AP: Cyborgs, Trolls and bots: A guide to online misinformation

[mooray]

It was the same thing when the printing press, radio, and television were invented. Crazy information reached crazy people and they used it to fuel their crazy agenda and people died. Nothing has been truly "new" for a long time, it just feels like it since we don't have four digit lifespans.

 

[HGCC]

yeah the internet.....the worst double edge sword to be created....on one side it was supposed to free us and help, and on the other war, of the 1's and 0's, and the radicalization of people and thought......sometimes dunno which is worse....

It just needs to stop being in everyone's pockets all the time. Go back to having internet cafes and pc's. It's a great tool, but we have become over reliant.

Edit: started imagining disinformation back in the day "typhoid you say...well you need the blood of a newt and to have sex with as many prostitutes as possible. Clear you right up. That Ben Franklin is a charlatan against God and our way of life."

 

[CatHedral]

It just needs to stop being in everyone's pockets all the time. Go back to having internet cafes and pc's. It's a great tool, but we have become over reliant.

So long as I can watch Pornhub and shake hands with the bishop.

 

[BudmanTX]

It just needs to stop being in everyone's pockets all the time. Go back to having internet cafes and pc's. It's a great tool, but we have become over reliant.

Edit: started imagining disinformation back in the day "typhoid you say...well you need the blood of a newt and to have sex with as many prostitutes as possible. Clear you right up. That Ben Franklin is a charlatan against God and our way of life."

started earlier than that, think late 1400's

 

[hanimmal]

started earlier than that, think late 1400's

 

[mooray]

That's awesome. It's funny to think about conspiracy theories as a "luxury" of sorts, but there's some truth to it.

 

[BudmanTX]

View attachment 4968277View attachment 4968279

isn't that the truth my friend...but i was thinking more of this....


the deadliest book in history....the witches hammer......

 

[CatHedral]

View attachment 4968277View attachment 4968279

It began with the Mammoth Lie

 

[hanimmal]

It is hard for me to not feel bad for these brainwashed people.

I wish that the youtube warning label went further in explaining that it is nonsense and likely to increase your chances at getting arrested if you try to pull it on cops.

 

[hanimmal]

 

[hanimmal]

https://www.rollitup.org/t/the-white-privilege-to-terrorize.1015418/post-16509980
It might be a silly racist one, but still.



This made me lol.

 

[hanimmal]

I found this paper on Bots from the Rand corp (I really don't know much about them other than I have heard of them a lot through the years).

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2700/RR2705/RAND_RR2705.pdf

Pretty good description of bot types.


It was interesting to find out that bots are allowed on so many social media platforms.

 

[hanimmal]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/03/facebook-misinformation-nyu-study/

A new study of user behavior on Facebook around the 2020 election is likely to bolster critics’ long-standing arguments that the company’s algorithms fuel the spread of misinformation over more trustworthy sources.

The forthcoming peer-reviewed study by researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France has found that from August 2020 to January 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources, such as CNN or the World Health Organization.

Ever since “fake news” on Facebook became a public concern following the 2016 presidential election, publishers who traffic in misinformation have been repeatedly shown to be able to gain major audiences on the platform. But the NYU study is one of the few comprehensive attempts to measure and isolate the misinformation effect across a wide group of publishers on Facebook, experts said, and its conclusions support the criticism that Facebook’s platform rewards publishers that put out misleading accounts.

The study “helps add to the growing body of evidence that, despite a variety of mitigation efforts, misinformation has found a comfortable home — and an engaged audience — on Facebook,” said Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University, who reviewed the study’s findings.

In response, Facebook said that the report measured the number of people who engage with content, but that is not a measure of the number of people that actually view it (Facebook does not make the latter number, called impressions, publicly available to researchers).

“This report looks mostly at how people engage with content, which should not be confused with how many people actually see it on Facebook,” said Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne. "When you look at the content that gets the most reach across Facebook, it is not at all like what this study suggests.”

He added that the company has 80 fact checking partners covering over 60 languages that work to label and reduce the distribution of false information.

The study’s authors relied on categorizations from two nonprofit organizations that study misinformation, NewsGuard and Media Bias/Fact Check. Both groups have categorized thousands of Facebook publishers by their political leanings, ranging from far left to far right, and by their propensity to share trustworthy or untrustworthy news. The team then took 2,551 of these pages and compared the interactions on posts on pages by publishers known for misinformation, such as the left-leaning Occupy Democrats and the right-leaning Dan Bongino and Breitbart, to interactions on posts from factual publishers.

The researchers also found that the statistically significant misinformation boost is politically neutral — misinformation-trafficking pages on both the far left and the far right generated much more engagement from Facebook users than factual pages of any political slant. But publishers on the right have a much higher propensity to share misleading information than publishers in other political categories, the study found. The latter finding echoes the conclusions of other researchers, as well as Facebook’s own internal findings ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, according to Washington Post reporting.

Only Facebook knows the extent of its misinformation problem. And it’s not sharing, even with the White House.

Occupy Democrats, Bongino and Breitbart did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Facebook’s critics have long charged that misleading, inflammatory content that often reinforces the viewpoints of its viewers generates significantly more attention and clicks than mainstream news.

That claim — which has been reiterated by members of Congress as well as by Silicon Valley engineers in films such as “The Social Dilemma” — had gained significant traction during the pandemic. Conspiracy theories about covid-19 and vaccines, along with misleading information about treatments and cures, have gone viral, and may have influenced the views of large numbers of Americans. A recent survey by the COVID States Project found that U.S. Facebook users were less likely to be vaccinated any other type of news consumer, even consumers of right-leaning Fox News.

President Biden upped the ante in July when he said covid-related misinformation on platforms such as Facebook was “killing people,” a comment he later walked back.

But there has been little hard data to back up the assertions about the harm caused by Facebook’s algorithms, in part because Facebook has limited the data that researchers can access, Tromble said.

In 2018, an MIT study of misleading stories on Twitter — a platform whose content, unlike Facebook’s, is largely public — found that they performed better among Twitter users than factual stories. Other studies have found that engagement with misinformation is not as widespread as people might think, and that the people who consume and spread misinformation tend to be small numbers of highly motivated partisans.

Facebook shared new data about what’s popular on its platform. The answers are deeply weird.

Facebook is also increasingly restricting access to outside groups that make attempts to mine the company’s data. In the past several months, the White House has repeatedly asked Facebook for information about the extent of covid misinformation on the platform, but the company did not provide it.

One of the researchers Facebook has clamped down on was the NYU researcher, Laura Edelson, who conducted the study. The company cut off Edelson and her colleagues’ accounts last month, arguing that her data collection — which relied on users voluntarily downloading a software widget that allows researchers to track the ads that they see — put Facebook potentially in violation of a 2019 U.S. Federal Trade Commission privacy settlement.

The commission, in a rare rebuttal, shot back that the settlement makes exceptions for researchers and that Facebook should not use it as an excuse to deny the public the ability to understand people’s behavior on social networks.

Edelson noted that because Facebook stopped her project, called the NYU Ad Observatory, last month, she would not be able to continue to study the reach and impact of misinformation on the platform.

In response to criticism that it is becoming less transparent, Facebook recently published a new transparency report that shows the most popular content on the platform every quarter. But the report is highly curated, and Facebook censored an earlier version of the report out of concerns that it would generate bad press, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive conversations. That led critics to argue that the company was not being transparent.

One of the reasons it is hard to tell how much exposure people have to misinformation on Facebook in particular is because so much content is shared in private groups, Tromble said.

Analysis: People are more anti-vaccine if they get their covid news from Facebook than from Fox News, data shows

To conduct the study, Edelson’s team used a Facebook-owned business analytics tool called CrowdTangle to conduct the analysis. The tool is often used by journalists and researchers to track the popularity of posts. But CrowdTangle has limitations as well: The tool shares how many likes and shares a particular post received, but does not disclose what are known as impressions, or how many people saw the post.

Edelson said the study showed that Facebook algorithms were not rewarding partisanship or bias, or favoring sites on one side of the political spectrum, as some critics have claimed. She said that Facebook amplifies misinformation because it does well with users, and the sites that happen to have more misinformation are on the right. Among publishers categorized as on the far right, those that share misinformation get a majority — or 68 percent — of all engagement from users.

 

[hanimmal]

 

[hanimmal]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-insiders-quietly-paying-teen-memers-partisan-sponcon_n_61200a80e4b0e8ac791e1161

In the fever swamps of Instagram, a network of right-wing meme accounts run by teenage boys and young men has erupted into an advertising powerhouse reaching millions. These memers — who regularly post far-right conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine propaganda and other incendiary clickbait — first caught the attention of obscure brands selling cheap MAGA merch, who started paying them to display ads to their rapidly growing conservative audiences. The money wasn’t great, as a few memers told HuffPost last summer, but it still felt like a big deal to watch their Instagram pages blossom into mini businesses.

Little did they know, members of Donald Trump’s inner circle would soon come knocking.

Since the 2020 election, these meme moguls have quietly collected payments to run ads for the Trump campaign’s “Election Defense Fund”; former senior Trump aide Jason Miller’s new social media network, GETTR; Trump confidant Mike Lindell’s bedding company, MyPillow; and, as recently as a few weeks ago, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In a few cases, the memers have included high-schoolers as young as 14. Some of these discreet ad deals were brokered directly between teens and former members of the Trump White House, communications obtained by HuffPost reveal.

Most of the ads come in the form of memes with captions urging people to click customized links inserted into the memers’ Instagram bios, which lead to the promoted parties’ websites. The memers typically earn a small “conversion” fee for each person who uses their link, doled out by third-party marketing agencies working with big-name clients.

Given the massive reach of several of these pages, often boosted by Instagram’s powerful recommendation algorithms, this can quickly add up. For the recent GETTR ad campaign, memers earned $0.85 per conversion with a cap of 25,000 conversions — or $21,250.

Not many kids can name-drop major political figures (or a world-infamous pillow tycoon) on their résumés before they’re old enough to vote. For some, their Instagram shitpost accounts — once casual side hustles they would use to shill crummy MAGA socks and the like for a few bucks here and there — are now serious income streams. At least one teen is planning a tropical vacation with his earnings, while other young memers are saving or investing theirs.

The services they provide are highly valuable: They’ve fostered relationships with huge niche communities and can launch hushed influence campaigns that are free from the kind of oversight and transparency mandates enforced through regulated advertising channels. This could open the door to dark-money campaigns and targeted, opaque disinformation operations reminiscent of when the Internet Research Agency, Russia’s Kremlin-linked troll farm, attempted to influence U.S. voters from the shadows via meme warfare in 2016.

Almost none of the dozens of meme ads that HuffPost has observed have been labeled as paid endorsements — a form of deceptive advertising known as “stealth shilling.” In certain cases, memers’ failure to disclose their compensation likely constitutes a violation of federal law for which they, the promoted parties and any intermediaries could be held liable.

But the evidence doesn’t exist for long: Unlike an official ad placed through Instagram’s business platform, which would
be stored in an online database and subject to public scrutiny, the memers tend to delete sponsored posts from their pages after just 24 to 72 hours. This is especially problematic when it comes to ads of a political nature, as it allows advertisers to target voters with virtually untraceable messaging.

Behind the scenes, young memers have done business directly with the former chief digital officer of Trump’s White House, Ory Rinat, according to emails and Instagram messages reviewed by HuffPost. Rinat left politics in June 2020 to launch Urban Legend, an influencer marketing platform, with the former marketing director of Trump’s executive office, Sondra Clark. Federal Election Commission filings show that over the next six months, Urban Legend’s partner firm, Legendary Campaigns, raked in close to $1.8 million from Trump’s reelection campaign for “online advertising,” as Axios first reported.



It’s becoming increasingly common for political candidates to partner with influencers to run ads on Instagram and other platforms. Influencer marketing is a highly effective way to connect with voters on a more personal level, like former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg did as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. People tend to trust the influencers they follow and may be more likely to get out and vote, for example, if an influencer tells them to.

But influencers’ failure to disclose when they’ve been paid to act as digital door knockers — and marketing firms’ failure to ensure they do so — is highly unethical and raises serious transparency concerns. It’s also a violation of Instagram’s policies, which require users to disclose when there’s “an exchange of value” between a creator and a business partner.

If your favorite memer had encouraged you to donate to Trump’s campaign but didn’t make it clear that they were being compensated to do so, you might have made a donation under the false impression that someone you trust was giving an independent endorsement rather than serving as a paid campaign mouthpiece.

“The electorate has the right to be fully informed, and part of that is knowing what the motive, bias and interest of the publisher of the content that they’re looking at has,” said Bonnie Patten, the executive director of the nonprofit watchdog Truth in Advertising. “If we think [someone is sharing their] organic opinion, we won’t analyze it in the same way or have the same level of skepticism we would if we know we’re being marketed to.”

Targeting voters under the radar also allows partisan operatives to get away with things that might not be tolerated in regulated ad channels, like spreading false information (or calling Democrats “Commies”). Urban Legend told HuffPost that the influencers it works with are required to comply with “applicable disclosure rules” but did not answer questions about how it enforces this mandate.

Stealth shilling is a violation of the Federal Trade Commission’s poorly enforced ad transparency laws, which apply to the sale of goods and services. But the legal requirements for online political ads, which fall under the Federal Election Commission’s domain, are narrow and outdated.

Unlike FTC regulations, which address influencer marketing in detail, the FEC rules in this realm haven’t been updated since 2006 — years before Instagram and many other influencer-populated platforms even existed. The FEC stipulates that “public communication made by a political committee … must display a disclaimer” and that “disclaimers must also appear on political committees’ internet websites that are available to the general public.”

 

[hanimmal]

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-technology-united-states-del-rio-haiti-872d4b59f5f68f0a63b32704aa961021

DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — For the final leg of his journey from Chile to the United States, Haitian migrant Fabricio Jean followed detailed instructions sent to him via WhatsApp from his brother in New Jersey who had recently taken the route to the Texas border.

His brother wired him money for the trip, then meticulously mapped it out, warning him of areas heavy with Mexican immigration officials.

“You will need about 20,000 pesos (about $1,000 U.S. dollars) for the buses. You need to take this bus to this location and then take another bus,” recounted Jean, who spoke to The Associated Press after reaching the border town of Del Rio.

What Jean didn’t expect was to find thousands of Haitian migrants like himself crossing at the same remote spot. The 38-year-old, his wife and two young children earlier this month joined as many as 14,000 mostly Haitian migrants camped under a Del Rio bridge.

A confluence of factors caused the sudden sharp increase at the Texas town of about 35,000 residents. Interviews with dozens of Haitian migrants, immigration attorneys and advocates reveal a phenomenon produced partly by confusion over the Biden administration’s policies after authorities recently extended protections for the more than 100,000 Haitians living in the United States.

It also reflects the power of Facebook, YouTube and platforms like WhatsApp, which migrants use to share information that can get distorted as it speeds through immigrant communities, directing migration flows. That’s especially true for tight-knit groups like the Creole-and-French-speaking Haitians, many of whom left their homeland after its devastating 2010 earthquake and have been living in Latin America, drawn by Brazil and Chile’s once-booming economies.

MORE ON THE BORDER CRISIS

• – Feeling trapped, migrants' fears grow in Mexican border city
• – Many migrants staying in US even as expulsion flights rise

In extending protections for Haitians this spring, the Biden administration cited security concerns and social unrest in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the temporary protections were limited to those residing in the U.S. before July 29 — but that condition was often missing in posts, leading Haitians outside the United States to believe they, too, were eligible.

Mayorkas acknowledged that this week, saying “we are very concerned that Haitians who are taking the irregular migration path are receiving misinformation that the border is open,” or that they qualify for protected status despite the expired deadline.

“I want to make sure it is known that this is not the way to come to the United States,” he said.

Thousands of Haitians have been stuck in Mexican border towns since 2016, when the Obama administration abruptly halted a policy that initially allowed them in on humanitarian grounds.

Online messages touting the Mexican town of Ciudad Acuña, across from Del Rio, started after President Joe Biden took office and began reversing some of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Ciudad Acuña has been spared the drug and gang violence seen elsewhere along the border. Some of the social media posts recommending it appear to have come from human smugglers seeking to drum up business, according to immigrant advocates.

Haitians began crossing there this year, but their numbers ballooned after a Biden administration program that briefly opened the door to some asylum seekers ended, said Nicole Phillips, of the San Diego-based Haitian Bridge Alliance, which advocates for Haitian migrants. The program allowed in a select number of people deemed by humanitarian groups to be at high risk in Mexico.

Once it ceased in August, people panicked, and the messages recommending Ciudad Acuña “went viral,” Phillips said.

“That’s why they rushed at this time to get in,” she said. “They realized they wouldn’t be able to get in legally through a port-of-entry like they were hoping.”

Del Rio is just one example of how technology that has put a smartphone in the hands of nearly every migrant is transforming migration flows, according to advocates. Migrants often monitor the news and share information on routes. The most popular platform is WhatsApp, which connects 2 billion people worldwide.

In 2020, after Turkey announced that the land border with Greece was open, thousands of migrants headed there – only to find the gates closed on the Greek side. Something similar happened this spring in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, in North Africa, when thousands of people were allowed to cross from Morocco into Spain, which promptly sent most of them back.

Last week, in a Facebook group for Haitians in Chile with 26,000 members, one member posted specific instructions on routes through Mexico. It included paths to avoid and recommended certain bus companies.

“Good luck and be careful,” said the post, written in Haitian Creole.

Another member shared a different route in the comments. The group’s members have since relayed stories of horrific conditions in Del Rio and risks of being deported.

The International Organization for Migration found most of the 238 Haitians who were surveyed in March after passing through a 60-mile (100-kilometer) stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap received route information from family or friends who had made the dangerous trek.

About 15% said they saw instructions on the internet.

Agency spokesman Jorge Gallo said the instructions led the migrants to believe crossing the gap was “difficult but not impossible.”

But just as similar messages drew many Haitians to Del Rio, news of the Biden administration deporting hundreds on the Texas border caused some to change their plans.

A 32-year-old Haitian woman who made it to Del Rio with her two teenage children bought bus tickets to Mexico City after receiving a cousin’s audio message via WhatsApp. She previously lived in Chile for four years.

“Wait in Mexico until this month is over. They will pick up everyone under the bridge. After that, they will give me the contact to enter Miami,” said the recording in Creole, which she played for an AP reporter. The AP is withholding the woman’s name to protect her safety.

Facebook Inc., which owns WhatsApp, allows people to exchange information about crossing borders, even illegally, but its policy bars posts that ask for money for services that facilitate human smuggling.

Robins Exile said he and his pregnant wife, who left Brazil after he lost his job amid the pandemic-wracked economy, headed to Tijuana, Mexico, instead after seeing warnings via YouTube and WhatsApp from fellow Haitian migrants.

“A lot of Haitians are advising now not to come to Acuña. They say it’s no longer a good place,” he said.

On Wednesday, Antonio Pierre, 33, who was camped in Del Rio with his wife and daughter, listened to the news on his friend’s cellphone.

“The U.S. is releasing some but just a few,” he said, referring to U.S. officials who told the AP on Tuesday that thousands of Haitians in custody were being let go and ordered to report to an immigration office, contradicting the Biden administration’s announcement that all Haitians camped in the town would be expelled to Haiti.

Nelson Saintil and his wife and four children had been camped in Texas but moved back to Mexico as they awaited word on where to go next to avoid deportation.

“I do not want to be like mice who do not find out that they are falling into a trap,” he said. “Because returning to Haiti is to bury a person alive.”

 

[hanimmal]

My message to the people deep in the MAGA cult.



Be that guy.

 

[hanimmal]

So it looks like Russell Brand has been pushing Russian propaganda about Wikileaks and Snowden.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/comedian-russell-brand-has-become-a-powerful-voice-for-anti-vaxxers?ref=home
https://www.rawstory.com/russell-brand-anti-vaxx/

According to a report from the Daily Beast's Cheyenne Roundtree, comedian and actor Russell Brand -- whose star had diminished considerably over the past few years -- has found new life as a purveyor of anti-vax conspiracy rumors.

The comedian who once took on Donald Trump early in his presidency now is catering to a new fan base made up of conservatives and the anti-science crowd with a series of alarmingly popular YouTube videos with titles like "Thought Biden Couldn't Sink Any Lower?? THINK AGAIN!!," and "SHOCKING Wuhan Evidence: Did Fauci LIE?" while asking his fans if he should make appearances on Fox News.

As Roundtree writes, "Brand has struck a viewership goldmine with his videos. His videos, which appear to be monetized, often rack up millions of views across YouTube and Facebook, and his comment sections have become hotbeds of misinformation. His viewership has railed against Dr. Anthony Fauci, mocked the phrase 'follow the science,' talked about microdosing with ivermectin, and claimed loved ones had passed away as a result of getting the vaccine."

Noting that Brand's YouTube channel has "long been a haphazard and rambling space where the comedian posted conversation-style videos," the Beast's Rountree adds that the actual anti-vax videos are not as over the top as their titles promise, but that they still feed into popular conspiracy theories that are keeping people from getting vaccinated or wearing masks.

According to the report, "A December 2020 video titled, 'Covid Vaccine - Skepticism or Trust?,' released just as the vaccine was rolling out in the U.K., saw Brand airing a series of clips of vaccine skeptics being interviewed on the street, before sharing, 'I'm certainly by no means saying 'Don't take a vaccine," neither am I saying 'Do take a vaccine'" and railing against an increase in 'government authority' and decrease in 'personal liberties' that is 'concerning.'"

In an interview, Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist and assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, said Brand has a right to his opinion but he is treading dangerously close to spreading more misinformation.

"I think it's really important for everyone to think for themselves," she explained. "I am not frustrated at all by individual-level questions, by individual-level discussion, or making sure that individual concerns are addressed. What's frustrating is when there is not rational conversation, when there is misinformation, or blatant lies as related to the FDA approval."

Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, an assistant professor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School concurred.

"There has been both a mistrust in science and a politicization of this pandemic. We understand why folks are questioning and asking good questions about the vaccine. We are recommending that folks initiate a conversation with a provider they know to speak directly with a provider who's trained as a clinician," she explained.

The Beast's Roundtree added, "For a celebrity such as Brand with millions of followers, Weintraub says he has taken on the responsibility of giving accurate info to those looking to him for advice. But she says that experts are more than happy to help out and come on his platform to make sure his followers have the best information available."

You can read more here -- subscription required.

I had this pop up in my youtube feed and decided to see what was going on with the actor turned click bait propaganda whore that had another propaganda channel snow flaking for him.

Looks like they are using Youtube's anti vaccine propaganda rules to snowflake more about their actual Russian propaganda that it's really a fake narrative that the Russian military is attacking our citizens.

 

[hanimmal]

https://www.rawstory.com/texas-gop-epik-hack/

The hacker group Anonymous has released a new trove of data obtained from Epik, the domain hosting website that has become synonymous with far-right groups and causes.

The latest data, released Monday, reportedly contains a backup of the Texas Republican Party's server and includes "sensitive documents, a database, and more," according to journalist Steven Monacelli.

In a news release accompanying the data posted on Twitter by Monacelli, Anonymous wrote that "it seems the Texas GOP lost their backups, Anonymous is generously including one, complete with all of their private documents, database, draft articles that didn't make the narrative cut, dark memes(?) and only Raptor Jesus knows what else."

"It's time to reclaim this series of tubes from Nazi scum. It's clear that the feds aren't going to do it. Save the children from Q," the release states, an apparent reference to the QAnon conspiracy group.

The Daily Dot notes that, "The Texas GOP website had been defaced by Anonymous in retaliation for the state's controversial abortion ban on Sept. 11."

The Anonymous news release encourages people to "keep messing" with "anti-choice states," adding that, "Abortion is a human right"

Monday's release of data represents part three of what Anonymous has dubbed "Operation EPIK FAIL," and what extremism researchers have referred to as "a Rosetta Stone to the far-right."

"The leaks have continued to cause widespread fallout for Epik's customers, which includes websites such as Parler, Gab, 8chan, and TheDonald," according to the Daily Dot. "It remains unclear what fallout will result from the third release as journalists and researchers struggle to sift through the enormous amounts of information already present in the previous two leaks."

 

[BudmanTX]

https://www.rawstory.com/texas-gop-epik-hack/
View attachment 5002356

i thought i heard chatter of that over the weekend......i think they go for the old orange avenger himself as well....