Your article from April 12, 2018, is titled: "Police Arrested This Cop Watch Activist—But Then Recorded Themselves by Accident."
An article from The Nation from April 3, 2017, is titled: "Police Arrested This Cop Watch Activist—But Then Recorded Themselves by Accident."
Your opening:
Last August, Jose LaSalle, a prominent New York City Cop Watch activist, was arrested after filming a stop-and-frisk near a housing project in the South Bronx. Though filming the police is legal, LaSalle was charged with “obstructing governmental administration.” LaSalle claims he was standing far away from the incident.
The opening from The Nation:
Last August, Jose LaSalle, a prominent New York City Cop Watch activist, was arrested after filming a stop-and-frisk near a housing project in the South Bronx. Though filming the police is legal, LaSalle was charged with “obstructing governmental administration.” LaSalle claims he was standing far away from the incident.
You're using somebody else's content, and your site has AdSense ads? That's just sketchy.
Currently, the most popular SNL video on YouTube is the "Undercover Boss" sketch featuring Kylo Ren. It has 32,820,334 views.
I could've sworn that the #1 spot used to belong to the "Sean Spicer" sketch with Melissa McCarthy, which is a bit interesting because that sketch came out more than a year after the Kylo Ren sketch. So that would mean the Sean Spicer sketch had more of an initial surge in popularity, but it hasn't been re-watched as often.
Here are the current top 10 Saturday Night Live videos in terms of views:
Spots #8-10 are taken up by parodies of the 2016 Presidential debates. The Sean Spicer sketch is currently #3, and I expect the Black Jeopary sketch will soon overtake it in terms of viewcount.
Yesterday, Steve Huffman released Reddit's annual Transparency Report. He also gave an update on Reddit's efforts to identify accounts linked to Russia's Internet Research Agency, and provided a list of 944 "suspicious" accounts.
Most of the suspicious Reddit accounts have 0 or negative karma, but 13 of the account managed to accumulate more than 10,000 karma points. The most successful, by far, was /u/Rubinjer, with 99,493 points. I dug into Rubinjer's history and found some posts that I suspect link back to the IRA.
On October 13, 2016, Rubinjer posted two links to a YouTube parody video of the (briefly) popular "PPAP" song. The parody features an animated Hillary Clinton, and the lyrics are altered. The first "PPAP" is replaced with "Pee Pee." The phrase "Apple Pen" is replaced with "No Health," and the phrase "Pineapple Pen" is replaced with "Old Woman."
When Hillary combines the phrases, they become "Old grandmother with no health." Hillary then convulses on the floor. The cartoon ends with a laughing Donald Trump that will surely haunt your dreams:
Aaaahhhhhh!!!!
The video itself was uploaded to YouTube on October 12th, 2016, by the account "Simon Swift" (which was created earlier that day). Rubinjer shared the video two times on the morning of October 13th: He posted it in /r/HillaryForPrison (where it received 6 upvotes) and in /r/The_Donald (where it received 5 upvotes).
Curiously, an Imgur user named Indiandell took credit for creating the video in a post that also appeared on October 13th. The post received 550 points and was titled: "Imgur, I made a thing!" Indiandell said in the description:
Hello there, my fellow imgurians. I think all of you watched PPAP video. To be honest, I don't really like it. It's annoying af and not that funny. So I decided to make my own version of it. Please check the video, it's much better with sound: https://youtu.be/WoSsyxhzgbA.
I want to point that Rubinjer made his posts at 10:38 A.M. GMT and 11:21 A.M. GMT. Indiandell made his Imgur post at 10:56 A.M. GMT. So Rubinjer already knew about the video before Indiandell made that post.
Russiagate, part 2: Putin takes Manhattan!
Rubinjer also posted four links to a YouTube video titled "Putin have fun in New-York." The video shows an electronic billboard in Times Square getting "hacked" and displaying the face of Vladimir Putin. Off-camera, a man exclaims: "Wow. Is it Vladimir Putin?...Oh my gosh, I can't believe it." The presentation isn't the least bit convincing. It's kind of reminiscent of the opening of Zero Wing (the game which inspired the "All your base!" meme).
The YouTube account that posted the video is named "Changers," and I noticed many of the early comments on the video were written in Russian. On a hunch, I went to Google translate and looked up the Russian word for "hackers." It gave me "чейнджеры." When I switched my starting language to Russian and asked for an English translation of "чейнджеры," it gave me "changers."
To date, the Times Square video has received 520,529 views, however the only mainstream reference I could find regarding the video was in a November, 2017, BBC article titled "Inside a pro-Russia propaganda machine in Ukraine." The author wrote:
The propaganda machine in Donetsk also has links to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a so-called "troll factory" in St Petersburg is famous for employing young Russians to post thousands of comments on Western news sites and social media networks, for hacking and botnets, and for spreading fake stories online. Some fake items created by CyberBerkut have connections with the agency. For example, in April 2016 the IRA published a video which appeared to show where an advertising sign in New York's Times Square had been hacked to show an image of Vladimir Putin winking. The video was a fake.
In May, 2016, Rubinjer submitted two links for a music app, www.musicfb.info, that allow users to share music videos with their friends on Facebook. The domain musicfb.info is registered to "Stas Blinov" in St. Petersburg, using the e-mail address stan.blinov.spb@yandex.ru. The links were posted in r/InternetIsBeautiful and r/UsefulWebsites, although neither post garnered much attention.
Finally, Rubinjer posted severallinks to a Pornhub video that purported to show hidden
camera footage of Hillary Clinton engaging in sexual acts with a black male
(who was obviously meant to be President Obama). These videos aren't convincing,
although perhaps the purpose wasn't to trick anyone. Last October, the Daily Beast reported on a claim that the IRA had produced a porn video featuring a black man and Hillary Clinton. It's likely that Rubinjer was sharing that exact same video. Rubinjer posted the video in r/Rule34 (twice), r/NSFW_WTF, r/BBCSluts, and r/PornVids. He also posted a gif version of the video in r/The_Donald and r/ImGoingToHellForThis.
Last night, NBC News reported that Pornhub had taken the video down. I discovered another account, Dereckurd which is active and appears to have posted a couple more IRA videos. One of these is a shortened 22-second version of the Hillary porn video, titled "Does anyone have the full video?" Dereckurd also uploaded a 2-minute video titled "Hillary Clinton gets destroyed by black c**k," which features a black man rubbing his member on a photo of Hillary Clinton.
A story I wrote about in December is receiving some pick-up today, thanks to CNN.
A few people asked why I began looking into the BlackLivesMatter1 page, and it started in September when I was researching a fake news site called the Jackson Telegraph. A Facebook user named "Mai Lee" posted a story from the Jackson Telegraph (titled "Black Tuscaloosa man charged after making fist into gun shape & farting near officers") in a Black Lives Matter group. And that group was linked to the BlackLivesMatter1 page.
Originally, I was trying to figure out if there was a link between the BlackLives group and the Jackson Telegraph. I don't believe they were linked, although I do suspect the person (or one of the persons) running the Jackson Telegraph was Australian.
This is the second time I've bought Bistro salads at Publix and then realized one (or more) of them had already reached their expiration date.
Check these out. I bought them both on Wednesday, April 4th. The salad on the left had an expiration date of April 4th. The one on the right has an expiration date of April 13th. As you can see, the container on the left is all...gassy and stuff:
I just figured out the answer to a trivial question: Does my Netflix "viewing activity" page include titles that are no longer available on Netflix?
The answer is yes. I went to my account page and scanned my viewing activity, and movies like The Pill (which was removed at the end of December) are still listed. If I follow the link, I can still view the title card, read a synopsis, and give the movie a "thumbs up" or a "thumbs down."
Another question I had is whether a title will appear more than once on the "viewing activity" page. The answer is no. I did a CTRL+F for "Civil War," and there was only one result. But I've definitely watched Captain America: Civil War multiple times.
A man falsely claimed to be a war photojournalist, and he took other people's pictures and submitted them to a variety of publications. Even the Wall Street Journal was duped. The guy went by the name "Eduardo Martins," and he made social media profiles and even a personal website.
I like to imagine that I wouldn't be duped by this type of charade, but who knows...
Your article from April 3, 2018, is titled: "Chicago pizza delivery woman moved to tears after church honors her with incredible tip"
A WGNTV.com article from March 2, 2018, is titled: "Chicago pizza delivery woman moved to tears after church honors her with incredible tip"
Your opening:
CHICAGO -- A local delivery driver was brought to tears after being surprised with an incredible tip during a Chicago church service.
For the entire month of February, New Life Covenant Church, located in Chicago's Humboldt Park, says they had been challenging members of the church to honor people.
The opening from WGNTV:
CHICAGO -- A local delivery driver was brought to tears after being surprised with an incredible tip during a Chicago church service.
For the entire month of February, New Life Covenant Church, located in Chicago's Humboldt Park, says they had been challenging members of the church to honor people.
You're using somebody else's content, and your site has AdSense ads? That's just sketchy.
I've written previously about BlackLivesMatter1, a sketchy Facebook page claiming to be part of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Facebook page frequently linked to a middleman site, BlackLivesMatter.media, which was structured a lot like Reddit: The site contained links to news articles, and visitors were encouraged to create an account and upvote or downvote the different threads.
I don't think BlackLivesMatter.media ever became popular in its own right. Hardly any links received more than 1 upvote, and most of the people who registered accounts seemed to be hawking products. After I published my first article, BlackLivesMatter.media disappeared, and it was replaced a couple months later by BlackLivesMatterMedia.com. The new site was structured exactly like the old site, and my impression is that all the accounts registered on BlackLivesMatter.media were carried over to BlackLivesMatterMedia.com.
One of theoe accounts was "AbenaTau," and I made an archive of their profile here: http://archive.is/efaRd. AbenaTau submitted 13 links:
6 links to BlackMattersUS.com
3 links to AtlantaBlackStar.com
2 links to DoNotShoot.us
2 links to HuffingtonPost.com
BlackMattersUS.com and DoNotShoot.us have both been identified as domains controlled by Russia's Internet Research Agency. I doubt any of AbenaTau's links were viewed more than a couple times, but still...it's mildly interesting! I wonder where else the IRA spammers tried promoting their sites?
