Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
Feb 16, 2022 9 tweets 5 min read Read on X
1/9 I hope this thread will bring a sliver of joy to those on strike. It's a thread about solidarity and music, and strikes. One of the most profound experiences of my career and life was the #UCUStrike of 2018. It was my second year as Image
2/9 a lecturer at Uni of Exeter, and my first time on strike. As well as making great friends on the picket line, a few of us formed an impromptu band called 'Comrade Snowflake'. What was wonderful was the solidarity. There was myself, lucky enough to be on a permanent contract, Image
3/9 @drrhianelinor - at the time a PhD student on a casualized contract, Gabriel, a PhD student, and @GromskiOliver, an undergraduate student and one of the most talented musicians I've ever met. None of us had known each other before, but striking brought us together #ucustrike
4/9 We did our best to keep spirits up on the picket line, playing Solidarity Forever, Power in a Union and the The Internationale on repeat (but mostly solidarity forever). @billybragg even showed up and we were lucky enough to jam with him! #UCUstrike Image
5/9 To this day I'm still not sure tuning his guitar was in... Image
6/9 As we painted posters (see below), planned teach outs, learned about pensions, and drank endless cups of sweet hot tea, we became bonded in a way that still makes me feel emotional today. We wrote songs about Vice Chancellor corruption and educational reform. Olly even Image
7/9 had an accordion too.

Strikes are tough. You strike because you want something to change. It is tougher for some than others - but solidarity gives us strength, both political but also spiritual. It builds deep bonds that can be impervious to even the most devious tactics Image
8/9 Even now, as I type from a different country, having moved from the UK, I get a lump in my throat when I see the hashtag #UCUStrike, and see photos of students and/or workers united in common purpose. You guys are wonderful, brave and I love you for it. Image
9/9 I want to leave you with a beautiful ballad written by Olly called Red Weather Warning, named in part after the storms of 2018. It details the journey from couch to the picket line. I hope it will bring a smile at the end of a tough day #Solidarity <3 soundcloud.com/user-600488288…

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More from @marcowenjones

Oct 6
🧵🚨1/ This verified X account posing as an American doctor has been spreading pro-Israel propaganda, justifying the killing of journalists, and posting predominantly anti–Sudanese Armed Forces content. The account is fake.>
#disinformation #gazagenocide #Sudan Image
2/ The first clear red flags are the tweets versus creation date ratio.

The account was created in 2009, but has only tweeted 1090 times, and the first of those was on April 2025. This means the account has been appropriated/hacked/bought and its old tweets scrubbed. Image
3/ I located the unique user id of the account. I ran this user id via the botometer archive of bots and it tells me that in February 2023 the account was called 'sitaramks', not 'nate_jone' Image
Read 15 tweets
Oct 6
1/ Propaganda botnet alert! About 50 accounts, tweeting in English & Arabic, have pushed out thousands of posts about #Sudan’s war over the past few months. Almost all certainly using genAI, all pushing a pro-UAE, anti-SAF & anti Muslim (Brotherhood) narrative. #disinformation Image
2/ They all follow the same script:

> Blame Burhan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood for Sudan’s suffering.
> Praise the UAE for “stability” and “humanitarian aid.”
> Wrap it all in moral language about peace, tolerance, and unity. Image
3/ Much of the phrasing is synthetic: with odd, weird idioms, and em dashes. Classic traces of Chat GPT or another LLM agent. The slogans repeat across accounts:

e.g. “Brotherhood’s Butler”, “Brotherhood in Uniform”, “Ministry of Brotherhood Enforcement”, "Sudan bleeds" Image
Read 14 tweets
May 22
🤖 1/ Ok this is pretty wild. I saw some sus pro-Israel astroturfing activity on a BBCNews Facebook post about aid arriving in Gaza. Lots of Hasbara comments like "Hamas will take the aid". The following 2 identical posts were side by side so I looked into it. #disinformation Image
2/ Specifically I looked at Dean O' Connor. Firstly up, there were two almost identical Dean O'connor pages, both created on consecutive days last week (15 + 16 May). The one that posted is the one on the right. Image
Image
Image
3/ When I reverse image searched the picture I was inundated with dozens of pages from forums about romance scams asking about people using this same picture. A lot of people scammed out of thousands. Someone even asked on Quora about O'Connor! Image
Read 7 tweets
May 15
Macron Cocaine Thread/ - The first 10 hours of the @EmmanuelMacron @Keir_Starmer @ZelenskyyUa Cocaine disinformation.

Seemed to be promoted initially by a few dubious accounts like @Veritiste @SitgesFranck @99percentyouth @SilentlySirs @goddeketal

#disinformation Image
2/ Before being boosted by the right-wing ecosystem and conspiracy accounts e.g. @DineshDSouza @RealAlexJones @CollinRugg. No serious journalists reported this story (because it's absurd). Nonetheless, those tweeting in the first 10 hours generated over 103 million views on X! Image
3/ The boosting of the info by Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev was via Alex Jones, who as the above timeline shows - wasn't the first to put it out on X - but the most widely viewed. Image
Read 4 tweets
Apr 29
🚨1/ Fake News Alert: A number of accounts are spreading false information that a church in #Wales was burned down by two Pakistan migrants/muslims. There are other narratives, but this is the dominant one. It is false but has obtained millions of views. some data> #disinfo Image
2/ It is true that a church did burn down. It was set alight by two local teenagers. The South Wales police have tweeted that other rumours circulating are false - they are of course talking about the false info about the ethnicity of the attackers (right). Image
Image
3/ The most shared claim comes from 'RadioEuropes'. This is a 'Dysinfluencer' account - an account that repeatedly spreads false and malicious information - in this case xenophobic and anti-Muslim content. You can see its false tweet garnered over 3.6 million views Image
Read 12 tweets
Jan 8
1/ THREAD: On populist gaslighting and the war on truth-tellers 🧵 Image
2/ Something concerning is happening in our information ecosystem: populists aren't just spreading misinfo, they're systematically trying to undermine the very concept of verifiable truth
3/ When fact-checkers or experts present evidence contradicting false claims, they get labeled as "elitist manipulators" or 'censors' - effectively inverting reality
Read 8 tweets

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