Ziptie Guy: OSINT Case Study

I'm I'm ready, I'm I'm ready this time. Today, we're gonna be doing another one of our chronicles into open source and O SENT style research or open source verification and this kind of side of of generally, you know, this is kind of a field of like anti fascist research UM and journalism. So we're looking at one of these case studies UM. But today I have someone with me, Alistair from Opossum Press is here to talk about SENT

and UH and this type of research. Hello, Hey, thank you for being with me again on this on this call, on the very experience for us. I would actually first like to talk about how Opossum Press got started as like a collective of of people dedicated towards this goal of you know, surveying the fascist creep. UM. I had an interest in UM and journalism. I have no experience

in it. But I have other friends that are into writing and stuff, and I just kind of reached out to friends and like, Hey, would anybody be interested in doing this? And um, there are several friends that were like, hell, yeah, let's do this. And that's pretty much it. After we

got it all formed. Um, we set up some open source intel like workshops and we've about every other week we get together for two or three hours and learned stuff that sounds that sounds lovely actually, Um, most of my stuff is usually done alone in my computer dark when I'm on my again tenth cup of coffee of the day. Doing O sent in a group of people like that sounds like it could be actually kind of fun.

So yeah, we're gonna In our last episode, we talked about how I tracked down and found out who written House was the night of of that happening in Kenosha. Um, and today we're gonna be talking about someone related to January six, um, the infamous zip tie guy, as he became known for like two days on the internet before

he got his actual day. Um. First, I I guess I probably I probably In case you haven't listened to the previous episode, I did on written house, so probably kind of explain what open source stuff is and what like O sent is and verification. So it's about trying to track down information using open sources UM on the Internet. So in terms of like nothing is it's it's all. It's it's it's it's it's already sitting there. Nothing requires like special access, nothing requires you know, you're to hack

into anyone system. UM, it's it's stuff is just the stuff that's already sitting there. The data, whether that be you know, geographical data, personal data, data from social media accounts, data from every time you've entered your email into a random website that you maybe didn't know quite what's going on, but you did it. Some that's that gets stored somewhere as data and someone can probably find it. UM. So it's all the stuff about you on the Internet that

is all open if you do the digging. UM. Often cases this results in going through social media profiles UM. That is a good portion of Osan's work is learning how to use Google really well and how to how to how to go through social media UM. Start using like Google search operators, start using social media tools that help you sort through information. Because the information is there, You just have to learn how to sort through it, right, because there's just so much of it. Um. So that's

kind of just to what open source stuff is. You mean, eventually you can get into the stuff like using like Python, using code and scrapers, like all that stuff is there too, but for our purposes, we're gonna stick to the more simplistic stuff because this is an audio format and I'm I'm not going to start explaining Python code on a podcast, right. Um, So let's let's let's turn back the clocks a year, um,

a little over a year, and it's January six. What's kind of you or your collective's reaction just to kind of watching things unfold? You know, Like as a researcher, every every time I look at these types of you know, protests, you know, whether they be big or small, always part of my brains, like trying to make connections and do stuff right. So, as January six is unfolding, what's what's kind of going through? Everyone at a post and press

his head. The first thing that seemed to be collective in everybody's mind was, oh my god, none of these people are wearing face masks. Yea, like the immediate thing is this is probably going to be re really easy for a lot of people. There's nobody. Nobody is in any type of like block or trying to hide their identity in at all, something you see the European fascist

actually doing more often. There was a I think of a video from Germany of a whole bunch of far right dudees just to eat in black block because black blocks a tactic. Um. So yeah, but in the States they're specifically January six, it was Yeah, no one was really worried about keeping their identity secret. They really did not think what they were doing was wrong. I think the other thing we were a lot of us were

really angry. Um, just like we had been like yelling that this was gonna happen, screaming it out, like trying to get people to pay attention, and we got blown off so much. I remember, just like a few days before, I got in an argument with a Facebook friend and like people need to be paying attention, like they're planning something. They're like, oh, it's fine, it's fine, and then you know, just a few days later, I'm like, oh, is it fine?

Like that is kind of always the curse of surveilling all of these things, whether they be like a specific event or some movement in general. Right, people who are really into q and on before the Libs knew what Qunan was and we're warning about it for years before you know it resulted in people dying. Um. Right, That's that's kind of always the curse of these things is that it's it's you get. You get the mix of the shock and horder of the thing finally happening and

a weird relief. It's it's, it's, it's it's it's a very bizarre feeling to watch these things unfold because you're like, oh, I'm vindicated, but it sucks that I'm vindicated. Right. I remember, like the December watching all these groups, like I was just it was just filled with dread. Yea. I knew something was gonna happen. I didn't know what was gonna happen, and it was just so much anxiety. And then like it's funny, January six after it happened, like it all

went away. I was able to get a dec at night sleep. Um, just because there was I didn't have that build up of suspense of what what is it going to be? What's it gonna look like? How bad is it going to be? Kind of had that release. Yeah, Unfortunately they were all like amateur, didn't know what they were doing, and it wasn't as bad as it could

have been. Yeah. Well, I think as for the open source stuff, I'm going to kind of walk us through chronologically and of in terms of the journey of zip tie Guy because I was doing like archiving on January six, But zip Tike I was really the only dude I was interested in identifying. There was there was a lot of other people doing really great identification work. I was also generous six. I was going through all the social media history of Ashley Babbitt, archiving all of her Twitter

and Facebook like years of stuff. I was to chronicle how she went from like an Obama voter to a Q and on from proponent. So that was what I was doing, and I was writing an article with Belling Cat about that. Um. But the only only other guy I wanted to identify was zip tie Guy because he was really interesting. He was one of the few guys that was masked up. UM. He had what he had visible weapons on him. He was obviously carrying zip ties. You know it gives you images of like, oh yeah,

it's like they're planning to capture and execute people. That was like the general kind of vibe um of that. So he was the only person that I I was actually put work into identifying, and I put a decent amount of work in. Now I I failed where other people succeeded, and we can talk about like why in a sec But for like a day at least, all we had to go on was the picture of the guy holding

the zip ties in a mask. Um. There's a few other pictures of him around from that day, but it's mostly mostly one picture and the biggest clue that we had to start with, Um, what what what? Why? Why don't you explain what the what the first clue is and how that maybe piqued your interest. He had two patches on his vest, and one of them was a thin blue line patch, but it was in this uh

shape of the state of Tennessee. So so yeah, in terms of having a decent lead, that is like, okay, well that that narrows it down to one of fifties states probably right, Yeah, I should say I'm from Knoxville, so like it be in Tennessee that I picked up on that because that's my state. Yeah, that it becomes a local problem. I And as someone in Oregon, I definitely understand that feeling of of yeah, when fascism becomes

a local problem of yeah. So that definitely piqued your interest specifically, but then also gives a really good lead for like where to look because Ozar, he's not trying to do a meta thing by tricking us into giving us a false lead. Generally people don't do that as often in real life as they do in television. Um but there's still has plenty of other ways to detect.

I mean, I love I love detecting, and there's there's enough, there's enough stuff to do otherwise that making it needlessly complicated as Honestly, I'm fine with it not being that. Um So, yeah, we had we had that to go off initially, So starting looking for like far right activity in Tennessee. You know, I was an outsiders. I didn't really know where to start in terms of specific rallies, but I know, used, Uh, at what point did you start looking trying to like go through pictures of specific

rallies to try to like match clothing or stuff. I think it was probably it may have been that day or the day after when I started going through the notebooks that I had, like names of just people we suspected may become problems, um, and I started looking at their profiles again and you know, didn't find anything. And in our research that we had already done, we didn't see anything on Yeah, I mean that was kind of

the case for me as well. With just the picture of the zip tie, a guy with the patch, I mean, it's it's a lead, but there wasn't tons to go on. But thankfully, thankfully are are good friends. At January six, we're giving us more clues as because as the Simpsons meme goes, videotaping this crime scene was the best idea we ever had. Um. So, like January I think seventh, there was a live stream video that was kind of circulating through like anti fascist group chats um. It was.

It was posted like publicly to get everyone's attention on it on January eight, um, but for like a day it was kind of passing through back channels and throughout in this live stream, which is yeah, there was so many people were live streaming that night and it is a kind of surreal thing to watch of them. This this this live stream in particular, it is the zip Ti guy if you was friends, um, I think his mom and a few and just ranting the people from January six all hanging out at a hotel room, um

towards like it's it is. It is the night of the sixth, and they're all just hanging out again totally like no masks, they're they're they're in a hotel lobby, no masks, um, and they're just like hanging out on chilly like sitting on the couch and chatting for like half an hour. It's one of the weirdest videos to watch.

All all of the live streams from that night are so surreal because it is like this transitionary period of like after the capital attack but before every before like people like go down on them, so they don't really know how to behave They still think what they did was kind of fine, even though at this point, like

I think like four or five people are dead. Um. But it's so weird just watch them just interact like such normal people in this moment like after they did this thing, then they go in this hotel room and they are acting completely normal. So it's it's just a weird video in general. But what it does have is someone in the same outfit as Zip Tie guy with

no mask on. You actually actually can see his full face. Ye. Getting to see his full face was a big make it big help, big help, because we ever, everyone was looking for pictures of this guy without his mask all like for the entirety of the day. So now having a whole video where we gonna see like all of

the angles of him was great. It was perfect. The best the best thing that was really the beauty of of all of of all of all the January six documentation is how many people were live streaming themselves doing crimes and their friends. Um it did. It did make the archiving and uh well not the archiving part. Archiving is always painful and tedious, but it made the actual research afterwards a lot easier because there was so much the documentation of it. So yeah, we we got we

got this video. I'm gonna explain how I kind of took this video and failed to reach the conclusion, and then we can talk about how you succeeded. But first, but first we're gonna hear some ads from our lovely products and services. Robert was here for our previous recording, uh that we tried to end I failed, and he made some very good jokes uh and very good segways about how all of our sponsors support insurrection, just like January six, And if I tried to repeat the jokes,

it will be stupid. So I'm just gonna I'm just gonna give you the sense there was a joke, and now you're gonna be left with that dissatisfaction. So bye, goodbye. Here's some ads. Okay, we're back, and I'm going to give an extremely brief rundown and how I failed to do uh well, I didn't fail to do research. I did research. I just didn't reach a proper conclusion. Um

and I knew that. So the the the other the other thing about Zip Tie Guy he had he had the patch of like the thin blue line in Tennessee and then that's at Then I soon after got the video of his face and uh interacting with people. And the the other thing is I think, um we the hat he was wearing in the Zip Tie Guy photo was I think was tracked back to be um our favorite coffee company, Black Rifle Coffee merchandise. It was it was like what was what was one of the hats

they sell. So me, being clever, I'm like, Okay, here's this Black Raffer Coffee hat, this patch in Tennessee. I know Black Ripe of Coffee is based out of Tennessee. I'm gonna go look through everyone who works for Black Raff of Coffee, which you mean isn't a bad instinct as an outsider. But it did not. It did not succeed. But the funny thing is is that while looking through all the employees at Black Apple Coffee, all of them do look identical to Zip Tie guy. They all same characteristics.

They all look exactly the same on their their beards, their nose, their forehead, their hair, all of them identical, every single one of them, to the point where the only way I could tell that it wasn't a Zip Tie guy was being like, Okay, no, he has a mole here, he has like a birthmark here. This way his like his eyes are his eye wrinkles are different. So it's like it's going down to the very like fine tuned facial features because all of their face shapes

are like I tentical. I think there's a point that I had the same instinct. I think I know there's a point that I went through, um the black Coffee Rifle, all of their people look, Um, I don't know if it was for Eric Wntel or if it was like maybe around the written house stuff. I don't know. Uh. Yeah, So that that's that's what I spent my time doing,

is going through everybody who works there of Uh. But but by the time I kind of gave up on that, the identity was already discovered, um and posted by your team at a possum press. So how how did you get from you know, this zip Tygi picture than the light the archived livestream video of him without without a mask, to to the point where you could say, hey, this

is his name? Well I was, I wasn't even really in cont hacked with Like we as a group weren't messaging each other trying to figure this out together, but we were, like it turns out a few of us

were working separately. So while I'm going through social media, UM, a friend in Nashville was um going through pictures of the protests from there over the summer, and they ended up finding about five different pictures, I think, and we knew we knew most of the people in the pictures that are maybe like one or two that we did not know, and one was always Eric Munchell and he's

wearing the exact same gear he wore January six. Um, I say, Eric Munchel, we didn't know his name yet then, so um, from there, we kind of we went ahead and posted what we had to Twitter, and then we went back to the social media and I started looking through the profiles that were the people we knew, and sure enough, one of them, Kurt Dennis, had a live stream that was telling the story, um, the same story that Eric Mutchell told him, that thirty minute video and

he actually while telling it, he's like, yeah, my buddy Eric. So at that point we go to his friend's list and sure enough, he only has one Eric there and it's Eric Mutchell. And there we go to that page and find some of the same gear in the background of the pictures that he has publicly posted. Yeah, he like puts the pictures of him and his gear with like guns, and yeah, you can you can track all of his like facial like like like like birthmarks and stuff.

They're all the same. So yeah, you and that that's you. You definitely got him of Yeah, their own mistakes Yeah, that's that's my favorite part. Like they they gave us his identity. They often, if not handing themselves to you on a silver pilatter, they at least have a platter. Um. They they often there's often enough bread, right. The reason why these things are solved because there are enough bread comes to follow and often they kind of leave pretty

big chunks of bread. Um. Just the fact that again added to the surreal aspect of that whole live stream video, the fact that he's like you matched it by telling the same You can hear them someone tell the same story. It's just such a weird, weird, surreal thing. Yeah. So I think in terms of like oas and stuff, what this case study in particular really highlights is the importance of archival stuff. Right. The reason why you were able

to solve this and not me because I wasn't. I mean, I did my own archival thing for archiving, like the video. But um, the way that you were able to really crack this open and everyone else who worked on it is because you had like those lists of connections of people who are already kind of active in this like al right far right scene within your local community, Like you already had documentation of the major players who they interact with, or you already had pictures of this guy

in gear with other known people. So the fact that there was already previously work archived really made the success of this so much more possible. That's what they uh People's Plaza and Nashville during their protests, they were really big on documenting. Um they documented everything with the police and um any counter protesters they would. They had professional photographers out there making sure we had good, clear quality pictures of like everybody on the other side as well,

and that definitely helped us a lot. Yeah, because especially before January six, they there was they did a decent job of archiving themselves, well not not archiving, but like filming themselves and documenting themselves. And then you know, it takes takes other research to then archive that. So not only important just to like look at the research and look at like the documentation of the that people do of themselves, but then make sure that you have a

source for that that's not their own uploading of it. Right. So, like a great example is like all of the live streams from January six, including like this one from this hotel room. Pretty soon it was deleted by the person who posted it because they realized, oh maybe I shouldn't have this living record of my crimes. Um. But at that point people already saved the video. They already like, I already ran it through a video of saving program

that I had. UM. So it's it's important not only to get archiving, having having having previous documentation of people and known players, but then as new information is coming out, make sure you make separate copies of that for your own sake so that you actually have it and then you're not gonna be stuck looking for something that's gone. Right. The worst case scenarios to like you know that there was an important thing, but you just don't have access

to it anymore. It's like you you remember seeing it, you didn't say it, and now it's gone. That's a horrible feeling to do when you're trying to get this kind of research done. UM. And like it happens, we all, we all make mistakes like this. UM, I definitely have it happened to me actually this week. Yeah, it happens all the time, and it happens to be. It happens to be all the time. I'll look at something to

be like I should probably save this. I get distracted or I just don't want to because archindague is boring and tedious, and then I check again that's gone. I'm like,

well that's should I should have archived it. Yea. So on top of all of the archiving stuff, which in general, anti fascist research is really that that's the thing that really excels at even like um above above journalism is like, you know, getting like traditional journalism is like getting a good documentation of like key fascist players in your area, key people who are kind of pushing far right stuff

and far right violence. Actually getting like a good a good, a good idea of who they are and having that knowledge always handy. Um is something that this type of research is is really that that is really what it excels at, or like what what the what those researchers excel at? This is the thing that they do very well. I think a lot of us probably started doing it just out of curiosity looking into people, and that that is certainly how I started, Like I've been doing it

long before. I just didn't know that's what it was called, because like I'd see somebody make a messed up common online I'm like, who is this person? And then you know, trying to find as much as I can about them. Yeah, that's that is certainly how I got started with this type of thing, because it can be fun to look for bad people. It is, it is. It is kind of pleasurable UM and one of one of the again

another big contributing factor. And how you got Zip tie guy, How how I got and how how a lot of this stuff works UM is uh the beauty of Facebook as a research tool because often in order in order in order to do the archiving, you need to have stuff to archive, and a lot of the stuff that gets posted from these things by the people doing them UM is done on Facebook, or at least it used to write the past five years, really, Facebook has been

the main main source of this UM. Now it's maybe now people are kind of getting wise and maybe some STU is moving to telegram. Facebook is becoming a little little bit less important of a platform for this type

of research. And I know Facebook has changed the way that they um that you can use their service, so it does make research kind of harder in some ways, but but even still it is it is one of the better tools to UM to dig into certain types of people, because there is certain types of people who

are going to be more likely to use Facebook. Um. And yeah, in terms of how getting Facebook was the method, it's not where the place where you're able to make the link between the fascist you already knew and and eric um because of because you are you already you you already knew who the players were, and that Facebook had the visualized network to actually make those connections. So Facebook itself and social media in general is really is really useful. And then in terms of how this operate,

it's like going through friends lists is really easy. Um, but oftentimes a lot of people will not maybe have those public um and what what Then there's again it's not a dead road. You can still look through likes, you can still look through shares, you can still look through like, um if you like people are tagged in photos. Um it really it really is a is a great is a great system that is good at making you not have privacy. That is the thing. It really it

really excels it. Yeah. And even even if people don't have like an active social media presence per se um, it can still be really useful in getting specific names of people or or just make or just having a connection be known like this. This was mostly how I was able to identify the all the anonymous UM riot cops in when when the Portland Police Bureau took took

away their badge numbers and names. UM, is that I could get like a list of cops and we could start figuring out like, okay, this is probably this is this is this is pre cops previously on the right team, right, and start doing facial matching UM. And then if I want to learn out, if if I want to if I want to learn more information about like their first name, and more information about them in general, even if they don't have a social media profile, often their wife might

or their mom might. You know, there's a UM And in terms of fun sentences to say, really learning how to exploit people's family as a weakness is is is wonderful um for this type of stalking stalking bad people. UM. Because Yeah, because a lot of a lot of a lot of the riot cops were smart enough to not to at least to either not have their presence at all on the internet UM or to have it very locked down in terms of you know, no one can

see their posts, no one can see their friends. No one can see anything, but still their wife will occasionally tag them in photos or uh maybe not even photos of them, but like they'll they'll just take them in a photo of like their kid or something. And then this just creates more ways to make connections so that you can, you know, learn more about these specific people. Um, because sometimes that's fun and interesting. I've noticed some people

with socks that I've found their identity. It's by going through the likes and seeing, um, you know, the same woman is always the first to put a heart react there, and you can go to their pages. Sometimes it's a little if you go through their pictures and you see a picture of the guy there with they'll have like somebody in the comments, oh Mark looks really good, they're something. You know. Naming the husband from thery you can get the last thing you know, you've know the wife's last name,

you have a good chance of that being their last name. Yeah. Yeah. So family families really is really great pro finding people because because like all of the other research is is learning how to make these open source connections, right, A lot a lot of it is connections and networking, and people usually always have an innate connection and networking and

that that that is their family. UM. And often this like extends out in terms of you know, political organizing, whether you're part of you know, militias or just kind of smaller groups. Yeah, that is another network. Um friends is another network. But you know, for people who are kind of are are more locked down, it is possible to find the information about people, um, you know, especially if if they have like if they have like a not very common last name, you know, that can make

finding information about them much easier if using tools like Facebook. Um. And then it's you know, just a matter of doing all the other you know, open source research of you know, comparing clothing, um, you know, and comparing to what other kind of information you already know about the person, email addresses, phone numbers, if you can, you know, get that, get that kind of stuff as well. But I think that's all he had on zip tie guy out mostly. M Yeah,

here's a really easy one. There's not a whole lot to really dive into their Yeah. No, for for someone for someone who was one of the few people masked up, wasn't was not was not that hard to find. I mean, yeah, of course, the fact that he was found by local

people in his area. Not surprising. Um. That's another thing anti fascist research is really good at, is that type of local research because you know they they have they have all those local connections, they have those local um documentation of like a political events that have happened in their area. So again it's the the importance of of having stuff archives and having stuff like sorted and having stuff organized well so you can access your archived information

is really important. It's it's it sucks that it's it's the part of OS and I hate the most. Everyone. Everyone hates. Everyone hates. I'm I'm sure there's some sick of out there who likes it, but everyone else, everyone else hates all of the We hate all this organizing and sorting. And I find archiving to be tedious. Archiving videos,

live streams, it's tedious, it's difficult. Um, it's done, it's time consuming, it's repetitive, it's not generally not a good time, but it is so useful and in the long run of trying to get these like a list of of like established players in your area, this is how you start seeing patterns. Right. You need to have this information already laid out so you can actually watch the patterns unfold. Otherwise it's just a whole bunch of chaotic information that

means nothing. So it's it's super important, as as much of a bummer as it may be. Yeah, let's see, UM, is there anything you've been working on since then that you like that you would like to talk about, or any upcoming research projects? Right now, I'm really focused on our local UM school board, and you know, like many towns across the country, we have fascists trying to take it over and going to the meetings, and so I've been watching that group very closely for the last several months,

since probably about October. Our school year, we started out without a mask mandate UM and a couple of parrots UM who's children need like they're there, I mean a compromise like their their kids need the everybody else to wear a mask. So their parents sued the school board and our governor UM to have a mass band aid. The judge issued an injunction and like the next Monday, all the schools had to wear a mask, and the anti mask crowd is like losing their ship over it.

Still UM trying to figure out how to fire the judge. Um, it's like, yeah, we have a member of Patriot Church who's involved in it, and you know they're the ones with the Church of plan Parenthood. It's Ken Peter too. I think he's from Washington, yes, spoken, I believe, yeah, and he's he's moved down here. Um. I think he still goes up there to the to the church stuff, but most of his time is spent down here in Tennessee and causing just as much trouble as he does

up there and his followers. So I'm curious to see how how does a research project like this school board thing differ from like the research surrounding you know, trying to identify someone at January six. Oh, for one, this is local. It's you know, I'm going to the school board meetings. Um. I know it's easier to know where to look for this because like I'm watching it as it happening where you like, you know, January six. Most of those people you have no clue where to even

start from. Um. So this more now, it's it's monitoring and documenting as we've you know, figure out who these people are, like linking Telegram names with Facebook names and all of that. So I guess now, it's more record keeping and getting that documentation done early, so when one of them goes too far, we have and we haven't ready. I mean, that's that's that's the sad part where it's like you're watching innevitive inevitability almost as it can mean.

But that's yeah, that's also how like January six works. Right, We were able to identify these people because there was a lot of documentation of a lot of major players already. Right, So a lot of the work in between these big protests and events is is the is this is the slow, tedious documentation because we have to do it now so

that it's a useful later. Let's you know, a big part of research is like, yeah, trying to spot potential, you know, issues and archiving it and then if the issue ever becomes a bigger issue, you already have information on it, right, whether that be you know, watching someone online who you might think is who like, watching someone who's like a Nazi who you might be worried that like they're posting and plans about how to kill people.

You're like, okay, so probably look into this dude, because he's doing this in case he does something in the future. Um it is that is kind of it sucks because yeah, you are watching this thing where you feel kind of helpless,

but you know that documenting it is worthwhile. Um they ye. Yeah, it's the same thing where like you don't want to be vindicated, but if it does been, it's better to be prepared because I don't think people realize like how much anti fascist research, how much of this type of like ohs and stuff like my journalism, Like most of the work that you put into it is never seen. Even if you do complete investigations. Sometimes by the end you're like it's getting getting them, getting them out in

enough time for them to be useful. Sometimes it isn't even worth it. Um. So you know a lot of it is you know, writing stuff and doing research that never actually sees the light of day for a long long time. Right with Eric Mountchell, we had like probably twenty people we had on our list too, and he

wasn't even one of them. Yeah, so you do all this and like on one hand, it almost felt in a moment like all of that we did was really for nothing, But now it did lead to Yeah, it did lead And even when you do find the correct answer, sometimes sometimes could via circumstances. You know, it's not something you need to put about immediately. Sometimes it's worth just you know, hanging onto um and not being super super

public about every horrible thing you find. It's not like you don't need to post every time you find a horrible thing on Telegram. You don't. You don't need to tell Twitter that. It's like it's it's about collecting these things and keeping them there for future use. Um. Well, thank you so much for coming on to talk with me again, um, after after already already discussing, uh, mostly the same things. Where can people follow your stuff online?

We're on Twitter at um at a possum press really easy. Yeah, we're on Facebook. We don't actually do much on Facebook. Um. Yeah, as we've discussed now, you probably probably shouldn't like in in a lot of ways, a lot of like fashions organizing that used to be done in primarily like Facebook groups or just even just like through the like incidental organizing through just through like posting and cross posting. A lot of that has been moved over to Telegram. At

this point. Telegram is kind of the new main nexus, whereas Facebook and like the days of the early alts right, Facebook was a pretty big nexus for like the more normalis right. You know, it's there, there is actually fascist forms that we're doing organizing, but as a place for again, like a lot of people in January six who didn't really know what they were doing was wrong. They were mostly you know, make America Great Again people or Q and on people. A good portion of like most of

them were not you know, swastika waving Nazis. Um. They may they may agree with fascist ideas, but they don't they don't self describe as Nazis. So like um. But we're even seeing after after January six with you know, um Facebook like cracking down on these groups, other platforms like Partla going offline, a lot of these normies themselves

or even migrating onto Telegram. Um. So you know, Facebook used to be a really great read research tool, and I'm using it less and left less and less often now unfortunately, because I mean it really didn't have a lot of strong suits. Telegram does have his own strong suits, but you know, it's it's still it's still different. I think the normans moved into Telegram is troubling though, because

a way easier time that is there. That is the obvious thing is Yeah, now that those groups are in closer proximity, it's easier for one to seep into the other,

whereas before there was more of that distinction. Um. Yes, that is a worrying thing that I believe we've talked about before and we'll talk about again um in the future in terms of having this like fascist milieu or cultic milieu, UM of a place where the the amount of the amount of overlap between you know, your uncle who's a regular Conservative and you know a member of Adam often or you know someone who wishes they remember of Adam often, UM is very small. It's a very

these they are, they are very close together. Yeah. Well, thank you for talking about all of these things on our on our second osand case study episode. Like guess big big big takeaways is uh, archiving is great, archive live streams, archived things because it's better to have them um and not use them than not have them and need them. UM. And then you know, archiving and documenting local fascists is really great, even for things beyond your locality,

like in January six. Um. So those are those are my main takeaways from this and uh, you know, also everyone in Black Life Coffee, they all, they all look like everyone at Day six, all of them do they do all right? That doesn't for us. Thank you so much. I can follow the metoposs and press um. Good bye, everybody. It Could Happen Here is a production of pool Zone Media.

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