Posted on 08/08/2021 9:59:10 AM PDT by Texas Fossil
This evening I received an email (shared below) from Davey Alba at the New York Times. Davey explained that “researchers” from two organizations with direct connections to and funding from Facebook were defaming both myself personally and Gab as a whole for spreading “misinformation.”
I’ll get into the baseless and defamatory claims, but first I’d like you to tell you a little more about these two organizations.
Stanford Internet Observatory is led by Alex Stamos who is the former Chief Security Officer for Facebook. The CTO of Stanford Internet Observatory, David Thiel, also worked at Facebook before starting at SIO. Stanford itself is of course widely known as the Ivy League snob school that the “best and brightest” in Silicon Valley all attended and have deep connections to.
The second organization is Graphika. Graphika is a Facebook-funded “research” group whose executive leadership team includes Camille Francois, a woman worked at Google’s infamous censorship technology incubator “Jigsaw,” and Lauren Pencek who previously worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) among others.
The New York Times own reporting confirms that Graphika receives its funding from Facebook and Facebook is also listed as one of Graphika’s top clients right on the front page of their website. Aside from Facebook, Graphika also partners with DARPA, a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense, along with Google, TikTok, and Pinterest.
Gab will never work with organizations like these and will never subject our community members to the slimy eyeballs of people who wish to “research” them. In fact we have spent years and a considerable amount of our engineering resources to stop these type of “reeeesearchers” from treating our community like lab rats.
Perhaps that’s another reason why Graphika has spent almost an entire year attacking Gab, but I suspect it has more to do with their deep connections to our competitors.
Let’s dive into the email from the New York Times, shall we?
Hi Andrew,
I’m a reporter from The New York Times, where we are writing about some viral posts about the coronavirus that have gained traction online in the past few weeks. I wanted to get your comment on a post by you that the Virality Project — a consortium of research groups focused on misinformation, including the Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika, among others — identified as misinformation.
You can find their assertions here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60025974f9f7920e6b40885b/t/61097813bdc29713648c24bf/1628010515835/Virality+Project+-+0803+Weekly+Briefing+.pdf
I’ve also screenshotted the relevant portion in the document:
Would you have a response to this being labeled as misinformation by this group of researchers?
Hope to hear from you as soon as possible — my deadline is on Monday, Aug. 9, at 12nn ET.
Feel free to call me at XXX-XXX-XXX if you have any questions about our story.
Best,Davey
My response to Davey is as follows:
The news that Lloyd Austin intends to make vaccinations mandatory in the military is two days old: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sec-of-defense-austin-to-announce-mandatory-vaccine-policy-for-all-active-duty-military
Furthermore, Pfizer and Moderna tested their vaccines on fetal cell lines and J&J used fetal cell lines in vaccination development. https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/you-asked-we-answered-do-the-covid-19-vaccines-contain-aborted-fetal-cells
I’m telling the truth. Your Facebook-funded “fact checkers” like Graphika are wrong and are the people peddling disinformation here. My response to them is that they can get bent. I’m reminding tens of millions of people that they have religious liberty and God-given human rights in this country. Deal with it. Jesus is King.
Andrew Torba
I spent all week posting the many dozens of direct messages that I have been receiving on Gab from Military service members and their families who shared their personal stories and experiences with me. I also posted similar stories from those working in healthcare and other various industries.
People are scared, but not of Covid. They are scared of being forced to choose between violating their religious beliefs and giving up control of their own bodily autonomy or losing their livelihood. It’s a position that no human being, let alone a citizen of the United States of America, should have to be in. I choose to share their stories because no one else is.
I then drafted a blog post about my experience reading and sharing these heartbreaking stories and reminded millions of people that in the United States of America we have God-given human rights, including religious liberty. I did this by providing a set of religious exemption templates for Christians to use in the Military and in their workplace.
The post went wildly viral on Gab, Facebook, and Twitter. I also emailed it to millions of people, because people deserve to know that they always have options and the dignity of bodily autonomy and religious liberty.
For doing this both Gab and myself are being defamed for spreading “misinformation,” a totally subjective and ambiguous term that can mean anything the tyrants in power want it to mean.
Ultimately what we are seeing here is an anti-Christian, anti-competitive attack on Gab by organizations who partner with, are funded by, and are staffed by people who worked for our direct competitors.
I am sharing this all with you now to let you know how these wicked people operate and to shine a light on their lies, deception, and anti-Christian attacks. They aren’t just attacking me, they are attacking any and all dissent and opposition to their libido dominandi (lust for power.)
I’m also beating the New York Times to print by emailing this information to millions of people over the weekend. This is how you beat these people at their own game. The time to stand up and speak the truth boldly is now.
God bless you and thank you for reading.
Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King
August 6th, 2021
Agree.
My top was over 8,000 followers.
I’m back about 7,000 again, It was hung there for 2 years. 50-100 over and 50-100 below until the purge. In 2 weeks I was down about 1,000 followers. My drop was mild percentage drop compared to most the I know. Most of mine have been with me for many years.
Normal analytics was 150K-225K impressions a month. Have had some at 400K. Now it is running just shy of 30K.
I do not care about the numbers, but what they have done is mask a lot of people form me.
Wiki is Leftist crap.
So I disregard their nonsense where I have the opportunity.
You are correct. Fascism. The very think the Communist freaks at Antifa, Black Block and BLM say they oppose.
The left always project what they actually are, unto their opponents.
They are hunting down anyone and anything that speaks freely and are going to eliminate him/it.
“Stanford Internet Observatory”
Interesting. I’ve seen the term ‘Observatory’ used a grand total of 2 TIMES outside of its astronomical context. This is the second time - the only other time is some group of people lying about Syrian leader Assad and what he’s doing to fight off the terrorists trying to overthrow him and an genocide the Christians (and others) he’s protecting.
They want that.
That may not be what they actually get.
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