Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
Jun 16, 2020 7 tweets 5 min read Read on X
[Thread]1/ The WTO report released today found that Saudi has failed to stop and permitted a commercial-level piracy operation of the BeIN sports channel. Already trending in Saudi is the patently false hashtag, "WTO rejects Qatari complaints". Here is a breakdown of the hashtag Image
2/ As of 8pm, I've analysed around 6571 interactions (tweets, RTs, replies etc) from around 4000 unique Twitter accounts. The usual suspects are some of the most widely retweeted, including the verified accounts: @monther72 @SalmanAldosary @70sul @amjadt25 @alekhbariyatv
3/ Interestingly, spreading this patently misleading content is @skynewsarabia presenter @a_albander . Also there is @SaudiNews50 - an account linked to SMAAT, a Saudi social media company, who in December 2019 had 88000 accounts removed by Twitter for platform manipulation. ImageImage
4/ Interestingly, some of these lot these accounts were very active in the harassment of @ghadaoueiss and @OlaAlfares , as well as the recent disinformation campaigns about a fake coup in Qatar. For want of a better word, many appear to be professional liars #كذابي_محترفين
5/ You may see this being circulated. While the letter head has WTO branding, it is actually a statement from the Saudi Perm Mission to the WTO (as said in header). It's basically the Saudis ignoring the ruling to try and spin it as positive Thanks @BarryJIngham1 for sharing Image
6/ I dare say this will certainly have implications for #NUFCTakeover, but the focus of the WTO case was highlighting Saudi's behaviour regarding piracy of BeIN content.
7 Updated graph of those most retweeted on the "WTO refused Qatar complaints" disinformation hashtag. Mostly Saudi and Emirati accounts. There's around 16k tweets here. Image

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More from @marcowenjones

May 22
🤖 1/ Ok this is pretty wild. I saw some sus pro-Israel astroturfing activity on a BBCNews Facebook post about aid arriving in Gaza. Lots of Hasbara comments like "Hamas will take the aid". The following 2 identical posts were side by side so I looked into it. #disinformation Image
2/ Specifically I looked at Dean O' Connor. Firstly up, there were two almost identical Dean O'connor pages, both created on consecutive days last week (15 + 16 May). The one that posted is the one on the right. Image
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3/ When I reverse image searched the picture I was inundated with dozens of pages from forums about romance scams asking about people using this same picture. A lot of people scammed out of thousands. Someone even asked on Quora about O'Connor! Image
Read 7 tweets
May 15
Macron Cocaine Thread/ - The first 10 hours of the @EmmanuelMacron @Keir_Starmer @ZelenskyyUa Cocaine disinformation.

Seemed to be promoted initially by a few dubious accounts like @Veritiste @SitgesFranck @99percentyouth @SilentlySirs @goddeketal

#disinformation Image
2/ Before being boosted by the right-wing ecosystem and conspiracy accounts e.g. @DineshDSouza @RealAlexJones @CollinRugg. No serious journalists reported this story (because it's absurd). Nonetheless, those tweeting in the first 10 hours generated over 103 million views on X! Image
3/ The boosting of the info by Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev was via Alex Jones, who as the above timeline shows - wasn't the first to put it out on X - but the most widely viewed. Image
Read 4 tweets
Apr 29
🚨1/ Fake News Alert: A number of accounts are spreading false information that a church in #Wales was burned down by two Pakistan migrants/muslims. There are other narratives, but this is the dominant one. It is false but has obtained millions of views. some data> #disinfo Image
2/ It is true that a church did burn down. It was set alight by two local teenagers. The South Wales police have tweeted that other rumours circulating are false - they are of course talking about the false info about the ethnicity of the attackers (right). Image
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3/ The most shared claim comes from 'RadioEuropes'. This is a 'Dysinfluencer' account - an account that repeatedly spreads false and malicious information - in this case xenophobic and anti-Muslim content. You can see its false tweet garnered over 3.6 million views Image
Read 12 tweets
Jan 8
1/ THREAD: On populist gaslighting and the war on truth-tellers 🧵 Image
2/ Something concerning is happening in our information ecosystem: populists aren't just spreading misinfo, they're systematically trying to undermine the very concept of verifiable truth
3/ When fact-checkers or experts present evidence contradicting false claims, they get labeled as "elitist manipulators" or 'censors' - effectively inverting reality
Read 8 tweets
Jan 7
🧵 THREAD: Meta's disturbing new "free speech" announcement is a masterclass in how platforms enable digital harm under the guise of freedom 1/9 theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Meta announces it's getting rid of factcheckers & "restrictions" on gender/immigration content. This isn't about free speech - it's about platforming hate & disinformation under the guise of "mainstream discourse" 2/9
Key red flags: ❗️❗️❗️

Moving content teams to Texas "for less bias" (read: political motivation)

Replacing factcheckers with "community notes"

Framing basic content moderation as "censorship" 3/9
Read 10 tweets
Dec 21, 2024
1/ 🧵This graph shows X posts by impressions in the first six hours after the Magdeburg attack. Specifically these are posts falsely attributing the attack to an Islamist terror attack or a Syrian, or using it as an opportunity to attack immigration or muslims #disinformation Image
2/ The usual suspects are there - that is, the anti-Islam disinfluencers (routine spreaders of disinformation). As you can see, one of the most widely viewed is @visegrad24 - who shared at least 6 posts falsely claiming the attacker was an Islamist Image
3/ The posts falsely claiming that the attacker was a Muslim or Islamist gained at least 38,000,000 views. False claims that he was Syrian resulted in around 8.4million views (remember this is just an approx 6 hour period). Image
Read 8 tweets

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