Thread by @0rf

EXCLUSIVE: In a newly discovered Zoom recording, the Biden/Harris team reveals how they manipulated voters to think Biden's mental decline was "disinformation". 🧵/1

Biden/Harris digital director Rob Flaherty says the DNC created a program to detect, track, and censor what it deemed "misinformation" (like Biden's mental decline). He calls it "critical" and "one of the more important decisions" made by the party in recent years. /2

Emails show Flaherty carrying out the (supposedly) counter-misinformation program in the White House, pushing Facebook to censor Tucker Carlson for correctly saying the COVID-19 vaccine didn't stop transmission, and Tomi Lahren for her strong "my body, my choice" stance. /3

Despite leading the Biden White House's efforts to censor "misinformation", when asked under oath, to define "misinformation", Flaherty refused. /4

But in the Zoom call, Flaherty said "misinformation narratives" include "conversation online about corruption or mental fitness...or [Biden's] record on the Crime Bill"—effectively defining "misinformation" as anything that the Biden team found inconvenient. /5

Becca Rinkevich, Biden's Rapid Response Director (later WH Deputy Director of Digital Strategy), also classified talk of Biden's mental decline as "disinformation"—"disinformation around his mental acuity". /6

The Biden/Harris team microtargeted voters exposed to the "disinformation" (aka reality) of Biden's mental decline. They used psychographic targeting, a tactic that Cambridge Analytica was highly scrutinized for after the 2016 election. /7

RINKEVICH: "We targeted folks based on online behavioral cues, building out personas, based on the type of content they were consuming, what they were searching, the kinds of websites they were visiting so that we could target folks in real-time as they were exposed to that disinformation." /8

“Flaherty and Rinkevich saw the opportunity to grab a voter at a moment of curiosity and then, essentially, keep badgering her as she traveled across the internet,” writes journalist Sasha Issenberg in his book Lie Detectives. /9

If you typed the words "Biden" + "senile" in a search bar, you'd be shown short videos of Biden speaking clearly. Upon hearing this, MSNBC's Chris Hayes exclaimed, "Wow." /10

Biden's team also deployed an army of online influencers to fight "disinformation". When asked for an example of "disinformation" countered with this "digital organizing," Flaherty's example of such "disinformation" was the "question about [Biden's] mental fitness". /11

Joining Flaherty & Rinkevich on Zoom, was the DNC Counter-Disinformation Program creator and lead analyst, Tim Durigan. His reports, according to Flaherty, "went to the highest levels of the [Biden] campaign". /12

#TwitterFiles show Durigan tried to censor many posts, including a video mashup of Biden coughing posted by @JackPosobiec. He failed in the 1 instance. But it seems other such efforts were successful. Acc. to Lie Detectives he also "cultivated ties" with Google & Facebook. /13

The Zoom host asks about the "big problem" of "true misinformation". Durigan says it's a "huge problem" & wants social media to suppress "true misinformation" to promote "authoritative" news sources like NYT. Big Tech's done that since '18, but apparently not enough for Tim. /14

A month later, the "really authoritative" NYT celebrated the Biden/Harris team and called concerns about Biden's mental health, "baseless rumors" and "misinformation" from "right-wing influencers." /15

But the Biden team didn't just get the media to forward their deception, they changed real votes. According to Rinkevich, "concern around [Biden's] mental acuity in particular went down by 8 points over the course of our campaign," resulting in "about 200K" votes for Biden. /16

To put things in perspective, Biden won by fewer than 200K votes in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, & Wisconsin ***combined*** 😲 /17

Today, Rinkevich runs the Institute of Rebooting Social Media @ Harvard; Durigan leads DNC disinfo analysis; & Flaherty is Deputy Campaign Manager, overseeing digital ads & social for Kamala Harris despite her past criticism of the intrusive data collection he exploits. /18

Like Biden's mental decline, the war on "disinformation" continues!

What "true misinformation" will they go after next?

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/19 Orf.Report