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The Hacked Account and Suspicious Donations Behind the Canadian Trucker Protests
“The entity behind some of the largest Facebook groups supporting the protests is an unknown person or persons who used the Facebook account of a Missouri woman. She says her account on the platform was hacked and stolen.
The account launched a handful of Facebook groups for the protest, all between Jan. 26 and 28, before the trucker convoy reached Ottawa. With a combined following of more than 340,000 members and more than 7,500 posts, the group names were variations on a theme: “Convoy to Ottawa 2022,” “Convoy for Freedom 2022,” “Freedom Convoy/Ottawa 2022 for Canada,” “Freedom Convoy 2022” and “2022 Official Freedom Convoy to Ottawa.”
Facebook groups are organized by administrators. Grid found that the only administrator account for these groups belonged to the Missouri woman. Reached briefly by phone on Monday, she said her account was hacked and she was not involved with the groups.
“Someone stole my identity on Facebook,” she said. “I don’t know how they [did] it.”
The woman, whom Grid is not naming because she is the victim of apparent identity theft, said her daughter set up a new account for her. A new Facebook account with the woman’s name appeared in October 2021 with the post: “New account. Last one got hacked.”
The account launched a handful of Facebook groups for the protest, all between Jan. 26 and 28, before the trucker convoy reached Ottawa. With a combined following of more than 340,000 members and more than 7,500 posts, the group names were variations on a theme: “Convoy to Ottawa 2022,” “Convoy for Freedom 2022,” “Freedom Convoy/Ottawa 2022 for Canada,” “Freedom Convoy 2022” and “2022 Official Freedom Convoy to Ottawa.”
Facebook groups are organized by administrators. Grid found that the only administrator account for these groups belonged to the Missouri woman. Reached briefly by phone on Monday, she said her account was hacked and she was not involved with the groups.
“Someone stole my identity on Facebook,” she said. “I don’t know how they [did] it.”
The woman, whom Grid is not naming because she is the victim of apparent identity theft, said her daughter set up a new account for her. A new Facebook account with the woman’s name appeared in October 2021 with the post: “New account. Last one got hacked.”
“The entity behind some of the largest Facebook groups supporting the protests is an unknown person or persons who used the Facebook account of a Missouri woman. She says her account on the platform was hacked and stolen.
The account launched a handful of Facebook groups for the protest, all between Jan. 26 and 28, before the trucker convoy reached Ottawa. With a combined following of more than 340,000 members and more than 7,500 posts, the group names were variations on a theme: “Convoy to Ottawa 2022,” “Convoy for Freedom 2022,” “Freedom Convoy/Ottawa 2022 for Canada,” “Freedom Convoy 2022” and “2022 Official Freedom Convoy to Ottawa.”
Facebook groups are organized by administrators. Grid found that the only administrator account for these groups belonged to the Missouri woman. Reached briefly by phone on Monday, she said her account was hacked and she was not involved with the groups.
“Someone stole my identity on Facebook,” she said. “I don’t know how they [did] it.”
The woman, whom Grid is not naming because she is the victim of apparent identity theft, said her daughter set up a new account for her. A new Facebook account with the woman’s name appeared in October 2021 with the post: “New account. Last one got hacked.”
more info on Americans who are not helping, along with photo, from Wired
https://www.wired.com/story/ottawa-trucker-protest-facebook-alt-right/
The story and protest was picked up by partisan, right-wing content creators and media in the US in particular,” says Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an online extremism-tracking think tank. O’Connor saw a similar phenomenon around the “Great Reset” conspiracy theory. The theory, that the pandemic is a global conspiracy to allow world leaders to reset the planet, remained niche until picked up by Rebel News, a Canadian equivalent of Breitbart News. From Rebel News the conspiracy theory reached the orbit of US right-wing commentators like Ben Shapiro and Laura Ingraham, who then further amplified the message, sending it to their millions of followers. The same process is happening with the Ottawa truck protests. Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, and Dan Bognino—alongside Trump Jr.—have shared their thoughts about the protests with millions of people worldwide.
The explosion of interest has been fueled by all the names you might expect: Current and former GOP officials like Mike Huckabee and Marjorie Taylor Greene have shared their support for the convoy on social media. More than 88,000 posts have been shared by Facebook pages, groups, or verified profiles between January 22, when the Freedom Convoy began, and February 8, according to CrowdTangle data analyzed by WIRED. Those posts have been interacted with 16.6 million times...
...The Canada trucker protest is, in effect, two protests. One run by a small group of people seemingly disowned by the wider Canadian trucking industry and another run by some of Facebook’s most successful operators. What was a protest against a work requirement has become something far bigger thanks to social media—and in particular thanks to America’s far right. “The narratives align globally,” says Amarasingam. “You have the anti-mandate, anti-lockdown, anti-quarantine component of the response to Covid that has had two years to grow and gel. That’s what the trucker movement is. It’s latched onto a broader angst and anxiety.”
The explosion of interest has been fueled by all the names you might expect: Current and former GOP officials like Mike Huckabee and Marjorie Taylor Greene have shared their support for the convoy on social media. More than 88,000 posts have been shared by Facebook pages, groups, or verified profiles between January 22, when the Freedom Convoy began, and February 8, according to CrowdTangle data analyzed by WIRED. Those posts have been interacted with 16.6 million times...
...The Canada trucker protest is, in effect, two protests. One run by a small group of people seemingly disowned by the wider Canadian trucking industry and another run by some of Facebook’s most successful operators. What was a protest against a work requirement has become something far bigger thanks to social media—and in particular thanks to America’s far right. “The narratives align globally,” says Amarasingam. “You have the anti-mandate, anti-lockdown, anti-quarantine component of the response to Covid that has had two years to grow and gel. That’s what the trucker movement is. It’s latched onto a broader angst and anxiety.”
9 replies
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Wish I had some hearts left.
thanks. It's the thought that counts.
