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Ben Collins Profile picture
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16 Nov, 11 tweets, 4 min read
Hey Glenn,

Good to hear from you. I’ve got a few questions.

Should I not have talked to all of those doctors back in April and May who told me disinformation was killing their patients and ravaging their ERs?

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Should I not have discovered that secret meeting between Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg a year ago this week?

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Should I not have talked to all of those people in tiny towns who were told by their local Facebook group that Antifa was coming and that they needed to arm up, in one case putting the lives of a multiracial family at risk?

nbcnews.com/tech/social-me…
Should I not have reported on that Boogaloo Boi who organized the murder of two federal officers on Facebook, then encouraged another Boogaloo Boi to burn things down in Minnesota?

nbcnews.com/news/us-news/a…
Should I not have discovered the link between the viral anti-mask freakouts and QAnon’s invasion into wellness and religious groups?

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Should I not have reported that a Hunter Biden dossier alleging dirty deeds a month before his laptop was magically discovered was actually written by an AI-generated person who did not exist?

nbcnews.com/tech/security/…
Should I not have figured out that some Trump supporters were stealing African-American identities to post in support of the president, or that white nationalists were posing as Antifa on Twitter to stir up violence?

nbcnews.com/tech/security/…
Should I not have reported on how QAnon indoctrinated women throughout the country into holding hundreds of real-life “SaveTheChildren” rallies that called for the execution of Democrats?

nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Those are all stories I broke in the last year.

Should I have not reported those?

Should I not have worked the phones for months, then slaughtered my mental health writing these stories?

I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve just shut up.

But that kind of feels like… censorship.

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More from @oneunderscore__

Ben Collins Profile picture
13 Nov
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…
Read 6 tweets
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

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