Intro
There was a post made to the board today that garnered the attention of a few mods and which was subsequently removed for posting a dodgy sauce with dodgy assertions. (Thank you mods).
Someone suggested I check it out, so I did. After a glance at the article itself, whose headlines plus first few lines stunk to high heaven (sensationalism, over-the-top claims, appeal to known biases, favorite villain, etc), I went into dig mode and applied an approach that I have found to be very useful for digging up potentially bad or evil sources.
I present that approach here (Three Steps) for pedes to consider, as a case study into 'busting' potential disinfo or clickbait operations or operatives. I invite pedes to draw their own conclusions from the data (even though I also post my own).
Note 1: As the narrative war steps up, the best, first defense is developing our discernment skills and investigatory practices.
Note 2: The following is a cursory (meaning not thorough or detailed) study using a few easy-at-hand resources.
Subject: Article: https://slaynews.com/news/wef-pushes-ban-home-grown-food-fight-climate-change/
Step One
search for same text from other publications > attempt to find original source or verify that the article / text is original here. (tool: search engine, i.e. google, etc)
Method: take a section of the text, sentence, etc, and search in search engine
=
Almost identical text found published on "News Addicts" (N/A)
https://newsaddicts.com/wef-warns-home-grown-food-causes-climate-change-demands-ban/
Slay date: March 1, 2024 vs. N/A date: February 3, 2024
After finding other earlier source (and no other), run a comparison between them.
Step Two
verify or investigate authors > check avatars, names, etc. (Tools: search engine, pic recognition, google, tineye, etc)
=
Two-1: check profile
Slay author : Frank Bergman
https://slaynews.com/author/frank-bergman/
Frank Bergman is a political/economic journalist living on the east coast. Aside from news reporting, Bergman also conducts interviews with researchers and material experts and investigates influential individuals and organizations in the sociopolitical world.
NOTE: blurb, no concrete or verifiable details
Two-2: check identity avatar
https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/8cba3174a095e11a787c2b1268dc9916?s=100&d=mm&r=g
No other images on web for "Frank Bergman" with any journalist connection.... "writer" "slay" "author"
COMPARE
Two-1:
N/A author : Hunter Fielding
https://newsaddicts.com/author/hunterfielding/
NOTE: no blurb, zero information
Two-2:
https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d0285a67d14cc3301b877cc335719bc1?s=100&d=mm&r=g
No other images on web for "Hunter Fielding" with any journalist connection, including "writer" "news addicts" "author"
DATA
*Both identities use https://gravatar.com/ for their avatar.
*Neither avatar appears anywhere else on the web (tools: lens.google.com/, tineye.com)
*Bergman has a very generic "blurb" for his profile in addition to stories he 'authored', no concrete information or data provided. In other words, he is anonymous. Fielding has no blurb at all for his profile, only stories he 'authored'. aka anonymous.
Step Three
Investigate publishing bodies, to see how transparent or otherwise they are, attention to verifiable information or data
Slay News
https://who.is/whois/slaynews.com
Registered 2021-10-30
Check registering provider using TUCOWS, INC. (http://tucowsdomains.com) >
Registration Service Provider: Fasthosts Internet Limited [email protected] +44.3330142700 http://www.Fasthosts.co.uk
Contact, admin : Great Britain, East Sussex.
Name Servers based in the UK : livedns.co.uk
Address on website: 63 Us Hwy #21 Jonesville, North Carolina(NC), 28642
Note: From memory, I have seen this address and location before, including street view, in digging into TPV, NewsPunch etc.
COMPARE
News Addicts
https://who.is/whois/newsaddicts.com
Check registering provider using TUCOWS, INC. (http://tucowsdomains.com) >
Registration Service Provider: Fasthosts Internet Limited [email protected] +44.3330142700 http://www.Fasthosts.co.uk
Contact, Admin : Great Britain, East Sussex
Address on Website: P.O. Box 20989 West Palm Beach Florida 33416
Tel: 561-686-1165
SEARCH Address:
belongs to Newsmax (Google)
https://www.newsmax.com/contact/
Newsmax Tel: 561-686-1165
Questions
Who uses anonymous avatars and profiles with zero concrete information or verifiable sources, but presents themselves as "journalists" writing articles on publications presenting themselves as legitimate sources of news?
Who copies texts from other 'authors' but presents it as their own, with little or zero modification, etc?
What publications paint themselves as "pro-american, patriotic, American values," describe themselves as "the world’s leading independent media source for political news junkies" (N/A) and "one of the nation’s fastest-growing alternative media companies" (Slay News), and are "designed for patriots" (N/A) and "promises to always prioritize its most valuable asset – our readers"?
Sauce:
https://slaynews.com/about-us/
https://newsaddicts.com/about-news-addicts/
What publications would provide a fake or false address and contact information in the US, while being based overseas (i.e. UK)?
Is there a pattern or are there patterns of activity/behavior similar or identical between these two 'sauces'? (hint: yes. Same avatar source, same IP provider, same or similar text, etc)
Also: we are anonymous here, but we do not present ourselves as anything other than anonymous. Who is anonymous but at the same time presents themselves as not anonymous? Why would they do that?
Wrap Up
Often, the first place to start myth-busting disinfo or clickbait operations is to check their details, looking for hints of legitimacy or otherwise. Aka the Sauce Check.
Often, even a cursory check can turn up red flags that make it easy to bring the information being published into doubt. Remember, the BEST disinfo always combines X amount (larger amount, normally) of truth with Y amount of disinfo.
Disinfo is most effectively delivered by wrapping it up in a bundle of seemingly legitimate information, in order to disguise the disinfo.
In addition, information that is presented while appealing to people's emotional biases (aka "We're patriots!) often seeks to circumvent otherwise critical thinking. Thus, a Content Analysis is also a very good option as a starting point.
For me, I think the data, re: these two publications, is pretty damning, to start with. So who do you think they are, and what do you think their motive is? To spread the truth? Or to do something else?
Think about it.
Comments
In the above, I have gone to looking at SAUCE as a first step, based on the red flags the headline and text raised for me straight up. However, another equally valid avenue of approach is to examine the text itself, and compare with other articles on the website. What style do they use? What subject matter do they target? What text format (i.e. themes, sequence, arguments, references) do they use? How robust is the content (sauces, reasoning, style, information)?
The problem here is that content alone can be a tricky beast. If the purpose of the publication is EITHER to grift and exploit truth seekers OR to inject disinfo into the truth sphere using undiscerning truth seekers as their conduits, then the information is going to be presented in a way that primarily plays to the target audience's (aka YOUR and MY) biases and emotions.
Also, disinfo or clickbait is best delivered in a package of apparent legitimacy, so spotting the red flags can be tricky. The Sauce Check approach above can be used to get leverage on the content, so that one approaches the text content in a far more skeptical way.
Together, however, whether Sauce Check >> Content Analysis, or Content Analysis >> Source Check, the two of these together deliver a powerful basis on which to regard the publication and content as either Friendly to Truth or Hostile to Truth.
Content Analysis Bonus:
Note that in the article(s) looked at here, the pattern is VERY similar to the NewsPunch format:
Sensationalist Over-the-top Headline plus 2-3+ sentences with bold but sourceless assertions about <despised group/individual> plus copy/paste or presentation of actual legitimate information
Make of that what you will.
Addendum: I checked out the SLAY address and it is the same address used at
https://demo.hashthemes.com/viral-mag/news/
Which is only a "demo", leading to the possibility that the operators were preparing it as a possible deployment or as a practice run for other operations.
I'm pretty sure I found that when investigating the (bogus, imo) Son of WEF co-founder Pascal Najadi narrative that came out last month.
The Viral Mag thing follows the pattern of Newspunch and also CNBCUS, also huffmag.com, which present themselves (originally) as a legit general news or interest website, before then being used for disinfo deployments.
https://huffmag.com/category/opinion/
Najadi himself linked to this fake dodgy website (CNBCUSA.com (now defunct)) on Truth Social as evidence that his assertions are true and that its going worldwide!!!, which at a minimum calls in to question his capacity for discernment, and more broadly calls into doubt his legitimacy. Look at all the dodgy places his article was posted (aka select a segment of the text and run a search on google or other search engine).
Disclaimer: I use google for such searches because they have the largest or one of the largest catchment ranges. I'm not looking for suppressed or censored sources, but purely for web presence, etc.
Hat tip to Charles Dickens for "A Tale of Two Cities" https://www.gutenberg.org/files/98/98-h/98-h.htm
Excellent write up.