A pro-Brexit Twitter account, supposedly run by someone claiming to be from “Southampton/Isle of Wight”, is at the centre of Russian trolling allegations.
The front page of The Times newspaper today (Wednesday) reports that analyses of @DavidJo52951945’s tweets “indicates that they were likely to have been posted as part of a disinformation campaign”.
However, the allegation has been countered by others (see below) who carried out their own research on the Twitter account and suggest the front page allegation about a Russian troll shows poor journalism by The Times.
Tweeting for four years
The account has been tweeting for four years and in that time has attracted over 102,000 followers.
‘David Jones’, who set ‘his’ account to private following the article in The Times, has reportedly tweeted about the UK Independent Party (Ukip), Brexit, Donald Trump, Bashar al-Assad and even Russia.
Tweets analysed by Conspirador Norteno
Earlier this month @DavidJo52951945’s tweets were analysed by a US-based analyst going under the name of Conspirador Norteno.
As reported by The Independent, “the intensity of messaging coincided with key points of Russian government interest, including its annexation of Crimea in 2014, intervention in Syria and the wider support for Mr Trump and Brexit seen in state media”.
What's he tweeting about? This figure illustrates the volume of DavidJo52951945's tweets mentioning various topics over the years. pic.twitter.com/0bvquyw6i1
— Conspirador Norteño (@conspirator0) August 23, 2017
Conspirador Norteno’s Conclusion was that @DavidJo52951945 is A) Almost certainly a Russian invention and B) a far more influential social media node than your average bot. Within twelve hours of posting the first analysis tweet, Conspirador Norteno was blocked by @DavidJo52951945.
More detail on the analysis can be seen by clicking on this tweet below and scrolling down to read the thread.
David Jones' Locker: Where Truth Goes to Die #TrumpRussia pic.twitter.com/VtpneRM6yD
— Conspirador Norteño (@conspirator0) August 23, 2017
Counter claims
Alex Hern, the Technology features writer at The Guardian, tweeted his exclamation at The Times posting their story on social media, going on to add, “the original thread goes nowhere near far enough in proving its case for a credible paper to reprint it”,
Wow, the Times just went all in on reprinting that viral thread https://t.co/iz2NKrSDmp
— Alex Hern (@alexhern) August 30, 2017
Later on, Twitter user @hughster apologised to his followers for the “over-eager RT of the ‘David Jones as Kremlin staffer'” this afternoon and then went on to share his quick research of the account @DavidJo52951945, linking him to a ‘John Smith’ who voted in .
Click on the tweet and scroll down to see his analyses.
I'm so very sorry for the over-eager RT of the "David Jones as Kremlin staffer" thread earlier; as @AlexHern pointed out, fatally flawed.
— Hughster (@hughster) August 24, 2017
Thanks to OnTheWight reader, Darran Gange, for the heads-up.
Sources: The Times and The Independent
