BNL News has "sources"

The Twitter account @BreakingNLive made a couple tweets earlier today about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Specifically, they said she was deathly ill:

BREAKING: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has not been heard of for over a month, is deathly ill, but is currently being kept alive at an unknown hospital for an unknown reason - sources 

(We are in contact with a few people who have knowledge about the situation)

Within half an hour, @BNLNews deleted the tweets, claiming they needed to "verify" the information further.  The tweets were sitting on my timeline, so I took a screenshot:

Is there anything more annoying than when an anonymous news source makes a reference to anonymous sources?  Call it a pet peeve of mine. 

The @BreakingNLive Twitter account has 77,000 followers.  The bio section says "Breaking news alerts & news updates from around the world."  The geographic marker says "USA."

The two earliest tweets from @BreakingNLive, from September 18, 2016, both reference RT.  That might be significant, but I'm not sure.

Nada Bakos and the mystery of @ColumbiaBugle

Several months ago I bookmarked a tweet by Nada Bakos:

https://twitter.com/nadabakos/status/1018759990230671360

The tweet has since been deleted.  According to my notes, it said:

This account is exactly what was described in the @NPR article on Russian trolls posing as local news.

Nada Bakos was referring to the Twitter account @ColumbiaBugle.  She thought @ColumbiaBugle was a Russian troll.

The @ColumbiaBugle Twitter account

To support her hunch, Bakos linked to an NPR article that discussed how Russian trolls were posing as local news agencies on Twitter.  The fake accounts bore names that sounded like local news outlets--e.g. @ElPasoTopNews, @MilwaukeeVoice, @CamdenCityNews, etc...  Furthermore, they all shared legitimate news stories on Twitter.

@ColumbiaBugle doesn't bear any resemblance to those troll accounts.  He doesn't pretend to be a local news outlet.  Rather, he's a pro-Trump political commentator.  He wants to Build The Wall.  He's a fan of Tucker Carlson.  He's a Young Republican.  He also explained that the "Columbia" in his handle doesn't refer to a geographical region, but rather to Lady Columbia:

#MyHandleExplained a tribute to Lady Columbia and the Bugle Boy who fearlessly played during the Battle of New Orleans. pic.twitter.com/H2i2Bn1iPW

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) April 23, 2018

If Nada Bakos (or any other ex-CIA agent) wants to know the guy's identity, I'll tell you.  Just send me a DM on Twitter.  For everyone else, here's a hint:  Imagine how an old Japanese woman would describe the fat Buddha.

The DFRLab and Reddit

In November, the Digital Forensic Research Lab published a report titled "RT and R/The_Donald."  It's an examination of how stories from RT.com perform in the subreddit /r/The_Donald.  As I read the report, some of the author's statements struck me as amiss, and I want to take a few minutes to articulate what bothered me. 

Nitpick #1:

Early in the article, the authors says:

Over the past year, more than 500 articles from USA Really and the brutalist.press were submitted on Reddit. Only two, however, were upvoted more than 1,000 times, indicating a low uptake of the content shared from the two domains.

That's wrong.  I went to RedditSearch.io and found seven articles from Brutalist.press that received more than 1,000 upvotes:  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.  This is an example of how data can be different depending on where you look.

Nitpick #2:

Later in the report, the author embeds an image from BuzzSumo, showing the six most-popular RT.com articles from the past six months, ranked in terms of total social media engagement.  The gist is that none of the top RT articles had any engagement on Reddit:

What I've been trying to figure out is why the same RT.com article is listed five times in a row?  It's the one titled: "Going to the gym is a sign of being gay, says Malaysian newspaper."

For what it's worth, that RT story was posted in multiple subreddits, and it spurred user engagements in /r/Malaysia (40 upvotes. 57 comments), /r/Forsen (27 upvotes, 4 comments), and /r/LGBT (25 upvotes, 1 comment).  I'm assuming the author didn't count those engagements because they occurred back in February, 2017, and she was only searching for results from the past six months.....but that still leaves a puzzling question:  Why does the BuzzSumo image indicate that all of the RT articles about the Malaysian newspaper were printed in October, when a simple Google search shows the article was printed in February?

I created an account on BuzzSumo and tried to replicate the DFRLab's results, to no avail.  I searched for the most-popular English-language RT.com articles for the six-month period up to November 6, 2018 (the publication date of the DFRLab's report).  My results showed that five of the top six stories had some engagement on Reddit.  The Malaysian newspaper story didn't appear in my results:

Nitpick #3:

Near the end of the report, the author explains how "if it was not for The_Donald, RT’s articles would fall on deaf ears on Reddit."

This statement ignores the fact that RT articles have been highly upvoted on /r/WorldNews, which is an active subreddit with 20 million subscribers.  If you look at the most upvoted RT articles on Reddit from the past year, the top four submissions were all in /r/WorldNews.  In their report, the DFRLab says the top 20 RT links in The_Donald received a combined 132,000 upvotes.  By comparison, the top 20 RT links on /r/WorldNews from the past year received over 143,000 upvotes.

Like I said earlier, this type of data depends on where you look.  (And I know my time frame isn't the same as the DFRLab's time frame.)  My point is:  It's wrong to suggest that /r/The_Donald is the only place on Reddit where RT articles gain a foothold.


Nitpick #4:

At the end of the report, the author says, "by upvoting RT’s articles thousands of times, The_Donald Redditors made it possible for RT’s content to reach Reddit’s home page, which is the first page users see when they enter the site."

I don't think the DFRLab understands how the "front page" of Reddit works.  For years, the front page consisted of 25 default subreddits.  Later, this was expanded to 50 default subreddits, and /r/The_Donald was never part of the default group.  In February, 2017, the Reddit admins redesigned the front page to display links from a large swathe of "popular" subreddits, and /r/The_Donald was not included as part of the original list, either.  It's possible that /r/The_Donald was included on the "popular" list at some point, but my impression is it never happened.  Thus, I doubt /r/The_Donald has ever pushed an RT article to the front page of Reddit.

Incidentally, I did find an example of RT making the front page on Reddit in 2018, courtesy of /r/WorldNews:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180103031815/https://www.reddit.com/


Conclusion:

I do agree with the DFRLab's overall thesis: There are lots of RT links being submitted to the /r/The_Donald, and this is concerning in light of the user base's potential susceptibility to Russian propaganda.  That said, I felt the DFRLab's efforts to contextualize their data mostly fell flat.  The report's conclusion mentions how RT is "seeding" it's content in /r/The_Donald, and I would've preferred if that part received more of an explanation.

A Russian troll on Coub?

I was reviewing all the Russian troll accounts from Reddit, and noticed a couple of them shared videos from Coub.com. 

Coub is a video mash-up site.  It's like a cross between Instagram and Vine, mixed with the humor of YTMND.  The Reddit trolls only shared videos from one Coub account:  "PoliGraph."  You can see PoliGraph's videos at this URL: https://coub.com/poligraphme.

There are a few reasons why I think PoliGraph was controlled by a Russian troll.  First, PoliGraphs's videos align with themes pushed by the Russian trolls on other social media platforms:  They're anti-Hillary; they highlight police brutality in the U.S.; they mock the U.S. for its obsession with guns, etc....  Second, one of the Internet Research Agency's accounts on Twitter was named @poligraphme, which matches the URL of PoliGraph's Coub page.

PoliGraph posted 1,002 videos on Coub.  The earliest was dated September 7, 2015, and the last was dated July 14, 2016.  The videos have received 3,339,508 combined views (so far).

Coub began as a Russian start-up.  There was an article in The Verge in 2014 which said the company had just opened an office in New York, but I don't know how popular the site is in the U.S.  It wouldn't surprise me if there were numerous accounts on Coub being run by Russian trolls, but so far I've only "discovered" PoliGraph.

Here was PoliGraph's most popular video.  It received 361,904 views:

Here are the four videos that were cross-posted to Reddit:













Here's a typical anti-police video:




And here's a video that defies commentary.  It combines politics, Star Wars, and Gangnam Style:

Streamja URL confusion

Oftentimes, when you click on a Reddit thread, there will a tab for "Other discussions."  This shows where else on Reddit people have submitted the same URL.

I saw this yesterday after clicking on a thread for a Streamja video:

Two of the threads link to a Streamja clip that shows a scene from yesterday's SmackDown.  The other thread links to a Streamja clip that shows a play from a soccer match from ~10 days ago.  Yet both Streamja clips apparently have the same URL.  So I took a closer look:

The SmackDown Streamja clip has the URL: https://streamja.com/g3BW. 

The soccer Streamja clip has the URL: https://streamja.com/g3bW.

Somehow, the capital "B" and the lowercase "b" were treated the same.

A quick dive into Chuck Johnson's comments on the Holocaust

On January 16, 2019, the Daily Beast published an article titled: "GOP Congressmen Meet With Holocaust-Denying Troll Chuck Johnson."  The article says:

Johnson, a former Breitbart reporter, has denied the magnitude of the Holocaust, expressing doubt that gas chambers were real and questioning whether six million Jews were really killed—a figure that has been well-documented by scholars and historians.

This was the first time that I'd ever heard Chuck Johnson was a Holocaust denier, so I wanted to follow the sourcing and see his original comments.  The Daily Beast article links to a Mother Jones article from September 13, 2018, titled: "Two Republican Congressmen Hobnob With an Alleged Holocaust Denier. Again."  The article says:

During an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit’s alt-right section, Johnson had been queried, “what are your thoughts on the Holocaust, WW2, and the JQ in general?” (“JQ” is neo-Nazi shorthand for the Jewish Question.) Johnson replied, “I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic. I think the Allied bombing of Germany was a ware [sic] crime. I agree…about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real.”

At this point, I was still looking for the original source of the comments.

The Mother Jones article links to a post on Little Green Footballs from January 27, 2017, titled: "Chuck C. Johnson Says He’s Advising the Trump Administration on Nominees - and He’s a Holocaust Denier."  The post says:

The reason why I’m writing about this loathsome character again: yesterday he did an “Ask Me Anything” in Reddit’s “altright” (read: neo-Nazi) section — and came all the way out as a Holocaust denier. Here’s the exchange. (The term “JQ” is a neo-Nazi abbreviation for “Jewish Question.”)

justacolyte:

what are your thoughts on the Holocaust, WW2, and the JQ in general?

ChuckCJohnson:

I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic. I think the Allied bombing of Germany was a ware crime. I agree with David Cole about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real. I read the German War (highly recommend), Bloodlands, Mein Kampf, and all of David Irving. I’m more or less of the view that the war was an outgrowth of the efforts of communism to spread itself throughout the world. I also believe that the fears of German extermination were not misplaced, especially in light of the Ukrainian famine. But I support Israel as a Jewish state and Zionism as a concept. I’m pro-ethno state, generally. I understand why and how Hitler rose to power but think too much of our focus on World War II is spent trying to understand Hitler and not enough is spent trying to understand Weimar. Mecius Moldbug, aka Curtis Yarvin, is right. America is a communist country.

The words "Here's the exchange" link to an AMA that Johnson held on the /r/AltRight subreddit on January 27, 2017.  However, Reddit has banned the /r/AltRight subreddit, and so when you click the link you see this message:

Fortunately, somebody saved the AMA using Archive.is.  Here's the specific Archive.is link for Chuck Johnson's "250,000" comment:  http://archive.is/Rrawk.  And here's the Archive.is link for the whole AMA:  http://archive.is/y9zKy.

What's interesting is that you can see Chuck Johnson went back and edited his comment.  Based on the timestamps, it would appear Chuck Johnson edited his comment several hours after the Little Green Footballs post was published.  Here is what the edited comment says:

ChuckCJohnson[S] 29 points 19 hours ago*  

I do not and never have believed the six million figure which I think is still up for some historical debate. There were a number of sources that disputed the six million figure and I find myself in that camp reluctantly. Of course you can't really discuss any of this stuff without being called a Holocaust denier which I am not. I think Jews were killed in the war, particularly in the Eastern occupied provinces. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic but I confess to having complicated views on the subject. I think the Allied bombings of Germany were a war crime. I agree with David Cole about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real. Why were their swimming pools there if it was a death camp? I support decriminalizing Holocaust inquiry. I read the German War (highly recommend), Bloodlands, Mein Kampf, and all of David Irving. I'm more or less of the view that the war was an outgrowth of the efforts of communism to spread itself throughout the world. I also believe that the fears of German extermination were not misplaced, especially in light of the Ukrainian famine. But I support Israel as a Jewish state and Zionism as a concept. I'm pro-ethno state, generally. I understand why and how Hitler rose to power but think too much of our focus on World War II is spent trying to understand Hitler and not enough is spent trying to understand Weimar. Mecius Moldbug, aka Curtis Yarvin, is right. America is a communist country.

So Chuck Johnson went back and made sure to emphasize that he was not, in fact, a Holocaust denier. 

This wasn't the last time Chuck Johnson would deny being a Holcaust denier.  In a post on GotNews, dated February 4, 2018, Johnson addressed the comments he'd made during the AMA:

Some of my friends are rightly asking me what I was doing when I posted on Reddit last year some comments that could fairly be characterized as Holocaust denial. A now archived and deleted post does reflect statements I made, but it does not reflect my views on the Holocaust. I am not now nor have I ever been a Holocaust denier.

I unambiguously believe the Holocaust happened, that 6 million Jews died, that some of those Jews who died in labor camps, gas chambers, ovens, and in all manner of dehumanizing ways.

Johnson also explained that his comments about the Holocaust were done for the sake of trolling:

So why did I post these remarks? What could I possibly have been after? 

Over the last few years, I have financed a project studying the various tech companies and their commitments to free speech against fake hate speech. I began this process several years ago when I joined a group of like-minded individuals committed to getting Ellen Pao fired from Reddit over her reluctance to embrace free speech. In that instance as in this one anti-Semitic language trended to the top of Reddit and led ultimately to her firing. This is how trolling works. 

That paragraph is awfully confusing.  The first time I read it, I thought Chuck Johnson was saying he made his Holocaust comments in order to get Ellen Pao fired.  Of course, that wouldn't make sense, because Ellen Pao resigned from Reddit back in 2015, long before the AMA took place.  All I can deduce is that Johnson was (supposedly) testing Reddit's commitment to free speech.    

Users on /r/Politics hate CounterPunch

Lately I've been posting CounterPunch articles on /r/Politics.  I do it mainly to see people's responses.

Last year, the Washington Post published an article revealing that a freelance journalist named "Alice Donovan" was, in fact, a Russian troll.  "Alice" had submitted politically divisive articles to publications like CounterPunch.org, VeteransToday.com, and WeAreChange.org.  As a result, whenever I share a CounterPunch article on /r/Politics, there are people in the comments section deriding the website as Russian propaganda.  Here are some typical responses:

"Russian propogandist site. Don't click."

"MoscowPunch.  Downvote." 

"Garbage propaganda." 

"This is a Kremlin crony source. Don't trust it." 

"Just like /r/politics to upvote literal Kremlin disinfo rags."

"Russian Troll Factory.  Downvote" 

"KremlinPunch, that's a downvote." 

"I would not trust this article, whatsoever. Propaganda and misinformation."  

Some commenters would copy-and-paste the section about "Alice Donovan" from CounterPunch's Wikipedia page.  Other commenters would copy-and-paste the opening section from the aforementioned Washington Post article, which mentions "Alice Donovan" and CounterPunch.

The oddest response I received was from a commenter named /u/LumpyUnderpass, who said:

What is this source, why is it being inorganically upvoted, and why is it whitelisted?

When /u/LumpyUnderpass wrote that comment, the thread was sitting at zero upvotes.  So, if anything, it was being inorganically downvoted.  Also, when a commenter on /r/Politics says: 'Why is this site whitelisted?' it's usually in response to some right-wing publication like Breitbart or  DailyCaller.  It's the type of question you ask after you've already formed an opinion about a website.  So it doesn't make sense that /u/LumpyUnderpass would ask "Why is it whitelisted" and, in the same breath, ask "What is this source?"  It's like he took three possible default responses and combined them into one Frankenstein comment.   

None of the commenters directly accused the editors of CounterPunch—Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank—of being Russian propagandists.  Nor did the commenters call out any of the authors whose bylines appeared on the articles.  (Heck, one of the articles that I submitted was written by Jesse Jackson, so it would've been a bold strategy to accuse him of being a Russian stooge!)  Instead, most of the rhetoric focused on the publication itself.

In total, I submitted ten CounterPunch articles over the course of ten days.  I'll have to cut back on that frequency, because by the end of the streak some commenters were suggesting I was a Russian troll.  User /u/TwilitSky wrote this comment, which got 17 upvotes:

For anyone wondering, the time in St. Petersburg Russia is 9:04 AM which just happens to be 4 minutes after this compromised shitsource was posted.

There's a thin line between doing something to see the reaction, and doing something to get a reaction.  I don't participate much in the comments on /r/Politics, and so people might wonder why I was making these threads.  If I share another CounterPunch link in /r/Politics, I'll have to choose an article that I'm willing to defend in the comments section.  Maybe that will affect the dynamic.   

The hardest Idiotest question ever

Idiotest was a show that aired on the Game Show Network from 2014 to 2017.  Two teams would compete to answer a series of brain puzzles presented on a touch screen, and the winning team played a final round for a chance at $10,000.

Most of the challenges on Idiotest were based on wordplay or visual cues.  For example, here's a puzzle that asks you to spot what doesn't belong in a bowl of Alphabet Soup.  The answer is the "4."

During the first few episodes of Idiotest, the final round had a difficult format.  The winning pair were given a total of 60 seconds to answer five questions.  If, at any point, they touched the wrong answer on their touch screen, they received a 5-second penalty.

Here's a question from the final round of episode 2:

That is, without a doubt, the toughest puzzles I ever saw on Idiotest.  The contestants were asked to "touch the total number of hearts" but what you probably wouldn't notice is there are two hearts camouflaged as spades in the top-left corner.  Who the fuck would ever notice those two hearts?  And this was just the second question!  Thomas and Kente wound up amassing too many 5-second penalties, and they ran out of time.  When the host, Ben Glieb, explained why the correct answer was 17, it took me a while to figure what the heck he referring to with regards to the two extra hearts.

I haven't seen black men given a question this tricky since those Literacy Tests in the 1960s!

Actually, that would be a pretty good idea for a game show:  LiteracyTest!  And the questions are always rigged against the black contestants.