35. DiResta has become the public face of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, a name promoted everywhere as an unquestioned authority on truth, fact, and Internet hygiene, even though her former firm, New Knowledge, has been embroiled in two major disinformation scandals.
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36. This, ultimately, is the most serious problem with the Censorship-Industrial Complex.
Packaged as a bulwark against lies and falsehood, it is itself often a major source of disinformation, with American taxpayers funding their own estrangement from reality.
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Packaged as a bulwark against lies and falsehood, it is itself often a major source of disinformation, with American taxpayers funding their own estrangement from reality.
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37. DiResta’s New Knowledge helped design the Hamilton 68 project exposed in the #TwitterFiles.
Although it claimed to track “Russian influence,” Hamilton really followed Americans like “Ultra Maga Dog Mom,” “Right2Liberty,” even a British rugby player named Rod Bishop:
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Although it claimed to track “Russian influence,” Hamilton really followed Americans like “Ultra Maga Dog Mom,” “Right2Liberty,” even a British rugby player named Rod Bishop:
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38. Told he was put on the Hamilton list of suspected “Russian influence” accounts, Bishop was puzzled.
“Nonsense. I’m supporting Ukraine,” he said.
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“Nonsense. I’m supporting Ukraine,” he said.
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39. As a result of Hamilton’s efforts, all sorts of people were falsely tied in press stories to “Russian bots”: former House Intel chief Devin Nunes, #WalkAway founder @BrandonStraka, supporters of the #FireMcMaster hashtag, even people who used the term “deep state”:
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40. Hamilton 68 was funded by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which in turn was funded by the German Marshall Fund, which in turn is funded in part by – the Department of State.
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41. The far worse scandal was “Project Birmingham,” in which thousands of fake Russian Twitter accounts were created to follow Alabama Republican Roy Moore in his 2017 race for US Senate.
Newspapers reported Russia seemed to take an interest in the race, favoring Moore.
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Newspapers reported Russia seemed to take an interest in the race, favoring Moore.
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42. Though at least one reporter for a major American paper was at a meeting in September, 2018 when New Knowledge planned the bizarre bot-and-smear campaign, the story didn’t break until December, two days after DiResta gave a report on Russian interference to the Senate.
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43. Internally, Twitter correctly assessed the Moore story as far back as fall of 2017, saying it had no way if knowing if the Moore campaign purchased the bots, or if “an adversary purchased them… in an attempt to discredit them.”
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44. Twitter told this to reporters who asked about the story contemporaneously. Moreover, after the story broke, Twitter's Roth wrote:
“There have been other instances in which domestic actors created fake accounts… some are fairly prominent in progressive circles.”
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“There have been other instances in which domestic actors created fake accounts… some are fairly prominent in progressive circles.”
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45. Roth added, “We shouldn’t comment.” Repeatedly in the #TwitterFiles, when Twitter learned the truth about scandals like Project Birmingham, they said nothing, like banks that were silent about mortgage fraud.
Reporters also kept quiet, protecting fellow “stakeholders.”
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Reporters also kept quiet, protecting fellow “stakeholders.”
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46. Twitter stayed silent out of political caution. DiResta, who ludicrously claimed she thought Project Birmingham was just an experiment to “investigate to what extent they could grow audiences… using sensational news,” hinted at a broader reason.
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47. “I know there were people who believed the Democrats needed to fight fire with fire,” she told the New York Times.
“It was absolutely chatter going around the party.”
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“It was absolutely chatter going around the party.”
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48. The incident underscored the extreme danger of the Censorship-Industrial Complex. Without real oversight mechanisms, there is nothing to prevent these super-empowered information vanguards from bending the truth for their own ends.
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