Remember when the infamous "Europe Invasion" was one of the first movers in claiming that the Southport stabber was a "Muslim immigrant" (false) and boosted the "Ali-Al Shakati" story (utter hogwash)?
Well, look who's back at it.
To remind everyone, that account, its Turkish origins, and its history of rehandling was first noticed by me and @marcowenjones during our investigation of the "Qatar Plot" influence operation last year.
Oct 25, 2024 โข 13 tweets โข 5 min read
๐ฝ๐งโ๐ป๐ณ๐ต๏ธ THIS JUST HAPPENED!!!
A most curious phenomenon observed on #YouTube: numerous channels, mostly "reaction video", mostly by young minority men, pivoting, sometimes hard, from apolitical entertainment/sports/etc content to MAGA or other right-wing content. ๐งต
๐งต We've seen the Tenet Media scandal expose how influence operations can make use of target-located influencers to push a narrative.
What might slip under the radar is the "long tail" of content creators, who rely primarily on crowdfunding and "patronage". ๐งต
Aug 20, 2024 โข 19 tweets โข 5 min read
๐๐ต๏ธ๐งโ๐ป๐ @Meta published its 2024 Q2 adversarial threat report, including on the Vietnam-proxied UK-/EU-/US-/โฆ-targeted influence operation I and @marcowenjones investigated as "The Qatar Plot", painting it even bigger than we estimated โ and disappointing in what's left out. ๐งต
๐งต Meta's report generally aligns with what we discovered on the Facebook platform โ the use of the Vietnamese proxy and currency, the geo-targeted areas, the cross-platform and IRL presence, and *much* of the messaging on the hostage, secularism, and war issues. That's good. ๐งต
Aug 10, 2024 โข 11 tweets โข 4 min read
Excellent investigation by @mariannaspring, into the #Southport misinfo "patient zero" X account, and the Potemkin news site that gave the misinfo a veneer of citable legitimacy, used by the far Right to direct the vitriol and riots at UK Muslims. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/โฆ
I should point out that said news site is still very much monetized on the ad exchanges.
You can visit it and see the ads to confirm, but here's the full ad scan:
@CheckMyAdsHQwell-known.dev/resources/ads_โฆ
Nov 16, 2023 โข 5 tweets โข 1 min read
The fake restaurant pages on food delivery platforms, decked with slick pictures and flowery language, taking your order and relaying it to an actual area restaurant after skimming off their markup, are doing the exact same thing as are #dropshippers.
#enshittification
Actually, even worse, because you may be specifically avoiding ordering from an area restaurant with which you've had a bad experience, but will end up ordering from them again, because #dropdashers relayed your order โ to what you thought was a newer/nicer place โ over to them.
Oct 12, 2023 โข 8 tweets โข 6 min read
So, per this "Disinfo Lab" outfit, @pranshuverma_ was 'qoofed by @raqib_naik into incorrectly reporting in the WaPo that @HindutvaWatchIn was founded in April 2021. Sounds serious. Let's look into it, shall we? ๐คจ๐
#OSINT archive.ph/443vv