Sock Puppets
<p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.4em 0px; border: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> oops see AI/persona mgmt</font></p><p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.4em 0px; border: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.4em 0px; border: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" widows="widows" background="background" transparent="transparent" border="border" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">promoted to 2ndary on twitter bots 2016 election trump</font></strong></p><p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.4em 0px; border: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" widows="widows" background="background" transparent="transparent" border="border" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">leverage social networks, un filtererd but also filter bubble blogspere echo</font></strong></p><p><b><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></b></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/how-an-errant-tweet-connects-a-gop-politician-a-mysterious-twitter-account-and-patti-labelle/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/how-an-errant-tweet-connects-a-gop-politician-a-mysterious-twitter-account-and-patti-labelle/</a></font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>...</b></font><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">A dive into Holte's background reveals several interesting things: He's written several articles on Medium, where he identifies himself as an</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><a href="https://medium.com/@bylholte" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">"Anti-feminist TV Critic" </a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">and complains about anti-racism and feminism in the film industry; he is listed on LinkedIn as a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/PadmaLakshmi/status/1326294064031883264" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">"boutique landscape designer"</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">in Pennsylvania; And, in the weirdest twist yet, he is music legend Patti LaBelle's adopted son.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">LaBelle adopted the two children of her sister, Jackie Holte, after her death in 1989. They are named Stayce and William, or "Byl." Byl Holte's Facebook account features public photos of him with LaBelle at family gatherings.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Dan Purdy account has since been deactivated, and<a href="https://twitter.com/DeanBrowningPA/status/1326326193117933569?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"> Browning's last tweet </a>reads: "I see I'm trending with Patti LaBelle tonight. I guess we've not gone only viral — but over the rainbow."</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Regardless, some questions still remain unanswered: What is the relationship between Holte and Browning? Is the "Dan Purdy" account actually Holte's? Was Browning ignorant of the racist and sexist comments on the fake Dan Purdy account — and if not, why choose to quote that specific follower? And, most importantly, what does Patti LaBelle think about all this?</p><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/15/dakota-access-pipeline-fake-twitter-accounts-dci-group">https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/15/dakota-access-pipeline-fake-twitter-accounts-dci-group</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no link pix</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Did an Industry Front Group Create Fake Twitter Accounts to Promote the Dakota Access Pipeline?</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Steve Horn • Thursday, September 15, 2016 - 09:02</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Screenshot of fake Twitter account criticizing DAPL protesters.</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A DeSmog investigation has revealed the possibility that a front group supporting the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) — the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now (MAIN) — may have created fake Twitter profiles, known by some as “sock puppets,” to convey a pro-pipeline message over social media. And MAIN may be employing the PR services of the firm DCI Group, which has connections to the Republican Party, in order to do so. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DeSmog tracked down at least 16 different questionable Twitter accounts which used the #NoDAPL hashtag employed by protesters, in order to claim that opposition to the pipeline kills jobs, that those protesting the pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's encampment use violence, and that the pipeline does not pose a risk to water sources or cross over tribal land.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On September 13, people began to suspect these accounts were fake, calling them out on Twitter, and by September 14, most of the accounts no longer existed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Dakota Access Pipeline is set to carry oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) from the Bakken Shale basin in North Dakota across the Dakotas, Iowa, and Illinois. Its owner, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), says it plans to talk to the Obama administration and “reiterate [its] commitment to bring the Dakota Access Pipeline into operation.” It will do so despite the administration requesting that the company halt construction “voluntarily — particularly around the contested sacred tribal sites located 20 miles east and west of Lake Oahe and the Missouri River — until further notice.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his memorandum announcing his company's plans to do so, ETP CEO Kelcy Warren espoused many of the same arguments that were deployed by the Twitter sock puppets, which calls into question whether his company helped spearhead the social media campaign behind the scenes in order to create the appearance of grassroots support, a technique known as “astroturfing.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that memo, Warren said his company plans to engage more aggressively in the PR sphere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It has not been my preference to engage in a media/PR battle,” wrote Warren. “However, misinformation has dominated the news, so we will work to communicate with the government and media more clearly in the days to come.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vicki Granado, a spokesperson for the company, did not respond to a request for comment. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the meantime, as all stakeholders in the debate await a definitive next move from the Obama administration, protests both on-site and nationwide have continued, with a militarized police presence at the Sacred Stone Camp intensifying. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke at a September 13 Washington, DC protest against the pipeline, while U.S. Representatives Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Raul Ruiz (D-CA) that same day called for a congressional oversight investigation of the hotly contested permitting issues which have arisen in the ongoing saga over the pipeline's future. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With that backdrop, in came the “sock puppets” for their own September 13 day of action on Twitter — and with MAIN likely pulling the strings. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Sock Puppets</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The sock puppet profiles had names such as Ashley Lovinggood, Garnett Vreeken, Yong Fetner, and Ying Baars, and all of the profile pictures featured women. Besides tweets promoting the Dakota Access Pipeline, what links all of the bogus profiles together is that they all “follow” (similar to “liking” a page on Facebook) the company Hootsuite.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image Credit: Twitter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Hootsuite serves as a social media platform management tool which allows an administrator for many different social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, to toggle quickly between accounts and send out posts in the form of tweets and other status updates. One of those accounts, that of Angla Dullea, formerly followed MAIN — and like all of the other pages — also followed Hootsuite; that is, until the account became suspended.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dullea's profile photo bore an identical resemblance to the Twitter profile for Palma Mackerl, another bare-bones Twitter account.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image Credit: Twitter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dullea also retweeted a tweet from a group called Standing Rock Fact Checker, which on its website describes itself as a project of MAIN. The website also states it is “dedicated to promoting the truth” and battling “misinformation about the approved — and nearly complete — Dakota Access project.” Five other suspicious Twitter profiles also shared Fact Checker tweets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MAIN members include the South Dakota Petroleum and Propane Marketers Association, North Dakota Petroleum Council, Petroleum Marketers, Convenience Stores of Iowa, and others.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reverse photo searches on Google revealed that the pictures used for other sock puppet profiles also appeared on a dermatologist website, a mail order bride website, and a hairstyle website featuring a photo of Eva Longoria, as well as images of Chinese model Crystal Wang Xi Ran, singer Keri Hilson, and the late singer Amy Winehouse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eva Longoria doppelgänger; Photo Credit: Twitter | Oliver Keyes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The use of political bots and sock puppets is nothing new and in fact, has become normalized by political factions worldwide, explained Norah Abokhodair of the Political Bots research program based at the University of Washington and Oxford University. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“There are many ways in which social bots can disrupt or influence online discourse, such as, spamming, phishing, distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), or other nefarious activities,” Abokhodair explained, pointing to examples such as the Syrian Civil War bots and bots used in Turkey. “<b>They can also be deployed for sophisticated activities like astroturfing, misdirection (botnet that tries to get the audience to attend to other content by spamming the hashtag) and smoke screening (serves to hide or provide cover for or obscure some type of activity</b>).”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MAIN and DCI Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">MAIN was the only industry group to issue a press release in response to the Obama administration's September 9 announcement halting construction on a portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Its press release contained a statement attributed to spokesperson Craig Stevens. Stevens also recently did an interview with KVLY-TV, the NBC and CBS affiliate for Fargo, North Dakota. When on TV, however, he was billed as the “spokesperson for a pipeline sort of group, if you will” by segment host Chris Berg.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Despite the lack of disclosure by KVLY and Berg, it turns out that Craig Stevens actually works as Media Affairs and Crisis Management Lead for DCI Group. His DCI Group contact information is listed for MAIN's profile page on the website PR Newswire.</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><p><b><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></b></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “alt-right” is counting on the media using only the cartoonish definition of white supremacy and white nationalism. Its adherents take advantage of the hesitancy of mainstream media and establishment figures to call out connections between Bannon and white supremacy. The “alt-right” is self-organizing and aims to protect the reputation of their allies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BuzzFeed gained access to secret chat rooms in France and documented Trump supporter’ efforts to manipulate the conversation to favor the “alt-right” by making far-right Marine Le Pen supporters appear to be the most reasonable political group. Trump supporters in America are undeniably using the same tactics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s more than fine if news outlets want to fact-check statements made about the chief strategist to the president of the United States. But it would be nice if they also gave a little more scrutiny to what, exactly, he is planning for America’s future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/inside-the-private-chat-rooms-trump-supporters-are-using-to">https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/inside-the-private-chat-rooms-trump-supporters-are-using-to</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Supporters Online Are Pretending To Be French To Manipulate France’s Election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Welcome to “The Great Liberation Of France.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Originally posted on Jan. 24, 2017, at 12:00 a.m.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Updated on Jan. 24, 2017, at 4:29 a.m.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Ryan Broderick</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ryan Broderick</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BuzzFeed News Reporter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TweetTumblr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BuzzFeed News was recently given access to a chatroom called The Great Liberation of France, which is hosted on a Slack-like messaging platform called Discord.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BuzzFeed News was recently given access to a chatroom called The Great Liberation of France, which is hosted on a Slack-like messaging platform called Discord.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Discord</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The head of this particular Discord group is a user that goes by @trumpwin2016. BuzzFeed News has reached out to them for comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The head of this particular Discord group is a user that goes by @trumpwin2016. BuzzFeed News has reached out to them for comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Discord</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The large majority of the work being done in The Great Liberation of France is based around creating fake Facebook and Twitter accounts to manipulate French social media users.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The large majority of the work being done in The Great Liberation of France is based around creating fake Facebook and Twitter accounts to manipulate French social media users.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Discord</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Users in the Liberation chatroom want to create as much chaos on social media as possible to make right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen and her supporters in the National Front (FN) seem like the most legitimate voice in French politics.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Discord</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In screenshots provided to BuzzFeed News, as well as conversations BuzzFeed News observed in the chatroom, users are creating fake accounts for two reasons.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The chatroom’s admins have instructed users to make fake Facebook accounts that are “ideally young, cute girl, gay, Jew, basically anyone who isn’t supposed to be pro-[FN].” Users are then instructed to lock down these dummy accounts so no one can tell they’re fake. Once they have their fake Facebook profiles, they’re told to infiltrate the comment sections of large French Facebook pages and post pro-FN memes and jokes about François Fillon, France’s current frontrunner for the presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And they’re doing something similar on Twitter, creating dozens of French-appearing sock puppet accounts. They then collect all of them on lists and organize campaigns to make things trend in French.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They have a subsection of the chatroom just for listing their Twitter accounts so they know what all the fake accounts are doing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They have a subsection of the chatroom just for listing their Twitter accounts so they know what all the fake accounts are doing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Discord</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The group has made it extremely easy for English-speakers to participate as well. They have a Google Doc labeled “MEGA GENERAL” — “Make Europe Great Again” — that they use for planning out social media campaigns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The group has made it extremely easy for English-speakers to participate as well. They have a Google Doc labeled "MEGA GENERAL" — "Make Europe Great Again" — that they use for planning out social media campaigns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Google Docs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The doc includes instructions for how users can help teach fellow right-wing trolls how to make memes that would be believable in their country. “You have to provide reconnaissance for us. WE DON’T KNOW SHIT about your internet segment,” one section reads.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The doc includes instructions for how users can help teach fellow right-wing trolls how to make memes that would be believable in their country. "You have to provide reconnaissance for us. WE DON'T KNOW SHIT about your internet segment," one section reads.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Google Docs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another section reads, “Brief info on your country — does the South hate the North? Are those on the coast richer than those in the mountains?” It also mentions Pepe the Frog and other memes that Trump supporters latched on to, acknowledging each country might have different memes that take off.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another section reads, "Brief info on your country — does the South hate the North? Are those on the coast richer than those in the mountains?" It also mentions Pepe the Frog and other memes that Trump supporters latched on to, acknowledging each country might have different memes that take off.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Google Docs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The last section reads, “DO NOT launch a meme shell in a foreign language without checking with a national operative.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The last section reads, "DO NOT launch a meme shell in a foreign language without checking with a national operative."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Google Docs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Meme shells” are essentially just blank templates that anyone can load up with text. Members of the Discord group have centralized all of their memes in an easy-to-download database hosted on a site called Dropmark.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Meme shells" are essentially just blank templates that anyone can load up with text. Members of the Discord group have centralized all of their memes in an easy-to-download database hosted on a site called Dropmark.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dropmark</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This allows trolls to appear French without actually needing to speak French.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This allows trolls to appear French without actually needing to speak French.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dropmark</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Recently, in a sub-room called #Materials, a user started posting transparent cutouts of Fillon, a former prime minister who is the leading mainstream candidate to take on Marine Le Pen.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Recently, in a sub-room called #Materials, a user started posting transparent cutouts of Fillon, a former prime minister who is the leading mainstream candidate to take on Marine Le Pen.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The document ends by directing users to 4chan’s politics message board, 8chan’s The Bureau of Memetic Warfare, and Reddit’s /r/The_Europe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The document ends by directing users to 4chan's politics message board, 8chan's The Bureau of Memetic Warfare, and Reddit's /r/The_Europe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Google Docs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The group’s swarms are fairly simple. Several times a week, someone will drop a link in the Discord chat, and people click over and attack the comments section....</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><p><b><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></b></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b><a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cracking-stealth-political-influence-bots/">http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cracking-stealth-political-influence-bots/</a></b></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">...</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">1/3 trump? 1/5 hc?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> Amazon’s Alexa.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">ACTOR:</strong> Alexa, stop.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> Or the chat box that pops up offering advice when your cable TV is on the fritz. A good one is hard to differentiate from a real person. And that’s the trouble.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clever bots, employed in a stealthy, strategic manner, can put a virtual finger on the scale of political discourse. Bots generated a huge volume of tweets pro and con during the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. They also promoted candidates in the 2014 India elections. ISIS uses bots to amplify propaganda by creating thousands of phony accounts.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">FILIPPO MENCZER:</strong> It’s like very easy to create one or 10 or 100 or 1,000 accounts controlled by that campaign and make it look like these are just regular people who are expressing their freedom of speech.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> Bots first reared their ugly heads in U.S. presidential politics in 2012. Mitt Romney got caught buying bots when he gained more than 140,000 followers in two days.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For a few dollars, anyone can buy a few thousand bots that can be deployed to strengthen your Twitter prowess. But this go-round, the bots are doing much more than providing artificial popularity.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Phil Howard is a professor of the Internet at Oxford University.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">PHIL HOWARD,</strong> University of Oxford: You program the bots that are following you to repeat your message. And what happens is that a larger and larger number of people see the retweets and think, this is an important position paper or this is a great new idea.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">DONALD TRUMP:</strong> You’re talking about taking out ISIS, but you were there and you were secretary of state when it was a little infant.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> Howard analyzed tweets during the first presidential debate. He found bots were behind one-fifth of pro-Clinton Twitter traffic, and nearly one-third of pro-Trump tweets.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">PHIL HOWARD:</strong> The real problem here is that not all users can tell when the content that comes up in their social media feed is actually generated by these bots.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s very difficult to know what the overall impact is on public opinion, but we do know that most Americans can’t distinguish these bots from real users.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> It’s hard enough for computer scientists and, for that matter, Twitter itself. The company admits 8.5 percent of its accounts are updated with no discernible human action.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that includes useful applications like TweetDeck, as well as harmful bots. Finding them is a challenge. Menczer and his team are working on this. They visualize Twitter traffic, helping them find accounts that look and act suspiciously nonhuman.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">FILIPPO MENCZER:</strong> Very often, there are patterns that we can still discern. They’re not necessarily easy for the human eye, but, sometimes, the machine-learning algorithms, by looking at over 1,000 features, they can recognize some patterns that make one particular account similar to other bots.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> The result is a Web site called BotOrNot, which analyzes Twitter accounts based on the frequency of tweets, the type of networks and friends, and the sentiment the tweets convey.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This Twitterbot account simply repeats pro-Hillary Reddit postings. BotOrNot predicts it is 70 percent likely to be a bot.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">PHIL HOWARD:</strong> One of the fun things about studying bots is that it’s very difficult based on the code alone to predict what they will do. And even designers can’t always predict what a bot will do.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> Brad Hayes can attest to that. He is a postdoctoral associate at MIT. He read a Boston Globe article that concluded Donald Trump speaks at the level of a fourth-grader. To him, that sounded like good grist for some Twitterbot fun.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">BRAD HAYES,</strong> Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Scientist: I went to work, and I created this bot, and I went through and grabbed all of the transcripts I could find from his speeches, the Republican debates, from his Twitter feed, basically anything, any kind of Donald Trump information, things that he has said, such that I could train the statistical model on that.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> His bot, DeepDrumpf, doesn’t understand language, per se, but rather detects patterns in the sequence of letters.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">DONALD TRUMP:</strong> A lot of things are going on folks, a lot of things.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> By analyzing reams of Trump speeches, it can make statistically valid and frequently humorous predictions of how the real Donald Trump might complete sentences that Brad begins.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">BRAD HAYES:</strong> “I’m a great judge of this country. We have to control everybody and let them fight each other. They won’t refuse me. I will make a fortune.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> What’s your best tweet?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">BRAD HAYES:</strong> “If I don’t win in the end, I will fire the entire American people. We cannot achieve peace if I don’t want it.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> Does it kind of surprise you at times what comes out?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">BRAD HAYES:</strong> Absolutely. As a computer scientist, the most surprising thing is that this kind of simple model can create such great results.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">MILES O’BRIEN:</strong> Which is why he doesn’t let his bot tweet without human supervision. DeepDrumpf is all in good fun and clearly labeled a bot.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But, tweeter, beware of the more nefarious bots that lurk out there in the Twitterverse. What may seem like a viral grassroots movement can be nothing more than an empty field covered with Astroturf. So, take a moment to check before you retweet.</font></p><p><b><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></b></p><p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.4em 0px; border: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/15/dakota-access-pipeline-fake-twitter-accounts-dci-group">http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/15/dakota-access-pipeline-fake-twitter-accounts-dci-group</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A DeSmog investigation has revealed the possibility that a front group supporting the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/energy-transfer-partners-bakken-oil-pipeline-through-iowa" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">controversial Dakota Access Pipeline</a> (<span class="caps">DAPL</span>) — the <a href="https://mwalliancenow.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now (<span class="caps">MAIN</span>)</a> — may have created fake Twitter profiles, known by some as “sock puppets,” to convey a pro-pipeline message over social media. And <span class="caps">MAIN</span> may be employing the <span class="caps">PR</span> services of the firm <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/dci-group" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="caps">DCI</span> Group</a>, which has connections to the Republican Party, in order to do so. </font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">DeSmog tracked down at least 16 different questionable Twitter accounts which used the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=news&q=%23NoDAPL&src=typd" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">#NoDAPL</a> hashtag employed by protesters, in order to claim that opposition to the pipeline kills jobs, that those protesting the pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's encampment use violence, and that the pipeline does not pose a risk to water sources or cross over tribal land.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>On September 13, people began to suspect these accounts were fake, <a href="https://twitter.com/duncanwrites/status/775842719809822720" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">calling them out on Twitter</a>, and by September 14, m<span style="line-height: 1.1em;">ost of the accounts no longer existed.</span></b></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Dakota Access Pipeline is set to carry oil obtained via <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/fracking-the-future/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”)</a> from the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/7174" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Bakken Shale</a> basin in North Dakota across the Dakotas, Iowa, and Illinois. Its owner, Energy Transfer Partners (<span class="caps">ETP</span>), says it <a href="http://media.graytvinc.com/documents/ETP+Internal+Memo+9+13+16+final+to+employees.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">plans to</a> talk to the Obama administration and “reiterate [its] commitment to bring the Dakota Access Pipeline into operation.” It will do so despite the administration <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/09/mixed-reactions-feds-give-standing-rock-sioux-partial-victory" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">requesting that the company halt construction</a> “voluntarily — particularly around the contested sacred tribal sites located 20 miles east and west of Lake Oahe and the Missouri River — until further notice.”</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In his <a href="http://media.graytvinc.com/documents/ETP+Internal+Memo+9+13+16+final+to+employees.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">memorandum</a> announcing his company's plans to do so,<b> <span class="caps">ETP</span> <span class="caps">CEO</span> Kelcy Warren espoused many of the same arguments that were deployed by the Twitter sock puppets, </b>which calls into question whether his company helped spearhead the social media campaign behind the scenes in order to create the appearance of grassroots support, a technique known as “astroturfing.”</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that memo, Warren said his company plans to engage more aggressively in the <span class="caps">PR</span> sphere.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It has not been my preference to engage in a media/<span class="caps">PR</span> battle,” wrote Warren. “However, misinformation has dominated the news, so we will work to communicate with the government and media more clearly in the days to come.”</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vicki Granado, a spokesperson for the company, did not respond to a request for comment. </font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the meantime, as all stakeholders in the debate await a definitive next move from the Obama administration, protests both on-site and nationwide have continued, with a <a href="https://twitter.com/SacredStoneCamp/status/775853557945737216" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">militarized police presence</a> at the Sacred Stone Camp intensifying. <span class="caps">U.S.</span>Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-<span class="caps">VT</span>) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgirR4Psie4&t=4m17s" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">spoke</a> at a <a href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-stands-with-tribal-nations-calls-on-president-to-stop-pipeline" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">September 13 Washington, <span class="caps">DC</span> protest</a> against the pipeline, while <span class="caps">U.S.</span>Representatives Raul Grijalva (D-<span class="caps">AZ</span>) and Raul Ruiz (D-<span class="caps">CA</span>) that same day <a href="https://ruiz.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/ruiz-grijalva-request-oversight-hearing-discuss-tribal-consultation" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">called for a congressional oversight investigation</a> of the hotly contested permitting issues which have arisen in the ongoing saga over the pipeline's future. </font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With that backdrop, in came the “sock puppets” for their own September 13 day of action on Twitter — and with <span class="caps">MAIN</span>likely pulling the strings. </font></p><h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Sock Puppets</font></h3><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The sock puppet profiles had names such as Ashley Lovinggood, Garnett Vreeken, Yong Fetner, and Ying Baars, and all of the profile pictures featured women. Besides tweets promoting the Dakota Access Pipeline, what links all of the bogus profiles together is that they all “follow” (similar to “liking” a page on Facebook) the company Hootsuite.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">img</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image Credit: <a href="https://twitter.com/YongFetner" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Twitter</a></font></em></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Hootsuite serves as a social media platform <a href="http://iag.me/socialmedia/reviews/7-reasons-why-you-should-use-hootsuite/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">management tool</a> which allows an administrator for many different social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, to toggle quickly between accounts</b> and send out posts in the form of tweets and other status updates. One of those accounts, that of Angla Dullea, formerly followed <span class="caps">MAIN</span> — and like all of the other pages — also followed Hootsuite; that is, until the account became suspended.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dullea's profile photo bore an identical resemblance to the Twitter profile for <a href="https://twitter.com/loverecycled" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Palma Mackerl</a>, another bare-bones Twitter account.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://twitter.com/AnglaDullea/following" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Screen%20Shot%202016-09-13%20at%209.04.17%20PM.png" style="border: 0px; max-width: 100%; height: 277px; width: 500px;" /></a> <img alt="" src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Screen%20Shot%202016-09-14%20at%202.37.17%20AM.png" style="border: 0px; max-width: 100%; height: 238px; width: 500px;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image Credit: <a href="https://twitter.com/AnglaDullea/following" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Twitter</a></font></em></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dullea also retweeted a tweet from a group called <a href="http://standingrockfactchecker.org/about-us/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Standing Rock Fact Checker</a>, which on its website describes itself as a project of <span class="caps">MAIN</span>. The website also states it is “dedicated to promoting the truth” and battling “misinformation about the approved — and nearly complete — Dakota Access project.” Five other suspicious Twitter profiles also shared Fact Checker tweets.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://mwalliancenow.org/about/who-we-are/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="caps">MAIN</span> members</a> include the South Dakota Petroleum and Propane Marketers Association, North Dakota Petroleum Council, Petroleum Marketers, Convenience Stores of Iowa, and others.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reverse photo searches on Google revealed that the pictures used for other sock puppet profiles also appeared on a dermatologist website, a mail order bride website, and a <a href="http://stylesweekly.com/eva-longoria-hairstyles/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">hairstyle website featuring a photo of Eva Longoria</a>, as well as images of Chinese model Crystal Wang Xi Ran, singer Keri Hilson, and the late singer Amy Winehouse.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><img alt="" src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Eva%20Longoria%20Look-Alike.jpg" style="border: 0px; max-width: 100%; height: 622px; width: 350px;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eva Longoria doppelgänger; Photo Credit: Twitter | <a href="https://twitter.com/quominus/status/775806853011824640" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Oliver Keyes</a></font></em></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The use of political bots and sock puppets is nothing new and in fact, has become normalized by political factions worldwide</b>, explained <a href="http://politicalbots.org/?page_id=64" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Norah Abokhodair</a> of the <a href="http://politicalbots.org/?page_id=129" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Political Bots</a> research program based at the University of Washington and Oxford University. </font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“There are many ways in which social bots can disrupt or influence online discourse, such as, spamming, phishing, distributed denial of service attacks (<span class="caps">DD</span>oS), or other nefarious activities,” Abokhodair explained, pointing to examples such as the <a href="https://norahak.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/activist-botnet-on-twitter-who-is-re-tweeting-the-syrian-civil-war/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Syrian Civil </a><a href="https://norahak.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/activist-botnet-on-twitter-who-is-re-tweeting-the-syrian-civil-war/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">War bots</a> and <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/social-media-trolls-in-turkey-attack-german-parliamentarians-over-armenia-resolution/a-19312431" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">bots used in Turkey</a>. “They can also be deployed for sophisticated activities like astroturfing, misdirection (botnet that tries to get the audience to attend to other content by spamming the hashtag) and smoke screening (serves to hide or provide cover for or obscure some type of activity).”</font></p><h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caps">MAIN</span> and <span class="caps">DCI</span> Group</font></h3><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caps">MAIN</span> was the only industry group to <a href="https://mwalliancenow.org/news/main-coalition-denounces-fed-statement/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">issue a press release</a> in response to the Obama administration's September 9 announcement halting construction on a portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Its press release contained a statement attributed to spokesperson <b>Craig Stevens</b>. Stevens also recently <a href="http://www.valleynewslive.com/content/misc/More-on-the-Dakota-Access-Pipeline-and-an-interview-with-Craig-Stevens-393337911.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">did an interview with <span class="caps">KVLY</span>-<span class="caps">TV</span></a>, the <span class="caps">NBC</span> and <span class="caps">CBS</span> affiliate for Fargo, North Dakota. When on <span class="caps">TV</span>, however, he was billed as the “spokesperson for a pipeline sort of group, if you will” by segment host <a href="https://twitter.com/chrisberg630POV" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Chris Berg</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Despite the lack of disclosure by <span class="caps">KVLY</span> and Berg, it turns out that <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Craig%20Stevens%20%20LinkedIn.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Craig Stevens</a> actually works as Media Affairs and Crisis Management Lead for <span class="caps">DCI</span> Group.</span>His <span class="caps">DCI</span> Group contact information is listed for <span class="caps">MAIN</span>'s profile page on the website<span class="caps">PR</span> Newswire.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/photos.prnewswire.com/medias/switch.do?prefix=/appnb&page=/getStoryRemapDetails.do&prnid=20160909%252f406192LOGO&action=details" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><img alt="" src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Screen%20Shot%202016-09-14%20at%205.20.38%20AM.png" style="border: 0px; max-width: 100%; height: 262px; width: 833px;" /></font></a></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image Credit: <a href="http://photos.prnewswire.com/medias/switch.do?prefix=/appnb&page=/getStoryRemapDetails.do&prnid=20160909%252f406192LOGO&action=details" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="caps">PR</span> Newswire</a></font></em></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caps">DCI</span> is a <span class="caps">PR</span> firm tied to the <span class="caps">GOP</span> and with roots in creating front groups on <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/07/from-big-oil-to-big-hair-meet-donald-trump-s-controversial-new-man.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">behalf of Big Tobacco</a>, spearheading the <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/mercenary-admen-5-ways-one-pr-group-has-hijacked-politics-for-corporate-gain/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">modern Tea Party movement</a>, and representing oppressive dictatorial regimes such as that of <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/20/trump-campaign-manager-s-firm-turned-blind-eye-to-burma-rapes.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Burma</a> and oil- and gas-soaked <a href="http://www.odwyerpr.com/blog/index.php?/archives/5300-DCI-Works-Tanks-for-Azerbaijan.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Azerbaijan</a>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Stevens <a href="http://www.dcigroup.com/leaders/craig-stevens/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">formerly worked</a> for the George W. Bush presidential campaign, served as <a href="http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-energy/2016/09/drought-talks-drive-energy-bill-heres-the-wrda-on-the-street-ferc-on-you-crazy-pete-olsons-216193" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">spokesperson</a> for <span class="caps">U.S.</span>Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman for the George W. Bush Administration, and also worked on Mitt Romney's 2012 Republican Party presidential campaign.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jim Murphy, the political director for Donald Trump's Republican Party presidential campaign, formerly <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/20/trump-campaign-manager-s-firm-turned-blind-eye-to-burma-rapes.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">served as President and Managing Partner</a> for <span class="caps">DCI</span> Group. Beyond the <span class="caps">DCI</span> Group connection, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/15658" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Continental Resources</a> — whose founder and<b> <span class="caps">CEO </span><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/9859" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Harold Hamm</a> is one of Donald Trump's top energy advisers and a potential candidate for <span class="caps">U.S.</span> Secretary of Energy under a Trump presidency </b>— said in a recent investor statement that a significant chunk of the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/06/harold-hamm-donald-trump-dakota-access-pipeline" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">company's Bakken oil will flow through Dakota Access</a>. </font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before <span class="caps">DCI</span> Group began working on Standing Rock-related projects for <span class="caps">MAIN</span>, it appears the<b> <span class="caps">PR</span> firm <span class="caps">LS2G</span>roup </b>maintained the <span class="caps">PR</span> account for Dakota Access. A <span class="caps">MAIN</span> <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20MAIN%20Coalition%20Media%20Advisory%20Nov%2012%20Rally.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">press release from November 2015</a> lists <a href="http://ls2group.com/team/kayla-day/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="caps">LS</span>2's Kayla Day</a> as the contact person and her <span class="caps">LS</span>2 work number is also listed, while metadata for the press release's <span class="caps">PDF</span> shows the document was last saved by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-shaner-2948b052" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">former <span class="caps">LS</span>2 staffer Alex Shaner</a>.</font></p><h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caps">DCI</span>'s Role</font></h3><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As DeSmog has previously revealed, <span class="caps">LS</span>2 also did <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/04/22/earth-day-greenwash-api-front-group-iowa-energy-forum-sponsors-pro-keystone-xl-event" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="caps">PR</span> work in support</a> of TransCanada's <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/5857" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Keystone <span class="caps">XL</span></a> pipeline. The group Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement <a href="http://iowacci.org/in-the-news/ls2group-greases-bakken-oil-pipeline-wheels/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">published emails</a> from 2014 (obtained via a public records request) showing <span class="caps">LS</span>2 also doing advocacy work in support of Dakota Access.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span class="caps">LS</span>2's Day told DeSmog that <span class="caps">LS</span>2 still does some work on behalf of <span class="caps">MAIN</span>, but declined to comment further on how the work is divvied up between <span class="caps">LS</span>2 and <span class="caps">DCI</span> Group.</b> Stevens was first listed as a spokesperson for <span class="caps">MAIN</span> in a <a href="http://mwalliancenow.org/news/main-coalition-issues-statement-judge-boasbergs-decision/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">September 6 press release</a>, two days after the now-infamous <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/4/dakota_access_pipeline_company_attacks_native" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">dog biting incident</a> took place at the protesting Standing Rock Siuox Tribe's Sacred Stone Camp. The Standing Rock Fact Checker website was registered the day before, and it also sent out its <a href="https://twitter.com/StandingRockFct/status/772912211991924736" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">first tweet</a> that same day.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><img alt="Standing Rock Fact Checker" src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Screen%20Shot%202016-09-14%20at%207.01.41%20PM.png" style="border: 0px; max-width: 100%; height: 421px; width: 500px;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image Credit: WhoIs.net</font></em></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Stevens declined to comment on who funds <span class="caps">MAIN</span>,</b> referring to the membership list and confirming he was brought on in the past couple weeks to do <span class="caps">PR</span> work on behalf of the coalition, “as the whole public discussion has increased and been elevated” surrounding the pipeline. He also confirmed he runs the Fact Checker portal.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asked about whether his firm or <span class="caps">MAIN</span> had anything to do with the sock-puppet tweets, Stevens denied he or <span class="caps">MAIN</span> had any involvement. </font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It's frustrating to me because we're working to be respectful in tone and fact-based and any tactics like these are a distraction for what we're trying to do and that's to bring facts and contexts to this discussion,” Stevens said. “I don't know about the tactics themselves and I don't know who or what is behind it, but as someone who's trying to get facts out and trying to be respectful in tone, it was incredibly frustrating that this was going on. As far as I know, and think I know, the<span class="caps">MAIN</span> Coalition had nothing to do with them.”</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, noted environmental advocate and co-founder of climate group 350.org, Bill McKibben, doubts the authenticity of such claims from <span class="caps">PR</span> firms with a record like <span class="caps">DCI</span>, saying: </font></p><blockquote style="margin: 1.5em 30px;"><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There's a word for this kind of thing, and that word is: lying. The invention of fake people to make fake arguments perfectly exemplifies the tactics Big Oil has been reduced to. They can't win an argument on the merits, so they've given up trying. Instead, they literally make things up. The contrast with the steadfast straightforwardness of the tribes, and of the climate scientists, couldn't be more stark.”</font></p></blockquote></div><p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.4em 0px; border: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">1. Abraxas</strong>
<a href="http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb06?ABRAXAS_COMPANY" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Abraxas</a> is an intelligence contractor that was revealed as a significant player in <a href="http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Persona_Management" target="blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Persona Management</a> (i.e fake IDs to snoop on political activists or create propaganda). Abraxas also acquired <a href="http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Anonymizer" target="_blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Anonymizer</a> (which includes encrypted email services) in May 2008. Two years later Abraxas was purchased by Cubic (see below) for $124 million in cash.</font>
<strong style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. Trapwire</font></strong>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Abraxas Corporation also created <a href="https://trapwire.net/" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">TrapWire</a> under its subsidiary Abraxas Applications. TrapWire is/was linked to the <a href="http://nsi.ncirc.gov/" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">National Suspicious Activity Reporting (NSI) Initiative</a>, a program designed to help aggregate reports of suspicious activity around the country. It was claimed that TrapWire could eventually extend to fusion centers around the USA as<a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg71298/html/CHRG-112hhrg71298.htm" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">congressional testimony from June 2011</a> indicated that the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department was part of a trial project of the Department of Homeland Security to test the use of TrapWire. The Texas Department of Public Safety, which operates the Texas Fusion Center, also <a href="http://wl.wikileaks-press.org/gifiles/docs/380450_re-close-hold-.html" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">purchased TrapWire software in 2010</a>. For more on Trapwire, click <a href="https://storify.com/bendoernberg/test-post" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">here</a>.</font>
<strong style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3. Ntrepid</font></strong>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.ntrepidcorp.com/" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Ntrepid</a> also provides Persona Management services to US and unspecified “multinational forces” in conjunction with the <a href="http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/CENTCOM" target="blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">CENTCOM</a> information operations program <a href="http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice" target="blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Operation Earnest Voice</a>. The technology is supposedly for use with non-US forums and social media outlets, thus circumventing US laws against impersonation. Ntrepid’s corporate registry lists Abraxas’ previous CEO and founder, Richard Helms, as the director and officer, along with Wesley Husted, the former CFO, who is also an Ntrepid officer. The shifting company names and management led to speculation that Ntrepid is a front company for Abraxas.</font>
<strong style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4. Cubic Corporation</font></strong>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.cubic.com/" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Cubic</a> is a global leader in defense, and transportation systems and services and an emerging supplier of smart card and RFID solutions. <a href="http://i.imgur.com/yuOt5.jpg" target="_blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">This picture</a> provides an idea of the relationships between Cubic Corp, other companies, and individuals. There was also controversy about a global surveillance system called<a href="http://www.trapwire.com/" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"> Trapwire</a>. Despite <a class="mw-redirect" title="Cubic" href="http://echelon2.org/wiki/Cubic" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Cubic</a>‘s denial of affiliation with Trapwire, <a class="mw-redirect" title="Abraxas" href="http://echelon2.org/wiki/Abraxas" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Abraxas</a> Corporation subsidiary Abraxas Dauntless shares an interlocking directorate, including <a class="new" title="Richard Hollis Helms (page does not exist)" href="http://echelon2.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Hollis_Helms&action=edit&redlink=1" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Richard Hollis Helms,</a> with both TrapWire and <a class="mw-redirect" title="Ntrepid" href="http://echelon2.org/wiki/Ntrepid" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Ntrepid</a>at least as recently as 2012 and appears to have done so continuously since its merger with<a class="mw-redirect" title="Cubic" href="http://echelon2.org/wiki/Cubic" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Cubic</a>. For more on Trapwire, click <a href="http://publicintelligence.net/unravelling-trapwire/" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">here</a>.</font>
<strong style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5. HBGary</font></strong>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HBGary Federal was set up with Aaron Barr as CEO to provide services and tools to the US Government that might require security clearance. In February of 2011, <a href="https://www.hbgary.com/" target="blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">HBGary</a> and HBGary Federal were raided by several Anons, who released over 70,000 e-mails acquired from their shared server. A subsequent review of those materials by journalists and activists revealed that the firm partnered with <a href="http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Palantir" target="blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Palantir</a> and <a href="http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Berico" target="blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Berico</a> to provide information operation services to prospective clients under a partnership known as <a href="http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Team_Themis" target="blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Team Themis</a>. Evidence of persona management and its use by CENTCOM was discovered via these e-mails, as also a complex US military surveillance and propaganda apparatus – referred to as <a href="http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Romas/COIN" target="blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Romas/COIN</a>. See also <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/the-ridiculous-plan-to-attack-wikileaks.ars" target="blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Spy games: Inside the convoluted plot to bring down WikiLeaks.</a></font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Note: for an excellent (2013) on the persecution of Barrett Brown, see:<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/21/barrett-brown-persecution-anonymous" target="_blank" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/21/barrett-brown-persecution-anonymous</a></font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">See also: <a href="https://undercoverinfo.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/barrett-brown-the-journalist-imprisoned-for-being-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time/" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">https://undercoverinfo.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/barrett-brown-the-journalist-imprisoned-for-being-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time/</a></font>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">old cute quaint :(</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last year, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an Internet PR firm that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Media_Strategies" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">specializes</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in “word-of-mouth marketing” for major corporations including Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford. It appears that, ever since the NMS contract was inked with Koch, an<span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> NMS employee began editing the Wikipedia page for “Charles Koch,” “David Koch,” “Political activities of the Koch family,” and “The Science of Success” (a book written by Charles). Under the moniker of “MBMAdmirer,” NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:David_H._Koch&diff=prev&oldid=411170214" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">distance</span></a><span class="Apple-converted-space"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> </span></span><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">the Koch family from the Tea Party movement, to provide</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> </span></span><a href="http://toolserver.org/betacommand/UserCompare/MBMadmirer.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">baseless</span></a><span class="Apple-converted-space"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> </span></span><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">comparisons between Koch and</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/MBMadmirer/Archive" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">conspiracy theories</span></a><span class="Apple-converted-space"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> </span></span><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets.</span> After administrators flagged the MBMAdmirer account as a “sock puppet” — one of many fake accounts used to manipulate new media sites — a subsequent sock puppet<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/MBMadmirer/Archive" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">investigation</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>found that MBMAdmirer is connected to a number of dummy accounts and ones owned by NMS employees like<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://nms.com/about/our-team/Jeff-Taylor" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">Jeff Taylor</a>.</font>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Soren Dayton, a GOP operative and executive at New Media Strategies, is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=48AFDC2A-E10F-4DC3-A8A9-15DBEBA3F8F2" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">reported</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to be the contact for Koch Industries at NMS. Reached by phone yesterday by ThinkProgress, Dayton exclaimed, “I’m not going to talk about this, thanks,” before hanging up. Lyndsey Medsker, a senior account director for NMS, spoke to ThinkProgress today. She explained that NMS also maintains the Koch Industries Twitter page, Facebook page, and has an active team working on promoting Koch Industries in the comment section of blogs and news websites.</font>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As ThinkProgress has<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/03/03/147953/bloggers-kneel-to-koch/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">reported</a>, the billionaire Koch brothers maintain contracts with over a dozen public relation firms and lobbying firms. Pushing back again recent scrutiny, the brothers have also<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/03/03/147953/bloggers-kneel-to-koch/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">relied</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>on a conservative media infrastructure owned by the Koch brothers or closely linked to them by way of their<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/23/koch-meeting-journalists/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">donor conferences</a>. We have documented how the Koch message machine has<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/03/03/147953/bloggers-kneel-to-koch/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">targeted</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>ThinkProgress and even<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/03/03/147953/bloggers-kneel-to-koch/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">placed</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>hit-pieces against a New Yorker journalist investigated the Kochs. But now it seems the Koch brothers are at work manipulating Wikipedia to polish their image.</font></p>
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<h5 style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 2px 8px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: bold; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; border-radius: 6px; text-transform: uppercase; width: auto; display: block; float: left; background: rgb(0, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">UPDATE</font></h5>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Media Strategies at one point tried to lie about its affiliation with Koch Industries. The account “MBMAdmirer”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MBMadmirer" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">wrote</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in December on Wikipedia: “I am a citizen who has read about and admires the Koch family. I was not pleased with the way that they have been presented in the media. And I thought that I could come to Wikipedia to try to make sure that there are balancing facts.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: bold; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing I do is in coordination with Koch or authorized by Koch</strong>.”</font></p>
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