Thread by @fascinatorfun

This might have focussed on Qatar, Egypt & Nigeria but it caught my attention because, like so much of the Brexit astroturfing, it was being driven by PR firms.

Here a load of Facebook messaging apparently fronted by grassroots campaigns came through associates of Lynton Crosby

https://twitter.com/janelytv/status/1179941504502112256

Many of us have noticed a big uptick in divisive tweets dripping into our accounts.

Worth stopping to think whether they too are being driven by a series of “professional” orgs just as here.

I know that @marcowenjones has been researching an overlap between this story & Brexit

So you have a sense of the familiar ground that seems to be common between this Qatar etc story and what is happening here, a little reminder of one of the U.K. Brexit/ Johnson based stories. Here is just one link.

theguardian.com/politics/2019/…

It seems that Lynton Crosby’s firm also uses arms length firms in other jurisdictions (eg NZ) to run operations

It also seems to “front” advertising campaigns by using grassroots campaign names.

The real key is who is paying for them all really?

@marcowenjones who is a Prof involved in the Qatar et al research also started running an analysis of Boris Johnson follower accounts, and RT of Johnson and Farage material to amplify the messages.

Someone asked him if there was any connection between the 2 bodies of research.

This is what he said.

https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1171045800329322497?s=21

It really makes you think about the International networking going on behind this sort of activity.

We need to be very very alert indeed. We ALSO need super emergency legislation to make inroads into this sort of activity.

@DamianCollins , Chair of the @CommonsCMS Committees says our elections are under threat in this digital age
Emergency regulation is needed.

This should be prioritised and politicians need to wake up & get this built into the timetable for EU extension

politicshome.com/news/uk/consti…

This regulation seems even more important in the light of this.

“Facebook says it WON’T fact check politicians’ speech or block their content if it’s newsworthy even if it violates the site’s hate-speech rules or other policies.”

techcrunch.com/2019/09/24/paw…

Then there was this little snippet.

Our old friends SCL seems to be linked into the Qatar/Gulf campaigns.

And Brexit backing off-shore Lord Ashcroft turns out to have been an investor in SCL.

https://twitter.com/fascinatorfun/status/1175347007331983360?s=21