In this companion piece I have to painstakingly explain how Matt Taibbi 1) gets our research backwards in an incomprehensible way 2) points to emails chains we weren’t on as evidence of things we did 3) imputes plans between tech & govt that happened 6mo before our election project existed, to us RE:
Bluesky Social
James Ball (@jamesrball.com)
And here is a supplementary companion piece on my Substack in which I include Matt Taibbi's 1800+ word response to questions in full, in the intere...
He will make it up, just like he made up the lie that my team censored 22 million tweets. Except this time, he’ll be making up lies about people living outside of the US, pretending they are “linked to the CIA” —his usual bullshit trope, which has real consequences in some countries. He won’t care. RE:
Bluesky Social
Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social)
Conspiracy theorist Mike Benz will start looking for proof of non-existent plots at USAID. He won't find any. What then? https://www.theatlantic.c...
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Another paranoid crank given a job that impacts lives. These cosplay sleuth Bongino wannabes — they’re all “content creators” — are going to wind up just like him: grasping to come up with evidence of bullshit conspiracies while real people suffer. [www.thehandbasket.co/p/conspiracy...](
The Handbasket
Conspiracy theorist election denier given FEMA’s second-most important role
Gregg Phillips will lead the Office of Response and Recovery, “the heart of what FEMA does.”
 ) RE:
Bluesky Social
Renee DiResta (@noupside.bsky.social)
Mike Benz, the pathological paranoiac who never did find the 22 million tweets Stanford supposedly censored, or explain how the CIA ran me as an as...
 [Conspiracy theorist election d...](
The Handbasket
Conspiracy theorist election denier given FEMA’s second-most important role
Gregg Phillips will lead the Office of Response and Recovery, “the heart of what FEMA does.”
 ) View quoted note →
Mike Benz, the pathological paranoiac who never did find the 22 million tweets Stanford supposedly censored, or explain how the CIA ran me as an asset, is now “investigating” USAID — the agency he boasts about being instrumental in killing — from the inside. [www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...](
The Atlantic
USAID Hired the Right-Wing Influencer Responsible for Its Decimation
Mike Benz was brought aboard to find evidence for his claims that the agency is secretly a spy operation.
 ) [USAID Hired the Right-Wing Inf...](
The Atlantic
USAID Hired the Right-Wing Influencer Responsible for Its Decimation
Mike Benz was brought aboard to find evidence for his claims that the agency is secretly a spy operation.
 )
'Vaccines as demonic tools' rhetoric from one of the thought leaders of the Republican Party. Nearly all antivax arguments are persistent tropes traceable to opposition to the smallpox 💉. They'd mostly dropped the extreme religious bodily-purity ones, but maybe they'll make a comeback. https://morel.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:5bnbgj7gwebt6hhub4pa5c7n&cid=bafkreihsxv223mja4mqgco724toonnbpwzyhp3opokq24tu5qagijdw3zu
Billionaire PR is lit today https://morel.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:5bnbgj7gwebt6hhub4pa5c7n&cid=bafkreib5he7udvinqmbekjhufdig3juxywdhgng66bdkdoo3kyny4qrweq https://morel.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:5bnbgj7gwebt6hhub4pa5c7n&cid=bafkreicpxr5tx3gw33fj5nz3km4i4kielcyfyusnwrr7spjdtudr2hi424
Lmao over on X “Data Republican”, has just discovered that inauthentic amplification is a thing. Nick Fuentes’ X followers may not all be authentic American humans. His posts…may be amplified by bots. Fuentes ratioed Elon…but maybe it wasn’t really real. 🤣 https://morel.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:5bnbgj7gwebt6hhub4pa5c7n&cid=bafkreifsbcfflip3kzimhmt6v5x57uewesyxuwpzzu5y6jdacbwhfytyo4
I was on a panel with Makary once, at an event an insurer put together. Onstage, he picked a fight w/me ab content moderation on vaccines. (This is why I did the panel! I like having that fight in public.) Offstage over coffee, he talked ab dangerous weight loss misinfo targeting teens on TikTok. RE:
Bluesky Social
Brandy Zadrozny (@brandyzadrozny.bsky.social)
It's so interesting to me how Makary conspiracy code switches when he talks to podcasters vs national news. This is the kind of stuff MAHA hears fr...
 View quoted note →
Michael Shellenberger, University of Austin expert on climate, whales, UFOs, energy, free speech, homelessness, urban policy, trans medicine, the intelligence community, and 9/11 —and Hugo Chavez’s former PR flak— is going to Europe to lecture them on authoritarianism. Regulating X violates NATO. https://morel.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:5bnbgj7gwebt6hhub4pa5c7n&cid=bafkreieu24sae4igwkkrjtgkvqdwzfq4jpbapqrvfqjqh5jr3oq4jr6xtu
There are a lot of hot takes from Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and assorted regime propagandists on X screaming about censorship. This is what the fines are actually about. RE:
Bluesky Social
Lawfare (@lawfaremedia.org)
Yesterday, the European Commission announced that they are fining X 120 million euros. @klonick.bsky.social and @noupside.bsky.social analyzed th...