Helluva business model, Zuck:
On May 22, a Donald Trump superfan and occasional sports blogger from the Bronx named Shawn Brooks posted a video clip of Nancy Pelosi on his personal Facebook page. The clip showed Pelosi at her most excitable, stammering during a press conference as she voiced frustration over an abortive infrastructure meeting with the president. Brooks’ commentary on the video was succinct: “Is Pelosi drunk?”
Thirteen minutes later, a Facebook official told The Daily Beast, Brooks posted a very different Pelosi video to a Facebook page called Politics WatchDog—one of a series of hyperpartisan news operations Brooks runs (with help, he claims). This clip had been altered to slow Pelosi down without lowering the pitch of her voice. The effect was to make it sound as though the Speaker of the House was slurring her words drunkenly while criticizing Donald Trump.
Fifteen minutes after that, the same doctored video appeared on a second Facebook page Brooks manages, AllNews 24/7. This clip was identical to the Politics WatchDog video on every way, except that it didn’t carry the Politics WatchDog branding that was superimposed over the earlier video. Whoever posted it had access to the director’s cut. On both pages the clip was accompanied by the exact same dispassionate, newsy prose: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on President Trump walking out infrastructure meeting: ‘It was very, very, very strange.’”
The video was an instant social media smash, surging through the internet’s well-worn ley lines of credulity and venom. It was shared more than 60,000 times on Facebook and accumulated 4 million page views from links. “Drunk as a skunk,” mused actor turned alt-right curmudgeon James Woods, whose tweet of the video scored 17,000 retweets and 55,000 likes. “What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi?”, wrote Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, in a tweet linking to the AllNews 24/7 post. “Her speech pattern is bizarre.”
Brooks, a 34-year-old day laborer currently on probation after pleading guilty to domestic battery, claims that his “drunk” commentary on an unaltered Pelosi video had no connection to the now-infamous fake clip that premiered less than 15 minutes later. “I wasn’t the individual who created that Pelosi video,” he insisted in a telephone interview.
It’s conceivable that someone else actually edited the clip. But a Facebook official, confirming a Daily Beast investigation, said the video was first posted on Politics WatchDog directly from Brooks’ personal Facebook account.
The guy made $1,000 bucks on ads before FB stopped promoting it. It’s Zuck’s puke funnel, we’re just living in it.
Bonus- he’s a fucking Patriots fan.
Msb
Wow, domestic abuser creates “sexist trash”. Nobody could have anticipated ….
/s
debbie
That says it all.
Suzanne
I’m shocked to hear this news.
SFAW
In the Bronx?
Fuck him, and everybody that looks like him.
ETA: And fuck James Woods and Ghouliani, too.
A 34-year-old “day laborer”? Sounds like he’s an up-and-comer.
Raoul
I’m more or less on board with the fuck Brooks idea.
But it is worth noting that Facebook decided to out him, I think to take pressure off them for their terribly weak processes. If it’s true that he’s a day laborer who somehow compiled that video (which I understand doesn’t require particularly savvy video skills, in fact that made it a fairly obvious fake, thankfully), was it really Facebook’s role to out the dude?
Folks I respect on the twit-machine have been asking that. Maybe it’s a hot take and not correct. But I do sincerely wonder. If it was traced back to Michele Makin, or that idiot who’s been banned from lots of platforms, I’d be fine with it – they’re public figures. And maybe we just say “congratulations, day laborer MAGA nut, you’re a public figure now”, but I don’t trust FB for one nanosecond, so his denials may hold water.
West of the Rockies
@Raoul:
The guy has been monetizing his political rantings for some time. FB pulled back the curtain. Personally, I’m fine with that. The lies-as-income angle makes me say F*$! Brooks.
Suzanne
The Trumps are the Bluths. I don’t know how I didn’t see this before.
“The Trump family’s overlaps with the Bluth family from Arrested Development have been the one consistent thing about them: there’s the shady, property-dealing father (George/Donald Trump); the stupid son desperate for his father’s approval (Gob/Donnie Jr); the amoral daughter who mistakes her own idiocy for genius (Lindsay/Ivanka); and the son who seems even dumber than the other one (Buster/Eric). I once thought Jared Kushner (also coming to London) was Michael, the one son trying to hold the Bluths together. But he is clearly Tobias, the moronic son-in-law, so maybe Tiffany is Michael. We’ll find out on this trip when she stops her father pussy-grabbing a minor royal.”
MattF
The guy who made the altered video is much less important than the RW conveyor belt that took the video and spread it around. It’s the trolls who took it out of Trump’s Twitter feed and spread it who are the guilty parties.
Keith P.
@Suzanne: I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy was also on probation for stealing batteries too.
SFAW
@Suzanne:
And the Traitor-in-Chief is burning the banana stand and everything else he can destroy.
Mike in NC
White trash 34-year-old day laborer in the Bronx. His most prized possession must be a signed MAGA hat.
RedDirtGirl
Ooh, yay! I’m getting directed to pron sites now, too!
West of the Rockies
We have two young(ish) men to compare: 24 year old man-bun guy and 34 year old laborer-turned-troll.
A few people here wanted Man-Bun arrested. One person said he should have been punched or even shot. As stupid and rude as he was, at least he had a cause, namely, animal rights.
The Pelosi video mastermind guy is spreading lies to make money. He is trying to contribute to the status-quo, to circumstances that harm people.
I think we have two jerks who should face consequences. YMMV.
SFAW
@Mike in NC:
Well, obviously, he’s economically anxious, although whether he qualifies as “working class” is unclear. But you goddamn Lie-berals need to understand why he voted for his idol, and try to tailor your message to be more accepting of others, etc.
OK, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my punditry close-up.
West of the Rockies
@Mike in NC:
Dude is black.
RSA
@Mike in NC:
Surprisingly, not quite.
Kay
I wasn’t worried about Google and Facebook domination until I started to see articles like this one. They’re eating up all the revenue that used to go to legitimate newsgathering. It isn’t just that they’re pumping out shit- they’re making it impossible for anyone to counter with real information and get paid. There won’t BE anything but Facebook crap.
Suzanne
@SFAW:
Because arugula and complete sentences.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
In scanning the above my eyes landed on the bolded text and I had a quick “Finally, Bobo loses his job!” thought. Sadly, no.
Kay
Many of you probably didn’t hear this at the time, but I saw the power of Facebook disinformation up close on one narrow lie and it’s amazing.
The lie was that Obama had “banned” the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. I hear this from everyone here- a REALLY broad swathe of people. College educated and not, low income, high income, didn’t matter. People absolutely believed this, although it is ridiculous on its face. I was blown away but how widespread it was, brought up to me like “well, so you support this?” It had to actually be rebutted and even then I bet 80% of them STILL believe it.
Baud
@Kay:
It helps when it’s a lie people want to believe.
Kay
It’s just so sad that nothing is “free” and that has to be shown again and again – we always pay one way or another. I’m as bad as everyone else- this stuff is “free” so why would I object to it?
Except it’s not and you know, of course it’s not. They had to get revenue somewhere so they ate all the advertising dollars, leaving us with the prospect of Facebook as our sole news source. That shit people send you? That’ll be your “news”.
germy
Wait til they get their hands on Deep Fake technology.
JGabriel
Daily Beast via John Cole @ Top:
Credulity and venom – it’s a good description, but it’s fucking annoying when journalists write ‘the internet’ when what they’re really describing is right-wing social media
Another Scott
@Kay: Meh.
Craig’s List killed newspaper classified ads. And before them, things like AutoTrader and other free-to-pick-up advertiser rags were pressuring newspapers. Advertising has been changing for a long, long time and newspapers and magazines were very slow to change. No business is entitled to easy profits.
Google provides a lot of value. Facebook is evil. Lumping them together is a disservice to readers.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Baud:
Absolutely. But I think there’s this reflexive “well, they’re poorly educated or low income” – um, no. These are people who should know Obama can’t ban the Pledge of Allegiance in tens of thousands of school districts. That should have raised questions for them. Some of then HAD CHILDREN in school. WTF? Can’t they just ask their kid?
Suzanne
@Kay: What killed me about that lie is that many of those people sharing it had school-age kids and all they had to do was ask them if they learned the Pledge in school. Spawn the Younger attends a dual-language school and recites it in both English and Spanish. Like…..it is the easiest thing in the world to fact-check that shit and people choose to go with their biases anyway.
Kay
@Another Scott:
Okay Scott but don’t complain when the only way you can find out what is going on in your statehouse or governor’s office is to travel there and report it out yourself. Unless you live in a huge urban center with a giant newspaper you aren’t going to have anyone watching, and 90% of law is STATE law, not federal. They will go hog wild at the state level- scratch that- ARE going hog wild. No one is watching them. It only becomes “news” when a national outlet picks it up.
dnfree
@Kay: I have mentioned before that I had a high-school classmate friend on Facebook (she unfriended me after the election) who during the 2016 campaign posted not once, but three times that the pope had endorsed Trump. Three times I told her that wasn’t true, with fact-checks. The third time, she responded, “Well, he should!” There is not just a ready audience, but an eager audience, for these falsehoods. They love fake news. And I don’t know what we can do about those people, but more so, I don’t know what we can do about companies like Facebook making money by lying to them.
Kay
@Suzanne:
They also knew Obama by then. Yes, the team were busy working to secretly ban the pledge. How? By executive order?
The same people who whine that kids these days don’t know civics repeated this to me like it was fact. You know, because they got a classical civics education, based on Socrates, as you can tell. We’re a country that needed a jingle to learn how a bill becomes law. There was no “golden age” of civics. Go to a senators town hall sometime. A quarter of the questions are people demanding that the US Senator change STATE law.
SRW1
Facebook refused to take down the altered video, but has now outed the dude who posted video after the thing has done its job for Facebook and brougt in the clicks. Apparently, Zucky felt it was time to wash his hands of the whole thing. Some people – cough, Zucky, cough – apparently do get to keep their cake after they have eaten it.
Kay
@dnfree:
The Dem county chair in this county asked me seriously if Obama was implanting ID devices under Obamacare. This lie was based on a truncated sentence of the ACA that had to do with tracking medical devices – they need a number on your pacemaker so they can track it if it fails. I had to send him a 500 word email explaining this. It takes much longer to debunk the lie and it’s a LOT more work than to tell it.
Baud
@Kay:
To be fair, Obama is black.
Suzanne
@Kay: The old people griping about how Teh Youngz don’t know civics can bite me. In AZ, students are required to pass a civics test before graduation, but our school district started prepping them and giving them the exam in eighth grade. Spawn the Elder’s teacher (who apparently was super-Trumpy, BTW) told them that the Speaker of the House was John Boehner and reacted poorly when Spawn corrected her and told her that it was Paul Ryan. (Because of course my Spawns know what’s up.) The next day, after factchecking and discovering that Spawn was correct, the teacher literally told the class to answer that the Speaker was John Boehner when they took the test.
Spawn refused and got a 99% on the exam.
Eighth graders are schooling the civics teachers.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Damn. Someone should be fired for that.
Baud
@Kay:
Also, as cop shows have taught me, to identify the decomposed body.
lumpkin
The real problem here is how gullible conservatives are. That doesn’t seem like a solvable problem because they seem to want to be that way.
Suzanne
@Baud: At least the Trumpy teacher got pwned by a kid.
I will note that the civics teacher at one of the local high schools went on to run for Mayor and then became my Congresscritter. He lost his seat after he voted for Obamacare. I made thousands of phone calls for that guy.
Kay
@Suzanne:
One of our high school history teachers apparently got tired of it so hit the parents with a pop quiz on meet the teacher night. It was great. 5 questions, like “who is the secretary of state?” (It was C. Rice at that time). 3/4’s of the room didn’t pass. I swear she was smirking. I’m on a school committee and I am sometimes amazed at the people who pontificate on the youngs. The LAST people who should be throwing stones.
Ella in New Mexico
@Suzanne:
And while this is hilarious, let us not forget that the US Taxpayer is footing the bill for these grifters–and THEIR familes/current Sex-Partner grifters, their staffers, and all the poor Secret Service schmucks tasked with protecting them on this visit.
Dude, there’s no money in the banana stand and there likely never, ever, was.
Kay
@Baud:
I think they actually need it for a lot of things. You know how worked up I get so I was bound and determined to convince him “you don’t want them just sticking any old part in there! They have to be regulated!”
I think about it sometimes. Like if we had a civil emergency where people had to be quickly informed and evacuated or something. “Don’t drink the water!” It wouldn’t work. There would be 500 conspiracy theories on Facebook. 40% of people would comply. 20% wouldn’t find out about it and and 40% would actively oppose it.
Suzanne
I grew up as the only kid in a house full of adults who were pretty politically aware, so I have often described my early life as being “the first-grader who knew who Caspar Weinberger is”. I get really, really tired of judgy adults who don’t know shit and have never known shit, other than their sense of entitlement, of course.
jc
The guy who made the video may be a deplorable scumbag, but Trump and his enablers eagerly used it, making them no better. Not exactly a surprise.
Another Scott
@Kay: I live in NoVA. WaPo doesn’t cover local politics and the statehouses. To find out what’s going on there, you have to read the local community papers like the Connection Newspapers or one’s local Patch.
Sorry, but the days of the big city newspaper covering all the news that’s fit to print are long over. There are plenty of niches out there for enterprising local reporters to fill.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
Hannah Dreier (@hannahdreier) Tweeted:
Immigration officials in the deep south are classifying all asylum seekers as dangers to the community, and making them plead their cases from jail. In New Orleans, the number of asylum seekers denied bail jumped from 25% to 98.5% in the past two years. https://t.co/ywUiVnLeqs https://twitter.com/hannahdreier/status/1134486124309753857?s=17
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
I did see lots of what would have been classified ads go to Craigslist, which had a ton of interesting and useful services and cars for sale. But recently when I went there to find things I now need, it was 90% gone, and I don’t know where it all went. Maybe Facebook? which I don’t use at all. But it isn’t on Craigslist any more..
J R in WV
@Kay:
Living in a rural area, our Public Service District that provides potable water often sends out phone messages telling us there’s a boil water advisory whenever they work on a main pipeline.
I wonder what the RWNJs think about a pseudo-governmental agency telling then the water being provided by said agency is perhaps not totally safe? Will Darwin work for us?
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
YOU CAN’T MAKE ME BOIL MU WATER LIEBTARDS!!!
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
google may provide a lot of value, but there is a cost to that value. As said in this thread, nothing is free. The cost may just be a moment of your time or it may be a lot more. With google it’s a lot more. Someone has to pay for all that free stuff, and we do. An ad may track you to show buying habits of a particular type of product or narrow range but google follows many points and can sell to a larger audience. And it’s more behind the scenes. At least the ads are in your face and can be blocked. What about your searches for whatever. That’s probably a far more useful chunk of info than that you like a particular brand of bottled water.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
We used to get these when I lived in OH. Sometimes the water line was old, but I think a lot of the problem is that there is a lot of ground contamination in places like OH, where a lot of the land that have houses was not all that long before, crop land and quite likely had a lot of pesticides used upon it, or the rivers were heavily polluted by industries. Don’t even know that boiling it does much of anything. And don’t forget the Cuyahoga River fire from heavy industrial pollution. Or the age of the pipes, which meant that there might be lead involved.
Brachiator
@West of the Rockies:
Fuck this guy and his cause.
Rushing the stage can put a candidate in jeopardy. It’s not protest. This should be discouraged.
I think this video is vile, but it is satire. I don’t know whether he clearly indicated that he had altered the video, and put a caption to say, “What if Pelosi sounded drunk?”
What escalated the deplorable nature of this video was asswipes like Rudy G assuming or pretending to assume that it was real. I think in the end Facebook should have taken it down, but the problem of distinguishing between satire and malicious deliberate lies does not go away.
Yep.
ETA. I was one of the people who intimated that the first guy should be punched or shot. That was more out of frustration than an actual desire to see the guy harmed.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Google has been selling their calendar and email services to corporations as a Mac-friendly alternative to Microsoft Exchange, so there are actually some business constraints on them. If they go too wacko, their corporate clients will drop them like nuclear-tainted potatoes.
Facebook has no such ties, and we see the result.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Local community papers are dying as well. And very few reporters can operate as lone wolves. They need healthy, viable publishers to get their journalism out in front of the public.
It is a volatile environment, and even online media is unstable, and sometimes unscrupulous.
https://media.thinknum.com/articles/vox-media-and-labor-unions/
West of the Rockies
@Brachiator:
Yes, Man-Bun is an idiot. He COULD HAVE been punched or shot and was lucky he wasn’t. But he is probably a shitty, privileged and entitled prick who is a very immature 24. Internet Troll is 34, a decade more mature. Satire or serious rat-fudging, he knows what he is doing.
I was going to say it is a male thing, but then I thought of Conway, Sanders, Coulter, Diamond and Silk, Owens, Katrina Pierson, Palin…
I thought of Bannon, Milo, Levin, Rush, Dennis Miller, Nugent, etc.
Rightwing idiocy is not bound by gender, race, age, sexuality…
But–an emphatic yes–it sure is over-represented by white males.
droog
Right wing news outlets are decrying the Daily Beast for doxxing a, and I paraphrase, “anonymous private black conservative citizen who posted a parody video”. Your heart goes out to that poor man indulging in parody. So why accuse Pelosi of being drunk whilst on the clock if this is just parody? Get your story straight, wingnuts.
Apparently the tweet from James Woods referenced in the Daily Beast article is from February and shows Pelosi wearing different clothes. The right wing outlets want the Daily Beast to retract the claim, which is fair enough. But also, is that other video from February an earlier hoax that didn’t catch on?
biff murphy
‘Bonus- he’s a fucking Patriots fan” … And what the fuck does that matter? I AM SPATICUS!