People protesting police violence against back Americans throughout the country note that no one seems to recognize the smash-and-grab fire-setting protesters. They did say that these individuals appeared to be very organized, though. Then the country found out who was really behind the violence.
One tweeter insisted it was a member of a national “antifa” group. That is interesting, because Antifa’s major role has been to protect protesters, support them, and yes, use force when necessary to do so. They do not commit violence for violence’s sake. Yet, his Twitter account pushed violence.
Twitter has acted against fake accounts linked to Identity Evropa and inciting hateful conduct. Hashtag @ANTIFA_US tweeted according to NBC News:
‘Tonight’s the night, Comrades. Tonight we say ‘F— The City’ and we move into the residential areas… the white hoods…. and we take what’s ours …’
Antifa is a movement, not an organization committed to fighting fascism — thus the name about anti-fascism “Antifa.” Trump frequently attacks the loosely organized group, blaming them for violence and property destruction during the protests. There has been no evidence behind his claims, but keep in mind, Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign manager came into the organization via his internet expertise.
Two hashtags suggested there was a “cover-up” or a “blackout” of protests in Washington, D.C. during the night. Each claimed that the protesters had been silenced by a “secret internet blackout.” Twitter took out this far-right account that was generating trending topic due to:
‘[C]oordinated attempts to disrupt the public conversation.’
The company claimed it had already suspended “several hundred accounts.” Furthermore, it was investigating the viral spread of these hashtags that had been amplified by “hundreds of spammy accounts:”
‘We’re taking action proactively on any coordinated attempts to disrupt the public conversation around this issue.’
According to the Twitter spokesperson, the company pulls down any hashtags that violate its rules. One example of that would be platform manipulation.
A nonprofit group that monitors worldwide internet access, NetBlocks, did not find “mass-scale internet disruption” in Washington over the past two days:
‘We want trends to promote healthy discussions on Twitter. This means that at times, we may prevent certain content from trending. These include trends that violate the Twitter Rules.’
Yet, eporter for the local ABC affiliate WOLA Victoria Sanchez was covering the protests and urged Twitter to “disprove the hoax:”
‘A lot of people are asking me about a possible #dcblackout. I’ve been out near the White House since 4 am and haven’t experienced any outage.’
#DCBlackout is a “misinformation campaign” boosted by bots and hacked accounts. Twitter could see a verbatim tweet posted hundreds of times, a dead giveaway:
‘Yeah…… as someone seeing #dcblackout trending, who lives and works in the DC metro area, and who has friends telecommuting into DC rn….. This hashtag looks like misinformation,” read the tweet.’
Independent bot researcher Josh Russell said that the continuing protests lend themselves to “foreign and domestic hacking” and “platform manipulation.” Russell said hostile foreign governments frequently “look at opportunities to make it seem as though there is an infrastructure failure” during times of crisis:
‘Any large ‘online’ event is going to have these types of things happen. Every bad actor that sees the opportunity to create some panic is going to leverage the situation to do so. It’s nothing new.
Russell continued:
‘This is a common thing for foreign disinformation agents. They would be trying to get people to believe that things are much worse on the ground than they are.’
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
