A (re)discovered series of posts seemingly authored by Q shed a little more light on the figure behind the notorious conspiracy. Largely unnoticed, they have not entered "official" aggregators of "Q drops" - as true believers call Q's prophecies.
How do we know they share the same author as Q's "canonical" posts? These "lost drops" include large sections of text which are identical to both previous and subsequent Q drops, in several cases sharing a unique user ID with the latter.
Compare Lost drop A (left) with canonical drop 4 (right). These apocryphal "Q drops" were made shortly after the first verified Q drop, on October 28, 2017. The conspiracy was in its infancy - what would an impostor have to gain?
In Q’s earliest days, the author hadn’t quite figured out what tone or personality was right for this character. Eventually the author settled on a winning plan: “Q” should operate at a lofty remove from each thread, dispensing pearls of wisdom for their fans to decipher.
But in these posts, the author is out of character and directly attacks critics. This author is "one of the guys" - vulgar and brittle, much like the online culture they thrived in. This shows how Q was a regular "anon". bellingcat.com/news/americas/…
As this dangerous conspiracy has gained prominence, observers have sought a smoking gun to identify the culprit once and for all. These "lost drops" are not that smoking gun - but they may undermine the mystique which has enticed and radicalised QAnon's true believers.
Thanks to everyone who attended today's digital showcase from @zkharazian, who discussed how to track disinformation in an Armenian context.
You can watch a recording of the event here (~2.5 hours):
You can watch this Monday's digital showcase event, ran by @RuslanLeviev, here (Russian):
Our next digital showcase event will be @Soshnikoff on May 6th, with a presentation led in Russian on an investigation he conducted, and then on May 7, a presentation in Ukrainian from a journalist at @bihusinfo focusing on anti-corruption investigations using OSINT techniques.
New details of the Czech arms depot explosion in 2014 from Bellingcat, including details of a senior GRU leader's direct involvement, and details of other team members involved bellingcat.com/uncategorized/…
Bellingcat has established that the GRU operation which Czech authorities have linked to the explosion of the munition depot in Vrbetice on 16 October 2014, involved at least six operatives from GRU’s Unit 29155.
It was supervised personally by its commander, Col. Gen. Andrey Averyanov, a senior deputy to the head of the GRU, who traveled undercover to Central Europe at the exact time of the operation and left back to Moscow mere hours after the explosion.
Here, nighttime imagery from the @NASAEarth VIIRS sensor highlights bright-burning gas flares from oil wells south of Erbil.
This time lapse (captured between 2013 and 2017) also shows the period when ISIS captured Mosul.
@wammezz@oballinger@NASAEarth Gas flares are a major sources of air pollution. Combining VIIRS imagery with @ESA_EO Sentinel-5p data in @googleearth Engine, we can also see high levels of Nitrogen Dioxide around flaring sites, many of which are located near big cities
The Comité International Pour La Protection Des Droits de L'homme (CIPDH) bills itself as a human rights group with headquarters in Paris. But as @elisethoma5 discovered, this was far from the whole story … bellingcat.com/news/2021/04/1…
@elisethoma5 CIPDH, it transpires, has exaggerated an apparent relationship with the UN, issued what the European Commission describes as “fantasy passports” and even misappropriated the identity of several prominent individuals
@elisethoma5 Until last year, CIPDH stated on its website that it partnered with more than a dozen UN agencies. Yet not one of those agencies said they had heard of CIPDH when contacted by Bellingcat
@PostcodeLoterij Bellingcat has become known for high-profile investigations such as those that looked at the downing of MH17 and the poisoning of Alexey Navalny.
While we will always look to cover important issues such as these, we have big plans to cover more topics and regions.
@PostcodeLoterij The @PostcodeLoterij grant will help us produce more open source reporting on the likes of environmental and wildlife issues.
It will also help us explore how open source evidence can be used in national and international courts, advancing accountability.