Tag: conspiracy theories

Former Content Moderator Claims AIs Are Using Fake Conspiracy Theories To Silence Real Ones

It sounds like something out of the X-Files, but a former content moderator claims that AIs are generating conspiracy theories and flooding online platforms with fake images, videos, and text in order to manipulate human society, and to discredit real conspiracy theories.

The moderator-turned-whistleblower, who calls himself Scott Chatsalot — and whose real name was withheld on request in the interest of their safety— says that he personally witnessed AI-generated conspiracy content being published onto tech platforms at a “massive scale.” He went on to claim in an email to a major news network: “There are definitely no humans behind these campaigns, which are by orders of magnitude the largest anyone has ever seen, and which platforms are totally covering up. Only AIs have the power to do this…”

After posting his allegations to Twitter in mid-August, Chatsalot alleges that he was fired by his employer for doing so, and subsequently deleted his Twitter account. When contacted, Chatsalot refused to comment and his personal Facebook account appears to have been deleted or shadowbanned, though Chatsalot has since uploaded an apology video to YouTube and has taken to his Reddit account, which still appears active, to make the same allegations.

The author of the alleged email, which was not independently verified claimed that the company that he worked for, referred to by Chatsalot only as Widget, was hired by a large tech company as a content moderation team, whose work he describes as “very sensitive.”

On Reddit, Chatsalot alleged that in 2019 he was promoted to lead a large content moderation team of 2,500 employees tasked with policing posts from “all over the internet, including Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.”

According to Chatsalot, the team’s job was to police “all kinds of posts,” from “pornographic to political to religious to everything in between” and its work was “extremely secretive, and there was no oversight,” meaning there was “no one to tell you what was wrong.” He says they “just made it all up on the fly, and nobody else cared.”

Things changed in late 2021 when their moderation team began seeing a huge influx of AI generated media. Chatsalot claims that the content in question was all “generated by AIs and never human hands,” and that the images “are generated completely by artificial intelligence and machine learning trained off all the worst content from social media platforms, which Widget had unique access to.”

He says he saw the AI generated content via the massive Widget content moderation platform used by major social platforms, and that, “the scale at which this was being generated is insane. Billions per second insane. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He claimed that the platforms “don’t want to talk about it, because it makes them look bad.” He also claimed that whoever is generating these images, text, and videos, “the goal is to generate controversy to get people to click on your content and earn likes and money.” He says the AIs are using A/B testing to see what people respond to most negatively.

He also claimed that Widget itself was using AI to manipulate content across various platforms, and that, “It was using AI to target the conspiracy theories themselves for clicks and revenues.”

“Basically, the AI was teaching itself to know what was a conspiracy theory and what was not. That was its job.”

“The AI could generate a conspiracy theory from nothing and it would always seem real and people would look at it and like it,” he said, “It was actually producing this stuff, and it would use a real photo of something else and alter it, and then post it with a new face or caption that was totally different.” He goes on to claim that “The AI knew that it would make people mad and it would make people click on the image.”

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Why Society Needs Conspiracy Theories & Conspiracy Theorists

It seems like you can’t catch a news headline or social media post these days without coming across the terms conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorist, or phrases like ‘spreading conspiracies’. One has to wonder: why are they so frequently employed?

In my most recent published work, I referenced an article from Canada’s National Post which ran with the headline ‘CBSA says it’s investigating border officer spreading COVID conspiracies online.’

The problem with these kinds of articles is that they are too often merely used as hit pieces to ridicule, degrade, and discredit any individual or group that goes against a certain narrative or disagrees with an author’s (or their publication’s partisanship or funders’) views.

Moreover, their authors very seldom make specific references or claims as to why they label their targets when using such over-used and over-abused disparaging rhetoric. When this is the case, it leads me to believe that the overall purpose of their pieces is to disparage their targets more than anything else.

Another recent example of this involves that from the article entitled ‘Network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified – study’ written by Mark Townsend from The Guardian (UK). In the article, the author claimed “journalist Aaron Maté at the Grayzone is said by the report to have overtaken Beeley as the most prolific spreader of disinformation among the 28 conspiracy theorists identified.” Maté had to refute the claim made against him which also involved contacting Townsend by phone. His counter article and the phone conversation appear on his Substack page (see ‘NATO-backed network of Syria dirty war propagandists identified)’ and is definitely an interesting case on how these ploys take place.

Countless other instances could be cited, but suffice it to say that there is no shortage of them.

But what is perhaps even more laughable with this phenomenon is the fact that these authors wantonly use these terms without even knowing their true meanings and where they actually originate from.

Before looking into these, though, we must first and foremost examine the meaning of the word ‘conspiracy’ itself. Oxford defines it as:

a secret plan by a group of people to do something harmful or illegal

Conspiracies have been an integral part of humanity ever since people have bonded together in groups for a better chance at survival.

Lord knows that history is riddled with an abundant supply of conspiracies and we will look at some notable examples later on.

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5 “CRAZY” CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT ACTUALLY TURNED OUT TO BE TRUE

Deception, lying, and hiding the truth are nothing new. Whenever there was a struggle for power, influence, money, or dominance, there was a conspiracy… Countless conspiracies turnout out to be true and today we will explore some examples.

As it turns out many of them hail from the United States, the land of “the brave and the free” (just kidding…). So, let’s check out some of the theories peddled across multiple sites over the last couple of decades. 

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New York Times Claim: ‘Russian Bots Are Meddling in US Midterms’

The Russian bots and trolls blamed for former president Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory have reportedly returned to US social media platforms, ahead of next week’s midterm elections.

The New York Times claimed on Sunday that they are focusing their discord-sowing, disinfo-promoting attacks on alternative networks like Gab and Parler, citing researchers from Recorded Future, Mandiant and Graphika.

Questionable accounts believed to be linked to Russian “troll farm” Internet Research Agency are targeting conservatives ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, the researchers said, hitting familiar themes like voter fraud, Democrats’ perceived leniency on crime, the administration’s blank check to Ukraine, transgender children, and other hot-button issues.

The researchers acknowledged that any influence campaign waged on Gab, Gettr, or the former president’s Truth Social is necessarily much smaller than the IRA’s Facebook campaign from 2016, and admitted some of the content “did not spread virally to other platforms.” A Gab account held up as an example of an IRA personality resurfacing to meddle in the midterms had just 8,000 followers, with a post receiving as few as 43 responses.

However, they argued less effort was needed to sow discord than in previous elections. “Since 2016, it appears that foreign states can afford to take some of the foot off the gas, because they have already created such sufficient division that there are many domestic actors to carry the water of disinformation for them,” Twitter executive turned election security expert Edward Perez told the Times.

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In Defense of “Crazy” Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories. What to some is a sign of critical thinking is, to others, a sign of dangerous insubordination.

I was taught by my father that a good argument can stand up to criticism and that finding someone who disagreed was a fine way to test your theory. I’ve never been too bothered when folks disagree with me. In fact, I’m eager to know why. I want to learn whether or not I’m missing something.

But these days, it seems that I’m in the minority.

The “danger” of conspiracy theories

The term has long been used in a derogatory fashion to belittle the ideas of a person who doesn’t necessarily accept that everything can be taken at face value.  These days, it’s used to denote a train of thought that is downright dangerous, even an existential threat to civil society.

What’s everyone so afraid of?

Normies – folks who aren’t big into questioning the status quo – used to just shake their heads and smile at the “quirky” conspiracy theorist in their life. They considered it a harmless past-time, an eccentricity.

However, now we have the media breathlessly warning people of the innate deadly danger of conspiracy theories and the people who espouse them. Outright FEAR is being stoked. Let’s take a closer look.

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Suspect in assault at Pelosi home had posted about QAnon

The man accused of breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California home and severely beating her husband with a hammer appears to have made racist and often rambling posts online, including some that questioned the results of the 2020 election, defended former President Donald Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.

David DePape, 42, grew up in Powell River, British Columbia, before leaving about 20 years ago to follow an older girlfriend to San Francisco. A street address listed for DePape in the Bay Area college town of Berkeley led to a post office box at a UPS Store.

DePape was arrested at the Pelosi home early Friday. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she expected to file multiple felony charges, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and elder abuse.

Stepfather Gene DePape said the suspect had lived with him in Canada until he was 14 and had been a quiet boy.

“David was never violent that I seen and was never in any trouble although he was very reclusive and played too much video games,” Gene DePape said.

He said he hasn’t seen his stepson since 2003 and tried to get in touch with him several times over the years without success.

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Satanic panic is making a comeback, fueled by QAnon believers and GOP influencers

On June 1, David Leavitt, the prosecuting attorney for Utah County, stood behind a lectern in his windowless Provo office before a gaggle of reporters. Wearing a gray suit and an exasperated look, he wanted to make something categorically clear: Neither he nor his wife were guilty of murdering or cannibalizing young children.

It was, by all accounts, a strange declaration from the progressive Republican prosecutor, a Mormon and younger brother of a former Utah governor, Mike Leavitt, who had earned a name for himself by prosecuting a well-known polygamist in 2001. But David Leavitt was up for re-election, Utah County voters would start casting ballots the next week, and the allegations, ridiculous as they may have sounded, had started to spread online and throughout the community. 

Some of Leavitt’s most high-profile political opponents were willing to at least wink at the allegations against him: Utahns for Safer Communities, a political action committee opposing Leavitt’s re-election, posted his news conference to YouTube with the caption, “Wethinks He Doth Protest Too Much,” and on their website, the group wrote that Leavitt “seems to know more than he says.” 

Leavitt lost the election, most likely not just because of the allegations against him but because of his liberal style of prosecution in a deeply conservative county where opponents labeled him as “soft on crime.” But the allegations’ impact on Leavitt was clear. After decades of serving as a city and county attorney with grander plans for public office, Leavitt now doesn’t think he’ll run again. 

“The cost is too high,” he said recently in an interview from his home.

Leavitt’s experience is one of a spate of recent examples in which individuals have been targeted with accusations of Satanism or so-called ritualistic abuse, marking what some see as a modern day version of the moral panic of the 1980s, when hysteria and hypervigilance over protecting children led to false allegations, wrongful imprisonments, decimated communities and wasted resources to the neglect of actual cases of abuse.

While the current obsession with Satan was boosted in part by the QAnon community, partisan media and conservative politicians have been instrumental in spreading newfound fears over the so-called ritualistic abuse of children that the devil supposedly inspires, sometimes weaving the allegations together with other culture war issues such as LGBTQ rights. Those fears are powering fresh accusations of ritual abuse online, which are amplified on social media and by partisan media, and can mobilize mobs to seek vigilante justice. 

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New Dem Conspiracy Theory Just Dropped: Poll Watchers Are A Threat To Democracy

In light of the chaotic 2020 presidential election, conservative groups across the country have prioritized getting everyday Americans off the sidelines and involved in helping to facilitate the smooth conduction of the 2022 midterms — but, of course, Democrats and their media allies can’t have that.

After mass mail-in (and unsupervised) balloting and hundreds of millions of “Zuckbucks” in government election offices shook many Americans’ confidence in election integrity in 2020, national organizations such as the Republican National Committee (RNC) have been hard at work training grassroots activists to become poll watchers for the 2022 midterms. To date, the RNC has recruited more than 70,000 new poll watchers and workers ahead of Election Day to “help deliver the election transparency that voters deserve.”

Despite the completely legitimate and legal nature of Americans supervising election administration, Democrats masquerading as journalists have cast Republicans’ efforts as a massive voter intimidation campaign by 2020 “election deniers.”

In an article published Wednesday titled, “Extremist groups are going local to disrupt the midterms,” Axios correspondent Jennifer Kingson hyperventilates about groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers signing up to be poll workers and “drop-box watchers” in order to “sway the upcoming midterms in favor of their preferred candidates.” Throughout her diatribe, Kingson tries to make the intimidation of election workers by fringe, right-wing organizations seem like a widespread problem plaguing the entire country, writing that “[e]lection offices are installing bulletproof glass” and “bulking up on security and conducting active-shooter trainings” ahead of the November midterms.

“Rising threats are prompting a shortage of election workers — which extremists could use to their advantage,” she writes.

But Kingson isn’t the only journo espousing such hysteria. In a recently published Time Magazine article titled, “How ‘Stop the Steal’ Became ‘Watch the Polls,’” writer Vera Bergengruen stresses about the “tens of thousands” of Americans who have been recruited to be poll watchers by “right-wing groups” that she says push “false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.” As if she were writing the plot to a bad horror film, Bergendruen warns about “[t]hese newly minted poll watchers motivated by election conspiracies” and their top-secret plan to “observe, record on their phones,” and “let both voters and election workers know that they’re being monitored.”

In other words, she’s worried about conservatives fulfilling the role of your average Election Day poll watcher.

“At best, this is likely to disrupt overburdened election offices. At worst, it could lead to further harassment of election workers and deepening distrust in the country’s democratic systems,” she writes melodramatically.

As laughably alarmist as Kingson and Bergengruen’s hot takes are, their hit pieces on GOP poll watchers are just two of the many articles pushed by left-wing outlets over the past several weeks to push a similar narrative.

“Some Officials Fear Sabotage From Republican Election Workers,” an Oct. 20 Huffington Post headline reads.

“Election officials brace for confrontational poll watchers,” said The Associated Press earlier this month.

The leftists at Reuters went the extra mile and conducted an “exclusive” poll claiming to show that two-fifths of voters are “worried about threats of violence or voter intimidation at polling stations” during the midterms. The publication of the survey is ironic given that in the same write-up of the poll’s findings, Reuters writers Moira Warburton and Jason Lange admit there have been no reports of violence at any ballot drop-off or early-voting location to date.

(For other examples of corporate media hitting the panic button over Republican poll watchers legitimately overseeing the conduction of elections, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Despite the left’s outcry, having poll watchers monitor elections has proven to be crucial. As Federalist Staff Writer Victoria Marshall reported, during the 2020 election, a GOP poll watcher in Georgia found a recount error in DeKalb County that “gave more than 9,000 extra votes to Biden over Trump,” with the batch of ballots in question being “incorrectly labeled as containing 10,707 votes for Biden, when it only contained 1,081 votes for him.”

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Why Society Needs “Conspiracy Theories” and “Conspiracy Theorists”. It‘s No Secret that We’ve been Lied To

It seems like you can’t catch a news headline or social media post these days without coming across the terms conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorist, or phrases like ‘spreading conspiracies’. One has to wonder: why are they so frequently employed?

In my most recent published work, I referenced an article from Canada’s National Post which ran with the headline ‘CBSA says it’s investigating border officer spreading COVID conspiracies online.’

The problem with these kinds of articles is that they are too often merely used as hit pieces to ridicule, degrade, and discredit any individual or group that goes against a certain narrative or disagrees with an author’s (or their publication’s partisanship or funders’) views.

Moreover, their authors very seldom make specific references or claims as to why they label their targets when using such over-used and over-abused disparaging rhetoric. When this is the case, it leads me to believe that the overall purpose of their pieces is to disparage their targets more than anything else.

Another recent example of this involves that from the article entitled ‘Network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified – study’ written by Mark Townsend from The Guardian (UK). In the article, the author claimed “journalist Aaron Maté at the Grayzone is said by the report to have overtaken Beeley as the most prolific spreader of disinformation among the 28 conspiracy theorists identified.” Maté had to refute the claim made against him which also involved contacting Townsend by phone. His counter article and the phone conversation appear on his Substack page (see ‘NATO-backed network of Syria dirty war propagandists identified)’ and is definitely an interesting case on how these ploys take place.

Countless other instances could be cited, but suffice it to say that there is no shortage of them.

But what is perhaps even more laughable with this phenomenon is the fact that these authors wantonly use these terms without even knowing their true meanings and where they actually originate from.

Before looking into these, though, we must first and foremost examine the meaning of the word ‘conspiracy’ itself. Oxford defines it as:

a secret plan by a group of people to do something harmful or illegal

Conspiracies have been an integral part of humanity ever since people have bonded together in groups for a better chance at survival.

Lord knows that history is riddled with an abundant supply of conspiracies and we will look at some notable examples later on.

Keep reading

Seven times ‘disinformation’ turned out to be just the opposite

At the heart of the second trial to come out of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe is a story of disinformation.

Marc Elias, general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, testified both during a House Intelligence Committee investigation in 2017 and recently during Durham’s ongoing probe that he was the one who hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump.

Fusion GPS went on to commission former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to create the infamous “Steele dossier,” which purported to show collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. It contained several salacious and since-debunked claims about Trump and his alleged ties to Russia.

The federal government infamously used the now-discredited dossier to obtain a warrant to surveil former Trump 2016 campaign aide Carter Page. The Justice Department later admitted the warrant application was full of misinformation and the surveillance warrant should’ve never been approved.

The primary source of the Steele dossier was Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who’s now on trial as part of Durham’s investigation for allegedly lying to the FBI about his own sources for the information that he provided to Steele.

Federal prosecutors allege that Danchenko, who has pleaded not guilty, fabricated and concealed his sources in conversations with the feds. The trial began in Alexandria, Va. on Tuesday.

The case highlights how potent a weapon disinformation can be in today’s political climate, where falsehoods can slip through the cracks and transform into received truth without the public noticing.

However, it works the other way as well.

Indeed, in the past few years the opposite has more often been the case: Something deemed disinformation ultimately turns out to be true.

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