Microsoft Partners With Neocon-Backed ‘Fact Checker’ Seeking To ‘Wage War On Independent Media’

by Chris Menahan

Microsoft has partnered with a shoddy Neocon-backed “fact checker” called NewsGuard which rates websites’ “credibility” in-browser and NewsGuard’s CEO says their goal is to have their software on all smartphones and computers by default.

From MintPressNews:

How a NeoCon-Backed “Fact Checker” Plans to Wage War on Independent Media

As Newsguard’s project advances, it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any technological device sold in the United States.
by Whitney Webb
January 09th, 2019

Soon after the social media “purge” of independent media sites and pages this past October, a top neoconservative insider — Jamie Fly — was caught stating that the mass deletion of anti-establishment and anti-war pages on Facebook and Twitter was “just the beginning” of a concerted effort by the U.S. government and powerful corporations to silence online dissent within the United States and beyond.

While a few, relatively uneventful months in the online news sphere have come and gone since Fly made this ominous warning, it appears that the neoconservatives and other standard bearers of the military-industrial complex and the U.S. oligarchy are now poised to let loose their latest digital offensive against independent media outlets that seek to expose wrongdoing in both the private and public sectors.

As MintPress News Editor-in-Chief Mnar Muhawesh recently wrote, MintPress was informed that it was under review by an organization called Newsguard Technologies, which described itself to MintPress as simply a “news rating agency” and asked Muhawesh to comment on a series of allegations, several of which were blatantly untrue. However, further examination of this organization reveals that it is funded by and deeply connected to the U.S. government, neo-conservatives, and powerful monied interests, all of whom have been working overtime since the 2016 election to silence dissent to American forever-wars and corporate-led oligarchy.

More troubling still, Newsguard — by virtue of its deep connections to government and Silicon Valley — is lobbying to have its rankings of news sites installed by default on computers in U.S. public libraries, schools, and universities as well as on all smartphones and computers sold in the United States.

In other words, as Newsguard’s project advances, it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any technological device sold in the United States. Worse still, if its efforts to quash dissenting voices in the U.S. are successful, Newsguard promises that its next move will be to take its system global.

Red light, green light . . .

Newsguard has received considerable attention in the mainstream media of late, having been the subject of a slew of articles in the Washington Post, the Hill, the Boston Globe, Politico, Bloomberg, Wired, and many others just over the past few months. Those articles portray Newsguard as using “old-school journalism” to fight “fake news” through its reliance on nine criteria allegedly intended to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to online news.

Newsguard separates sites it deems worthy and sites it considers unreliable by using a color-coded rating — green, yellow, or red — and more detailed “nutrition labels” regarding a site’s credibility or lack thereof. Rankings are created by Newsguard’s team of “trained analysts.” The color-coding system may remind some readers of the color-coded terror threat-level warning system that was created after 9/11, making it worth noting that Tom Ridge, the former secretary of Homeland Security who oversaw the implementation of that system under George W. Bush, is on Newsguard’s advisory board.

As Newsguard releases a new rating of a site, that rating automatically spreads to all computers that have installed its news ranking browser plug-in. That plug-in is currently available for free for the most commonly used internet browsers. NewsGuard directly markets the browser plug-in to libraries, schools and internet users in general.

According to its website, Newsguard has rated more than 2,000 news and information sites. However, it plans to take its ranking efforts much farther by eventually reviewing “the 7,500 most-read news and information websites in the U.S.—about 98 percent of news and information people read and share online” in the United States in English.

[…]

According to local media, Newsguard “now works with library systems representing public libraries across the country, and is also partnering with middle schools, high schools, universities, and educational organizations to support their news literacy efforts,” suggesting that these Newsguard services targeting libraries and schools are soon to become a compulsory component of the American library and education system, despite Newsguard’s glaring conflicts of interest with massive multinational corporations and powerful government power-brokers.

Notably, Newsguard has a powerful partner that has allowed it to start finding its way into public library and school computers throughout the country. As part of its new “Defending Democracy” initiative, Microsoft announced last August that it would be partnering with Newsguard to actively market the company’s ranking app and other services to libraries and schools throughout the country. Microsoft’s press release regarding the partnership states that Newsguard “will empower voters by providing them with high-quality information about the integrity and transparency of online news sites.”

Since then, Microsoft has now added the Newsguard app as a built-in feature of Microsoft Edge, its browser for iOS and Android mobile devices, and is unlikely to stop there. Indeed, as a recent report in favor of Microsoft’s partnership with Newsguard noted, “we could hope that this new partnership will allow Microsoft to add NewsGuard to Edge on Windows 10 [operating system for computers] as well.”

Newsguard, for its part, seems confident that its app will soon be added by default to all mobile devices. On its website, the organization notes that “NewsGuard will be available on mobile devices when the digital platforms such as social media sites and search engines or mobile operating systems add our ratings and Nutrition Labels directly.” This shows that Newsguard isn’t expecting its rating systems to be offered as a downloadable application for mobile devices but something that social media sites like Facebook, search engines like Google, and mobile device operating systems that are dominated by Apple and Google will “directly” integrate into nearly every smartphone and tablet sold in the United States.

A Boston Globe article on Newsguard from this past October makes this plan even more clear. The Globe wrote at the time:
Microsoft has already agreed to make NewsGuard a built-in feature in future products, and [Newsguard co-CEO] Brill said he’s in talks with other online titans. The goal is to have NewsGuard running by default on our computers and phones whenever we scan the Web for news.”
This eventuality is made all the more likely given the fact that, in addition to Microsoft, Newsguard is also closely connected to Google, as Google has been a partner of the Publicis Groupe since 2014, when the two massive companies joined Condé Nast to create a new marketing service called La Maison that is “focused on producing engaging content for marketers in the luxury space.” Given Google’s power in the digital sphere as the dominant search engine, the creator of the Android mobile operating system, and the owner of YouTube, its partnership with Publicis means that Newsguard’s rating system will soon see itself being promoted by yet another of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies.

Furthermore, there is an effort underway to integrate Newsguard into social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Indeed, as Newsguard was launched, co-CEO Brill stated that he planned to sell the company’s ratings of news sites to Facebook and Twitter. Last March, Brill told CNN that “We’re asking them [Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google] to pay a fraction of what they pay their P.R. people and their lobbyists to talk about the problem.”

[…]

Notably, Newsguard has a powerful partner that has allowed it to start finding its way into public library and school computers throughout the country. As part of its new “Defending Democracy” initiative, Microsoft announced last August that it would be partnering with Newsguard to actively market the company’s ranking app and other services to libraries and schools throughout the country. Microsoft’s press release regarding the partnership states that Newsguard “will empower voters by providing them with high-quality information about the integrity and transparency of online news sites.”

Since then, Microsoft has now added the Newsguard app as a built-in feature of Microsoft Edge, its browser for iOS and Android mobile devices, and is unlikely to stop there. Indeed, as a recent report in favor of Microsoft’s partnership with Newsguard noted, “we could hope that this new partnership will allow Microsoft to add NewsGuard to Edge on Windows 10 [operating system for computers] as well.”

Newsguard, for its part, seems confident that its app will soon be added by default to all mobile devices. On its website, the organization notes that “NewsGuard will be available on mobile devices when the digital platforms such as social media sites and search engines or mobile operating systems add our ratings and Nutrition Labels directly.” This shows that Newsguard isn’t expecting its rating systems to be offered as a downloadable application for mobile devices but something that social media sites like Facebook, search engines like Google, and mobile device operating systems that are dominated by Apple and Google will “directly” integrate into nearly every smartphone and tablet sold in the United States.

A Boston Globe article on Newsguard from this past October makes this plan even more clear. The Globe wrote at the time:
Microsoft has already agreed to make NewsGuard a built-in feature in future products, and [Newsguard co-CEO] Brill said he’s in talks with other online titans. The goal is to have NewsGuard running by default on our computers and phones whenever we scan the Web for news.”
This eventuality is made all the more likely given the fact that, in addition to Microsoft, Newsguard is also closely connected to Google, as Google has been a partner of the Publicis Groupe since 2014, when the two massive companies joined Conde Nast to create a new marketing service called La Maison that is “focused on producing engaging content for marketers in the luxury space.” Given Google’s power in the digital sphere as the dominant search engine, the creator of the Android mobile operating system, and the owner of YouTube, its partnership with Publicis means that Newsguard’s rating system will soon see itself being promoted by yet another of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies.

Furthermore, there is an effort underway to integrate Newsguard into social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Indeed, as Newsguard was launched, co-CEO Brill stated that he planned to sell the company’s ratings of news sites to Facebook and Twitter. Last March, Brill told CNN that “We’re asking them [Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google] to pay a fraction of what they pay their P.R. people and their lobbyists to talk about the problem.”

[…]

Financial censorship

Another Newsguard service shows that this organization is also seeking to harm independent media financially by targeting online revenue. Through a service called “Brandguard,” which it describes as a “brand safety tool aimed at helping advertisers keep their brands off of unreliable news and information sites while giving them the assurance they need to support thousands of Green-rated [i.e., Newsguard-approved] news and information sites, big and small.”

At the time the service was announced last November, Newsguard co-CEO Brill stated that the company was “in discussions with the ad tech firms, leading agencies, and major advertisers” eager to adopt a blacklist of news sites deemed “unreliable” by Newsguard. This is unsurprising given the leading role of the Publicis Groupe, one of the world’s largest advertising and PR firms, has in funding Newsguard. As a consequence, it seems likely that many, if not all, of Publicis’ client companies will choose to adopt this blacklist to help crush many of the news sites that are unafraid to hold them accountable.

It is also important to note here that Google’s connection to Publicis and thus Newsguard could spell trouble for independent news pages that rely on Google Adsense for some or all of their ad-based revenue. Google Adsense has long been targeting sites like MintPress by demonetizing articles for information or photographs it deemed controversial, including demonetizing one article for including a photo showing U.S. soldiers involved in torturing Iraqi detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

Since then, Google — a U.S. military contractor — has repeatedly tried to shutter ad access to MintPress articles that involve reporting that is critical of U.S. empire and military expansion. One article that has been repeatedly flagged by Google details how many African-Americans have questioned whether the Women’s March has aided or harmed the advancement of African-Americans in the United States. Google has repeatedly claimed that the article, which was written by African-American author and former Washington Post bureau chief Jon Jeter, contains “dangerous content.”

Given Google’s already established practice of targeting factual reporting it deemed controversial through Adsense, Brandguard will likely offer the tech giant just the excuse it needs to cut off sites like MintPress, and other pages equally critical of empire, altogether.
Read their full report.

This has been a dream of the establishment for over a decade.

One of these NewsGuard “journalists” contacted yours truly with a review of Information Liberation that was so shoddy I didn’t even bother to respond as almost everything he said was wrong and his reading comprehension was terrible.

I figured it’s a waste of time to respond as I would be doing the reporter’s job for him by correcting him and I would only be improving his shoddy work.

It’s blatantly obvious their goal is not to create an honest assessment of any of our websites but instead to compile whatever slander they can throw together to suit their pre-ordained narrative.

JihadWatch’s Robert Spencer has also written an excellent article exposing NewsGuard titled, “Steven Brill’s NewsGuard and the ‘fact-checking’ scam.”

Just look at the guys behind this:

Would you trust those men to walk your dog?

The reason no one ever bothered implementing any scheme like this is because it’s so obviously a fraud and an affront to people’s intelligence that it is more likely to have the opposite effect — negative rated sites are going to be viewed as more credible as evidenced by the fact they’re being slandered by these establishment hacks.

January 14, 2019 0

Schumer says ‘enough with the memes’ in attack on Trump, gets bombarded by sea of memes

US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer inadvertently activated the meme-generating powers of President Donald Trump‘s supporters after criticizing his handling of the government shutdown on Twitter.

“Enough with the memes. Just quit hurting innocent people and re-open the government,” Schumer tweeted on Saturday in response to a ‘Game of Thrones’-inspired meme that Trump had tweeted earlier to champion his border security fence project.

Trump tweeted a photo showing a barrier of steel slats below an image of his frowning face. The photo was captioned “The Wall is Coming,” channeling the famous “Winter is Coming” motto from the popular HBO series.

It was not the first time that Trump altered the Stark House slogan to bolster his agenda. Back when he reintroduced sanctions against Iran in November, the president tweeted a photo with “Sanctions are Coming. November 5” transposed over his image.

The president’s clumsy meme-making was entirely lost on Schumer, who chided Trump for indulging in picture-editing instead of working to reopen the government, now in its third week of shutdown.

The Twittersphere’s response was instantaneous: Schumer’s comments were flooded with dozens of memes.

BUILD THE WALL! pic.twitter.com/6XGlsDxkJ5

— Stephanie Schroeder (@BerthaSassypant) January 7, 2019

pic.twitter.com/9l9DK74XMQ

— Patriot Tony🇺🇸 (@tony_patriot) January 7, 2019

The unproven ‘Russia collusion’ allegations were also brought up.

The anti-Trump resistance crowd entered the meme battle with a few sorties of their own, dragging the Mueller investigation, the “blue wave,” and impeachment calls into the snowballing thread.

January 7, 2019 0

Hacker group releases ‘9/11 Papers’, says future leaks will ‘burn down’ US deep state

The Dark Overlord hacker group has released decryption keys for 650 documents it says are related to 9/11. Unless a ransom is paid, it threatened with more leaks that will have devastating consequences for the US ‘deep state’.

The document dump is just a fraction of the 18,000 secret documents related to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks believed to have been stolen from insurers, law firms, and government agencies.

Hacker group threatens to leak 9/11 ‘truth’ unless paid in bitcoin

The Dark Overlord initially threatened to release the 10GB of data unless the hacked firms paid an unspecified bitcoin ransom. However, on Wednesday, the group announced a “tiered compensation plan” in which the public could make bitcoin payments to unlock the troves of documents.

A day later, the Dark Overlord said that it had received more than $12,000 in bitcoin – enough to unlock “layer 1” and several “checkpoints,” comprised of 650 documents in total.

There are four more layers that remain encrypted and, according to the group, “each layer contains more secrets, more damaging materials… and generally just more truth.”

The hackers are asking for $2 million in bitcoin for the public release of its “megaleak,” which it has dubbed “the 9/11 Papers.”

The group has also offered to sell the documents to terrorist groups, foreign governments, and media outlets. When RT approached the hackers for comment, they proposed providing the channel exclusive access to the potentially explosive papers – for a price, of course.

“They were willing to sell those documents to me. So it’s all about money for them,” RT America correspondent Michelle Greenstein said.

By design, the “layer 1” documents – if authentic – do not appear to contain any explosive revelations. The publications focus mostly on testimonies from airport security and details concerning insurance pay-outs to parties affected by the 9/11 attacks. However, the data dump suggests that the group is not bluffing.

“Let this serve as more definitive proof that what we’re saying is true, and that we’re doing exactly as we promised you. Continue to keep the bitcoins flowing, and we’ll continue to keep the truth flowing,” they wrote in a message that included the decryption keys.

The documents – which were immediately scrubbed from Reddit, Pastebin and Twitter – are available for download on Steemit at the time of writing.

Shortly after releasing the decryption keys, the group posted an ultimatum addressed to “the nation-state of the United States of America and the greater deep-state.”

“To all the other parties involved (airlines, litigation firms, investigation firms, FBI, TSA, FAA, banks, security companies and more), we’re going to burn you down unless you begin to ‘play ball,'” the message reads.

Apparently angered by the fact that the ransom has not yet been met, the message warned: “We’re peeling these layers back like an onion. No one can save you except for us. Pay the f*** up.”

Although the group insists that it is financially motivated and not interested in “hacktivism,” they nonetheless expressed hope that continued crowd-funding would secure the full release of the 18,000 documents.

Dark Overlord strikes again: Mysterious hacker leaks new ABC TV show

“We can’t allow the mainstream media to silence the truth any longer. We must ensure their propaganda is crushed by the truths we’re dealing today,” the hackers wrote after providing the decryption keys for “layer 1.”

The Dark Overlord claim to have hacked documents from not only major global insurers like Lloyds of London and Hiscox, but also Silverstein Properties, which owned the World Trade Center complex, and various government agencies.

The “megaleak“ purportedly includes secret documents that were meant to be destroyed but were instead retained by legal firms, allegedly revealing “the truth about one of the most recognizable incidents in recent history.”

The group emerged in 2016 and has been responsible for numerous extortion schemes involving hacked data. The Dark Overlord infamously leaked an entire season of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black last year after a ransom was not met.

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January 4, 2019 0

Sweden invests big in sentencing people who criticise migration: Convictions increase tenfold

By EMMA R. 3 January 2019

**Head of online hate speech monitoring group “Näthatsgranskaren” Tomas Åberg receives tax funds for mass reporting pensioners and others who write critically about migration on Facebook.**

And now he claims that his reports to the police have resulted in almost 150 hate speech convictions.

“1,218 police reports 2017-2018. 144 hate speech sentences, from 214 notifications. Many are waiting for prosecution!”, writes “Näthatsgranskaren” (The Online Hate Speech Monitor) on Twitter.

👮‍♀️1 218 polisanmälningar 2017-2018.
⚖️ 144 näthatsdomar, från 214 anmälningar. Många väntar på åtal!
✔ 10x ökning av fällande domar.

Följ, rekommendera, retweeta, gilla, kommentera, stöd oss!

Swish: 123 501 44 28
Bli månadsgivare: https://t.co/QakeZbAN5c
Bankgiro: 5232-9026

— Näthatsgranskaren.se (@Nathatgranskare) January 1, 2019

The group also states that its state-financed operations have led to a tenfold increase in the number of hate speech convictions in Sweden, reports Fria Tider.

Over the year, they further “researched, collaborated, and lectured on, among others, the Council of Europe’s conference on criminal online hate speech”, they claim.

The authority MUCF, which finances left-wing extremist organisations such as Expo, has so far granted just over €150.000 in contributions to the Online Hate Speech Monitor.

The group is run by Tomas Åberg, who a few years ago was investigated for extensive animal cruelty but escaped charges by avoiding being served the lawsuit.

Most of the contribution from MUCF goes to paying his salary.

Last spring, Åberg was nominated for the “Swedish Hero” award by one of Sweden’s major newspapers Aftonbladet.

However, the nomination was withdrawn when it was discovered that he had tortured his own animals to death.

The fact that the “Swedish Hero” event was sponsored by the pet insurance company Agria, probably had something to do with the decision to disqualify him.

January 3, 2019 0

Popular Far-Left Account Spends Christmas Doxing and Threatening ICE Employees with Bombs, Apparently Does Not Violate Twitter Rules

by Cassandra Fairbanks January 2, 2019

A Twitter account with over 8,000 followers spent Christmas posting the names, photos, job titles, and locations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Despite being reported dozens of times, Twitter has apparently not found the tweets to be in violation of their terms of service.

According to a report from Far Left Watch, the user @AntiFashGordon had grabbed the employee list from another user, @Animal_Mothah, who described the ICE employees as “American genociders.”

“This list was retweeted hundreds of times and was met with praise by other far-left Twitter users. One user even said ‘Hopefully someone will pay them a warm Christmas visit with some explosives and some buckshot!’” FLW reports.

After another Antifa account doxed Fox News host Tucker Carlson, dozens of fat-left radicals showed up at his home where he lives with his wife and small children.

Far Left Watch notes that since the Twitter rules do not appear to apply to the left, it may be “more strategically sound to report this information to the FBI. Should you decide to go this route, make it clear that these users are using Twitter’s platform to put ICE employees in danger and that Twitter is failing to take any action against them.”

January 2, 2019 0

New Orleans Women’s March CANCELED After Co-Chairs Exposed As Racists

By Laura Loomer

The New Orleans Women’s March rally has been canceled following allegations of Jew hatred and anti-white racism that have rocked the movement and several of its key members, including Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory.

A rally was scheduled for 2019, but has now been axed amid all of the controversy regarding recent reports that Women’s March organizers actively promoted anti-Jewish sentiments among the organization, particularly an odd affinity for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Due to several issues we have decided it is necessary to cancel the 2019 Women’s March in New Orleans,” the National Organization for Women’s (NOW) Baton Rouge chapter posted on social media Friday.

In their statement, NOW’s Baton Rouge Chapter emphasized their desire for Women’s March co-chairs to step down.

In October, Women’s March representative Alyssa Milano was confronted by me — investigative journalist Laura Loomer — while speaking on a panel about the #MeToo movement and Women’s March. I asked Milano to disavow Sarsour, who supports Sharia Law which encouraged Jew hatred and homophobia, two things the Women’s March claims to be against. Milano not only denied my claim despite being presented with evidence in person, but she refused to answer the question. However, nearly two weeks later, Milano disavowed Sarsour, citing Jew hatred.

While my face to face confrontations with both Sarsour and Milano led to a viral discussion about the Women’s March support of Jew hatred, in November, Tablet Magazine expanded on my work and reported Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory, two of the Women’s March’s founders, harassed a Jewish woman who was part of the Women’s March. According to the report, Mallory, who is a supporter of Farrakhan, began berating the woman with anti-Jewish slurs, and told her the Jewish people “bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people,” and “were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade.”

Mallory, along with her colleague Sarsour, has openly supported and promoted Jew hatred. In a picture from Mallory’s Instagram, she said she was “super ready” for Farrakhan to give a speech at the Nation of Islam Saviours’ Day event.

Carmen Perez, another key member of the Women’s March, also posted a since-deleted photo with Farrakhan in 2016. In the post, Perez is seen holding his hand with the caption: “And one thing I know whether people agree with his message or not is that the Minister often speaks his truth.” In the replies to the photo, Sarsour posted, “the brother does not age. God bless him.”

In October, Farrakhan took to Twitter to call for the extermination of Jews. He tweeted, “I’m not anti-Semite, I’m anti-Termite.”

In his talks, Farrakhan has praised Hitler, and has gone as far as saying, “Hitler was a very good man.” You know, the same Hitler responsible for the murder of 6 Million Jews.

In the same Tablet article, Vanessa Wruble, one of the Women’s March founders, said she was forced out of the group because she is Jewish and not liked by Sarsour and Mallory simply because she is Jewish.

Last week, the Chicago Women’s March also canceled their event and issued a statement condemning Sarsour and Mallory’s connections to Farrakhan, who is a resident of Chicago.

“No universe exists in which it is acceptable to support anti-Semitic statements. Women’s March Chicago condemns bigotry in all its forms. We reject Minister Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ views. Our work is to fight against social and racial injustice everywhere, no matter its source. As an additional point of clarification, and as many of you already know, Women’s March Chicago is not now and never has been affiliated with Women’s March Inc. We receive ZERO funding or organizational support from them and share NO common leadership.”

In November,Theresa Shook, the founder of the Women’s March called on Sarsour, Mallory, and Perez to step down from their roles as co-founders of the Women’s March.

Women’s March rallies in Nevada, Portland ,Chicago, and California have also been canceled.

Baton Rouge NOW said they will be refunding donations and t-shirt purchases from unhappy women who no longer wish to attend the Women’s March.

It turns out marching in pink pussy hats with Jew haters and racists isn’t a good look after all…

January 1, 2019 0

Then They Came For Louis CK

December 31, 2018 0

Irony alert: Firm that warned Americans of Russian bots…was running an army of fake Russian bots

By Danielle Ryan

The co-founders of cybersecurity firm New Knowledge warned Americans in November to “remain vigilant” in the face of “Russian efforts” to meddle in US elections. This month, they have been exposed for doing just that themselves.

Ryan Fox and Jonathan Morgan, who run the New Knowledge cybersecurity company which claims to “monitor disinformation” online, penned a foreboding op-ed in the New York Times on November 6, about “the Russians” and their nefarious efforts to influence American elections.

At the time, it struck me that Fox and Morgan’s reasoning seemed a little far-fetched. For example, one of the pieces of evidence presented to prove that Russia had targeted American elections was that lots of people had posted links to RT’s content online. Hardly a smoking gun worthy of a Times oped.

ALSO ON RT.COMThe only ‘Russian bots’ to meddle in US elections belonged to Democrat-linked ‘experts’Morgan and Fox, intrepid cyber sleuths that they are, claimed in the article they had detected more “overall activity” from ongoing Russian influence campaigns than social media companies like Facebook and Twitter had yet revealed — or that other researchers had been able to identify.

The New Knowledge guys even authored a Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russia’s alleged efforts to mess with American democracy. They called it a “propaganda war against American citizens.” Impressive stuff. They must be really good at their job, right?

Racist ‘Russians’ targeted African-Americans in 2016 election ploy, reports claim

This week, however, we learned that New Knowledge was running its own disinformation campaign (or “propaganda war against Americans,”you could say), complete with fake Russian bots designed to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore as a Russia-preferred candidate when he was running for the US senate in Alabama in 2017.

The scheme was exposed by the New York Times — the paper that just over a month earlier published that aforementioned oped, in which Fox and Morgan pontificated about Russian interference online.

New Knowledge created a mini-army of fake Russian bots and fake Facebook groups. The accounts, which had Russian names, were made to follow Moore. An internal company memo boasted that New Knowledge had “orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.”

Moore lost the race by 1.5 percent. To be fair, accusations published by the Washington Post that he pursued underage girls back in the 1980s may have had something to do with it as well, but that’s a different story.

Of course, New Knowledge and even the New York Times, which blew the lid of the operation, are trying to spin this as some kind of “small experiment” during which they “imitated Russian tactics” online to see how they worked. Just for research, of course. They have also both claimed that the scheme, dubbed ‘Project Birmingham’ had almost no effect on the outcome of the race.

The money for the so-called research project came from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, who contributed $750,000 to American Engagement Technologies (AET), which then spent $100,000 on the New Knowledge experiment. After the scheme was exposed, Hoffman offered a public apology, saying he didn’t know exactly how the money had been used and admitting that the tactics were “highly disturbing.”

ALSO ON RT.COMLinkedIn billionaire ‘sorry’ for funding ‘Russian bot’ disinformation campaign against Roy MooreIf people like Fox and Morgan actually cared about so-called Russian meddling or the integrity of American elections, they would not have run the deceptive campaign against Moore, no matter how undesirable he was as a candidate. Their sneaky and deceitful methods are in total contrast to the public profile they have cultivated for themselves as a firm fighting the good fight for the public good. But is it really that much of a surprise?

You would think that a newspaper like the New York Times would have cottoned on to the fact that guys like Fox and Morgan, with their histories in the US military and intelligence agencies, have clear agendas and are not exactly squeaky clean or the most credible sources of information when it comes to anything to do with Russia. But that kind of insight or circumspection might be too much to ask for in the age of Russiagate.

Capitalize on ‘Russian meddling’ like a pro: Fake it in state elections, write report for Senate

Facebook removed Morgan’s account on Saturday for “engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior” around the Alabama election. Three days after publishing its initial article on the scandal (the one in which it played down the effects of New Knowledge’s disinfo campaign), the New York Times published a follow-up piece about the Facebook removal, in which it admitted that the controversy would be a “stinging embarrassment” for the social media researcher, noting that he had been a “leading voice” against supposed Russian disinformation campaigns.

In Fox and Morgan’s original NYT oped, they warned of the ubiquitous “Russia-linked social media accounts” and estimated that “at least hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even millions” of US citizens had engaged with them online. One must now wonder, were they including their own fake Russian bots in that count, or were they leaving those ones out?

It’s nearly two years into the Trump presidency and still we have no solid evidence that the Russian “collusion” theory is anything more than a fantasy concocted by Democrats desperate to provide a more palatable reason for Hillary Clinton’s loss than the fact that she simply ran a bad campaign.

In fact, at this point, we actually have more solid and irrefutable evidence of election meddling from the likes of dodgy American and British companies like Cambridge Analytica and New Knowledge than we do of any meddling orchestrated by Russia.

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December 31, 2018 0

Democratic operative who bragged about Russian bot ‘false flag’ issues contradiction-filled denial

JONATHON MORGAN

The Democratic operative who boasted about orchestrating a “false flag” operation that used fake Russian bots to swing a US Senate race has issued a farcical denial in which he backpedals on his own publicly available statements.

Jonathon Morgan, CEO, and co-founder of “Democratic-leaning” private intelligence firm New Knowledge, was reportedly part of a secretive campaign to discredit Republican candidate, Roy Moore, during the Alabama election. According to an internal report obtained by the New York Times, Morgan and his accomplices boasted about how they had “orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.” Moore ended up losing the race by a hair to his Democratic opponent Doug Jones – who became the first Democrat in 25 years to serve Alabama in the Senate.

Morgan adamantly denied these accusations in a statement posted on New Knowledge’s blog, insisting that his company used the election to conduct “research” and “did not engage or operate a botnet.” In fact, according to Morgan, New Knowledge believed from the beginning that the “Russian bots” purportedly aligned with Moore were fake. The hundreds of Cyrillic-sporting accounts that followed Moore on Twitter “seemed to us to be the work of internet trolls, not Russian activity,” Morgan wrote. He acknowledged that the media presented the bots as a genuine Russian influence campaign, but asserted that “to this day, we have no idea where these followers came from or what their purpose was.”

Morgan, it appears, felt differently during the actual election. Citing his much-admired “Russian bot” dashboard, Hamilton 68, Morgan tweeted in November 2017 that Moore was conspicuously popular among “Russian trolls.”

In other words: In November 2017 – when Moore and his Democratic opponent were in a bitter fight to win over voters – Morgan openly promoted the theory that Russian bots were supporting Moore’s campaign. A year later – after being caught red-handed orchestrating a self-described “false flag” operation – Morgan now says that his team never thought that the bots were Russian and have no idea what their purpose was. Did he think no one would notice?

Tellingly, Morgan publicized during the election that New Knowledge had invested time and resources into unmasking the owner of a pro-Moore Twitter account. True to form, Morgan suggested that the Twitter user was a Russian bot – an accusation that was found to be baseless after the Daily Beast conducted a thorough investigation into the matter.

This is just one of several painfully apparent inconsistencies with Morgan’s “research” story. He insists that his company’s activities were limited to the creation of a benign Facebook page aimed at Alabama conservatives, which was used to gauge how political audiences responded to “mainstream, moderate” journalism.

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None of this adds up. According to the New York Times, which broke the story, Morgan “acknowledged his role in the secret Alabama operation on Facebook and Twitter.” Why is he now denying any role – and why is there no mention of Twitter activities in his statement? Morgan’s obstinate denial insists that he was only involved in setting up a harmless Facebook page.
Morgan ends his statement by declaring that New Knowledge “is in the integrity business.” This is why, as the Times reported, the company “intended to help Mr. Jones and hurt Mr. Moore and that its operators believed it had succeeded in doing so.”

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December 29, 2018 0

LinkedIn billionaire ‘sorry’ for funding ‘Russian bot’ disinformation campaign against Roy Moore

The co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, has apologized to Republican Roy Moore for funding an organisation that faked a ‘Russian bot’ involvement to mar his election campaign in Alabama.

American Engagement Technologies (AET), which Hoffman gave $750,000 to, put $100,000 of the entrepreneur’s money towards New Knowledge, a cybersecurity firm which fabricated some 1,000 Russian language Twitter accounts to follow Moore.

The company used the tactic to link the controversial Republican to so-called Russian influence campaigns and then fed it to the mainstream media. They also created misleading Facebook pages urging Republicans to support a ‘write-in’ candidate instead of supporting Moore. The ploy was revealed by New York Times earlier this month.

“I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing,” Hoffman told the Washington Post. “For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track AET — the organization I did support — more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would reject.”

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AET is ran by former Barack Obama administration official, Mikey Dickerson, who previously helped the US government with its adoption of new technology.

Last week, Facebook suspended five accounts linked to the operation for “engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior.”One of the accounts belonged to the CEO of New Knowledge, Jonathon Morgan, who claims he was acting alone as a researcher and not on behalf of the company.

Morgan is also one of the developers of the Hamilton 68 dashboard, a tool that purports to look into ongoing Russian social media operations by monitoring Twitter accounts, the list of which is too secret to be disclosed.

Hamilton 68 has been used by US publication Mother Jones to bolster a December 2017 article titled: ‘Russian Propagandists Are Pushing for Roy Moore to Win.’

Senator Doug Jones, the Democrat who narrowly defeated Moore last May, has called for a federal investigation. A move supported by the chastened Hoffman. “What is obvious now is that we have focused so much on Russia that we haven’t focused on the fact that people in this country could take the same playbook and do the same damn thing,” stated Jones.

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December 28, 2018 0

Microsoft has partnered with a shoddy Neocon-backed “fact checker” called NewsGuard which rates websites’ “credibility” in-browser and NewsGuard’s CEO says their goal is to have their software on all smartphones and computers by default. From MintPressNews:

US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer inadvertently activated the meme-generating powers of President Donald Trump‘s supporters after criticizing his handling of the government shutdown on Twitter.

The Dark Overlord hacker group has released decryption keys for 650 documents it says are related to 9/11. Unless a ransom is paid, it threatened with more leaks that will have devastating consequences for the US ‘deep state’.

Head of online hate speech monitoring group “Näthatsgranskaren” Tomas Åberg receives tax funds for mass reporting pensioners and others who write critically about migration on Facebook.

A Twitter account with over 8,000 followers spent Christmas posting the names, photos, job titles, and locations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

The New Orleans Women’s March rally has been canceled following allegations of Jew hatred and anti-white racism that have rocked the movement and several of its key members, including Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory.

The co-founders of cybersecurity firm New Knowledge warned Americans in November to “remain vigilant” in the face of “Russian efforts” to meddle in US elections. This month, they have been exposed for doing just that themselves.

The Democratic operative who boasted about orchestrating a “false flag” operation that used fake Russian bots to swing a US Senate race has issued a farcical denial in which he backpedals on his own publicly available statements.

The co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, has apologized to Republican Roy Moore for funding an organisation that faked a ‘Russian bot’ involvement to mar his election campaign in Alabama.

Microsoft has partnered with a shoddy Neocon-backed “fact checker” called NewsGuard which rates websites’ “credibility” in-browser and NewsGuard’s CEO says their goal is to have their software on all smartphones and computers by default.

From MintPressNews:

**Head of online hate speech monitoring group “Näthatsgranskaren” Tomas Åberg receives tax funds for mass reporting pensioners and others who write critically about migration on Facebook.**