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3 Nov, 5 tweets, 3 min read
Hi friends! I'll be covering disinformation and extremist activity at NBC News with @BrandyZadrozny today.

Let us know if you're getting weird texts or if your Facebook group is on fire. (I mean, not in the usual way.)

DMs open. You are appreciated. We're all in this together.
New from @BrandyZadrozny:

Pennsylvania voters have been hit especially hard by online voter fraud misinformation today.

Conservative media influencers and Republican political operatives are tweeting misleading videos and photos from polling places.

nbcnews.com/politics/2020-…
From @JareenAI:

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said residents in Flint, MI received robocalls that allegedly told some people that if lines were too long on Election Day, voters could vote the following day, which is not true.

nbcnews.com/politics/2020-…
New from me + @BrandyZadrozny:

Twitter has banned several high-profile accounts that frequently posted about fringe politics on Election Day for breaking the company’s spam or hateful conduct policies.

nbcnews.com/politics/2020-…
This is not the day to test out the twitchiness of Twitter's election integrity team, as some people are finding out.

nbcnews.com/politics/2020-…

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More from @oneunderscore__

Ben Collins Profile picture
29 Oct
NEW from me + @BrandyZadrozny:

The Deepfake Peddling a Hunter Biden Dossier

nbcnews.com/tech/security/…
Months before the NY Post story, a document passed around far-right websites detailed a vast Hunter Biden conspiracy.

The document's creator, Martin Aspen, claimed to be a Swiss intel professional.

But Aspen's face was created by AI. He doesn't exist.

nbcnews.com/tech/security/…
A Hunter Biden-China dossier made the rounds among so many people in the rightwing internet. Steve Bannon, Newt Gingrich, even Q from QAnon.

It was created by a fake person with an AI-generated face.

nbcnews.com/tech/security/…
Read 6 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
29 Oct
Absolutely incredible.
Did the Magic 4Chan Document Fairy make a second copy? Find out tomorrow night!
So many tweets in my drafts right now Twitter’s server rack might explode.
Read 4 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
25 Oct
After a half-decade covering extremists and disinfo pipelines, this is the week the effects of this job really got to me.

The anonymous people want me dead, the named are desperate for me to fail.

Just going to keep going. No other way.
I really should’ve predicted this would be the week i started to feel it.

It’s a week before the election. The people who pushed Pizzagate are on TV now, their millions of followers going after a new target.

I remember them from the first time around. Not great news for them.
Disinfo pipelines are crumbling. They’re having a harder time on Facebook. They can’t manipulate mainstream media as well now.

It’s angrier and more vengeance-filled than before since they can see their flirtation with real power maybe ending.
Read 5 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
22 Oct
Tucker Carlson is devoting an entire segment to attacking my colleague, Brandy Zadrozny, for doing actual reporting, like using public records to confirm identities of people who create harassment campaigns.

It's disgraceful.

She's the best reporter I know. I'm with her 1000%.
Had Tucker looked into this, his guest was emailed by Brandy the day before about a story she's doing about his website. He spent the day tweeting retributively at her.

That wasn't mentioned. Seems pretty important to include.

And the guest is this guy.
cnn.com/2018/08/19/pol…
Anyways, that was a hideously unethical segment by Tucker Carlson, framing using basic reporting tools like public records searches as some sort of evil act.

To do it to a mom, and one of the best people I know, is disgusting. I won't forget it.
Read 4 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
21 Oct
Oh my god.

vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020…
Rudy Giuliani has spent the last week teasing multimedia of Hunter Biden doing something sexually nefarious on a hacked laptop. He's had this allegedly criminal evidence for a year. He's produced nothing.

That same thing, featuring himself, will be on Amazon Prime on Friday.
Really good point here.
Read 4 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
15 Oct
NEW from @BrandyZadrozny + me:

YouTube says it is banning QAnon, other conspiracy content that targets individuals

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
As far as we can tell, all of the major radicalization-driving QAnon videos — some of which have tens of millions of views — are still up at press time. YouTube said enforcement will take a minute.

We'll keep you updated.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
In our reporting, YouTube was QAnon's largest remaining radicalization driver.

This enforcement action puts YouTube somewhere in between Twitter (make QAnon accounts harder to find, ban overt harassment) and Facebook (outright ban on QAnon content).

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Read 5 tweets

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