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Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
@marcowenjones
Mar 4, 2022 • 13 tweets • 9 min read • Read on X
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🧵Thread 1/ OK, so we need to talk about Kevin (well, Steve Kevin)! Stand aside #TinderSwindler, meet the pro-Putin #TwitterSwindler. This is a thread about the wild crossover of romance scams & pro-Kremlin soc media propaganda

First up, meet Steve Kevin PhD
#UkraineRussianWar
2/ Steve has it all. A doctor who specializes in elbows, knee, all the joints, and erm, low [sic] back. He obviously loves kids, adults and erm, 'teen'. Oh yeah, he also loves Putin, and despite being an American (methinks), his English ain't so hot.

#Ukraine
#disinformation
3/ So Steve Kevin is standing with Putin, who, by the way, is not a warmonger like the West. He's not NATO, the EU, or the West....

....He's Putin 🇷🇺 ♥️

#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation
4/ The eagle-eyed among you will notice that Steve Kevin's tribute to Putin garnered a lot of attention. 1231 likes, 226 RTs and 244 replies is nothing to scoff at.

I certainly wouldn't kick them out of bed.

#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation
5/ So with those stats, Steve Kevin PhD must be some kind of big time influencer, both online and in the low back world right?

Well no, he has 31 followers, and only posted 86 times, despite having an account that's over 2 years old.

#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation
6/ Indeed, apart from his recent diatribes against NATO (see below), his early tweets seem to be mostly about crypto ( 🙄🙄) . Scams or marketing, it's hard to tell.

But who is Steve Kevin?

#UkraineRussianWar
7/ Well, a reverse image search is, erm revealing. It led me to a Polish facebook group about dating scams. Here we see someone using the same picture and multiple aliases, including Ray Chandler, Raymond Douglas, James Scooott, Frank Wilson, Steven Cooper...
8/ And there are more scam sites, and more names, Henderson Leighton, James John, Stuart Hallam. In fact the only name he hasn't used is probably Vladimir Putin.

...He's not Putin🇷🇺💔

#UkraineRussiaWar
9/ So what's going on? Well firstly it's still not clear who is in the original photo, but it's certainly not Steve 'low back' Kevin from Atlanta. I found his tweet by searching for tweets with high engagement on the 'i stand with Putin' hashtag. This is important because...
10/ a characteristic of the hashtag is that many of the most popular tweets are accounts with few followers, and few tweets - which is suspicious. Steve Kevin is just one of many impersonator 'fake' accounts that are promoting pro-Russian propaganda
#UkraineRussianWar
11/ Who exactly is behind it is not clear. But the modus operandi appears to be for sock puppet/fake accounts/trolls (won't get bogged down in nomenclature) to promote tweets by these other fake accounts. The numbers are in the thousands.
#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation
12/ I saw similar tactics in tweets promoting the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed. Literally thousands of booster bots and fake accounts. See here for more details
#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation
13/ So just remember. Steve Kevin is likely one of many thousands of fake accounts or sock puppets boosting 'I stand with Putin'. He's not really an elbow teen doctor.

He's not even really Steve Kevin.

He's....

He's Putin 🇷🇺♥️
#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation

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More from @marcowenjones

Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
May 27
🧵1/ There is some confusion going on around the strike in Rafah. This is largely due to awful IDF instructions. In a video on 22nd May IDF spokesman @AvichayAdraee told people that Zones 2371, 2373, 2360 were safe. I have highlighted this below.
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2/ The source of the confusion lies in the fact that the image of the highlighted map in @AvichayAdraee's video DOES NOT match the text. The image initially does not include zones 2371, 2373, 2360 yet the text explicitly states they are safe. Image
3/ However the location of the strike has been reported to be both 2371 and 2372. Existing geolocation by @m_osint and Al Jazeera suggests it was in 2372, not 2371. Zone 2372 was not explicitly mentioned by the IDF. However...

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Read 10 tweets
Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
May 20
1) Telegraph subtly trying to align pro-Palestinian voices with Chinese and Russian disinformation. No actual evidence is provided here of Chinese and Russian interference, simply a note that some pro-Palestinian accounts have fake followers. Image
2) (It should be noted that you can't control who follows you). From my point of view there are a LOT of fake accounts on X promoting various points of view. However, there is more evidence for Israel using fake accounts on FB, Insta and X to smear UNRWA aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/19…
Image
3) Interestingly, the network that was focusing on attacking UNRWA, is also focusing on blaming the Chinese/Russian/Iranian 'axis of evil'. While it's plausible China and Russia are trying to influence narratives, the narrative that China and Russia are the only ones operating
Read 11 tweets
Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
May 15
🧵1/ Israel are attempting to muddy the waters around the killing of an international UN worker in a clearly marked vehicle. They have released a video claiming that "terrorists" are roaming and shooting at a UNRWA compound. There's no evidence that indicates they are Image
2/ terrorists. The video shows armed men mingling with what are probably UN workers. There is no sense of coercion or animosity in those shots. Crucially, there is no caveat that these people might not be factions or Hamas police protecting aid convoys.
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3/ The US has even asked Israel to stop targeting Hamas police officers trying to protect aid. Naturally the video provides no context, and remember the IDF are an organisation that recently murdered multiple aid workers in clearly marked vehicles. Image
Read 6 tweets
Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
May 13
🧵1/ I am somewhat dismayed (though sadly unsurprised) by this extremely disingenuous and callous reporting about Palestinian death figures. Claims that the UN have revised down its death toll are absolutely untrue but have been repeated by right wing outlets but also the CFR 🤔

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2/ These media are focusing on these two infographics by the @ochaopt . The one on the left, published 6th May, the one on the right published 8th May. As you can see, total fatalities INCREASE, as opposed to decrease. What the propaganda is seaking to do is barely sophistry
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3/All that's happening is the OCHA has added figures for the dead that have been identified. It quite clearly says that the breakdown DOES NOT include 10000 missing or buried under rubble. Image
Read 15 tweets
Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
May 8
1🧵Lots of lessons on how unreliable information spreads. Here, Hen Mazzig makes an unsubstantiated claim about pro-Palestinian protesters 'combing' the street for Israelis in Athens. Someone asks him for a source. Mazzig provides a source that does not support his own claim. Image
2/ Another subtle aspect of this the hotel. One widely shared tweet stated that 'rioters' were trying to break into an Israeli-owned hotel. In fact, the crowd are outside the Tiare hotel. The event is filmed FROM an Israeli owned hotel (Brown Acropol). This proximity to the Image
3/ the Israeli-owned hotel is obviously designed to make the 'attack' seem targeted. In fact, the crowd are closer to a different hotel, that is also in the centre of Athens, where there had just been a pro-Palestine protest. Image
Read 7 tweets
Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
May 6
1/ 🧵I just did a quick corpus analysis of 100 New York Times articles published between 1st April - 5th May on US Campus Protests. Findings indicate that the NYT reporting of the campus protests place a large emphasis on equating protests with antisemitism. Image
2/ A notable finding was that the terms 'antisemitism' & 'antisemitic' appeared around 296 times, while terms such as Islamophobia/c only appeared 9 times. This is a large discrepancy. Image
3/ Jewish/Jews/Judaism are mentioned 450 times, Muslims/Islam mentioned 72, and Christian/Christianity 7. The second most common collocate (words that appear together often) of the word 'safety' and 'unsafe' is 'Jewish', (the first is students). Other minorities do not appear
Read 10 tweets

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