Hamilton 68

 

If you have read only one story about the last two US Presidential elections, chances are it’s contained a reference to Russian meddling/interference with their social media “bot farms.” On Friday, Matt Taibbi revealed that much of the so-called “proof” of that interference came from a single source: The Hamilton 68 Project.

The problem with all these stories that credited Hamilton 68 is that the project itself was bogus. It was one big psyop — led by a former FBI Agent turned MSNBC “misinformation analyst,” Clint Watts, the German Marshall Fund (US), and a veritable “Who’s Who” of Trump haters including, you guessed it, Bill Kristol.

To his credit, then-Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth said in an internal memo, “I think we need to just call this out on the bulls–t it is.” To his eternal shame, he didn’t have the hanging down equipment to actually do just that. From Taibbi:

The two founders of Hamilton 68, the blue-and-red team of former counselor to Marco Rubio Jamie Fly and Hillary for America Foreign Policy Advisor Laura Rosenberger, told Politico they couldn’t reveal the names of the accounts because “the Russians will simply shut them down.” Tchya, right. One look at the list reveals the real reason they couldn’t make it public.

This was not faulty science. It was a scam. Instead of tracking how “Russia” influenced American attitudes, Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming. As Roth put it, “Virtually any conclusion drawn from [the dashboard] will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.”

Taibbi calls it “the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history.”

You will want to read the whole thing.

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There are 18 comments.

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  1. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    This may be the biggest thing to happen to Republican politics since the Tea Party won in 2010 — but more likely it will be sighed away by the very party people it indicts.

    Meet the Old Boss.

    • #1
  2. DrewInWisconsin, Oik Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oik
    @DrewInWisconsin

    The sad part is, even though the Russian Bot excuse has been revealed as a sham, half the country (and 98% of the journos) still believe it.

    Bill Kristol is the devil, by the way.

    Right up there with Soros in terms of the web of front organizations that he hides behind. I’ll bet many of the “conservative” media outlets trusted by Ricochet have connections to Kristol.

    A literal devil from hell.

    • #2
  3. DrewInWisconsin, Oik Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oik
    @DrewInWisconsin

    And Charlie Sykes is his handmaiden.

    • #3
  4. Chris O Coolidge
    Chris O
    @ChrisO

    What an interesting week for learning about the Internet (old Chicago Style Guide called for the word to be capitalized, so I still do it). 

    The amount of chatter calling for Hamilton 68’s outing and ouster did leave an impression. Good instincts, but the D operatives inside Twitter were good at sowing doubt for that course of action. 

    Meanwhile, were you curious about Pfizer’s Internet game? They’ve got some, and partners to go with it. 

    Add to that the RNC election, about which nothing has been posted here (relevancy, Ricochet) and there are reasons to call it a bad week, though it’s never bad when things come into the clear.

     

    • #4
  5. EDISONPARKS Member
    EDISONPARKS
    @user_54742

    The strangest aspect of the Russia Hoax and all it’s ancillary scandals is how it has been effectively buried for so long and how the most light shone on the culprits to date has been the Twitter revelations by virtue of the Musk Twittter purchase and the actual journalism committed primarily by liberal Matt Taibbi.

    The fact that it is rarely discussed how the Weissmann Mueller Special Counsel had access to everything and purposely made sure this Russia Hoax persisted and eventually(after Barr said rap it up) concluded Trump was probably guilty of obstruction of justice …. when with everything we know now, it is the Weissmann Mueller Special Counsel who were an integral part of the perpetuating the hoax and it was in fact the  Weissmann Mueller Special Counsel who were the ones guilty of obstruction of justice.

    Watch the criminals from the Weissmann Mueller Special Counsel continue to swan along in their DC career path with no concern they will ever be brought to justice. 

    Legal corruption … what a racket.

    • #5
  6. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    I wasn’t here during the Trump administration, and Ratburger was vaporized, so I can’t point to where I said this or that — I can hardly keep it straight.  But I know that I was stridently among those saying that the investigation IS the cover-up, as many here were.

    And you know what — we were right, and now it’s public knowledge, and it’s all just down the memory hole with Benghazi and Afghanistan and the coup of 2020.

    • #6
  7. James Salerno Inactive
    James Salerno
    @JamesSalerno

    Everything “bad” that’s happened in the United States over the past decade has been Russia’s fault (lies), and now we’re in a proxy war with them.

    Shocking.

    • #7
  8. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    So instead of having anyone on to talk about these stories on the Flagship. Ie, Glen Greenwald, Matt Taibi or Amanda Millius.  The flagship continues to shill for neocons like Eypatch McCain.  

    • #8
  9. genferei Member
    genferei
    @genferei

    Can we acknowledge that what “NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times … Washington Post [and] Mother Jones” is doing is “journalism”? And that, therefore, journalism is nothing to do with truth? Good. 

    • #9
  10. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    genferei (View Comment):

    Can we acknowledge that what “NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times Washington Post [and] Mother Jones” is doing is “journalism”? And that, therefore, journalism is nothing to do with truth? Good.

    “Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as a source.”

    When Snopes uses it for a source, you know it’s true.

    • #10
  11. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    So instead of having anyone on to talk about these stories on the Flagship. Ie, Glen Greenwald, Matt Taibi or Amanda Millius. The flagship continues to shill for neocons like Eypatch McCain.

    I’d love Taibi on

    • #11
  12. Bereket Kelile Member
    Bereket Kelile
    @BereketKelile

    Isn’t this just reaffirming the point that Twitter was lying about their moderation practices? It’s important to reveal these facts and get it out there in the public record but this seems like a matter of degree rather than kind at this point.

    it’s a mystery to me why conservatives think Elon is crashing and burning the Twitter plane.

    • #12
  13. DrewInWisconsin, Oik Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oik
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Bereket Kelile (View Comment):
    it’s a mystery to me why conservatives think Elon is crashing and burning the Twitter plane.

    They do?

    • #13
  14. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    @drewinwisconsin Yeah, there’s a lot of moaning going on. It seemed that things got a lot better in Twitterland immediately after the sale. Now, engagement is way down for conservative accounts.

    Dave Rubin just spent two days out in SF talking to Musk and his team. What they’ve discovered is that the whole system was built primarily for shadow banning. They have the monumental task of completely rebuilding the code while it’s still running.

    For example, Twitter runs a three-strike program. If you’re suspended, that’s a strike. Even if you’re forgiven or the suspension was found to be in error, there seems to be no way to remove the “strike.” And that limits your reach. 

    • #14
  15. Chris O Coolidge
    Chris O
    @ChrisO

    EJHill (View Comment):

    @ drewinwisconsin Yeah, there’s a lot of moaning going on. It seemed that things got a lot better in Twitterland immediately after the sale. Now, engagement is way down for conservative accounts.

    Dave Rubin just spent two days out in SF talking to Musk and his team. What they’ve discovered is that the whole system was built primarily for shadow banning. They have the monumental task of completely rebuilding the code while it’s still running.

    For example, Twitter runs a three-strike program. If you’re suspended, that’s a strike. Even if you’re forgiven or the suspension was found to be in error, there seems to be no way to remove the “strike.” And that limits your reach.

    Yes, it’s still running. Someone recorded Robert Malone’s retweets and likes decreasing in real time the other day. You can’t just scrap it and take it down, it has to be surgical to make sure everything stays up. Quite a task and Musk has much praise for the engineers that have stayed on. Their knowledge and expertise has been relied on during this process, and they keep coming through for the new boss.

    • #15
  16. DrewInWisconsin, Oik Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oik
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Behold, a follow-up:

    Responding to Hamilton 68

     

    • #16
  17. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Bereket Kelile (View Comment):

    Isn’t this just reaffirming the point that Twitter was lying about their moderation practices? It’s important to reveal these facts and get it out there in the public record but this seems like a matter of degree rather than kind at this point.

    it’s a mystery to me why conservatives think Elon is crashing and burning the Twitter plane.

    Which conservatives are those?

    • #17
  18. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    DrewInWisconsin, Oik (View Comment):

    Behold, a follow-up:

    Responding to Hamilton 68

     

    Paywalled.

    • #18
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