Hamilton 68, which claimed to be “a new tool to track Russian disinformation on Twitter,” was nothing more than a scam used to implicate the accounts of regular people who had opinions that the Democrat left and their complicit partners in media didn’t like.
In the latest Twitter Files, dropped by Matt Taibbi on Friday, it was revealed that Hamilton 68 was a “scam.” “Instead of tracking how “Russia” influenced American attitudes, Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming,” Taibbi wrote.
Hamilton 68 created a list of 644 Twitter accounts that they claimed could “directly attribute to the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian governments or their various news and information channels.” They said they would not provide the list outright because that would give these governments a chance to take the accounts down and create new ones to fill that space.
The only issue was that these accounts were, in most cases, not bots but actual people who disagreed with the going Democrat, leftist narrative. And Twitter knew it.
Taibbi provided emails showing that Twitter knew that much of what Hamilton 68 provided was inaccurate and that Twitter execs like Yoel Roth did not feel that they could go after Hamilton 68, which is under the Alliance for Securing Democracy and is housed at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
They claim that their purpose is to develop “comprehensive strategies to deter, defend against, and raise the costs of autocratic efforts to undermine and interfere in democratic institutions.”
Hamilton 68 was sourced in countless articles in mainstream press as evidence of the Russian bot problem on social media.
“Hamilton 68 was used as a source to assert Russian influence in an astonishing array of news stories: support for Brett Kavanaugh or the Devin Nunes memo, the Parkland shooting, manipulation of black voters, ‘attacks’ on the Mueller investigation…
“These stories raised fears in the population, and most insidious of all, were used to smear people like Tulsi Gabbard as foreign “assets,” and drum up sympathy for political causes like Joe Biden’s campaign by describing critics as Russian-aligned.”
The only issue was that what Hamilton 68 declared about Russian disinfo bots, which was used as evidence by countless media outlets as proof of Russian meddling, was a lie.
Instead, Taibbi writes, “The illusion of Russian support was created by tracking people like Joe Lauria, Sonia Monsour, and Dave Shestokas. Virtually every major American news organization cited these fake tales— even fact-checking sites like Snopes and Politifact.”
And Twitter knew it, but didn’t do anything about it.
Yoel Roth, former head of Twitter Trust and Safety, found Hamilton 68’s contention that anyone who disagreed with the going narrative to be “condescending.”
“Hamilton 68 was and is a computerized ‘dashboard’ designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation”. It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC ‘disinformation expert’) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank. The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and onetime Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol,” Taibbi wrote.
While Taibbi didn’t release the list of those 644 accounts, he did say that he had been contacting some of those named on the list, as Twitter was able to recreate it and he has access to those files.
