In the most recent issue of the Twitter Files, independent journalist Matt Taibbi revealed a scam on the social media platform that implicated most major corporate media news outlets in promoting false claims of Russian disinformation.
It included the 2017 Alabama U.S. Senate race, which had then-Democrat candidate Doug Jones pull off an upset against Republican nominee Roy Moore.
Hamilton 68 was a digital “dashboard” that claimed to trace “Russian disinformation” and its influence in america by analyzing the behavior of over 600 accounts it identified as Russian bots or pushing “Russian influence activities.”
In keeping with Taibbi, major news outlets in america used Hamilton 68 — created by former FBI agent Clint Watts — as a source for a whole bunch of stories related to Russian disinformation. Nevertheless, Taibbi reported the dashboard itself was based on fraudulent data, and the alleged Russian bots were mostly atypical users unaware their account had been an element of the list.
https://t.co/0yk0y7VlGX outlets for years cited Watts and Hamilton 68 when claiming Russian bots were “amplifying” an infinite parade of social media causes – against strikes in Syria, in support of Fox host Laura Ingraham, the campaigns of each Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. pic.twitter.com/Qwf5UuKUkb
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023
“Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The Recent York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did not less than 14 stories pegged to the group’s research,'” Taibbi said. “Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as a source… The accounts Hamilton 68 claimed were linked to ‘Russian influence activities online’ weren’t only overwhelmingly English-language (86%), but mostly ‘legitimate people,’ largely within the U.S., Canada and Britain.”
14. In layman’s terms, the Hamilton 68 barely had any Russians. The truth is, other than a number of RT accounts, it’s mostly filled with atypical Americans, Canadians, and British.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023
The incontrovertible fact that the accounts listed as Russian bots were neither “strongly Russian nor strongly bots” was no accident, Taibbi said, but an intentional “scam” against “conservative circles.”
“As an alternative of tracking how ‘Russia’ influenced American attitudes, Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming,” he outlined.” As [former Twitter executive Yoel] Roth put it, ‘Virtually any conclusion drawn from [the dashboard] will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.'”
Alabamians could also be accustomed to false claims of Russian bot interference after Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of the research firm Recent Knowledge, used similar tactics throughout the 2017 U.S. Senate race. In keeping with Taibbi, Morgan was a “key figure related to Hamilton 68.”
“Jonathon Morgan … was outed for faking a Russian influence operation within the Alabama Senate Race,” Taibbi said. “He used Hamilton-like tactics to create online chatter about Republican Roy Moore having Russian bot support, got caught, and suffered the indignity of getting what he called a ‘small experiment’ described as a ‘false flag’ operation within the Recent York Times.”
Nevertheless, even after Morgan’s plans were exposed and Twitter itself questioned revealing Hamilton 68’s fake list of Russian bots, the news stories of Russian disinformation, citing the dashboard as a essential source, kept coming through 2018.
29.Hamilton 68 was used as a source to say Russian influence in an astonishing array of stories stories: support for Brett Kavanaugh or the Devin Nunes memo, the Parkland shooting, manipulation of black voters, “attacks” on the Mueller investigation… pic.twitter.com/GU9UCBLEeO
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023
“These stories are still having a big impact on American culture and politics and played significant roles within the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, placing downward pressure on the Sanders, Trump and Gabbard campaigns while boosting the likes of Joe Biden (steadily depicted as a ‘goal’ of Russian bots),” Taibbi said. “Within the wake of any online controversy, be it the Colin Kaepernick saga or gun control debates after mass shootings, reporters raced to say ‘Russian bots’ were attempting to ‘sow division,’ often using Hamilton or an outfit prefer it to bolster their claims.”
“Before, we could only speculate. Now we all know: the ‘Russian threat’ was, on this case not less than, only a bunch of atypical Americans, dressed as much as seem like a Red Menace,” Taibbi concluded.
Hamilton 68 was taken offline in 2018. Nevertheless, an identical dashboard, Hamilton 2.0, was launched in September 2019.
To attach with the creator of this story, or to comment, email daniel.taylor@1819news.com.
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