, 7 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
THREAD - I found that @2020fight - the account that helped the Covington High School video go viral, according to @CNN, and that Twitter suspended shortly after, had services for hire on Shoutcart - a service that allows users to pay influencers to post videos on their behalf.
Put another way, someone *could* have paid @2020fight to post the viral video that sparked one of the most toxic 24-hr news cycles we've recently seen and led @POTUS to take sides and criticize the press. The video was viewed at least 2.5 million times.
This highlights an under-discussed aspect of information operations - information laundering. You don't need a bot network or sockpuppet to make divisive information go viral - you just need a few bucks and an influencer or trusted source willing to do it for you.
This account, which boasts high engagement and an audience of educated 20-30 year olds would have been an ideal choice. A similar tactic could hypothetically be used to skirt political advertising restrictions on Facebook which require ad purchasers to be US citizens.
No ID? No problem. Just pay a willing page admin to post your content for you.
To be clear-I have no evidence that @2020fight was paid to post the viral video and am not asserting that to be the case. Merely using the opportunity to point out how information laundering can occur and how accessible and effective it can be as an information operation tool.
Credit to @donie for the original discovery/sleuthing on the account
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