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Thread: Twitter Files #15 Twitter Files Expose Next Great Media Fraud (twitter.com/mtaibbi)
13 points by starkd on Jan 27, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments



> “Real people need to know they’ve been unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse,” Roth wrote.

That feeling when you knew what the Right Thing was, and wanted to do it, but were talked out of it by people you trusted.

That really sucks.


To the surprise of nobody with a brain, the country that can't collect its own taxes or fight its significantly smaller neighbors, also cannot actually brainwash the west with millions of shills.

What's very curious is that some of the institutions spinning this lie have been confirmed to hire firms and botnets to astroturf since the late 2000s. Who remembers HBGary Federal? Or the fed's "Special Identities Modernization" program?


This seems potentially interesting, but the Twitter Thread format is challenging to read. "Challenging" being a charitable way of describing the experience I just had.

It'd be significantly smoother to consume this information through a normal document comprised of sentences linking related ideas and concepts together.

Is this unreasonable?



I had the same feeling. It is awkward to read. Supposedly, they are working on longer form entries that can follow the short form entries. Some seem to think that would ruin twitter.

Dave Rubin did a thread recently after being invited in to twitter. He claims the twitter codebase is so bad that its hard to understand what is going on. They are seriously considering just rebuilding from scratch. It might be easier, considering some of the changes they want to do.


So will they release the list of accounts that Hamilton 68 was tracking?


the people who created the tool have already released the accounts. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-dashboard/. (click on the 'Accounts' button).


That is the list of v2.0, not the original. 2.0 tracks government officials/state outlets, the original tracked a hidden list of supposed undercover influencers.


So weirdly, in Twitter files #15, Twitter is the good guy defending right-wing, conservatives?

Seems to be "off brand" for Twitter files, no?


Not everything lines up to left vs. right. The way twitter conducted itself was a mess all around. With very little consistency.


But in this case, Twitter was the one pointing out the problem. But by releasing this as part of "The Twitter Files" they've confused at least one person into believing that they've uncovered more about Twitter.


The problem is that while plenty of folks at Twitter knew that the list was bogus and didn’t have any real correlation with Russian bot activity, ultimately Twitter didn’t do anything about it. Internally they talked about how ridiculous it was, but then they second–guessed themselves into saying nothing externally. If they had publicly stated that Hamilton 68 is a fraud, or at best incompetent, then they would have been the good guys. Instead they said nothing.


Weren't they ultimately the bad guy by not refuting it publicly. The author compared it to 'digital macarthyism' and ir seems like Twitter remained silently complicit.




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