While you might've heard the phrase 'influence operations', some readers may not have seen specific examples.

Therefore, I decided to create this thread to cover a specific influence op.

We start with Step 4, where Infowars offered a carrot ($1000 or $2500) to their audience. Why am I starting with Step 4? I'll come back to that question later.

It is June 3, 2017. It is a Saturday, a day when more people have free time to do many things, including protest. A pretty standard protest about the Paris Agreement has been organized by conservatives.

2/

This thread is sponsored by [redacted]. Visit [redacted].com for all your [redacted] needs.

This is another QAnon-boosting, Kremlin-talking-point-promoting acct which cosplayed as a progressive.

The closest thing to an honest remark from this acct was the following tweet.

1/ "If USA suffers from a Trump POTUS" . . . "I'm down."

This acct was part of a network of accts posing as Bernie supporters in order to depress Democratic turnout in 2016. Some such accts, like this one, went so far as to encourage Bernie supporters to vote for Trump.

2/

Extremely brief thread on two Q posts, one which referred to JFK Jr and the other which referred to JFK.

These are two additional instances where Q referred to topics that had been previously promoted by Project Lakhta.

First, we have JFK Jr's death.

1/ Next, we have JFK's speech to the press, which has been cherry-picked & relabeled to fool people about the context. I've done another thread mentioning that narrative, which I'll link to in the next tweet.

Despite Q's spelling error, we can deduce what was meant there.

2/

Jan 6, 2021

"Death to tyranny" (Owen Shroyer) very much "Death to America" vibes, but remixed

"They just breached the Capitol" (unk)

"It's only the shit of your dreams" (unk)

"We gotta call this right" (Alex Jones)

*see attempted audio cleanup in next tweet

1/ I'm absolutely certain someone can do a better cleanup of this audio than my attempt.

Especially to try to figure out what is being said near the end . . .

"if we bring a big old crowd and show a peaceful demonstration and confuse" [unintelligible]

I've put together a little comparison of Anna Khait bragging right before her Survivor appearance in 2015 and her later assertions when the media started reporting on her 'undercover' work for Project Veritas, and the many contradictions/deceptions therein.

1/ And the attempts to undermine the media that's weaved in there is par for the course for both Project Veritas and her.

2/

This Lex Fridman guy makes some compelling points in this interview with Rogan. I don't agree with all of his points, but the ones below? 👍

I don't know who he is so this is not me cosigning him as a person (or Rogan for that matter.)

But Rogan does catch something I didn't. As I've said, the HBO series tries to imply that Ron is Q, rather than proving it. And Lex also catches that this is what's happening. The difference between him and me is that he seems to have bought into it, at least a bit.

But he doesn't think it's autonomous. I agree there.

Thread:

We ought to talk some more about one of Project Veritas's operatives, Anna Khait.

She has promoted Q Anon and Pizzagate, is friends with Jack Posobiec, Liz Crokin and has all sorts of connections. Big fan of Flynn.

1/ These tweets are pretty self-explanatory.

2/

Thread:

The Q: Into The Storm series provided enough information to uncover what happened in December 2017 to early January 2018 with regards to Q's moves on 8chan.

What happened revolves primarily around one guy, Paul Furber (BaruchTheScribe) & his board (CBTS).

1/ Before we can discuss this episode, we need to discuss Q's move from 4chan to 8chan, starting on November 25.

Q's first post (230) on 8chan appears on /pol/, following an increase in claims of Q being a LARPer on 4chan.

Q then returns to 4chan and

2/

https://twitter.com/QOrigins/status/1385323470196645889

A synopsis of Q's points of alignment with the Kremlin

- Attacking the GEC, which fights Russian meddling
- citing Russia Today
- reproducing content that first appeared on USA Really (an IRA operation)
- citing headline from New Eastern Outlook (Russian propaganda outlet)

1/ - citing Your News Wire, a known Kremlin proxy outlet
- citing headline from Veterans Today, which regularly traffics Russian disinfo and is reported to be run by the Russian govt
- pushing claim that John McCain created ISIS (IRA talking point)
- pushing Seth Rich conspiracy

2/

Today seems like a good day to do another case study. A Twitter user pointed out this acct to me.

Typically, when I find anonymous accts that are trying to baselessly smear various Americans like John Cusack or Jane Fonda by calling them pedos, such accts are pro-Kremlin.

1/ And while some may be inclined to focus on the MAGA costume, sometimes it is just a costume. They may tepidly support someone like Trump due to the damage he causes to the West, rather than any other reason.

America ain't rootin for Putin, troll.

2/

Thread: If you're hunting for something to call BlueAnon, this thread's for you. You could call it Mirror-Q, because instead of being sold to Trump supporters, this is being sold to those who oppose Trump.

This is the biggest Intelligence Operation in History, of course.

1/ There's a worldwide house cleaning on the horizon which encompasses the Vatican, the US govt and the Royal Family. This is a battle between Good and Evil.

There's a "World Wide Cabal" to be taken down. A Luciferian Cabal. A storm is coming, you see.

2/

I thought I'd put together a case study for progressive Democrats and progressive Independents. I hope it will be useful.

Anonymous accts have been hijacking our language and then using it to advance their agenda for years. I've been studying this activity for some time.

1/ I will be highlighting one such account. There are layers of deception that such accounts use which most people on Twitter do not have the time to uncover.

I first noticed this acct due to a long thread that was targeting Ana Kasparian. The operator was backing Jimmy Dore.

2/

This tweet is how a troll army tries to trick people. Elon Musk liking someone's tweet doesn't result in them accumulating nearly 950K followers as of right now.

How can you tell? It's simple. Look through Musk's likes and find rando accts and check their follower counts.

1/ You can then compare their follower count to archive records to see what the follower count was before Musk liked their tweet.

But really, there are plenty of examples where you don't need to go thru that extra effort. Like this acct, which only has 401 followers at present.

2/

Thread: The Mystery of "Gary Forbes."

In October 2015, the NYT wrote about how Trump came to dominate Twitter, with one section describing how "hundreds of thousands of strangers defend him."

But it was the section about "Gary Forbes" that I found most curious of all.

1/ It was not just the coordinated activity which I found notable. It was also the careful language they used regarding "Gary Forbes."

"A man identifying himself as Gary Forbes" sounds like a very careful way to say that they weren't able to independently verify his identity.

2/

Twitter history thread:

In my estimation, the best way to know what is happening on Twitter now is to see what happened in the past.

For example, let's look at 'Jennifer Myers.'

(Note that I don't expect many will see this thread as I don't have a network promoting me.) 🙃 [2] When we look through some of the tweets this account put out in 2016, we notice a peculiar pattern. Many of the tweets have roughly the same amount of retweets. A sampling is provided below.

A thread examining the origins of #DefundThePolice:

In 2014 & 2015, this hashtag began being spammed on Twitter. The first Twitter account to frequently spam this hashtag is one that is currently promoting Trump and QAnon.

https://twitter.com/dragnetizen/status/1269654521610993670

[2] Another account which heavily spammed this hashtag in 2015 is currently inactive. It has not tweeted or liked any content for over seventeen months.

This account spammed this hashtag from August to December 2015.

A thread for Progressives:

You ever feel like you're experiencing Groundhog's Day? I've been experiencing this feeling ever since the 2020 primary season began.

I would like to illustrate this by reviewing a shapeshifting account which operated from April 2015 to July 2016. [2] The first thing I'd like to note is that this account is just one of many that were never cleaned up by Twitter. Perhaps one might believe that Twitter has taken this issue seriously. But have they?

What happened in 2016 on social media was a matter of volume. That volume -

A thread on a matter I've been thinking about and digging into for a bit:

[1] New evidence has come to light which further supports a theory I've had, based on the timing of certain events. For instance, NATO StratCom recently performed a study on manipulation service providers. [2] The report on this study can be found here.

buzzfeednews.com/article/albert…

A short thread on how influence ops work, with an example.

[1] Imagine you're a verified user. And you get an account tweeting at you with a screenshot from 2016, showing a purported "Bernie Bro" trashing PoC on Twitter. And you retweet it.

And then imagine someone like me - [2] comes along, investigates & then realizes that the screenshot is of a fake account that has since been purged by Twitter. I remark about this, & the user says it doesn't matter. Furthermore, they try to claim that this is just the general sentiment of many Bernie supporters.-

A thread on one aspect of online influence operations:

[1] Since most of the broadcast media doesn't seem to know how to cover this issue, someone should. And others have done some amazing work discussing aspects of this, but they don't get promoted nearly enough. [2] To start, here is the recent Senate Report on these matters, based on studies of data from fraudulent accounts.

It should be read by anyone who is interested in ensuring that these ops do not continue to affect America or the 2020 elections.

intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/…