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Thread: On May 20, Breitbart threw some red meat to its readership. Pure outrage-bait. The article inspired 8,000 comments, 1,400 of which on @disqus, I spent a couple of days reading and documenting the response to this article. Here's what I found. 1/
@slpng_giants
My focus was on the @disqus comment section. Disqus has a TOS for users and publishers called the "Basic Rules". First rule: "Hate speech and other forms of targeted and systematic harassment of people have no place on Disqus". Let's see how this goes. 2/
help.disqus.com/en/articles/17…
I began documenting a few days ago. The process takes some time and has to be done in small batches to preserve my sanity. 😅

The first thing that stuck out to me was the general tone of the most upvoted comments. I tweeted about it on May 22. 3/
One day later, I noticed the most upvoted comments I had highlighted the day before had all been deleted.
1. Why wait 3 days?
2. What does it say about your content/readership that most of the top upvoted comments have to be removed? 4/
As mentioned at the top, the @disqus comment section saw about 1,400 comments. I grabbed 217 comments in total, most of which (197) promoted the racist conspiracy theory that the former First Lady is transgender. 5/
How did we get here? Well, in 2014 Joan Rivers made an "off-color" joke. Two years later, it was being promoted by Alex Jones on Infowars. 6/
Belief in this conspiracy theory "relies on a number of racist stereotypes about Black women's bodies", as this @PinkNews article points out. 7/
pinknews.co.uk/2020/05/18/mic…
In addition to comments about the First Lady's gender, others were more upfront with their racism saying, "they don't want another black man one step from the Presidency" and that they should "go back" to Kenya/the jungle. Others compared her to a primate. 8/
This is really nothing new for Breitbart or their comment section. Over four years I've documented thousands of comments that clearly very easily violate @disqus' "Basic Rules". The question is, why does Disqus continue to give Breitbart a free pass? /END
CC: @ZetaGlobal
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EJ Gibney
@EJGibney
Last summer, a very determined and very angry individual created several dozen fake accounts explicitly to harass and intimidate me and others who often tweet to @slpng_giants.
AI-generated faces were used to make the accounts appear authentic. (1)
It's not the first time that a person has been harassed on twitter dot com and I'm sure it won't be the last.

What's troubling is the tech. Untraceable faces of people who don't exist. The fake faces are meant to give the appearance of authenticity and it works. (2)
Had it not been for this Medium post by @kcimc I'd have had no idea what I was looking at. The tech has changed a bit since, but many of the artifacts in the images can still be identified -- missing earrings, warped backgrounds, misshapen teeth, etc. (3)
medium.com/@kcimc/how-to-…
Read 9 tweets
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EJ Gibney
@EJGibney
Stephen Miller is a white nationalist. Breitbart promotes white nationalism.

Breitbart's comment section is a reflection of their content — an angry, hate-filled echo chamber. It's for-profit outrage propaganda.

How is this a "trusted source", @facebook?
The @hatewatch article points to Miller's lack of interest for domestic terror when the perpetrator is white.

When Breitbart wrote about a white nationalists foiled plot to commit a mass shooting, users in the comment section viewed him as a hero.
When Breitbart wrote about the mosque shootings in Christchurch, NZ, the comment section celebratedthe murder of Muslims.

Miller communicated with Breitbart for their reach and because their audience would help promote a white nationalist ideology.

Propaganda =/= news.
Read 3 tweets
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EJ Gibney
@EJGibney
THREAD: I tend to take anonymous commenters with a grain of salt, particularly when they're contributing to the conversation on Breitbart but I feel it's important to draw attention to how Breitbart's audience has responded to the President's "Civil War" tweet.
@slpng_giants
The comments in this thread were taken from the first 1/4 of the article's comments. I grabbed about 100 before needing to step away. It's disheartening and alarming to see an entire community drift toward violent extremism without seemingly any accountability.
The comment section on Breitbart is powered by @disqus. In 3 years of documenting Breitbart's comment section, I've flagged about 5,000 comments that violate Disqus' TOS. They know it's a cesspool and they've chosen to ignore it. I'd like to know why. help.disqus.com/en/articles/17…
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