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9 Oct, 5 tweets, 3 min read
New from me + @BrandyZadrozny + @Tom_Winter:

Alleged Michigan kidnapping plotters’ online lives reveal Boogaloo ties, Trump support, and swift online radicalization

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
In 2016, one of the alleged plotters of Whitmer’s kidnapping pushed pro-Trump conspiracy theories that absolved Russia of meddling in the 2016 election, calling investigations of Trump an "uprising.”

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
One of the alleged plotters of Whitmer’s kidnapping was radicalized very fast.

Last year, he was posting selfies and Joe Rogan clips. After the pandemic, it was only Boogaloo memes and Bill Gates conspiracy theories.

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Rightwing blogs like Gateway Pundit have spent today claiming one of the alleged kidnapping plotters was on the left because he owned an anarchy flag.

In reality, he’s a Boogaloo Boi who followed a standard rightwing YouTube radicalization rabbit hole.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
One of the alleged plotters of Whitmer’s kidnapping railed against her on YouTube for months.

In one video he points to a Trump 2020 hat on his head and says “I hope that triggered a whole lot of people.

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…

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More from @oneunderscore__

Ben Collins Profile picture
7 Oct
Four years ago today, Pizzagate was born when Wikileaks dropped John Podesta's hacked emails.

Users on 4chan and Reddit said if you replaced the words "pizza" with "little girl" in his emails, suddenly they were eating children.

A year and three weeks later, QAnon was born.
In the last four years, an infrastructure for an alternate reality was built on social networks to frame one political party as Satanic child eaters.

It went unchecked by social networks and winked at by politicians who it didn't yet harm.

Millions joined those communities.
This is important to note: The reason 4chan users were so ready to accept "pizza" meant "little girls" in creating Pizzagate?

In 4chan speak, "cheese pizza" was a backronym for "CP," or child porn, which saturated the site for years.

Read 6 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
6 Oct
BREAKING: Facebook bans QAnon across its platforms

Facebook "will remove Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts for representing QAnon" like any other militarized social movement, militia or terror group.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Facebook's QAnon ban is the most sweeping content moderation step I've seen from any social media company so far.

This won't just ban certain posts. Facebook will ban Groups, Pages and Instagram accounts that post about QAnon, a militarized movement.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
QAnon will now be treated like other militias and terror groups that have been tied to real-world violence and repeatedly fantasize about violence and mass slaughter.

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Read 9 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
30 Sep
"Proud Boys, stand back and stand by" is not disavowing white supremacists.
The president was asked point blank to disavow white supremacists.

Here's what he said:

"Proud Boys, stand back and stand by, but I'll tell you what, somebody's gotta do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem, this is a left-wing problem."
Story incoming on this, but The Proud Boys took the president's statement for them to "stand down and stand by" as marching orders.
Read 5 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
25 Sep
New from me: Urging followers to 'camouflage,' QAnon attempts to rebrand

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
'Q' from QAnon told followers last week to stop mentioning Q and QAnon.

Some Q influencers took down their accounts to scrub Q references before re-emerging.

They're afraid of bans with a lot of conspiracies to push before election day.

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Be careful: The next QAnon conspiracy won't self-identify that way.

Yesterday's story about the George Soros Antifa U-Haul, for one, was pushed by Q himself.

QAnon influencers won't mention the link anymore when posting conspiracies. The brand is toxic.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Read 4 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
15 Sep
Guy who just moved in next door spends, I'm not kidding, at least five hours a day playing ornate trills on his clarinet.

If this isn't some sort of elaborate psyop by an adversarial government, I'll frankly be pretty upset.
He's not even bad, which is somehow worse?
Probably the cruelest trick this guy does is that he rears up like he's going to start Rhapsody in Blue maybe three times an hour and I get excited because, hey, at least I know Rhapsody in Blue, then he just... doesn't play it.
Read 4 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
14 Sep
Quick thread about 4chan and their years-long campaign to tie the LGBTQ community to pedophilia:

Last year, I wrote a story about how 4chan trolls were posing as gay men on Twitter to try to frame the LGBTQ community as trying to normalize pedophilia.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Far-right sites ran headlines like “Resistance Member Says Pedophilia Is Sexual Orientation, Claims Bigotry” based on a fake Twitter account created by a chan troll.

This is a homophobic trope, an extension of ages-old homophobic slippery slope arguments against LGBT people.
There were real gay men who had their identity stolen for this disinformation campaign. They were deeply kind guys who run a blog highlighting safe places for LGBTQ people to travel.
Read 7 tweets

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