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mark_wollschlager@diaspora.glasswings.com
Mark Wollschlager

(quoted the entire article to avoid complaints of paywall)

Washington Post: Viral attack on Walz features fake former student making false claim

Hawaii man who attended a school where Walz taught — but says they never met — was dismayed to see person in video using his name to make a false allegation against the vice presidential candidate

By Jon Swaine, Sarah Blaskey and Chris Dehghanpoor
October 21, 2024 at 10:47 a.m. EDT
Matthew Metro didn’t recognize the face that popped up on his cellphone screen when he clicked a link that a friend texted him last week. But after hitting play on the online video, he was dismayed by what he saw.
“My name is Matthew Metro,” said the man in the video, who went on to describe life as a student decades ago at a high school in Minnesota where Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz was a teacher. Some of the details — including about being at the school when Walz worked there — matched the biography of the real Metro. But the man in the video went further, leveling fabricated allegations against Walz, who the real Metro said he never met.
Millions of people have viewed social media posts containing the video since it was published Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter. For some viewers, the use of Metro’s name and verifiable biographical details created an aura of credibility around the false allegations. Not so for the real Metro, whom The Washington Post located in Hilo, Hawaii.
“It’s obviously not me: The teeth are different, the hair is different, the eyes are different, the nose is different,” said Metro, 45, who has not previously spoken publicly. “I don’t know where they’re getting this from.” Metro showed The Post his Hawaii driver’s license to confirm his identity.
Metro told The Post that Walz never taught him. He said he was irate that his name and biographical information were being used to bolster a lurid false accusation — and that he may be forever associated with it online. “It’s an invasion of my privacy and my personal life,” he said.
The four-minute video, published by a mysterious X account falsely using Metro’s name, is one of numerous outlandish smears against Walz and the other candidates that have flown around social media in recent days, in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. While X eventually added labels beneath the video indicating the content had been manipulated, multiple versions of the clip remain online. In all, posts featuring the video garnered at least 5 million views, according to engagement data the platform publishes.
In a political environment awash with false claims, including sophisticated faked videos of prominent figures, the hoax was unusual in that it appeared to draw on open-source research to crudely steal the identity of a member of the public who had a tenuous historical connection to a candidate currently in the public eye. Moreover, the former student appeared to have been selected because personal details about his real life — among them, his sexual orientation — figured into the fabricated claim and could be seen as corroborating it.
Metro said he was contacted after the video’s publication by a senior aide to Walz. According to Metro, the aide said Walz’s team was investigating and already knew he was not the person featured in the video.
A spokeswoman for the Harris-Walz campaign confirmed the outreach.
X did not respond to emailed questions from The Post.
The earliest instance of the video that The Post could find online was published just after noon on Wednesday by an X account using Metro’s name as its user and display names. Metro told The Post he had no connection with the account; user and display names can be changed at any time. The account was created in October 2023. Other than posts critical of Walz, which began last week, it has mostly shared content about dogs.
The video containing the false allegation against Walz attracted little attention until several hours after it was posted, when it was repackaged and shared by an anonymously operated X account associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. The video was also shared on Rumble, Truth Social and Gettr — all popular platforms among Trump supporters — by accounts that, according to information in their bios, are linked in a network that also includes the X account.
Messages left for the operator or operators of those accounts received no response.
The X account’s post containing the video was viewed more than 5.4 million times in the next 22 hours, archives show, before it was deleted. The video was shared by other accounts with significant readerships, including Juanita Broaddrick, who accused former president Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting her in the 1970s.
Broaddrick, who deleted her post about the video, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Many Trump supporters with small followings promoted the post as a bombshell revelation about the conduct of Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate toward students when he was a teacher, one made credible because there was seemingly a named accuser who had attended a school where Walz taught.
Others researched Metro in school yearbooks and on social media and concluded that the man in the video did not resemble photographs of the real Metro. Some X users dismissed the video as a “deepfake,” citing as evidence apparent visual distortions, including around the man’s mouth.
Several experts told The Post they believe that the clip is not a deepfake and that it shows a real man posing as Metro.
Hany Farid, a professor of computer science and member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Lab, said the video was likely a “cheap fake.” Unlike a typical deepfake, he noted that the bogus Metro — whose voice is heavily accented — does not look or sound like the real one.
Farid said an analysis his team conducted with a computer-assisted detection tool found no evidence of generative AI, a technology used to create deepfakes. He said apparent distortions are actually indications of a low-quality video that was compressed from its original size.
Siwei Lyu, a professor of computer science and engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said analyses of the video by some of his students led them to a similar conclusion. “Our algorithms found no clear evidence to show the video was made or manipulated with AI,” Lyu said. The analysis determined that it was unlikely that the video was created with face swap or lip-syncing, he said.
Oren Etzioni, the founder of True Media, a nonprofit AI company that creates a popular deepfake detection tool, said his firm’s analysis detected significant evidence of audio manipulation. “I think what it indicates most likely is that the video is real, but that the audio has undergone various kinds of transformations,” Etzioni said.
It could not be determined who the man in the video is or why he would pose as Metro and make a false allegation against Walz — or who else, if anyone, might have been involved.
Metro said he was born in Central Pennsylvania. His family moved to Ohio and then New York before arriving in Mankato, Minn., where his parents took jobs at Minnesota State University. Starting in 1994, Metro said he attended West High School, which Walz joined as a teacher two years later.
In the video, the man posing as Metro claims that Walz groped and kissed him in a classroom after he turned to Walz for guidance during a difficult period in his senior year in 1997. But the real Metro said no such interaction occurred and that his senior year “was a breeze.”
The fake Metro says in the video that his parents were getting divorced that year and that he was having to keep his sexuality secret. The real Metro, who is gay, told The Post the opposite was true. “I was completely out in high school,” he said, adding that his parents remain happily married today.
Metro said he was first alerted to the video by an old friend based in Minnesota. “I know this is fake,” he said the friend remarked in the text message last week. Metro said he had since been inundated by messages from friends and relatives, all of whom recognized that he was not the individual in the video.
He said he had “no idea” why he had been targeted for inclusion in the video. He speculated that his dormant accounts on Facebook and other platforms may have been harvested for images and information about his background and interests.
In November, he said, he plans to vote for Harris and Walz.

Daryl Lee in Hilo, Hawaii, and Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.
#USPol #Disinformation #XisCancer #Election2024

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mlansbury@despora.de
Mark Lansbury

US offers $10 million reward for information on Russian media organization accused of election interference

United States is providing a reward of up to $10 million for information that helps prevent or disrupts foreign election interference linked to the Russian state-sponsored Rybar media organization, the U.S. State Department announced. Rybar and its employees are accused of using social media to meddle in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

The established bounty comes as the U.S. continues to crackdown on Russian election #interference.

On Sept. 4, amid the presidential election campaign period, the U.S. announced sanctions against high-profile Russian propagandists like Margarita Simonyan and seized 32 internet domains linked to Kremlin propaganda campaigns.

#Rybar LLC, founded by the now deceased founder of Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is a state-funded Russian media organization that is contracted by Russian state-owned arms manufacturer #Rostec, according to the State Department's Rewards for Justice program.

https://kyivindependent.com/us-offers-10-million-reward-for-information-on-russian-media-organization-accused-of-election-interference/

#HybridWar #RussianAggression #Election2024 #elections #disinformation #RussianPropaganda

US offers $10 million reward for information on Russian media organization accused of election interference

The United States is providing a reward of up to $10 million for information that helps prevent or disrupts foreign election interference linked to the Russian state-sponsored Rybar media organization, the U.S. State Department announced. Rybar...

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wist@diasp.org
WIST

A quotation from Watterson, Bill

CALVIN: Dad, how do people make babies?

CALVIN’S DAD: Most people just go to Sears, buy the kit, and follow the assembly instructions.

CALVIN: I came from Sears??

CALVIN’S DAD: No, you were a Blue Light Special at K Mart. Almost as good, and a lot cheaper.

CALVIN: AAUUGHHH!

CALVIN’S MOM [off panel]: Dear, what are you telling Calvin now?!

Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1987-04-18)

#quote #quotes #quotation #babies #parenting #teasing #reproduction #disinformation
Sourcing / notes: https://wist.info/watterson-bill/4082/

Calvin strip

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psych@diasp.org
Michael

The good ol' _Let them Eat Cake / State of #Denial / Punish them and blame Dems approach.... #TrumpVirus #projection_

Welcome to the GQP / Ron DeathSantis world... No 'woke' here!

Cartoon/#truth from Clay Jones/Claytoonz
#cult #disinformation #denial #blame #WordSalad

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mlansbury@despora.de
Mark Lansbury

Putin used then-President Trump's animus toward Ukraine to undermine US support, NYT reports

Donald Trump asked Russian President Vladimir #Putin for advice when deciding on whether to send arms to Ukraine early during his presidency in 2017, the New York Times (NYT) reported on Oct. 5, citing undisclosed U.S. officials.

Trump allegedly asked Putin what he thought about the possibility of sending U.S. #weapons to #Ukraine, which was at the time fighting Russian and Russian proxy forces in the eastern region of #Donbas.

The #Russian president responded it would be a "mistake," forcing Trump's team to come up with ways to "change the president's mind on Ukraine" after the meeting, according to the outlet.

https://kyivindependent.com/putin-trump-zelensky-nyt/

#StopRussianAggression #disinformation #propaganda #traitor #TraitorTrump

Putin used then-President Trump's animus toward Ukraine to undermine US support, NYT reports

Donald Trump asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for advice when deciding on whether to send arms to Ukraine during his presidency in 2017, the New York Times (NYT) reported on Oct. 5, citing undisclosed U.S. officials.

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psych@diasp.org
Michael

Can't wait until we finally see Sir #TrumpVirus is led away in cuffs while complaining, "It's so unfair!"...
...to a chorus of "So what?!" "Lock him up!"

There's a monster on the loose! Perfect really, a plague with a cult and terrific alternate-reality delusions and lies

#truth #justice #accountability #disinformation "Learn from history!"

MONSTER

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wazoox@diasp.eu
Emmanuel Florac

Stop misusing Popper’s ‘Paradox of Tolerence’ in free speech debates. | by giggs boson | Medium

#politics #freedom #speech #disinformation

As you can see this is a very different argument than the cartoon gives us. Popper is clearly referring to those who refuse to debate their ideas**, and instead want to use violence and force to supress debate and speech.

https://giggsboson.medium.com/stop-misusing-poppers-paradox-of-tolerence-in-free-speech-debates-6f6ab4b8f0d3

Stop misusing Popper’s ‘Paradox of Tolerence’ in free speech debates.

You may have seen this image on Twitter whenever someone, usually of the leftist persuasion, wants to counter someone of the unlimited…

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