Thread by @jimstewartson

Thinking about doing #RealTwitterFiles to show exactly how this website was a central weapon in nearly every Kremlin-backed psychological operation over the last 8 years.

GamerGate, the alt-right, the theft of the 2016 election, QAnon, the Big Lie, the insurrection…

The intentional distractions about “Russian bots” are there to confuse people about how Russian influence really works.

In the lead up to the 2016 election, numerous Twitter accounts were set up as LARPs (live action role play characters) to play a role in manufactured drama.

These LARPs were set up on both the right and the left, because the point is to set the two sides against each other — to radicalize.

So the LARPs would intentionally fight amongst themselves and drag a whole bunch of bystanders with them into traumatic psychodrama.

Many of these original LARPs still exist, still playing the same role they played when they were hired. There are “activists,” “researchers” and “journalists” who have been getting paid for years to infiltrate real movements in order to cause chaos and gatekeep narratives.

While there is nothing good about Elmo’s reign of terror on this website, he has taken control back from thousands of “contractors” who were able to access the Twitter console to silence whoever they wanted and to coordinate harassment.

One of them got me banned for a year.

The real story of pre-Elmo Twitter is the anarcho-capitalist @jack who ran it was perfectly fine with the chaos and destruction his platform wrought. He enabled companies like Yonder to weaponize it for power and money, to torment people who disagreed with their clients.

Twitter has always been a battlefield, more of a mindwar that anything resembling “social.” It’s never been a way to have conversations, it’s always been a way to change people’s minds, voluntarily or not.

More to come.
#RealTwitterFiles

Here’s a detailed article debunking one of the first “TWITTER FILES” which is all so comically performative, it’s hard to imagine that millions of people fall for it. And yet they do.

Please subscribe to my Substack! 🙏
jimstewartson.substack.com/p/elmo-does-wi…

The fact that Elmo chose one of the most notorious Kremlin propagandists on the left @mtaibbi to do his “expose” tells you everything you need to know about its intention and the validity of its findings.

Here’s a giant debunk thread anyway. 🙂

https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1619056608910401536