The guy who ran 8chan, who spent the last several years in the Philippines, is driving a harassment campaign against a random IT professional in an effort to further the Dominion conspiracy theory.

He's doing it on this website, using the army of QAnon fans he's built for years.
This is not just a particularly amoral way to boost a dying conspiracy theory. And it's not just a terrible thing for democracy.

It's also just a rotten thing to do to a random fellow human, who woke up today the target of horrific threats just for doing his job.
I got started on this beat because an old college buddy of mine became a target of one of these conspiracy theories in the weeks after the worst days of his life.

His girlfriend was killed on live TV. YouTube and Google told the world it was staged.
thedailybeast.com/what-do-you-sa…
I know, I know. The guy who runs 8chan is going to accuse random people of being part of the New World Order plot. Water's wet. The sky is blue.

But public figures can denounce those lies, even when they're benefiting from them. Social media platforms can make them fringe again.
It's not an exorbitant ask to expect social media networks to study and quell the systems on their platforms that put the lives of random private figures in danger on a regular basis.

On days like today, when the harm's so profound, it's hard to believe it's not the point.
Anyways, it's all a game to the 8chan guy, and that's fine. But it's not a game to his followers, and the private citizen he's singling out fears for his life now.

Don't take it from me. Take it from Georgia Republicans, who have also seen enough.

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More from @oneunderscore__

24 Nov
The funniest possible TV show is just a straight timeline of QAnon, but the main character is a random civil servant watching it unfold.

—"Finally, undeniable proof of the baby eating. Now the important part: Wait for around for 3 years."

—"Shouldn't we arrest them?"

—"…no."
"Mr. Trump is ready to publicly arrest the cabal for kidnapping and murdering children."

"Okay, cool, let's do this thing."

"No, we must allude to it with vague poems on a site otherwise used by adult diaper fetishists."
"Look, guys, I don't know about you, but the president taking down a cabal of child eaters seems urgent and… important? I really think he should be taking credit for this publicly instead of haikus on the diaper site. He'd be a hero."

"No, Mr. Trump is simply too humble."
Read 4 tweets
16 Nov
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…
Read 11 tweets
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
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
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
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

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