🚨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).

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

🧵 THREAD: Meta's disturbing new "free speech" announcement is a masterclass in how platforms enable digital harm under the guise of freedom 1/9 theguardian.com/commentisfree/… Meta announces it's getting rid of factcheckers & "restrictions" on gender/immigration content. This isn't about free speech - it's about platforming hate & disinformation under the guise of "mainstream discourse" 2/9

1/ 🧵This graph shows X posts by impressions in the first six hours after the Magdeburg attack. Specifically these are posts falsely attributing the attack to an Islamist terror attack or a Syrian, or using it as an opportunity to attack immigration or muslims #disinformation 2/ The usual suspects are there - that is, the anti-Islam disinfluencers (routine spreaders of disinformation). As you can see, one of the most widely viewed is @visegrad24 - who shared at least 6 posts falsely claiming the attacker was an Islamist

🧵1/ I analysed the headline and lead paragraph of 536 English news articles including the terms "Maccabi" + "Amsterdam" and classified them using Claude 3.5 Sonnet to determine how many framed Israelis as victims or non-Israelis as primary victims (as well as both). 2/ The results are fairly striking. 65% of articles frame Israelis as the victim, while only 5% frame Non-Israelis as victims. 24% are neutral while 9% framed both groups as victims. Quite clear the media emphasised violence as anti-Israeli and antisemitic, especially early on

🧵 1/ Part of understanding what is going on in Amsterdam is also to understand the coordinated anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant campaigns run with huge amounts of money targeting Europe. Here's a short private Eye article about an investigation I did with @SohanDsouza

https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1823656683865784739

2/ Here's a write-up by @karamballes on the campaign in @BylineTimes "Disinformation Campaign on Social Media Reached More Than 40 Million People – but Meta ‘Alarmingly’ Hasn't Revealed the Culprits' bylinetimes.com/2024/08/30/qat…

🧵🚨1/ This is nuts. After mysteriously deleting a package covering the Amsterdam protests, Sky News have put up a new version. The new version completely changes the thrust to emphasise that the violence was antisemitic. See the opening screenshot change below

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1855319970860712306

2/Even the tweet accompanying the video has changed. It has explicitly shifted from mentioning anti-Arab slogans to removing the phrase "anti-Arab" and using antisemitism. It also removes mention of vandalism by Israeli fans. An extremely clear editorial shift!

1/ If you break down the BBC's live reporting of what happened in Amsterdam, you can see the disproportionate attention it pays to Maccabi fans and Israelis as victims, with far less attention paid to the actions of Maccabi fans. Here are the sources interviewed. 2/ In terms of mentions of Arab, Dutch or other Ajax fans, there is very little emphasis on Arab safety, with the majority of coverage focused on Maccabi fans as victims. There are vox pops with fans, but very little interaction with non-Maccabi people.

🚨1/ This New York Times piece is wild. Let's go through it.

Firstly, the lede is an emphasis that attacks in Amsterdam were based on antisemitism, yet it cites no evidence of this, but DOES cite evidence of anti-Arab chants. 2/ The claims of antisemitism are based primarily on the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who tweeted that the attacks were antisemitic. Note - the Dutch Prime Minister didn't call out anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian racism from Maccabi fans.

🧵 'At least 1,800 bots on the social media site X are promoting the controversial choice of Azerbaijan, a major oil and gas producer, to host next month’s ...#COP29, according to a new analysis shared exclusively with The Washington Post".

washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro… 2/ The analysis by Marc Owen Jones, an expert on disinformation at @NUQatar, focused on roughly 2,800 X accounts that collectively sent around 10,800 tweets, retweets and replies about the conference between Oct. 17 and Oct. 24.

🧵1/ There is a dis/misinfo campaign targeting Ariane Tabatabai, a deputy assistant secretary within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. On 22 Oct, Sky News Arabia said a Pentagon official told them that Tabatabai leaked information about Israel's planned attack on Iran. 2/ There is no evidence to substantiate this. Even the Pentagon have denied it. @jengriffinfnc from Fox News followed up with Tabatabai who, contrary to reports, was at work as usual. The Pentagon denied that the information reported by Sky News Arabia was true.

🧵🚨(1/16) In Oct 2023, Billboard emerged across Lebanon with the slogan “Lebanon does not want war.” While seemingly neutral on the surface, the campaign was part of a multimillionaire dollar info op designed to frame Hezbollah as chief antagonists (as opposed Israel)
(2/16) The campaign was attributed to an anonymous "coalition of Lebanese youth and businessmen". The only name that could be connected, was one Gina Al Khazen, working out of the UAE (According to SharqAlAwsat). Some of the billboards bore the branding 'One Peace Global'

🧵Kind of curious why it looks like @TRobinsonNewEra has done a video about Qatar that looks like it was produced by @visegrad24, but without a disclaimer? Did Visegrad produce it? If so why? It's not like them working together is a secret 👉 2/ On 6th of June and on 4th October 2024, Tommy Robinson posted on X this video specifically about Qatar. It has a degree of production value. It repeats generic tropes we've seen with pro-Israel and US right-wing narratives about Qatar.

🚨🧵1/ Graph showing people on X sharing the 'Haitians' or 'Immigrants' are eating pets xenophobic and/or racist disinfo. @elonmusk gets the most engagement by far on the topic, but @jdvance @stillgray @Surabees @tedcruz @charliekirk11 @endwokeness & @bennyjohnson get a lot 2/ Here's a list of the accounts who got the most impressions. I counted a minimum of 399,984, 065 impressions - and I was only downloading tweets with a minimum engagement of 50 retweets - so the real figure is higher.

🧵1/ Thought I'd zoom in on the data from the Southport riots, especially given the recent arrest of a man in Pakistan - which has prompted some commentators & news outlets to use it as an opportunity to target people of colour once again. Let's look at what happened 2/ A man in Pakistan, Farhan Asif, who ran Channel3NowNews, was just arrested for spreading misinfo. Channel3NowNews used the made-up name "Ali Al Shakati," However, contrary to some right-wing i/allusions, Channel3NowNews was NOT the first to tweet this name, or be arrested

🚨Important thread highlights how X under Musk is putting people at risk

1) This account impersonating a man who helped stop a knife attack in London is still live, & has accumulated well over 1 million impressions.

2) It's history indicates it is a pro-Putin "bot" connected

possibly to Pakistan. However, it also has pro-Ismail Haniyeh & Hamas content

3) Regardless of what you think of Hamas, this is far right rocket fuel. Tommy Robinson already tweeted out the fake account, wrongly accusing him of supporting an "islamist genocidal regime"

🧵🚨This account @abdullahfromuk is impersonating a man who stopped a knife attack in London's Leicester Square. His original account handle was ZartashaPti and he has been tweeting pro-Imran Khan content in Urdu and English for most of his account history. It has also tweeted content that would suggest it's pro-Vladimir Putin (although not in any particularly sophisticated way). The account is in the process of deleting its tweets, and it looks like a classic sockpuppet farm, for-hire type account.

🧵🚨New analysis showing ALL tweets mentioning both "Muslim" & "UK" with over 500 retweets since 29 Jul. Graph shows which accounts got most impressions over time. Red/pink dots show anti-Muslim &/or anti-immigrant tweets, brown=neutral, green=tweets defending Muslims #UKRiots 2/ I grouped the tweets into the following three categories, 'anti', 'in defense of', and 'neutral'. Sadly the impressions gained by the number of 'anti' tweets was over 155 million (65%) while those 'in defense of' around 31 million. Neutral tweets were about 50 million.

🧵🚨1/Somewhat depressing graph. I calculated whether all X posts with over 500 retweets mentioning the words "Muslim" and "UK" sent since 29th July were anti-muslim, anti-immigrant (red), neutral (blue), or in defense of muslims and/or immigration (green). #Ukriots #hatespeech 2/ I grouped the tweets into the following three categories, 'anti', 'in defense of', and 'neutral'. Sadly, the impressions gained by the number of 'Anti' tweets was over 159 million (67%), while those in defense of around 28 million. Neutral tweets were about 50 million

🧵🚨I wanted to do another thread on the account @EuropeInvasionn. It's been one of the most widely viewed anti-immigrant & anti-muslim disinfluencers on X since the #Southport murders. Read more to learn about its shocking reach, disinformation, & hate speech #UKRiots 2/ Reminder. @Europeinvasionn is engaged in deception. We can tell this because it's a hijacked account. The account was created in 2010, but hacked/sold & scrubbed & has only tweeted since Feb 24. It's previous handle was makcanerkripto. Note the 'crypto' red flag...

PSA: I wasn't going to indulge this but thought it was an opportunity for some important media literacy. @Artemisfornow - who is the first person documented to use the fake name 'Ali Al Shakati' to describe the #Southport killer, is claiming she copied the post from FB 2/ She is claiming a post on Facebook posted at 11.26 used the name Ali Al Shakati, before she posted it on X. Bernie posted her original tweet at 4.49 UK time. However, the Facebook post she mentions was sent at 7.26 UK time. So why the 11.26?