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Ben Collins Profile picture
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13 Nov, 6 tweets, 3 min read
Here's a thread how the Dominion conspiracy theory went from QAnon to the president:

Q, the secret government insider they believe is taking down the Democrat child-eating cabal. didn't post for more than a week after the election.

This left a vacuum.

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
That vacuum was filled in by random posts on 4chan, plus QAnon influencers on YouTube and Twitter, like the son of 8kun owner Ron Watkins.

Chan posters and Watkins floated the false idea that votes could be "flipped" using a Dominion's vote software.

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Since Watkins' dad owns 8kun and promotes QAnon for a living, his audience is enormously Q-heavy.

With Q absent, they started spamming his conspiracy theory on Twitter, like a substitute Q.

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Watkins goes all in on the Dominion conspiracy theory around midnight Wednesday, says OAN's Chanel Rion "reached out to me."

Ten hours later, OAN runs a Dominion conspiracy report.

A half-hour after that, the president tweets this.

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news… Image
(FWIW, when I asked if Watkins informed Rion’s report, he responded “Sounds like you should ask Chanel that." When asked how much Watkins’ ideas informed her report that was tweeted by the president, Rion responded “None.")

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Anyways, what does this all tell us?

It doesn't matter that all of the Q people realize they were lied to by a guy on 8chan.

They are all mobilizing to the next political doomsday, a digital army that always works to absolve Donald Trump, no matter what.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…

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More from @oneunderscore__

Ben Collins Profile picture
5 Nov
NEW from me + @BrandyZadrozny :

Pro-Trump operatives, some who were behind #WeBuildTheWall, coordinated those viral #StopTheSteal Facebook events.

Facebook shut them down.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Facebook blocked #StopTheSteal from its search, so today's #StopTheSteal events found a new way to go viral on far-right Facebook:

Pro-Trump operatives from previous hashtag campaigns like #WeBuildTheWall used other groups to push users to #StopTheSteal.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
The "Stop the Steal" Facebook group was littered with calls to take up arms and a civil war.

350,000 people joined Stop The Steal, and promoted real-life events, before Facebook shut it down.

Its growth was not nearly as organic as it seemed.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Read 5 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
4 Nov
We've reached out to Twitter about the president's tweets.
Twitter has added this label to the President's tweet:

"Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”

No comment yet from Twitter's spokespeople.
Read 4 tweets
Ben Collins Profile picture
3 Nov
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-…
Read 5 tweets
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

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