Fake News (SFFN).”

“The SFFN team (now called Stop Funding Misinformation) was supported to develop skills to communicate persuasively when approaching organisations and businesses online, and to encourage participation in the initiative. They began by identifying tweets that contained misinformation, then tweeted the users to request their deletion whilst sharing advice from CCDH on how to avoid spreading it. Later, they adapted their approach to target websites that were promoting harmful misinformation and fake news by contacting organisations whose adverts were appearing on those sites.”

“The reports produced from this collaboration have been used in US Congress, UK Parliament, in government briefings and media reporting across the world, particularly influencing the deliberations surrounding the Online Safety Bill and the scope of online harms.”

web.archive.org/web/2022033109…

This is a 2020 year end doc from Restless Development. It even references the Youth Against Misinformation program.

This includes their Donor Funders.

“From young leaders reaching 247,000 people across Sierra Leone to help communities protect themselves, to Youth Against Misinformation fighting the ‘infodemic’ online, to young researchers gathering deep insight on how the pandemic impacted young people and communities, over 3,523 Restless Leaders took action when it mattered most, serving 319, 360 people in 2020.

The pandemic was not the only force to reshape our world in 2020. Following the murder of George Floyd, we were again called on to change and to challenge the systemic racism in our world and in our work.

Building on our existing diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy, Restless Development conducted deep, meaningful listening exercises across our global teams to create new anti-racism approaches. From changing our leadership structure.

“We trained 61 volunteers in the UK to fight COVID-19 misinformation. Over 2,000 pieces of misinformation were recorded and reported to social media companies.”

“COVID-19. Fighting misinformation. Taking on the ‘infodemic’, young leaders rooted out misinformation and fake news about COVID-19, identifying misinformation and reporting it to GOVERNMENTS and social media platforms to force them to take action.”

web.archive.org/web/2024100104…

🔥Huge new info! I just found a 2019 EU funded fact checking research paper on Trump listed in a CCDH and Restless Development document! It discusses fact checking and the 2016 election in great detail. And it links to the US Department of Interior to get the doc!

Why are they linking to a government website with a special link that needs authorized access?

When accessing the link via Archive.org it forwards from the DOI to Springer. After more investigation I found out that the DOI link was a special access link with extra DOI information for authorized users.

This means the DOI was involved in fact checking malarky during the Trump admin!

Here’s a Jstor page that shows that the DOI page is only for authorized users and has additional information.

“Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi.org/10.1007/s11109…) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.”

jstor.org/stable/48694273

Here’s a layman’s copy of the fact checking study document and not the DOI version.

“Taking Fact-checks Literally But Not Seriously? The Effects of Journalistic Fact-checking on Factual Beliefs and Candidate Favorability”

This research received funding support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 682758). We also received support from the School of Media and Public Aairs at George Washington University.

web.archive.org/web/2021030801…

Here’s the CCDH and Restless Development document link which we still need to discuss further.

web.archive.org/web/2023052109…

Now Restless Development and the Center For Countering Digital Hate, did a bunch of documents together for this program.

Shame on folks for trashing Bill Gates, a donor partner! And who’s posting this? Why it’s Robert F Kennedy Jr!

Theres tons of misinformation examples inside this doc. A large portion goes to Bill Gates. Feel free to share your favorites with us.

Oh, and beware of the Anti Mask Mind control too. Oooo… 👀

“Many posts in our sample claim that masks are ineffective in limiting the spread of Coronavirus, are a form mind control or are actually dangerous”

And here they push a conspiracy of their own. They accused Trump of pushing an anti Covid vax agenda. When he was the one who warp sped it into existence.

“There is a major gap in vaccine hesitancy between those who voted in 2016 for Secretary Hillary Clinton (29%) and those for President Donald Trump (55%).

This suggests a push by the President and his party to persuade their base could be very valuable.”

web.archive.org/web/2023052109…

Here’s the next document from the Restless Development and Center For Countering Digital Hate joint program called Will to Act.

Various documents discuss various numbers of misinformation used for that particular paper. This paper covers only about a month at the beginning. And of course, our friend and their Donor Partner, Bill Gates, is inside.

And who can forget Alex Jones, with a Bill Gates hashtag. 😹

They also have a block list with the “Lies Cost Lives” name found on this report. We’ll discuss it later.

“In the Coronavirus pandemic, lies cost
lives.”

web.archive.org/web/2023052106…

Once we get the did docs out of the way, we head into the block lists.

This Restless Development and Center For Community entering Digital Hate doc is called Malgorithm. Recall these all relate to their Youth Against Misinformation aka Stop Funding Misinformation program. This report mostly deals with Instagram.

Inside they list a top ten of Instagram anti vaxers. They also discuss the Instagram recommendation system suggesting the “taboo” anti vaxers.

1. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (verified)
2. Children's Health Defense
3. London Real (verified)
4. Weston A. Price Foundation
5. NVIC.org
6. Physicians for Informed Consent
7. Highwire with Del Bigtree
8. Dr Rashid A Buttar
9. Patrick Bet-David
10. Valuetainment

“More than one volunteer was recommended content from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., while
others were recommended posts from “The Truth About Vaccines”, an account run by the anti-vaxx entrepreneurs Ty & Charlene Bollinger. Two more commendations were for posts from “Green Med Info”, an account run by the anti-vaxx entrepreneur Sayer Ji. All of these individuals were identified in CCDH’s report The Anti -Vaxx Playbook.”

They also list ten health authorities used.

1. nhs.uk (verified)
2. BBC News (verified)
3. World Health Organization (verified)
4. Gates Foundation (verified)
5. Public Health England
6. UK government (verified)
7. Centers for Disease Control (verified)
8. UNICEF (verified)
9. Bill Gates (verified)
10. LSHTM

They also extended the list of top ten anti vaxers to 20.

11. Ty & Charlene Bollinger
12. The Truth About Vaccines
13. The Truth About Cancer
14. Vaccines Uncovered
15. Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai
16. Rizza Islam
17. Denise Marie
18. Circle of Mamas
19. Erin Elizabeth
20. Dr. Joseph Mercola

And here’s a list of Wellness influencers linked to anti-vaxx

1. David Wolfe (verified)
2. Zach Bush
3. Ben Lynch
4. Global Healing
5. Wellness Force
6. ANH International
7. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. (verified)
8. Dr. Joseph Mercola (verified)
9. Erin Elizabeth
10. Organic Consumers Association (verified)

There’s other lists inside including Qanon etc, so don’t forget to look for your name!

Oh and there’s a bunch more of those US Department Of Interior (DOI) links inside too.

web.archive.org/web/2021072212…

Let’s head into the block lists now. Stop Funding Misinformation actually bragged about putting a website out of business and DAMAGING others.

“Since we launched, we've seen one of our target fake news sites completely shut down, and the capacity of several others reduce significantly as a result of us damaging their ability to raise revenue.”

archive.is/b4rwj

As you can see by the second photo of a tweet, the blocklists are used by advertisers as recommended by Stop Funding Misinformation.

Here’s the tweet pictured.

archive.md/2fEVu

Here’s the Blocklist page the Tweet sends you to. There’s multiple years of lists available in the archives.

“Keep your adverts safe, download the blocklist.”

archive.is/HmhQ7

And here’s the 2021 version of this particular blocklist. They tell advertisers to remove ads to defund these news outlets:

gnews.org
zerohedge.com
greatgameindia.com
wakingtimes.com
globalresearch.ca
tr.news
evolvepolitics.com
rebelnews.com
thecanary.co
politicalite.com
dorseteye.com
unitynewsnetwork.co.uk
breitbart.com
wattsupwiththat.com
voiceofeurope.com
americanthinker.com
amgreatness.com
moonbattery.com
americanthinker.com
bigleaguepolitics.com
wnd.com
thewashingtonstandard.com
thegatewaypundit.com
westmonster.com
wattsupwiththat.com
climatedepot.com
electroverse.net
junkscience.com

web.archive.org/web/2021112313…

Stop Funding Misinformation has other blocklists also.

This list is for those that they call racist. This page lists their top ten, “racists”.

- amgreatness dot com
- moonbattery dot com
- americanthinker dot com
- bigleaguepolitics dot com
- zerohedge dot com
- wnd dot com
- thewashingtonstandard dot com
- thegatewaypundit dot com
- breitbart dot com
- thefederalist dot com

archive.ph/UcBEj

And of course it offers a downloadable blocklist at the bottom.

web.archive.org/web/2021112313…

There’s also the Covid “Lies Cost Lives” campaign also.

“We've identified five GoogleAds-funded Fake News sites that we hope you will blacklist as they are doing some of the worst damage when it comes to spreading COVID-19 misinformation.”

*On the webpage itself, they actually list 6.

archive.is/0G5PM

And they too have an easy blocklist.

web.archive.org/web/2020051606…

Here’s Emily’s Story on the Restless Development page. She joined Youth Against Misinformation in April 2020 as one of the volunteers.

“Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) have seen the complete shutdown of one of their target sites, and the significant reduction of capacity for multiple others.”

“We split into two teams; the Don’t Spread the Virus (DSTV) team and the Record and Report (R&R) team. Both teams were trying to get as much misinformation as possible reported but in slightly different ways.

In order to accurately identify misinformation, we used a variety of fact-checking websites such as FullFact and First Draft News. We also used several official sources, such as the World Health Organization and the NHS.”

“The DTSV team contacted people (on Twitter) sharing misinformation, provided them with more information and asked them to remove their posts. “

“The Record and Report team on the other hand, spent shifts combing through misinformation Facebook groups, Instagram and Twitter accounts, sourcing explicit examples of misinformation and reporting them to the respective platforms.

We would visit these websites and screenshot adverts next to the article headline, then contact the advertising brands via Twitter and email. We included information from CCDH on the nature of the website and their content and requested that they blacklist those sites from featuring their adverts, therefore reducing the profitability of misinformation.

We were also able to keep track of the brands that other volunteers were contacting, retweeting their posts and following up on their emails to confirm that the brands had taken action. Most recently, we have also added the focus of contacting brand CEOs as well as the official company Twitter/email account, to increase accountability of individuals. 

Since YAM volunteers began working on CCDH’s Stop Funding Fake News campaign we have contacted over 250 different brands, with around 40 responding that they’ve taken action.”

archive.is/F3OP1