Four years ago this month, there was an uproar among analysts (and the public) about whether Cambridge Analytica was a PSYOP. The word is triggering; it tends to get people animated, makes people think of conspiracy theories, implies a grand master plan, shadowy operators, etc.

@ropebelt Yes, though we have been on edge for deep fakes for a good while now, and remain constantly impressed at how well cheap-fakes and simple manipulations work. Deep fakes are the caviar of the trade, when McNuggets work just fine.

Investigating networked disinformation and influence campaigns is hard. SIGINT is often scarce, and encrypted. But people are sloppy; HUMINT is vital, and developing it requires an iterative approach. Each cycle of reporting exposes more players, which attracts more sources.

1/ Hey guys, remember that time Steve Bannon ran an army of game virtual currency miners in Asia, for sale to westerners at discount prices, arbitraging attention for profit?

That was

2/ “The company was founded by former child star Brock Pierce, and Bannon was an investor. Bannon managed to convince Goldman Sachs to plow $60 million into a company that sold imaginary goods in an imaginary world.”

In 2020, Brock Pierce ran for President. Guess who...

3/ was Pierce’s campaign manager?

Brittany Kaiser, the fake whistleblower who left Cambridge Analytica in late March 2018 — right *after* it blew

4/ Guess who was all excited about today’s $GME activity? Steve Bannon and Russia shill, Jack Posobiec. They called it a “populist uprising against Wall Street.” That’s cool... just leftists, Steve Bannon, and Russia shills cheerleading for the same stuff. It happens...

THREAD: It’s time to clarify an ethical stance regarding QAnon, and those who research and report on it. It is a disease — a mind virus — with real victims, people who have been lied to and alienated from their families and communities.

2/ First, we must help the victims, and focus on helping them restore their bonds to family and community. Second, we must hold the perpetrators accountable. Third, we must shun all those who profit from its continuance.

THREAD: Now that @Amazon @awscloud has announced they will no longer host @parler_app, many have speculated that they will just “find another host.”

Here is why that’s not so simple and what it will likely mean for the app’s future. First, let’s look at where things are...

2/ Google and Apple have removed the app from their app stores, effectively terminating growth on mobile devices. People can still access the (not good) web UI until Amazon terminates them today. CEO Matze has said they may be down “up to a week” while they find new hosting.

3/ Translated to English, that’s code for “we have no idea what’s going to happen next.” No US cloud provider (Microsoft, Google, IBM, Digital Ocean) is likely to touch this, as it could be seen as providing material support for sedition. No CEO or counsel wants to get near this.

4/ They could potentially “roll their own” data center by buying servers and putting them in a co-location facility. But that’s a single point of failure, and many colo providers would be just as likely to decline their business. It would be hard and risky to pursue this.

5/ Imagine, after they sweated like pigs to get this hardware all setup, if they get told their colo provider is booting them. That’s a lot of metal to then move somewhere else. Meanwhile, the user base is deteriorating because chaos and dying apps. They will go to other venues.

So much #FactCheckBait being put out by IT Cell today and so many people biting.

What is #FactCheckBait? Fascists putting out tweets or messages with very obvious rebuttal properties. So non-fascists are distracted by rebutting or fact checking them. And the fascists get more name recognition. What have the top sanghi twitter accounts done other than provoke?

Why are so many sanghi bigot handles famous & well followed on Twitter despite having no notable quality other than getting called out by liberals? Cos that's all it takes. If they can fool liberals into QTing or even screenshot-ing them, they become heroes and then are like

Another example of #FactCheckBait. This sanghi wants you to identify them while pointing out the very obvious flaws in their logic. This sanghi is counting on it to improve their visibility. Don't give them that oxygen. Call them out like this, without IDs, if you must.

As pointed out by @bongopondit, peak #FactCheckBait was Ted Cruz saying rejoining the Paris climate agreement was about appeasing Paris not Pittsburgh. He knows it's BS. He's an evil psychopath but not dumb. He wants you to QT him and distract from his insurrection efforts.

Academic staff at universities can't be open about the complaints against them - and most complaints of transphobia from students seem to be directed at staff. I'm just a final year PhD student, under no contractual requirement to be confidential, so I can share.

The original complaint against me was typical of the sort of thing directed at many female professional academics (and some male too). The strategies employed by my complainants are commonly used.

One of these is to perform vulnerability while behaving aggressively. Performing vulnerability is essential in order to trigger the university's awareness of its duties under the Equality Act, and establish an oppressor/victim dynamic to the case from the outset.

My complainants did this effectively. The complaint was initiated by a fellow PhD student, who joined forces with the SU. A student from the SU wrote the actual complaint. This is how it begins:

In all my dealings with @HuddersfieldUni I accepted that sometimes anonymous complaints were necessary - and that, sometimes, victimisation could be a concern. However, I have never victimised anyone. Nobody has ever argued that I have.

@danielashby @AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd I'll bite. Let's try to keep it factual. There's a reasonable basis to some aspects of this question, that it might be possible to agree on. Then there are other, more variable, elements which depend on external factors such as transport and energy policy. /1

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd First up, we know reasonably well how much energy it takes to propel a high-speed train along the HS2 route. We can translate that into effective CO2 generated by making some assumptions about how green the electricity grid is. /2

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd Secondly, we have a reasonable grasp of how much CO2 is going to be generated by building HS2 - there are standard methods of working this out, based on the amount of steel, concrete, earthmoving, machine-fuelling etc required. /3

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd Thirdly, we can estimate how much CO2 is generated by cutting down trees, and how much is captured by planting new trees. We can also estimate how much CO2 is needed to keep the railway running and generated by maintaining the track /4

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd We know how much CO2 is saved by moving goods by freight train on the lines freed up by moving the express trains on to HS2, rather than by truck. /5

Capitalism demolishes society and, with it, itself.

A thread.

1/

Prior to capitalism, there were plenty of elite-centric, exploitive systems in place. European and Japanese feudalism. Roman mass slavery. The corvee labor of the ancient hydraulic state. Etc.

2/

But as exploitive and repressive as these systems were, they still retained some sense of mutual obligation among classes. Elites depend on the masses to survive and thrive. You can only exploit them up to a certain point, beyond which you threaten your own labor supply.

3/

Consider this quote from Kenneth Jupp on European feudalism. Feudalism entailed *mutual obligations* between rich and poor.

4/

These obligations were not equal, uniform, or always universally respected. But they were at least *there.* In return for labor and agricultural surplus, a feudal lord was obligated to protect his villeins, provide them justice, and respect their usufruct land rights.

5/