Thread by @RepRiggleman

First, crazy and reliable are mutually exclusive

Obama Deep State nonsense is a conspiracy theory

If you’re going to fight disinformation you have to bomb with facts.

This thread is an example of how to identify liars, QAnon & why I would destroy Flynn in an interview. Thread/

https://twitter.com/ronfilipkowski/status/1447360089204084736

#Obamagate Disinformation Campaign (ref @ncri_io)

Obamagate was a prevalent conspiracy theory pushed by QAnon accounts, right-wing influencers, and President Donald Trump in May. The Obamagate hashtag surfaced on May 10th, 2020… 2/25

accumulating over two million tweets by the end of May 11th, and another four million tweets by the end of the week. According to research by @AlKapDC, a researcher at Media Matter, #Obamagate originated on QAnon Twitter. 3/25

The NCRI conducted a hashtag frequency analysis and found a majority of hashtags associated with #Obamagate are QAnon associated hashtags, which suggests the movement played a key role in spreading the conspiracy theory. 4/25

Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Amplified #SubpoenaObama and #Obamagate

Evidence suggests pro-QAnon accounts may have engaged in this behavior to push conspiracies from the fringes to the President’s Twitter feed - @BarackObama conspiracies included. 5/25

Similar to the #Obamagate tag, an in-depth look into the subsequent #subpoenaObama tag highlights how, under the banner of QAnon, coordinated inauthentic behavior produces non-factual narratives and circulates them from the fringes to the mainstream. (A Mike Flynn specialty) 6/25

At 2:09 a.m. EST on May 13th, 2020, the account @followthe17 first posts the hashtag #subpoenaObama, followed by another tweet at 2:09 a.m., “Hey #QAnons, If you make #subpoenaObama trend; good things will happen. Use the hashtag everywhere.” 7/25

This account is a QAnon-affiliated one, given that 17 stands for the 17th letter of the alphabet, Q. Still at 2:09 a.m, other QAnon-affiliated accounts, identifiable by Qs in their profile pictures or usernames… 8/25

…shared the tag and encouraged their followers to keep the tag going in order to get it to trend. Using Pushshift, NCRI was able to see that the tag usage developed in a fashion consistent with inorganic behavior, as it jumped from zero to 42 tweets in the same minute. 9/25

Rapid spikes such as this are often indicators of coordinated inauthentic behavior.
QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts amplified the hashtag on May 13th at 2:09 a.m. EST. Here are examples: 10/25

11/25

A look at the first hundred accounts to share the #subpoenaObama tag after it was initiated by @followthe17 (the central node of this operation) further confirms the role of QAnon in spreading disinformation into the mainstream. 12/25

NCRI found that amongst those users, the phrase WWG1WGA appears 34 times; the letter Q and words QAnon and QArmy appear 41 times; the Great Awakening appears eight times, and Trump appears 42 times. 13/25

NCRI was able to determine which hashtags were most associated with the #subpoenaObama tag. Notably, #Obamagate came in first and is another example of a QAnon amplified tag. Other tags were also associated with QAnon, such as #wwg1wga and #qanon. 14/25

This shows a strong link between the QAnon community and this conspiracy theory…The hashtag was amplified throughout the 13th and 14th of May, at times being tweeted roughly 4,000 times an hour. The hashtag, which was the top trending hashtag in the United States… 15/25

…made its way from obscure QAnon-affiliated accounts to verified users such as conservative pundit Glenn Beck, Diamond and Silk, and Ryan Fournier in a matter of hours. 16/25

Later that evening, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, used his personal Twitter account to convey the sentiment of the tag just hours after the original use of the tag. 17/25

The tweet asks @LindseyGrahamSC, the chair of the Senate Judicial Committee, to subpoena former President Obama to testify about his role in this alleged scandal. @Followthe17, the central node in the QAnon network promoting the hashtag, retweeted the President’s tweet… 18/25

…adding a winky face emoji (;)) and a screenshot of the original tweet promising good things if QAnoners amplified the tag:
President Trump asking Lindsay Graham to subpoena former President Barack Obama on May 14th. 19/25

This is the first tweet: 20/25

This timeline illustrates how the QAnon movement is uniquely capable of gaming online communication and its narratives. To the President, the #subpoenaObama tag might merely have directed attention to his political opponent. 21/25

But to dedicated QAnoners, his expressed support of the tag was seen as having coded significance. This further legitimized the movement… 22/25

…while also encouraging its adherents to engage in coordinated inauthentic behavior to push conspiracy theories to the forefront of the national conversation. Late evening on May 14th, the President thanked his great “keyboard warriors.” with this tweet: 23/25

His thank you: 24/25

Channels of cryptic, network-to-network signals appears to exist…channels such as these allow for “tight coordination between QAnon disinfo networks & major political figures in perpetrating fraudulent disinformation” while permitting plausible deniability.

Figures like Trump