Here’s some manipulation for you! The media sourced the same twitter bot in 7 different stories.

by kit8642

He’s an interesting case I stumbled upon a few months back and figured I share. A twitter account called “Talia @2020fight” was used in multiple stories over a two year period. Below are the news articles and screen shot of the account being sourced.

Now this is where it get’s interesting. Talia @2020fight was the account that twitter suspended for posting the original Nicolas Sandmann / Nathan Phillips confrontation video.

We are primarily funded by readers. Please subscribe and donate to support us!

The Twitter account that helped spread the initial video has been removed. The user — @2020Fight — claimed to be a teacher and advocate named Talia from California with a photo appearing to show Brazilian model and actress Natalia Cardoso.

The account was offered on a website called Shoutcart.com, which allows people to pay to post on “other peoples” accounts.

As recently as Jan. 13, the @2020fight account was listed on social media marketplace Shoutcart ― a service that allows individuals to pay for “shoutout” posts on highly followed social media accounts, according to Robert Matney, Director of Communications at cyber security firm New Knowledge. The @2020fight account, which had around 41,400 followers at the time, listed a price of $20 a tweet.

The part that wasn’t investigated or checked out, was the video originated from r/trashy, and was posted 45 minutes before Talia’s account:

So it looked to me that someone on r/trashy saw that video, loaded it on to that shill account, and then the media started sourcing that account for the news. Once it all blew up, they burnt the account. The interesting thing to me, is how twitter allows website like Shoutcart.com to operate, if they claim the Talia @2020fight was in violation of their TOS. Seem all the accounts who participate on that site are in violation as well. Anyways, figured I’d share this bizarre story, cheers!

Views:

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.