DiscloseTV & the Cultic Milieu

the podcast. We have a special guest today, UH journalisten researcher W. F. Thomas. Hello, Hello, it's so good to be here on Behind the Woman's Revolution the Police Insurrection Daily. Thank you, thank you lovely to have you. Um. A lot of people say Garrison's voice tastes like surbet, by the way, it's a comment. We get a lot a lot, a lot of a lot of a lot of those

d M s. Um, you surprised, not that. Um. So we're gonna be talking about something I've wanted to actually bring up myself for a while now, but I just have not put it the work in and now Luckily someone else did the actual work, so we now we could just talk about it. We're talking about something called disclosed TV UM, which is a broad range of things. It's not it's not just one thing. Uh, And I guess I'll hand it over to the person who do the actual work in terms of like how how would

you describe what disclosed TV is? But but like before we get into like the journey of the platform and thing like what like what is it? Yeah, UM, let me start this off by saying, I've already before the publication of the article been publicly threatened vaguely with legal action from Disclosed TV, so that will be largely informing what I say today. But we do have a lot of receipts. UM, we have very scary lawyers here. So I'm i'm, i'm I'm excited whatever happens, So feel free

to say whatever you want to say. But UM, Disclosed TV markets itself and presents itself as a news aggregator UM operating Twitter, UM Telegram, gab getter. They have a Facebook as well as well as the main site where

they host what one could describe as articles as well. Yeah, and I think disclosed TV for our purposes, despite like they have a very large Facebook presence UM, but the way that we usually interact with them specifically like me and Robert and then other people who are like journalists storage to anti fascist researchers, usually we interact with disclosed TV on Telegram or through Twitter um Twitter through like it's how they like break a lot of current events

in like a like you know, a lot of like political figures talk about them is is Twitter um and then Telegram is where they really disseminate these out into more obscure groups and maybe they change their wording because they know the audience is a little bit different and

they've been a vector of information for a while. Really really with the protests, they kind of picked up a lot of there they were everywhere in terms of like saying specific things, not doing sourcing UM and just having like basically they are a place where they kind of create what then they try to create what the news is because of how isolated they are from the sources that they actually pull info from, and they're very they're very interested in kind of crafting their own version of

events UM which appeals to people across the spectrum. Like they don't just market towards the far right wing. Sometimes they frame things to kind of attract of a variety of people on like the under the Street extremist banner. Let's say. Um, so, you know, you don't just see them in far right circles. You see discloses pop up in a lot of places because of the way they framed news and breaking events. UM. But they didn't always start out like this. This isn't what they always were.

They weren't always this kind of content aggregator that creates their version of news. UM. And Thomas did more research into what they were before, which I actually had not done that research yet. UM. So yeah, let's uh, let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So I'm gonna start off with talking about how I first heard about disclosed. UM. So. I was living in Germany when the pandemic hit UM and got COVID first wave in Germany in the March. UM.

Luckily I was totally asymptomatic. UM, but I was kind of stranded in Germany for a couple of weeks UM and how to isolate in a vacation rental uh and the Bavarian man who owned it just kept coming in talking to me and I would tell him, Hey, it's probably not the best idea for you to be coming by and chatting with me all the time. And now

he got into talking, and we're talking in German. He got we got into talking about the pandemic, what he thought about it, and he started talking about how he thought, Oh, the government's making this seem way worse than it is. You know, the deep state if you know anything about that, and he and he said deep state in English. Um. And I was familiar with German far right currents at that time. Um, but I had never encountered a pilled German dude. And that's when I realized this is gonna

be a fucking problem. Yeah. Yeah, and and it lo and behold, it has continued to be a problem. So as I got back to the U S. And and the other thing when I was in Germany is the first time I toounded I encountered telegram. Um. When a German I knew said hey, I I just don't trust WhatsApp because it's on by Facebook. Why don't you download telegram in two thousand nineteen, I think, um, and and it was pretty innocuous to me at the time. I

didn't realize this would become a problem. Yeah, fast forward, UM. I was working on my master's project, which UM you can talk about more later on because it's kind of besides the point, UM if you don't want to hear about it, But looking at Telegram as the cultic milieu UM, using Colin Campbell's framework of the cultic milieu UM to understand specifically how qan on spread in Germany and how Q and on interacted with these native underlying conspiracy narratives

within Germany. UM. Because Telegram is already massively popular in Germany before after j six, I think of the band wave came down and there was much more migration to the platform. So you know, I did the social network analysis looking at the conspirat German conspiracy is seen on Telegram and one of the biggest notes that came up, and I looking at a number of times shared into other groups or channels was disclosed tv UM and that's

the first time I came into it. I look through it and realized, okay, they there is an editorial stance within this UM, and that editorial stance largely attracts conspiracists and far right extremists to this coverage and too you know this is widely shared among conspiracists and far right extremists. UM. Fast forward. UM. I'm on Twitter, as many of us are, unfortunately, UM, and I saw Disclosed TV just popping up everywhere, UM,

even from people who who I would think should know better. Yeah, absolutely are you know big extremism researchers and journalists UM shared it. I remember there one specific one that really came across my feed. UM disclosed had had taken a video from like the Blaze, Glennbex whatever, the Empire whatever, UM about the firefighters who were quitting over vaccine mandate or something and had all of their boots or whatever.

And I saw, yeah, lots of people sharing that as well. UM. And eventually I got tired of saying, hey, this should is suspect, don't share it UM, and decided to write an article about it so I could just send my article to people. And it's really interesting what I found. UM. Disclosed tv started off in the mid two thousand's as just this forum for UFOs, paranormal stuff, cryptids, bigfoot sightings, and existed in largely the same format until two thousand

and twenty one. UM. There were some shifts in in the way the site presented itself. Um, it was. It started off as a member loggin where member could write articles that were largely long form forum posts and then have people comment on them and reply. Um. And at one point Disclosed made the jump to functioning as a news aggregator while including an editorial spin on that and

including some of their own articles. Do you want me to get more into that now, Yeah, because yeah, because like the shift was was it wasn't like immediate as well, right, Like they were starting to kind of present themselves in more of a news gathering way, you know, around the late of course, during this became a big thing in terms of their social media presence. Um, they were trying to present themselves as like a news aggregator, right, but

they still operated that. But they still operated the forum on their site throughout most of that time. And it's only until recently where they shut that forum down. Um, which was you know, full of full of all kinds of conspiratorial nonsense. It's very easy to see passed for most people, uh, secret you know, secret Arctic ship, which is yeah, it's always that's usually Yeah, even going to get stuff like watch this s j W get wrecked, which which is not a quotation, but just that kind

of vibe, that style of content. Yeah, going from the forum operating than what they know their social media accounts to the shift this more of like presenting as a news website. Talking about that and the potential effects that we see this having on both like the social media sites and just the overall trend of news aggregation in general,

I guess. Yeah. So the first big shift that I found UM was the creation of their Telegram channel, which is in January of one actually, so this is relatively more recent than Yeah, if that happened UM, and they operated their Telegram as a UM as more in this traditional news aggregator since and so that's how they really blew up on Telegram. At some point they deleted all of their old tweets UM and started operating their Twitter

in a similar manner. It was after they created this telegram channel UM in September, actually overnight on septemb they

completely re rebranded the site. They took out all the user forums UM, they included backdated articles to a year prior UM, and looking looking through archives of it, there was a note saying something along the lines of we have found so much growth on our social media are growing Telegram channel, are growing Twitter account UM, and something to the effect of we we are changing our strategy

and going about this a different way. UM. And you can if you were into the forum, you can join our discord UM which is defunct and I'll get I'll get into that later. UM. And yeah, looking it was really interesting too because looking at these backdated articles UM, they included very obviously plagiarized content. UM. They had I believe it's it's all in the article, but they had four journalists UM names attached with the article using um

AI generated images for their pictures. UM. And the especially the articles that they themselves published UM were very focused on UFOs paranormal paranormal phenomenon UM, as well as content that could cause skepticism within an audience, UM about vaccines and lockdowns. And I do not know the intent of U their editorial board, and so I cannot speak on that,

but of course it generated this effect. Yes, that is, they found a way of creating content which develops a very specific audience, which grew their numbers, which made them, you know what one could assume would make them want to make more of that content. Because that makes more numbers than they can UM use that to grow their platform. UM. Yeah, specifically leading up like after after January UM ramping up one of the vaccines were coming more and more common

in the States and that across the world. UM. They have seen a pretty significant growth and have changed their platform accordingly exactly. UM. So we began looking into who the who the fun owns this, what's going on with this UM. Like all German companies UM, and it is based in Germany, there's a requirement by law to include an imprint or an impress them that includes an address

UM contact information for the site UM. There in the company that owns it UM a company called Future Bites operates disclosed tv UM, which describes itself as a private equity firm and media group. UM and looking into the ownership behind Future Bites is a man by the name of Uva Brown who has a pretty interesting backstory. He's hosted, he's He's made numerous web hosting sites. UM. I believe he created some dating sites as well, but but my research was not conclusive, so that's a maybe. UM. But

eventually he sold. He had his most success when he sold one of his web hosting sites to go Daddy for a lot of money, and along the way, in his own as he described, booked a flight on virgin to go into space and see for himself if the earth, if the Earth was flat. Oh my god, awesome cool that that, this is great? Thank you. Yeah. So this this is who we're dealing with, um. Sweet. And the thing about Disclosed being based in Germany, UM, that that becomes an issue, UM, is that Germany has a very

different uh look at free speech than in the US. UM. For example, even online displaying swastikas UM and denying the Holocaust is legal and is a prosecutable crime. They can get you jail time. UM. So as we explored as I mostly and UM, there's additional reporting from Berni Piper and I'll talk a bit more about that later explored

the discord and their telegram. We realized, Hum, it seems to be a lot of Nazis here, and by which when I say seems to be a lot of Nazis, I mean people with swastikas in their profile builds, UM with you know, names, referencing the Holocaust with the whispers parentheses um, and saying denying that the hologast Happened UM, and also sharing the neo Nazi, famous neo Nazi, infamous new Nazi propaganda film Europa The Last Battle UM, which

was shared by prominent q and On influencer ghost Ezra. Yeah. I know. UM, oh man, this this came up a few days ago. One of the one of the channels that me and someone else have been watching, UH forwarded me it being that that that film being shared at the it was it was it was that the the Free Oregon Telegram channel was sharing links to that and I wonder I would I would like to track back

where that link came from. UM. Yeah. Not not great seeing that film circulate more and more, especially among like you know, the free organ Telegram channels, you know, like Anti mask, Anti backs, Anti Lockdown channel. Yeah, and seeing the percoloration of that type of content. Yeah. So and prepare for this article UM. With the help of of the Logically editorial team, I'm a freelancer UM, their current head of content, Ernie Piper UM sent an email basically asking, hey,

what's going on. You all seem to have a Nazi problem that's kind of borderline illegal in Germany, UM, to which for a while this for for about twenty four hours as closed, just went totally quiet and didn't post Um and then came out with a post specifically targeting Ernie Um by name him and with a picture of him and linking to some of his old reporting work as well, Um saying yes, Uva Brown owns this. He

got his money from Go daddy. You know, we value free speech and we condemn hatred whatnot, and and saying, oh, our telegram we have a tell there's a telegram group, but we have these rules in it, and h okay, yeah, we we had to shut down the discord that got a little bit out of hand. We admit that. You know, they had people denying the Holocaust with swastka icons in their discord that they didn't seem to care too much

about until someone pointed it out. Um. And you know there's there was additionally very explicit neo Nazi content in their telegram channel as well, with the excuse, oh well, we're a glowing growing platform. We we can't moderate everything. Is well they have They just crossed four hundred thousand in their telegram channel and I think about thirty thousand

and their telegram group UM, which is frankly bullshit. Yeah that is if if my personal opinion is that if you cannot don't have the resources to moderate this space, you probably shouldn't space the space. Um. And and additionally confirming, oh, okay, we we when we made our new version of the site. Yes, we backdated some articles from previous user generated content that we you know, didn't vet properly. We're trying to fix

that now they removed some of those articles. Um. And that yeah, we none of the people who who are the authors of our articles are real people and they're all pen names. Um. You know. They also have or at least had a tab on their website that said right for us and looking for people to send them things and saying you know, well we will disclose your bio and link to all your social media if you write a story for us. And they're there was zero

of that happening as well. So do you think that, I know, like on the rules for their telegram they have the no Nazi stuff rule. Um. Do you think they're actually trying to discourage that because they're scared of legal stuff or is that just presentorary and they I guess you know, this is just going into speculations. So I think this might be more a question for even Robert Um in terms of yeah, like is the anti

Nazi stuff presentorary? And because it does seem to be a lot of their user base is fostering that type of thing or is you know being moved over from

other similar channels? Um? Because yeah, like a lot of like the amount that we see disclose, like you know, intercept with channels like you know, the Rise above Him the channel, UM, and a whole bunch of like eco fascist channels, and a whole bunch of channels you know on a like a broad range of like actual like fascist topics, like people who are like into fascist theory. Um is quite high the like the amount that disclosed

shows up. Um. And I don't know, like you could look at all their stuff saying I mean, like yeah on on the their rule page saying no Nazi bullshit. Um. But then if you spend any amount of time looking at at where they're posts are forwarded, it's almost primarily

people who are self describe themselves as fascists. UM. So I mean, yeah, it's hard to or Donald J. Trump Jr. Yes, Yes, it expands out into a lot of you know, just like you know, American journalists suits studying streamism could also share discloses stuff on Twitter, right, that is part of their thing is making that and you know that that

does strengthen them because it gives them that legitimacy. So then when people point out that they have Nazi problem, like, no, that's not us, that's just some of our users who are trolling or you know whatever whatever bullshit they want to say. Um So I guess, like how I guess the real way to frame this is like how often have you seen Nazi stuff associated with the disclose with

the Disclosed TV brand? Because that's the one thing we actually can measure, right, we can't measure their intentions, but

we can't measure how often this stuff happens. Yeah, mean, that's always like the best way to measure that kind of thing, rather than just sort of like making the allegation listing like we find it in this many channels, we see it shared in these areas, it's being discussed by these people, and like like that that's I think always kind of how you actually build these these sort of networks is by looking at what is actually spreading where like that's that it is thankfully, something that you

can measure pretty objectively, and like they are fostering it with the amount of stuff they talk about, like George Soros, and you know, the amount of stuff that they like. The way they frame breaking news is has that editorial bent where it's very clear that it's getting pushed in a specific direction like there's that is That is a thing that you can observe by reading the type of

narratives they're weaving via how they report information. Um, the the topics that they choose to cover, our topics that reson very deeply with conspiracist and with far at extremist communities. UM. If I had to speculate, UM, I will say at least since the article has come out, Um, they've done a better job of moderating their telegram channel at least for now. So good job, disclosed, TV no one. You can't find links to Europe with the last battle there anymore.

You can still find you can still find very rampant homophobia slurs um, because you know they didn't. They clearly auto blocked some words, but people can shorten them or use different spellings for those words to still be used in the channel. Um, there's still anti Semitic um coded anti Semitic references as well responding to something saying oive a for example, which is something that tends to be

used by a lot of neo Nazis and anti Semites. Yeah, I mean even and if you do any amount of research on Telegram, you will you will find forward links forwarded links to this channel all everywhere, like if it's

it is, it is so massive. The footprint that they have currently in the in like the the cycle of of forwarding posts specifically on Telegram UM and yeah, and they're they're getting a lot of traction on it because they have stuff framed in a way that's really easy for them to have those stuff like line up with the communities that promote those types of worldviews UM and promote the you know, the narratives that they want to foster.

So let's see, let's have another quick break and then let's maybe talk about your big master's project, which is really interesting. Yeah, can I can? I can I do it? Yeah? I do this. You know you know what isn't telegram? Uh? Literally these ads unless we get an ad by Telegram, which we are primarily sponsored by the Duo Brothers UM. But that's for a separate project. My favorite at is the is the one where it's the kid playing and they find a gun. Oh yeah, that's my favorite. And

oh we are thanks to great hope. Everybody enjoyed that kid finding a gun a kid firing it. Yeah, so there's one of my favorite tweets recently was like somebody, it was somebody like clipped a screen grab of news article that was like a toddler has shot someone every day in the United States for the last three years, and somebody quote tweeted and said, somebody fucking stop him.

It's very good. Um. The last thing I want to talk about is just kind of why news aggregators are bad in the first place, and examples of which we've seen the past few years, and how they contribute to dis information specifically, and how they don't do sourcing for any claims and they try to make themselves a primary source even though they're not. UM. And then also would

love to talk about your very fancy project. So yeah, we saw a lot of news aggregators that like during the protest, specifically that that spawned and killed many a news aggregator account UM, which did not help things very much. UM. And this is this is an issue that strikes across the political spectrum. Yes, I mean one of the biggest instances of that would be an account called and on cat right. That was the yeah um who you know marketed themselves towards the left wing UM. And I again,

I don't know what their intentionality was. They may have had their heart in the right place. I have no idea, um and I'm not going to speculate on that right now. But the effect that they caused was damaging to how

information is disseminated, specifically in high stress events. Um. You know, like for instance, the writtenhouse shooting, you know, like stuff like that, Uh, the big accounts, the demos around that before that, yeah, before that, yes, yeah, like the the in fostering that very fast paced unverified information circulation UM that gets you know a lot of retweets, it gets it gets a lot of eyeballs on it. But but

it's hard. It makes it very hard to backtrack claims because they do not want to link to other accounts, because they're mostly interested in growing their own account. Um. So and I will say Disclose has gotten better about linking to the sources, even if the title and the tweet don't necessarily match what in the story they link to. Yeah,

at least someone could take a different interpretation from the two. Yes, So, just like you know, news aggregation and the way it intersects with disinformation and misinformation, not just a problem for the far right, not just a problem for the right wing, just a problem for liberals, not just problem for leftist This is the thing that anyone, anyone can really grasp on to um. And some of it's accidental, some of

it's intentional. Right, there's some some people might just do this kind of mindlessly, and some people may, you know, do this aggregation with a very specific intent in mind. So just be very careful whenever you have an account that always leads with all caps like breaking like news. Like if if you have an account that always does that, maybe maybe maybe don't take that account super seriously all

the time. Maybe you should uh find other sources of info that don't always start the tweets with breaking news and all caps or advice to people if they do want something like that, find an actual news source. Yeah, there's plenty of valid criticism to be made. Again, you know these mainstream media m s M centrist stuff from from you know, even from the left, there's there's criticism. Um, but you have to find some way of finding your own meaning and understanding of what is going on in

the world around you. I think a CNN Reuters. Yeah, And on that point, I think that is part of why I think Disclosed can succeed and or like what they did can succeed, even like when I see stuff shared on the left, even by like anarchists, because it is a not mainstream media news source, the way they can frame things of sometimes rarely will match up with like an actual anarchist views and the like, Yeah, I'm going to share it from this thing because it does

feel like an underground you know source. It doesn't. It doesn't. It's not you're not sharing a scene an article, so you feel better because instead you're sharing something that is not in the mainstream. So like I get that, I get that pull to not something that genuous reading of a CNN article instead. Yeah, but instead of you're you know,

it's not actually better, it's just marketing. They're just tricking you via esthetics and branding, and that's all that it is, right, So maybe you should learn learn to see past the marketing and branding of those types of things, and look at the actual content of what's being shared. What is the university project thing that has been taking up a

lot of your time? Yeah, and um, so you're back in the U S. And I got interested, um, especially in looking at the spread of Q and on in Germany, and that you led me down this research path, um, and brought me especially to telegram um again before it was largely used in in right wing circles in the U S. Well, the the Nazis have have pretty regularly

in the US, but on telegram as well. Um. But this led me to look at this and and um especially to to look at telegram the context of as I mentioned, Colin Campbell's concept of the cultic milieu, um, which I don't know if you'll have talked about that on this we have one behind subject of time, okay, but yeah, to give a quick summary, is is the concept that there is this space and when Colin Campbell

wrote that, it was in I believe the seventies. So it was a physical space where people go to find these rejected narratives, you know, reject the idea of rejected knowledge, and they go to seek this kind of knowledge and and and these things. UM. So he's talking about things like UFO conferences or or meet ups, or or alternative bookstores, or perhaps maybe signing up at an institute to get a degree in metaphysics. Yeah, as a weirdly specific example,

gear Yeah, sorry, does red red of thought? Yeah. Anyway, how's that going, by the way, Garrison, it's going good, good, Yeah. And and what you find is is people can very easily move between ideologies, UM. And as they move between ideologies concepts, specific schools, they cross pollinate these schools UM.

And this is how you get these kind of highly syncretic movements like Q and on UM, like the modern conspiracy movement UM, which is incredibly syncretic, and UM some of the other really bad ones that are out there as well that combine these different views UM. Specifically, when you start when you start combining the type of like cultural mysticism with politics, often you can have very volatile results. Yes, exactly.

Can you think of any examples? I mean, in some ways, the modern eco fascist movement is built on a lot of this type of stuff, so that that would be

the easiest one, would be the easiest one. The I think that the syncretism of because I think a lot of people have been surprised to see like you know, kind of like natural medicine and and what not subcultures and eight like alien subcultures kind of colliding with Q and on and and these like more like far right neo Nazi type groups, and the fact that there are all of these things that were associated for years kind of more with the left have been increasingly um pulled

into this this sort of weather system of conspiratorial thinking has been surprising to a lot of people who don't understand this stuff. But it makes total sense if you if you have been paying attention to the scholarship on on what is actually like how cults sort of form like it's it's it's um. It's like a weather pattern that's been building for quite a while. There's a gravity to it that sucks um everything in together and it all kind of it's as you said, syncretic um. It's

not to get into horsehoe through. But this is even how you get some of that crossover, right, Yes, yeah, that was that was That was what I was just going to mention, is that even a lot of like the left wing authors or you know, post left wing authors who got into this like cultural mysticism. Um, you see their texts now getting shared by like like open fascists.

Even though these authors were anti fascist, Um, they are able to still pick and choose what parts they're writing to appropriate because some of it can kind of synchronize

at from opposite ends a very long time. Like if you we've we talked about in our Gabriel the Nunzio episodes Fume, which was this kind of like we're a large chunk of like the fascist intellectual movement got started, um in the post World War One period, but also there were like a ton of anarchists and a lot of like left wing um like thought leaders and whatnot.

We're kind of all it was again kind of there there was this kind of like gravity center that pulled everything in and it all started churning together, and um, yeah we're we're we're we're seeing that happen now. Um and yeah it sucks. That's that's that's great. To jump back to, campl That's one of those examples of those physical space of the call and that Cal Campbell was talking about right, Um, where it's it's any place that ideas that are rejected by you know, the orthodox kind

of the establishment. There is overlap, there is not necessarily ideological overlap. There is an interplay between them as people move between them and as these ideas come into collision with one another. Um, and with the Internet, right, whole different fucking ball game. Um yeah, because that space is now everywhere exactly and and telegram specifically has the specific affordances that make it ideal for having this soup of bullshit on it as well. Um. It's it's additionally one

of and this may be changing. There's a lot of discussion going on about this, especially within the German government, who could actually they already have a lot that they could use to say, hey, you can't have Nazis on

you can't have this Nazi ship in telegram. Um. But telegrams one of these last places where where things are largely allowed to spread without any kind of interruption, right, Um, which I do think you know you look at telegram is used in in um, the Hong Kong uprising as well, it was used for it was used in the George Yeah, that George Floyd uprising as well. Um. And it's the same things that people too at time is fake, um, bolish lane of your time. Um, but shooting your clock,

shoot the fucking clock. But okay, said, let's get back to the topic. Yeah, but but but but drumming back into this, Telegram markets itself is this very secure platform. It's probably not right. It does have it's certainly not absolutely not. It does have it does have encrypted chats, but that's only for one to one messaging between people. And even then you need to go and make your the security settings right. And again, I I don't fully trust that. Yeah, I don't fully truy. I mean signal

is about barely trust signal. Yeah, yeah, I trust conversations when everyone has put their phone inside a Faraday bag in a house and then we walked two miles into we walked two miles into the woods, then you can have a conversation. Yeah. Um, but Telegram market itself is a very secure app, right, um, which is which is largely marketing. You know, It's it's appeal is that it's

not What's app, it's not owned by Facebook. It's probably worth acknowledging that for because it's also very popular with a lot of people in um, you know, parts of the global South and countries with authoritarian governments, and it is has been used for a lot of organizing and can be more secure and all more secure but also more able than what than any other tool people have

access to. I mean in Syria, it's like it's again extremely common for like nay, like neighborhoods and towns will have like Telegram groups for this little village where they a lot of stuff gets done over Telegram in places like that, And telegram sits in this interesting space between social media. UM. It's not a full on social media site, but it's also not just a messaging app like telegrams to categorize it is an interesting sort of like in

between type thing. Yeah, because you can have essentially unlimited I think the number is in the hundreds of thousands for how many people can join a group message UM on Telegram. And you also have these one way messaging thing called channels where where one person or group of people can send out messages that appear alongside everyone else's message feed as well. UM, and that can you can also enable comments on that UM, which will get into in a second UM. But but it's a great way

to share information as well. And what I was specifically looking at is the forwarding of messages, because you you can forward a message from this one channel into whatever a group chat you're in, and it links back to that channel. And I was interested in saying, how far you know, what connections can we make from this? What

kind of zigzagging can we find? Um enhancer is sucking a lot uh where where someone may may use telegram for for example, a neighborhood group message right, and then someone forwards the messages a message for this channel UM or for this other group message UM, where they talk about, oh,

here's kind of helped practices to use. And then you get into the pseudo science of things crossing into further messages from what's forward forward groups and channels from what's forwarded into that group and channel, and so on so on, until you get to the neo nazis eventually UM. And it's also it is it is a concerted effort on the part of people pushing their ideology, who will go in the comments of these giant channels and say, hey, check out my channel. UM, what's not a real one?

You know, areean cooking, which is probably a channel but it probably is. Yeah, great job checking. Sorry, but check out check out check out, check out this or whatever. And and especially when q and on moved on a lot of promoters. Um, there there was organized groups of of internet neo Nazis going on and trying to pill boomers into neo Nazism. And because of the because of the mesh like network of Telegram, they try to make

those meshes connect via dissemination. Right you can, you know, people who are dedicated to these more esoteric groups can join more regular like Marga groups or qut on groups and start slowly bringing links to the start doing links and forwarding to the more extreme channels. Um. And eventually yeah, that does that does work. It can be a slow, careful process um, or it can be very fast and like bobastic And it'll depending on the said one of

them will latch onto one one watch onto the other. Yeah. And and before the article came out, UM, what I did see was the specific thing of accounts that I would associate or or believe to be neo Nazi UM encouraging people to join their groups and channels UM in the in the telegram group message as well. And I cannot speak to what that looks like right now after the article has come out, yeah, and I've been trying to take a break from telegram for my day to

day life, um and focus on reading actual books. So but yeah, that is how I can always tell when one of us has been spending time on telegram, because the things we consider jokes get much worse. Yeah. You remember when I found that playlist of Blink covers covers it was what there was like a hundred of them Blink or some full ship. Yeah, you always find you could, you could find the most fucked up stuff. Don't don't do it. Don't don't scrowl until do not. You're not

going to get this isn't like coveting the stay. You don't need to be like it's it's not even it's not worth it, Like there's no sacred novit like knowledge that we're hiding. It's just it's it's just kind of sucks, like it just like it just to feel bad. Yeah, it just makes you feel worse about life and yourself and the people around you. So the scope for your master's project what it's kind of the what's the what's

the deal with like tying these things together? I guess yeah. Yeah, So so using this social network analysis to argue that the telegram does function as this could take Millie you um, which yeah, it seems seems to be. It seems to be the case. Yeah. Um. You know, and the question gets into what is the responsibility the platform? Right, um, because I fully believe there should be something at least

similar to this. It has been used for you know, purposes along with my politics, in which I would call good and needed. Um. However, they've also allowed this fucking awful ecosystem to spread. It's it's interesting to see when Telegram has had to step in and they you know, they have pulled down some ices, accounts and channels. Um. And and they have down when I was in um Al Hall, which is that the camp where all the

ISIS prisoners were in Syria. Like while Jake and I were in the camp, we could see on telegram like ISIS supporters and al hole talking about stabbing guards like in real time. It was not particularly Uh. They've done like a lot. There's less of it than there used to be, but it is still not hard to find ISIS on telegram. Yeah. And they they've taken down a few amounts of neo Nazi channels. Um. It's it's funny

because oh god, maybe cut this. But they've taken on some of the your honesty channels when they've shared Ice as ship for example. Yeah, yeah, I think we're we've we're familiar with that line of thing. That's something we've

mentioned before. Okay. There has been pressure from from the play Store and Google as well, or the play Store from Google and and the app store Apples, app Store from Apple to say we we aren't going to carry the app if you don't do just a tiny bit better essentially um which which which also it exists as a web client, um, both as as a web client and as a desktop app as well. UM. But that

would you know, limits some of it. Um. So, So this has become largely discussed in the German in the German parment because there's a new UM, there's a new government in Germany, and and there is this history of Germany kind of is the lead for doing things about this digital content, especially within the EU. And and as I mentioned, there's already law call Adoptic Enforcement Act that requires platforms to take down content in Germany. Um. They

could be implemented on telegram as well. There's already a law. Yeah, I mean This is like the thing why you know what I watch happen lots is you know, these channels will get shut down and they'll make a new one, and it will shut down that one and make a new one. Right. It's this You see this with like discord servers, telegram channels. It is kind of this endless cycle, um,

and seeking an end to the cycle. It's always not as easy as what one would hope, UM, because of the cyclical nature of building these platforms and connections and how the people who run these you know, intersect and specifically with with telegrams. Really easy because channel get shut down, you're still part of twelve of their channels, and odds are one of those channels is going to afford you

the link to the new channel that was that was lost. Yeah, And this is the thing you see where they send lists of channels within within extremest groups and channels, they will send out a list of here's other groups and channels to check out as well. Yeah, but I mean I would So that's something that's you know, hard for

regular people to actually do. But something I think that people who do not own these platforms nor lawmakers can't think about is particularly the the cultic comulie you that does you know, go past regular left right divisions in terms of politics and how you know, symbol like symbology um and stuff that was you know initially you know, perhaps more anarchist or or left wing is being used by people on the right, and some people are really confused by that, and there is ways to there is

ways to understand it, like it is, it does. I am very frustrated when I look at you know, people online who don't understand why Nazis can use ted K and right, it's like, yeah, like it's it's not it's it's not it's not what It's not not really about

what ted K actually run. It's more the symbolic meme of ted K. And trying to you know, get that, get that line of thinking across is not the easiest thing because sometimes it will go in the other direction and be like, oh, ted K is a Nazi, which isn't accurate either, Like that's that's not also the most accurate thing to say, So it's it's the cultimalu framework

of being. Yeah. Sometimes these symbols can cross over from one thing to another, and sometimes the action can be the same you know, both anarchists and like instructionary fascists both want to like attack like industrialization and attack points of industry, right, but maybe their ideologies are slightly different, sometimes in specific ways, so it's always a tricky thing

to kind of navigate. UM. So I think in terms of, you know, people should think about what symbols they promote, uh, like publicly and stuff is a good thing, and think about news aggregation and how to maybe not not just share something because it's countercultural, trying to figure out what other what other types of narratives the sources spread. Um journalists support the work of real journalist because a bunch of kick asks people out there um who were doing

awesome research and work. So I think that kind of wraps up the scope of what I want to talk about around Disclose specifically, because I mean, discloses a thing, but it's also like it's good as just like an example to like this overly this broader like phenomenon, I think, um, because like disclose won't be here forever, hopefully, like you know, hopefully in a few years. It's something that we can

just like look back on and laugh about. Um. But it's you know, it's still a good signifier for a phenomenon that happens, and the phenomenon even even if disclose goes away, the phenomenon is still going to stay. Um, and it's important to point it out when you see whatever the next version of this is. So, And I'll

also say that the culticnalu isn't necessarily a bad thing. Right, this is you know where where the stuff that is rejected by the orthodox goes and clearly eliminating right, any kind of culticnal you just means everything is exactly the fucking same, mean falls in line with or thoughts belief which I strongly disagree with as well. No, there's there is a way to be countercultural without being a conspiratorial fascist.

I would say that most responsibility in which you were consuming and sharing, Yes, And I would say like most people who are actually counterculture are Yeah, like actual punk is that you know, once you're enforcing traditional hierarchical of viewpoints that that ain't punk. That is uh, that's playing into what the status quo was. That isn't that isn't revolutionary.

Pistols would disagree with you, aren't they all? Yeah? But I think we can all agree that having living members of the sex Pistols was a mistake, and I would I prefer Alana Wachowski's version of punk to theirs anyway. So hey, who cares? UM? So thank you for your work, Thomas. UM. I would recommend people reach your article, UM, which you can do by googling disclosed TV and out it will be for me. It's the second result that pops up, So that's gool um. Send it to all your friends

and mutuals who are sharing disclosed TV. UM. You can find it on logically dot Ai is the website and the full title of the article is Disclosed TV Conspiracy Forum turned disinformation Factory. Thank you, Thank you for that. UM. Do you want to direct people to your Twitter account or do you want to be a ghost that fades away in their memory? Uh? Just don't be fucking weird. You can find me on Twitter at w underscore underscore Thomas, God damnit, Christ be weird. All right, I guess I'm

keeping my account Lockford. UM. Yeah, I also want to shout out, um some of the local mutual aid or one of the local mutual aid groups in the town where I live or in the area where I lives. The Atlanta Justice Alliance. Their cash app is cash symbol a t L mutual fund and their Venmos a t L mutual fund. They're helping out. Um they they've done weekly, UM weekly provided food and resources for people, and how's people living in downtown Atlanta. UM and are a great group.

And then also people want to give more money to things. Shout out Atlanta Solidary Fund, who have helped many of my friends get out of jail after they were arrested in protests. And also you can hire me, yes if you researchers, Yes you can. You can't. You can't hire Thomas if you want. I mean, I've I've I've I've known Thomas for a bit. Um they do really good work. UM. Yeah, they're very They're very they're in my experience, they're very

careful researcher. They will not say things without thinking about them a lot first, which is always great in the researcher, or at least not publicly send them money and off put in comments. An even mix of money and really off putting Twitter comments. One more shout out to my One more shout out to my friends at Terrorism Bad Pod, which you should listen to and is on Twitter terrorism

bad pod Well, that doesn't for us today. If you, for some reason are on social media and you want to follow us, you can follow us at cool zone Media or hassolutely don't do or happen here pod um.

You can follow Robert Evans at I Write Okay, send him weird messages, do not do that, and you can send me weird messages at creep time all right, Garrison, pictures of salads that you make, and keep keep doing that for like five or six years, to the point that it actually becomes funny, because it's going to take a while. I'm just happy that people stop sending me meal porn. So that's honestly, that's a wind. That one's on you though, A good find everybody. It could Happen

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