Thread by @RealBristolNews

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes End of 2011-12 Guido selling ads to the Kremlin Harry Cole, Guido et al are in Moscow as Navalny uses Facebook to protest against the Putin regime (just after Arab Spring had used it).

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Guido is successful and the Kremlin buys ads on his political blog (March 2020)

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Putin points the finger at Facebook as the 'platform behind the protests' (same time Cole and Guido in Moscow) rferl.org/a/russian_prot…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Facebook float in 2012 on a knife edge with many thinking it could be a flash in the pan and not achieve its earth shattering price and success

bbc.co.uk/news/business-…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Putin saves the Facebook float - Ulisher Usmanov hands a wad of cash to Yuri Milner who slots it into Zuckerberg literally days later and the float is a success - washed in London by Tulloch friend of the oligarchs (and still is)

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Suddenly Facebook is Russia's best friend = Zuckerberg in Moscow 'scouting for local tech talent'

hollywoodreporter.com/business/digit…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes In 2012, Zuckerberg hosted "World Hack Moscow" and gave prizes for figuring out how to mine Facebook friends' data

boingboing.net/2018/06/10/pri…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Moscow-based Boostmate one of the three winners of Hack the World target your personal friends and family date and mine it

techcrunch.com/2012/10/15/fac…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes "The BoostMate team, from Moscow. BoostMate analyzes your social graph and the connections you have with all your friends, producing a ranking of who you’re closest to, who you interact with least, and whether those interactions were positive"

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Facebook gave a dataset of “every friendship formed in 2011 in every country in world at national aggregate level” to Dr Kogan's University of Cambridge laboratory for a study on international friendships published in Personality and Individual Differences businessinsider.com/facebook-gave-…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes 2011 Michal Kosinksi and David Stillwell first carried out its Facebook 'friends study' here is a peer review paper link from late October 2012 - that Dr Kogan would have been well aware of as he jetting back and forth to Russia
pnas.org/content/110/15…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes When Facebook was coming up to float time Steve Bannon is heavily invested in it - he'd got Goldman Sachs to stump up $60m - presumably he saw the potentially from his World of Warcraft hack experiences in Hong Kong - funnily this is also where DST Global starts too (Hong Kong)

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes DST Global 'Yuri Milner' January 2009 is his 'start date' crunchbase.com/organization/d…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Matthew Elliott sets up Business for Britain (morphs later in Vote Leave) was set up spring 2013 - and by time of Euro vote in 2014 Dom Cummings is on board 'crunching the data' for Euro elections (Cambridge Analytica is alive and kicking at end of 2013)

brexitcentral.com/matthew-elliot…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Let's let Rebekkah Mercer explain how she "sent Steve Bannon over" in the fall of 2013 to set up Cambridge Analytica in London (do read)

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes All the while the Russian Embassy in London had been instructed to penetrate the UK Conservative Party at the national and European level. And Cristo says in articles that they seemed obsessed about a theoretical rivalry they wanted to exploit between Boris and Cameron back then

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Sept 2012 (Facebook is now 'bought by Russia' to all intense and purposes) - step forward Jag Singh Andrew Whitehurst and several members of Conservative Friends of Russia - a few months after Guido had sold the Kremlin political campaign ads

jag.my/2012/itar-tass…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Creator the Downing Street 'Nudge Unit' Steve Hilton apparently worked for President Medvedev's re-election - he became an American in May 2021 and is now a far right pundit for Fox News (married to ex-Tory spin doctor now Google Spinner Rachel Whetstone

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Hil…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Whetstone is grand daughter of the late extreme Far Right libertarian Anthony Fisher

Here is a page from the Atlas Network (one of his many babies) which explains they drop think tanks everywhere like a spider giving birth to a thousand babies and letting them run (+ training)

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Then there are the big events kicking off in 2013
Here's Trump Miss Universe - raising the profile of the Donald on the global political stage (thanks to his mate Putin)

theguardian.com/us-news/2017/s…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Boris Johnson then Mayor of London co-sponsors Dmytro Firtash's Days of Ukraine (Oct 17-19 2013) in London
Nov 20th 2013 Firtash gives Jones Lang LaSalle a £5m deposit to buy former tube station at Brompton Rd (Firtash is a known national security risk but the Mod does not care)

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Last but not least back to Peter Juke's superb YBF story where the reprobates trained up by the Tory madrasa get to meet Steve Bannon for the 1st time (with his freshly set up Cambridge Analytica in London and a budget from Mercer for anything (Nov-Dec 2013)

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes @threadreaderapp "unroll"

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes 2007, following a major lawsuit by a World of Warcraft player, accused IGE of "impairing" players' enjoyment of the game, the company took a nosedive. Rebranded to Affinity Media, and Steve Bannon became CEO. Stayed until 2012, when he joined Breitbart boingboing.net/2017/02/09/ste…

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes The full Steve Bannon and Affinity Media story wired.com/2008/11/ff-ige/

@Hardeep_Matharu @peterjukes @BylineTimes Bannon guided HK firm running ‘virtual sweatshops’ in China making millions helping gamers cheat. Start-up used players in China to earn virtual treasure in video games which it sold to wealthy gamers in West; Bannon came on board to find investors

scmp.com/culture/arts-e…