2018 Senate Testimony Tells A Different Story Than Hamilton 68’s Masterminds Are Telling Now

In response to last week’s “Twitter Files” Takedown of the Hamilton 68 dashboard, which purportedly tracked Russian influence campaigns on social media, the dashboard’s sponsor issued a response blaming “the media, pundits, and even some lawmakers” For misrepresenting and misinterpreting the data. However, the congressional record says a different story. 

“At a bare minimum, the U.S. government needs to have an understanding of what Russia is doing in social media,” Clint Watts, who is responsible for the Hamilton 68 dashboard. Submitted The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation at hearings on Jan. 17, 2018. “Terrorism and Social Media: Is Big Tech Doing Enough?” 

“The Hamilton 68 platform I’ve tried to provide to the U.S. government directly through multiples agencies” Watts suggested Watts do this, stating that “regardless of the outcome of the election in 2016,” We should “want to equip our intelligence agencies, our law enforcement agencies, and the Department of Defense with just an understanding … just an understanding of what Russian active measures are doing around the world.”

“There is no excuse for it,” Watts concluded. “I can’t understand it.”

Watts’ 2018 Senate testimony bolstering the Hamilton 68 dashboard as the means of “understanding … what Russia is doing in social media,” It is impossible to be in sync with Attempts by the dashboard’s host, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, to extricate itself from the latest scandal exposed by “The Twitter Files.”

Matt Taibbi was an independent journalist who published his first issue a week ago. puYou are blished “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud,” The internal Twitter communications revealed that Hamilton 68 used a flawed methodology. Instead of using Russian bots and trolls for Russian influence campaigns assessment, Hamilton 68 used accounts. “understand” What the Russians were doing with social media “neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots.”

Other tweets stressed the importance of this. “no evidence to support the statement that the dashboard is a finger on the pulse of Russian information ops,” Hamilton 68 was “hardly evidence of a massive influence campaign.” Twitter’s then-chief of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, said it more simply: “I think we need to just call this out on the bullsh-t it is.”

Twitter tried to warn politicians, media and politicians against Hamilton 68. But the tech giant decided to go with the flow. “long game,” Instead of calling out the BS, Twitter limited its public comments to vague counters for claims of Russian influence campaigns. Twitter is the best platform for this. deserves condemnation. 

Hamilton 68, however, was the winner. Promoted As a result, “resource for journalists to appropriately identify Russian-sponsored information campaigns,” At least at the beginning, it was. It is to blame. Yet You can find more information atfter Taibbi’s exposé broke, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, or ASD, issued a “Fact Sheet” Response that tried to shift the blame to others. 

Its “Fact Sheet,” ASD claimed control of the dashboard “analyzed a dynamic list of more than 600 Twitter accounts linked, wittingly or unwittingly, to Russian influence activities online,” before complaining that “recent reporting on