Thread by @davetroy

I didn’t know what to expect from the @HBO film on Q and #Jan6 by @CullenHoback. But he managed to get at the network, and followed the facts. It comports with my own work on this subject, which provides additional context without contradiction.

davetroy.medium.com/the-big-histor…

And I am also happy to report that both the @Vice and @HBO documentaries covering these subjects are in alignment with this program we did in October, which I believed would be the first broad description of this network. That turned out to be correct.

What so many have failed to see is the complex and emergent nature of this networked insurgency. I am pleased reality is asserting itself, but there is so much more we need to do to tell this story. We need to inoculate the population so this doesn’t happen again.

There are so many more stories to tell; interesting ones, too. There is a reason that non-print storytelling forms are doing a better job at exposing this than the newspapers did. In fact, there is almost no information shared in these recent works that wasn’t known to media.

One problem is impossible complexity. It is very easy to overrun people’s capacity to absorb names, dates, and relationships. Another problem: what’s the newspaper story equivalent of a three or six hour documentary filmed over months or years?

Complexity was used as a defense to prevent these stories from being exposed for months and in some cases years. And it is being used now to delay expansion of disinformation campaigns underway right now. This is our OODA loop vulnerability and we have fixed nothing.

When the next attack happens, it will take us months to figure out what took place. And when we figure that out, the next attack will already be underway. We have got to get better at detecting this kind of activity *in real time.* That means tracking networks of bad actors.

It also means shutting down people running interference for bad actors so as to buy more time. This may be a combination of witting and unwitting accomplices. This network had both.

Heads up: If you knowingly help bad actors delay detection, we are going to make you stop.

It is difficult but by no means impossible to disrupt these kinds of operations. And at some point these tricks run out of power. How many iterations of this will people fall for before they are cured of it? Some will, obviously.

But for those of you who say this can not be addressed: no. This is not different from the virus. We can and must make fringe ideas fringe again. We can curb their spread and amplification. We can get the rate of transmission below 1.0.

Right now infections of harmful viral beliefs are raging out of control. And people are rewiring their social networks around them, with real long-term effects. “Long QAnon” is every bit as harmful a concept as “long COVID.”

People have a right to live free of undue influence.

Anyway, all in all I think there is a great deal of hope in seeing reality assert itself. This was a dumb op executed by people with specific goals. It’s something we can address. But we have to get real about what it is and who all is behind it.