Posted on 01/30/2023 4:19:40 PM PST by lowbridge
A left-wing think tank erroneously claiming to track Russian online activity was responsible for thousands of bogus stories asserting the nation’s influence in US politics, according to the latest batch of Twitter Files.
The Hamilton 68 “dashboard” was the brainchild of former FBI special agent and MSNBC contributor Clint Watts and operated under the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank founded in 2017 — shortly after former President Trump took office.
The ASD Advisory Council included such figures as top Clinton ally John Podesta, Obama-era acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, and former conservative activist Bill Kristol.
...latest Twitter Files disclosure, the 15th so far, revealed how Hamilton 68’s Russian bot dashboard repeatedly insisted there was widespread and deep Russian penetration of social media and unveiled that Twitter executives frequently challenged those claims internally.
“I think we need to just call this out on the bulls–t is,” Twitter’s then-head of trust and safety Yoel Roth wrote in an October 2017 email. “Hamilton dashboard falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots,” he added in January 2018.
Emails in the disclosure show that Twitter’s own internal audits repeatedly showed that accounts flagged by Hamilton 68 were not Russian bots.
“It was a scam. … Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming,” wrote Matt Taibbi, who released the latest tranche of files Friday.
Hamilton 68’s pronouncements were used to allege a hidden Russian hand in US politics from hundreds, and possibly thousands, of news stories during the Trump years.
While Roth wanted to publicly push back against Hamilton 68, he was warned against taking on the politically connected group by Twitter’s then-head of global policy communication, Emily Horne.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
There’s gotta be slam-dunk defamation suits all over this!!
later
“… erroneously claiming to track Russian online activity”
“Erroneously”??
As in scam, lying, cheating, fallacious, two-faced, and breaking the law. That kind of “eooneously”?
One would think so, and yet....
Fla. Judge Hits Trump, Atty With Nearly $1M In Sanctions
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4127172/posts
Left Wing Think Tank = CIA
Dan Bongino had a lot on this today. Good info.
Bkmrk
The same people are pushing the Ukraine war.
The left always accusing their opponents of their own behavior. It’s an Alinsky thing.
Former conservative. Present traitor.
John Podesta of the “Left” on the board behind this that’s for sure.
The board behind this included Bill Kristol he’s “Conservative” right???
such a huge story...so little coverage.
Given their laughable performance, “left-wing think tank” appears to be one of the top ten oxymorons.
What is his FReeper handle?
SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE, says Gomer Biden!!
In leftworld, this never happened, and never will have happened.
So Twitter’s official Emily Horne was also Biden’s National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne before the Russian invasion of Ukraine proper.
SNIP
...The collaboration between TDIP and New Knowledge, which has not been previously reported, involved a dashboard set up at the site, Disinfo2018.com, which tracked “social media disinformation networks — to include suspected foreign state-actors — conducting information warfare against the American public prior to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.”
The project appears similar to Hamilton 68, a dashboard operated by the Alliance for Security Democracy. Jonathon Morgan, the founder of New Knowledge, helped create Hamilton 68 and has appeared frequently in the media to discuss Russia’s disinformation efforts.
In an interview with BBC, Morgan claimed Russians were behind #ReleaseTheMemo, the hashtag used to call for the release of a memo from House Intel Republicans that questioned the FBI’s reliance on the unverified Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
But New Knowledge and Morgan are now known for their tactics during the December 2017 Alabama special election.
The New York Times published a damning exposé Dec. 19, 2018, showing New Knowledge operatives targeted conservative Alabamans with fake Facebook pages intended to sow doubt about Roy Moore, the controversial Republican candidate....
- Source: Daily Caller
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