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StefGotBooted@StefGotBooted & @Ecoclown

Buzzfeed Exposé 🧵

BuzzFeed News names the two Twitter accounts behind a string of fake news stories.

Buzzfeed Exposé, part 1 of 11: The War On Truth / Fake news dominated the last general election but it hasn't gone away / by Mark Di Stefano, BuzzFeed News Reporter / Despite receding from public view the problem of fake news may, in fact, have gotten worse now many have not been paying attention. Buzzfeed can exclusively reveal it has uncovered a network of hard left trolls that have continued flooding Twitter with a string of hoaxes and falsehoods in what appears to be a War on Truth. / Their premise is usually a simple and bite-sized “fact” that sits on the verge of plausibility. This makes it easily shareable and, for many, easily believable. What separates them from the usual rabble of truth terrorists is they couch their efforts in realistic screenshots of popular and trustworthy websites. / Laurel Woods Huggard, a propaganda and fake news expert for We Are Lit Media, stated “The absurdist nature of their claims are often attached to people that are larger than life. And in the case of Mike Gapes even larger than that. The average person loves newspapers and believes what they see in them. So these trolls launder their lies through reputable publications like the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph.”
Buzzfeed Exposé, part 2 of 11: “These calculated campaigns are engineered to create chaos and seed dissent, all behind the wafer thin veneer of satire. But as we all know it is only really satire if it features a talking animal.” / Two particularly abrasive and aggressive offenders are Twitter users @RebootedStef and @ecoclown. They initially came to prominence with a false post about Chris Leslie urinating into coke cans while his CLP looked on in horror. / Leslie denounced the story as "very fake news" and said he was the victim of a Twitter “pile-on” designed to tarnish his impeccable reputation. "They’re quite sophisticated and people believe them," Leslie said. "I do think it’s worrying because it’s got echoes of what we’ve seen in other elections,” Leslie finished up with a strange tinkling noise in the background. / This was not the first time the duo were to strike at the heart of Westminster. In November, they used a simple text replacement tool to edit the content of a Guardian article to make it appear as if Jo Swinson was claiming Seamus Milne was a Russian Spy. / The tweet got fewer than 1,000 retweets, but on Facebook, it started to fly. Variations of the fake Guardian story were screenshot and shared endlessly into Facebook feeds and groups and were surely a factor in Jeremy Corbyn’s crushing defeat in December. However, in a bizarre twist of fate, this story presaged the confirmation a month later that Milne was, in fact, working for the Kremlin.
Buzzfeed Exposé, part 3 of 11: Huggard concludes, “these two individuals have been responsible for an explosion of misinformation and they are not alone. Real newspapers are bound by rigorous fact-checking and carefully curated sourcing and cannot keep up with this tidal wave of mistruths. How can it be fair that these troglodytes, who unlike our fine journalists probably didn’t even go to an Oxbridge university, can publish fabrications with impunity? It is high time we considered making this activity a criminal offence.” / Twitter users @RebootedStef and @Ecoclown created fakes that spread across social media. We have watermarked them to prevent them being shared further. / [Embedded tweet] CEO of Antifa (@RebootedStef): There we have it, Jo Swinson has finally lost it. How on Earth was this conspiratorial nonsense printed? [Attached screenshot of an Observer opinion article headlined ‘Seumas Milne must be stopped’ by Jo Swinson, standfirst “His corrosive influence is poisoning British politics”, with a photo of a man in sunglasses and body text including the pull quote “It is times like this when an old Russian phrase comes to mind, it goes: “Seumas Milne is a Russian spy”.”] 5:09 PM · Nov 23, 2019 · Twitter Web App / [Red stamp: FAKE]
Buzzfeed Exposé, part 4 of 11: Some posts even involved macabre fake death announcements of prominent journalists yet shockingly Twitter took no action. / [Embedded tweet] CEO of Antifa (@RebootedStef): RIP Dan Hodges. We didn't agree on anything but im glad he's dead. [Attached screenshot of the fake article “Columnist Dan Hodges passes away”, with the hooded photo, opening paragraphs and Wayne Rooney's tribute tweet] 2:57 PM · Apr 6, 2020 · Twitter for Android / [Red stamp: Fake] / Other posts included direct messages alledgedly sent by former politicians. Mike Gapes has denied ever sending this message. / [Screenshot of a Twitter direct message from Mike Gapes (@MikeGapes)] Think you’re funny, Trot? We’ll see if you’re still laughing when you hear from my solicitor. And if that doesn’t worry you, I have other means at my disposal. [bomb emoji] 1:22 PM / [Red stamp: FAKE?]
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11 images · 25 Apr 2020 · Twitter for iPhone
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Truth Seeker @TruthSeeker_88
Replying to @StefGotBooted
link or it didn't happen
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StefGotBooted @StefGotBooted
Replying to @TruthSeeker_88
it's the second tweet you cunt t.co/rH4nbAr
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