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Post-Truth Protest: How 4Chan Cooked Up...Zagate Bullshit | Tuters
5/5/2019 Post-Truth Protest: How 4chan Cooked Up the Pizzagate Bullshit | Tuters | M/C Journal M/C JOURNAL Home > Vol 21, No 3 (2018) > Tuters ARTICLE TOOLS HOME Post-Truth Protest: How 4chan Cooked Up the Pizzagate Bullshit PRINT THIS ARTICLE Marc Tuters, Emilija Jokubauskaitė, Daniel Bach CURRENT ISSUE INDEXING METADATA HOW TO CITE ITEM UPCOMING ISSUES Introduction FINDING REFERENCES ARCHIVES On 4 December 2016, a man entered a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor armed with an AR15 assault rifle in an attempt to save the victims of an alleged satanic pedophilia ring run by EMAIL THIS ARTICLE CONTRIBUTORS prominent members of the Democratic Party. While the story had already been discredited (LOGIN REQUIRED) (LaCapria), at the time of the incident, nearly half of Trump voters were found to give a ABOUT M/C JOURNAL measure of credence to the same rumors that had apparently inspired the gunman (Frankovic). EMAIL THE AUTHOR Was we will discuss here, the bizarre conspiracy theory known as "Pizzagate" had in fact (LOGIN REQUIRED) USER HOME originated a month earlier on 4chan/pol/, a message forum whose very raison d’être is to protest against “political correctness” of the liberal establishment, and which had recently ABOUT THE AUTHORS JOURNAL CONTENT become a hub for “loose coordination” amongst members the insurgent US ‘altright’ movement Marc Tuters SEARCH (Hawley 48). Over a period of 25 hours beginning on 3 November 2016, contributors to the /pol/ forum combed through a cache of private emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign https://oilab.eu manager John Podesta, obtained by Russian hackers (FranceschiBicchierai) and leaked by University of Amsterdam SEARCH SCOPE Julian Assange (Wikileaks). -
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Proceedings of the Fifteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2021) A Large Open Dataset from the Parler Social Network Max Aliapoulios1, Emmi Bevensee2, Jeremy Blackburn3, Barry Bradlyn4, Emiliano De Cristofaro5, Gianluca Stringhini6, Savvas Zannettou7 1New York University, 2SMAT, 3Binghamton University, 4University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 5University College London, 6Boston University, 7Max Planck Institute for Informatics [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract feasible in technical terms to create a new social media plat- Parler is as an “alternative” social network promoting itself form, but marketing the platform towards specific polarized as a service that allows to “speak freely and express yourself communities is an extremely successful strategy to bootstrap openly, without fear of being deplatformed for your views.” a user base. In other words, there is a subset of users on Twit- Because of this promise, the platform become popular among ter, Facebook, Reddit, etc., that will happily migrate to a new users who were suspended on mainstream social networks platform, especially if it advertises moderation policies that for violating their terms of service, as well as those fearing do not restrict the growth and spread of political polariza- censorship. In particular, the service was endorsed by several tion, conspiracy theories, extremist ideology, hateful and vi- conservative public figures, encouraging people to migrate olent speech, and mis- and dis-information. from traditional social networks. After the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Parler has been progressively de- Parler. -
Riots: a Comparative Study of Twitter and Parler
111 Capitol (Pat)riots: A comparative study of Twitter and Parler HITKUL, IIIT - Delhi, India AVINASH PRABHU∗, DIPANWITA GUHATHAKURTA∗, JIVITESH JAIN∗, MALLIKA SUBRA- MANIAN∗, MANVITH REDDY∗, SHRADHA SEHGAL∗, and TANVI KARANDIKAR∗, IIIT - Hy- derabad, India AMOGH GULATI∗ and UDIT ARORA∗, IIIT - Delhi, India RAJIV RATN SHAH, IIIT - Delhi, India PONNURANGAM KUMARAGURU, IIIT - Delhi, India On 6 January 2021, a mob of right-wing conservatives stormed the USA Capitol Hill interrupting the session of congress certifying 2020 Presidential election results. Immediately after the start of the event, posts related to the riots started to trend on social media. A social media platform which stood out was a free speech endorsing social media platform Parler; it is being claimed as the platform on which the riots were planned and talked about. Our report presents a contrast between the trending content on Parler and Twitter around the time of riots. We collected data from both platforms based on the trending hashtags and draw comparisons based on what are the topics being talked about, who are the people active on the platforms and how organic is the content generated on the two platforms. While the content trending on Twitter had strong resentments towards the event and called for action against rioters and inciters, Parler content had a strong conservative narrative echoing the ideas of voter fraud similar to the attacking mob. We also find a disproportionately high manipulation of traffic on Parler when compared to Twitter. Additional Key Words and Phrases: Social Computing, Data Mining, Social Media Analysis, Capitol Riots, Parler, Twitter 1 INTRODUCTION Misinformation of the United States of America’s presidential election results being fraudulent has been spreading across the world since the elections in November 2020.1 Public protests and legal cases were taking place across the states against the allegation of voter fraud and manhandling of mail-in ballots.2 This movement took a violent height when a mob attacked the Capitol Hill building to stop certification of Mr. -
Building Resilience & Confronting Risk In
BUILDING RESILIENCE & CONFRONTING RISK IN THE COVID-19 ERA A PARENTS & CAREGIVERS GUIDE TO ONLINE RADICALIZATION POLARIZATION AND EXTREMISM RESEARCH AND INNOVATION LAB (PERIL) PERIL brings the resources and expertise of the university sector to bear CONTENTS on the problem of growing youth polarization and extremist radicalization, through scalable research, intervention, and public education ideas to PARENT & CAREGIVER GUIDE 3 reduce rising polarization and hate. WHAT IS ONLINE RADICALIZATION? WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? 4 SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER NEW RISKS IN THE COVID-19 ERA 5 The SPLC seeks to be a catalyst for racial justice in the South and RECOGNIZING WARNING SIGNS 6 beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white UNDERSTANDING THE DRIVERS 7 supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the ENGAGE AND EMPOWER 9 human rights of all people. RESPONDING TO HATE 11 HOW TO GET HELP 12 APPENDIX: STAYING ALERT TO SITES, PLATFORMS AND APPS FREQUENTLY EXPLOITED BY EXTREMISTS 17 ENDNOTES 19 CREDITS 20 ILLUSTRATIONS BY CLAUDIA WHITAKER PARENT & CAREGIVER GUIDE Who is this guide for? We wrote this guide with a wide Whether you live with a young person, or work virtually range of caregivers in mind. with youth, radicalization to extremism is something we all should be concerned about. Extremists looking Caregivers living with children and young adults. This to recruit and convert children are predatory. Like all includes parents, grandparents, foster parents, extended forms of child exploitation, extremist recruitment drives families, and residential counselors who are the a wedge between young people and the adults they would guardians and caregivers of children and youth living typically trust. -
Understanding the Qanon Conspiracy from the Perspective of Canonical Information
The Gospel According to Q: Understanding the QAnon Conspiracy from the Perspective of Canonical Information Max Aliapoulios*;y, Antonis Papasavva∗;z, Cameron Ballardy, Emiliano De Cristofaroz, Gianluca Stringhini, Savvas Zannettou◦, and Jeremy Blackburn∓ yNew York University, zUniversity College London, Boston University, ◦Max Planck Institute for Informatics, ∓Binghamton University [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] — iDRAMA, https://idrama.science — Abstract administration of a vaccine [54]. Some of these theories can threaten democracy itself [46, 50]; e.g., Pizzagate emerged The QAnon conspiracy theory claims that a cabal of (literally) during the 2016 US Presidential elections and claimed that blood-thirsty politicians and media personalities are engaged Hillary Clinton was involved in a pedophile ring [51]. in a war to destroy society. By interpreting cryptic “drops” of A specific example of the negative consequences social me- information from an anonymous insider calling themself Q, dia can have is the QAnon conspiracy theory. It originated on adherents of the conspiracy theory believe that Donald Trump the Politically Incorrect Board (/pol/) of the anonymous im- is leading them in an active fight against this cabal. QAnon ageboard 4chan via a series of posts from a user going by the has been covered extensively by the media, as its adherents nickname Q. Claiming to be a US government official, Q de- have been involved in multiple violent acts, including the Jan- scribed a vast conspiracy of actors who have infiltrated the US uary 6th, 2021 seditious storming of the US Capitol building. -
Capitol Insurrection at Center of Conservative Movement
Capitol Insurrection At Center Of Conservative Movement: At Least 43 Governors, Senators And Members Of Congress Have Ties To Groups That Planned January 6th Rally And Riots. SUMMARY: On January 6, 2021, a rally in support of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election “turned deadly” when thousands of people stormed the U.S. Capitol at Donald Trump’s urging. Even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who rarely broke with Trump, has explicitly said, “the mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the President and other powerful people.” These “other powerful people” include a vast array of conservative officials and Trump allies who perpetuated false claims of fraud in the 2020 election after enjoying critical support from the groups that fueled the Capitol riot. In fact, at least 43 current Governors or elected federal office holders have direct ties to the groups that helped plan the January 6th rally, along with at least 15 members of Donald Trump’s former administration. The links that these Trump-allied officials have to these groups are: Turning Point Action, an arm of right-wing Turning Point USA, claimed to send “80+ buses full of patriots” to the rally that led to the Capitol riot, claiming the event would be one of the most “consequential” in U.S. history. • The group spent over $1.5 million supporting Trump and his Georgia senate allies who claimed the election was fraudulent and supported efforts to overturn it. • The organization hosted Trump at an event where he claimed Democrats were trying to “rig the election,” which he said would be “the most corrupt election in the history of our country.” • At a Turning Point USA event, Rep. -
Testimony of Lecia Brooks Chief of Staff, Southern Poverty Law Center
Testimony of Lecia Brooks Chief of Staff, Southern Poverty Law Center before the Subcommittee on National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy Committee on Financial Services United States House of Representatives Dollars against Democracy: Domestic Terrorist Financing in the Aftermath of Insurrection February 25, 2021 My name is Lecia Brooks. I am chief of staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Now in our 50th year, the SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people. SPLC lawyers have worked to shut down some of the nation’s most violent white supremacist groups by winning crushing, multimillion-dollar jury verdicts on behalf of their victims. We have helped dismantle vestiges of Jim Crow, reformed juvenile justice practices, shattered barriers to equality for women, children, the LGBTQ+ community, and the disabled, and worked to protect low-wage immigrant workers from exploitation. The SPLC began tracking white supremacist activity in the 1980s, during a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and other organized extremist hate groups. Today, the SPLC is the premier U.S. nonprofit organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists. In the early 1990s, the SPLC launched its pioneering Teaching Tolerance program to provide educators with free, anti-bias classroom resources, such as classroom documentaries and lesson plans. Now renamed Learning For Justice, our program reaches millions of schoolchildren with award-winning curricula and other materials that promote understanding of our nation’s history and respect for others, helping educators create inclusive, equitable school environments. -
Analysis of Evolution of Meme Trends on 4Chan.Org's /Pol/ Board Via
Analysis of evolution of meme trends on 4chan.org's /pol/ board via image clustering J. Jin, E. Williams, S. Lam, O. Savas, E. Hohman, M. Bosch-Ruiz, P. Rodrigues Accenture Applied Intelligence Arlington, VA 22203 November 5, 2020 1 Introduction Internet memes rapidly accelerate the spread of ideas on social media platforms. Although memes are primarily consumed as entertainment, they often communicate messages that influence viewers' political opinions [4]. With the advent of new multimodal classification techniques, we can garner new insights about the content and culture of a platform. [2] analyzes memes using image, text, and face encoding and applies this to a large online conversation around a political event, and [5] finds that 30% of the image-with-text memes in their sample have identifiable themes that are politically relevant and shared more often by Democrats than Republicans. Often new memes are created from \templates" based on key elements and features of already popular memes. These templates can be exploited by \meme factories," which are coordinated networks of creators, for social or monetary gain. Employing meme tem- plates help users achieve widespread dissemination, urge call-to-actions, affect discourse, and spread misinformation [1]. The emergence of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, intro- duced an influx of Internet memes reflecting on the infection rate, origin, and location of cases. Given 4chan.org's /pol/ imageboard's reputation as a vector for misinformation [7], we conducted a study of meme templates and their use in knowledge spread throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to answer: 1. What computer vision methods can we use to identify and cluster meme templates? 2. -
January 11, 2021 NCRI Assessment of the Capitol Riots Violent Actors and Ideologies Behind the Events
NCRI Assessment of the Capitol Riots Violent Actors and Ideologies Behind the Events of January 6, 2021. Former Congressman Denver Riggleman Strategist, The Network Contagion Research Institute Alex Goldenberg Lead Intelligence Analyst, The Network Contagion Research Institute Joel Finkelstein Director, The Network Contagion Research Institute Senior Research Fellow, Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience, Rutgers University John Farmer Former New Jersey State Attorney General and Senior Counsel, 9/11 Commission Director, Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience, Rutgers University Brian Harrell Strategic Advisor, The Network Contagion Research Institute Former Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection at DHS Danica Finkelstein Intelligence Analyst, The Network Contagion Research Institute Lea Marchl Intelligence Analyst, The Network Contagion Research Institute The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) is a neutral and independent third party whose mission it is to track, expose, and combat misinformation, deception, manipulation, and hate across social media channels. On January 6th, President Trump’s “Save America” rally was attended by a majority of peaceful protestors. However, a sizable crowd left the speech delivered by the President and overwhelmed law enforcement officials in order to break into the U.S. Capitol building during the certification of the electoral vote. While a majority of attendees remained peaceful, many participated in the violent storming and looting of the U.S. Capitol building. These events saw law enforcement evacuate lawmakers, Capitol offices burglarized and left 5 dead and many wounded. The cause(s) of these events are several-fold according to NCRI’s analytical assessment: Bottom Line Up Front: ● Virtually all violent vanguard elements appeared to come from predominantly far-right, fringe groups. -
Partisan Platforms: Responses to Perceived Liberal Bias in Social Media
Partisan Platforms: Responses to Perceived Liberal Bias in Social Media A Research Paper submitted to the Department of Engineering and Society Presented to the Faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Virginia • Charlottesville, Virginia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Science, School of Engineering Luke Giraudeau Spring, 2021 On my honor as a University Student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment as defined by the Honor Guidelines for Thesis-Related Assignments Signature __________________________________________ Date __________ Luke Giraudeau Approved __________________________________________ Date __________ Richard Jacques, Department of Engineering and Society Introduction In the United States, public opinion about tech companies’ political biases is divided along partisan lines (Vogels, Perrin, & Anderson, 2020). In the U.S. since 2018, 69 percent of Republicans claim that technology companies favor liberal views, whereas only 19 percent of Democrats say that technology companies favor the alternative view. Over 50 percent of liberals believe that perspectives are treated equally, whereas only 22 percent of conservatives feel this way. Critics who allege bias have organized to promote legislation such as the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act (2020) as well as an executive order (Executive Order 13,925, 2020). Furthermore, conservative entrepreneurs have produced new social media platforms such as Gab and Parler that claim -
Parler V. Amazon Web Services
1 FILED 2021 MAR 02 04:27 PM 2 KING COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT CLERK 3 E-FILED CASE #: 21-2-02856-6 SEA 4 5 6 7 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF KING 8 PARLER LLC, 9 Case No. __________________________ Plaintiff, 10 vs. COMPLAINT 11 12 AMAZON WEB SERVICES, INC., and AMAZON.COM, INC., (JURY TRIAL REQUESTED) 13 Defendants. 14 15 16 NATURE OF ACTION 17 1. Defendants Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon) and its subsidiary Amazon Web Services, 18 Inc. (AWS) are commercial Goliaths. Amazon is the fourth most valuable company in the world 19 with a worth of nearly $1.7 trillion, about the annual GDP of Russia. Amazon is also the largest of 20 the Big Five “Big Tech” companies in the United States and has the fourth largest share of the 21 global internet advertising market. And Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is the world’s leading 22 cloud service provider, capturing nearly a third of the global market. See Felix Richter, Amazon 23 Leads $130-Billion Cloud Market, STATISTA (Feb. 4, 2021), 24 https://www.statista.com/chart/18819/worldwide-market-share-of-leading-cloud-infrastructure- 25 service-providers/. AWS generates tens of billions of dollars in revenue annually for Amazon. Id. LAW OFFICES COMPLAINT - 1 CALFO EAKES LLP 1301 SECOND AVENUE, SUITE 2800 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98101 TEL, (206) 407-2200 FAX, (206) 407-2224 1 And, when companies are this big, it’s easy to be a bully. Many start-up companies that have 2 appeared to be a threat to Amazon and AWS have felt their wrath. -
Congressional Record United States Th of America PROCEEDINGS and DEBATES of the 117 CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION
E PL UR UM IB N U U S Congressional Record United States th of America PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE 117 CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION Vol. 167 WASHINGTON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2021 No. 26 House of Representatives The House met at 9 a.m. and was The SPEAKER led the Pledge of Alle- tives, the Clerk received the following mes- called to order by the Speaker. giance as follows: sage from the Secretary of the Senate on f I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the February 9, 2021, at 3:11 p.m.: PRAYER United States of America, and to the Repub- That the Senate agreed to S. Res. 47. lic for which it stands, one nation under God, With best wishes, I am, The Chaplain, Reverend Margaret indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Sincerely, Grun Kibben, offered the following f GLORIA J. LETT, prayer: Deputy Clerk. Loving God, I come to You this day COMMUNICATION FROM THE in prayer for each and every person SERGEANT AT ARMS f who labors in this place, for their The SPEAKER laid before the House heartfelt dedication to their tasks, for the following communication from the ELECTING MEMBERS TO CERTAIN the commitments they have made to Sergeant at Arms of the House of Rep- STANDING COMMITTEES OF THE serve their country as Members, as resentatives: HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES staffers, interns, service providers, and OFFICE OF THE SERGEANT AT ARMS, security officers, and the whole range HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The SPEAKER. Without objection, of duties and responsibilities rep- Washington, DC, February 8, 2021.