Highly-Cited 'Hamilton 68' Russiagate Tracker Is Total Hoax: Taibbi

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Highly-Cited 'Hamilton 68' Russiagate Tracker Is Total Hoax: Taibbi

Starting from this framework... go read it... I'll wait.

I wanted to see what anyone might think of the idea, that it was a deliberate strategic decision to 'centralize' the sourcing for so many efforts to "control" the narrative. Not that any of the particular people they used and exploited, turning their ideas into something they were most certainly weren't upon the occasion of utterance, and then creating the illusion that the interconnectivity they manufactured is a "telling element" of that narrative.

The fact that the whorish media, wearing the face of "news and information," amplified and sensationalized the aberrant 'media product' manufacturing 'outrage and dissention' then exploiting it seemed to have vanished... many people just plain 'stopped observing' and enjoined the throngs of news "consumers," echoing the "news."

If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history. Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the group’s “research.” Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as sources.

Where, I wonder, is the 'response' to come from? This whole thing shows that information consumers require either a responsibility to discern truth from fiction, or accept that there is no information service that can be trusted at all. Which will we choose?

I could go on, but I am really interested to learn if anyone else recognizes the less outrageous task of finding a way to remedy this obviously soon-to-be-repeated practice in "public thought management.'

a reply to: Maxmars

This whole thing shows that information consumers require either a responsibility to discern truth from fiction, or accept that there is no information service that can be trusted at all. Which will we choose?

What part of this statement is profitable?


AI is coming for the "news" industry.

So, their vaunted "secret methodology" to ID Russian bots consisted of:

(1) We don't like what you said, therefore
(2) You are a Russian bot.

This is my surprised face:

a reply to: JinMI

Maybe the problem is the idea of 'industry'... that necessitates profit, no?

Yes, my objection is one of 'the process' not the political ideology, which would then mean "if it's not profitable, ignore it as you would noise."

a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

There is this 'tool', and there are other 'tools'... and I bet there will be more 'tools' like this.

The problem is who uses these tools and what for.

originally posted by: Maxmars
a reply to: JinMI

Maybe the problem is the idea of 'industry'... that necessitates profit, no?

Yes, my objection is one of 'the process' not the political ideology, which would then mean "if it's not profitable, ignore it as you would noise."

When really digging down, the unfortunate problem is that facts arent profitable.

Truth and bias are.

A multi billion dollar a year industry.

a reply to: Maxmars

this, is, clown, world. The culmination of all these lies, some stupidly obvious, and the way people react to factual events that don't fit their paradigm has changed massively in a short time. It's infuriating to see how "in your face" stupid things are, and much like idiocracy, people applaud it or ignore it. But nobody seems to want to call it out.

The FBI has no problem with Joe Biden selling secrets to our enemies. Is there even a point anymore?

Taibbi: Hamilton 68 Stealth Edits Website After Bombshell Report

Hamilton 68 responded to a #TwitterFiles thread Friday with a series of claims, including that their site was always intended to be understood as “nuanced,” that they always maintained that “witting or unwitting” accounts could be on their list, and that “some accounts we track are automated bots, some are trolls, and some are real users.”

They could also have inserted the disclaimer added to the new Hamilton 2.0 page, which as a helpful reader noted this morning, includes in red font a blaring warning to all that it would INCORRECT to label anyone or anything that appears on their dashboard “as being connected to state-backed propaganda”

HOWEVER WE CAN SEE THAT IT USED TO SAY SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

These accounts were selected for their relationship to Russian-sponsored influence and disinformation campaigns, and not because of any domestic political content.

We have monitored these datasets for months in order to verify their relevance to Russian disinformation programs targeting the United States.

…this will provide a resource for journalists to appropriately identify Russian-sponsored information campaigns.

High on that original page, the Hamilton founders explained they monitored two types of accounts:

There are two components to the dashboard featured here.

The first section, “Overt Promotion of Content,” highlights trending content from Twitter accounts for media outlets known to be controlled by the Russian government.

The second section, “Content Tweeted by Bots and Trolls,” highlights themes being pushed by Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence campaigns.

Frankly, I don't really understand why ATS members aren't more interested in this kind of disingenuous information machinery (dare I call it "disinformation?) since many of us actually ran into and dealt with information from this source.

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
So, their vaunted "secret methodology" to ID Russian bots consisted of:

(1) We don't like what you said, therefore
(2) You are a Russian bot.

This is my surprised face:

No kidding. We saw it even here, and not all of it was tongue in cheek. I suspect some were quite serious about it.

The saddest thing to me is that so many people could construct a fantasy world outside their own direct reality where all of this was true, and proceed to convince themselves that things were so even if they weren't experiencing it.