🧵1/ Thread on the #Southport anti-migrant and anti-Muslim disinformation and propaganda. In this thread I highlight key spreaders of disinformation, the chronology, and some points about some of the inauthentic activity evident. I will focus on X.
2/ First. What we know so far. The attacker 17 was, born in Cardiff, but moved to near Southport. There's no indication of his religion, and his parents have been reported as being from Rwanda (although again questionable why this is relevant). The rest is speculation #southport
3/ Firstly, there were at least 27 million impressions for posts stating or speculating that the attacker was Muslim, a migrant, refugee or foreigner. There were people also denouncing these speculations - especially the more racist ones.
4/ This graph has been filtered to show accounts that spread this speculation over time (adjusted to UK time). The size of the circle relates to the number of the impressions. Some of the most influential included= @Cobratate @darrengrimes_ @EuropeInvasionn and @afowler06
5/ The nature of the disinfo varies. Andrew Tate claims the attacker was an illegal immigrant, Fowler claims they were Syrian. Europe Invasion claim they were a Muslim, while Grimes suggests they are refugees. Either way, xenophobic speculation. Of course Tommy Robinson is
6) also in the mix. Another aspect of this campaign is someone making up an Arabic sounding name for the attacker - "Ali al Shakati". As others have mentioned, the account that first mentioned this is @Artemisfornow. They deleted this tweet & did not say where the name came from
7) Following this mention, other accounts started using the name "ali al shakati" - despite there being no legitimate source for this. It's worth noting well known right wing accounts like @endwokeness also tweeted this - citing @channel3nownews
7) However, @channel3nownews is obviously an illegitimate website. Indeed, I found four Facebook pages connected to them. One of these pages was repurposed - it used to be called "Funny Hours" in 2016, but changed its name to Fox3News and then Channel3Now. Those who operate it
8) are reported to be in Pakistan & the US. Their website doesn't have anything by way of a serious 'about us' page. The only author I could find through checking the sitemap was James Lawley. This goes back to a LinkedIn profile of a guy running a lawn company in Nova Scotia
9) I want to talk to about @EuropeInvasionn . This account, which was briefly suspended and has now been reinstated, used to be called @makcanekripto. It was then scrubbed and repurposed and now promotes anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant stories, & spreads disinformation. Although
10) it says it was created in 2010, it's only tweeted in its current incarnation since around February 2024. It quickly got over 300k followers> It routinely gets thousands of likes and RT's - which are almost certainly inauthentic too. It was one of the first and most shared
11/ accounts to share the rumour that the attacker was Muslim. I will likely add more to this thread, but worth mentioning that while people always spread incorrect information in the wake of a tragic event (we saw this with Sydney), there is clear and attempt to exploit the
12/ tragic incident by right wing influencers and grifters - pushing an anti-immigrant and xenophobic agenda despite there being no evidence. #disinfo
13) List of shame - top ten accounts with most impressions spreading xenophobic disinformation and/or propaganda after the tragic Southport stabbings.
14) Feel free to ask questions, or send queries I can use on the data.
Update: And now there are protests outside a mosque in Southport, highlighting the dangers of propaganda and disinformation
note: The channel3now news YouTube account's early videos are in Russian, and seem to be about car rallies. However you'll notice those videos are 11 years old - then there was nothing for 6 years and then a bunch of videos about Pakistan. Again this suggests that a Russian car rallying fan had their account hijacked and repurposed as opposed to a Russian disinfo op. The Pakistan connection is interesting though, especially as in some of the content people use the term "Mohammedan" to mean Muslim - which would be archaic in English
For those asking about tools I used @nodexl pro to gather and analyse the X data. I also use Gephi and Tableau to do visualisations.
note* So far the attacker's motive is unknown and there is no evidence religion (whatever his may or may not have been was) played any role. Given Rwanda though is 94% Christian the attacks outside a Southport mosque and rumours about him being Muslim are even more troubling.
Incidentally I did a thread documenting a similar phenomenon in the wake of the #sydneystabbings #southport
Merseyside police have stated the name "Ali Al Shakati" is fake
For those interested in this and the subsequent #Southport riots I'd recommend reading this report by myself and @SohanDsouza on how dark money has been using FB ads to spread anti immigrant and anti Muslim disinfo in the UK for the past 6 months
🧵🚨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
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.
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'
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
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.
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"
🤖 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
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.
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!
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
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!
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.
🚨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
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).
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
1/ THREAD: On populist gaslighting and the war on truth-tellers 🧵
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