«Détruisons Macron à coup de mèmes…. Il faut qu’on empêche ce pervers de Macron de rendre l’Europe cocue.» ATTENTION: Cet article contient des images dérangeantes.

Dimanche soir, un thread (fil de discussion) a été lancé sur le site 4chan, à peine quelques heures après les résultats du premier tour de l'élection présidentielle.

Ce message a été publié sur /pol/, le forum politique de 4chan, qui est devenu au cours des dernières années un centre de ralliement de militants d'extrême droite.

Les utilisateurs publient des posts de manière anonyme sur le forum. Si leurs pseudos sont générés automatiquement par le forum, l'adresse IP de chaque utilisateur permet d'identifier le pays dans lequel il se connecte, d'où les petits drapeaux qui apparaissent à côté de chaque pseudo.

«Il faut qu'on empêche ce pervers de Macron de rendre l'Europe cocue. Le Pen est le dernier espoir de la France, et donc par extension de l'Europe. On a deux semaines pour effacer ce sourire à la Rothschild de son visage», écrit l'utilisateur ci-dessus.

Il continue:
«La gauche l'adore car il a épousé sa vieille prof, Brigitte, qui a genre 30 ans de plus que lui, ça tape dans leurs fantasmes de "la femme plus âgée qui se tape un beau et jeune toy boy". Brigitte a une fille de 30 ans de son précédent mariage. Ce serait pas marrant si l'info sortait qu'il avait eu une conduite indécente, ou du moins qu'il avait essayé, avec la jeune et (potentiellement) belle fille de sa femme à moitié sénile —que sa femme est une femme humiliée, mais son silence a été acheté avec l'argent de (((l'élite))). (cette dernière partie à propos de l'argent c'est peut-être en faire un peu trop mais pourquoi pas)» [Dans certaines communautés antisémites en ligne, les triples parenthèses servent à désigner les juifs, ndlr.]

«Il y a déjà eu des rumeurs sur le fait que Macron était un homosexuel dans le placard donc l'idée que c'est un pervers sexuel existe déjà dans la tête des gens... les gens pourraient bien y croire et ça permettrait de tacher sa réputation et de le faire oublier.»

boards.4chan.org

Le thread a été lancé par un utilisateur suédois qui demandait aux membres de la communauté de l'aider en lançant des mèmes de désinformation à propos d'Emmanuel Macron qui pourraient ensuite être traduits et partagés sur internet.

boards.4chan.org

Le message d'origine suggérait de se concentrer sur le scénario suivant: Emmanuel Macron aurait une liaison secrète avec la fille de sa femme Brigitte, Tiphaine Auzière, âgée de 30 ans.

«Elle travaille pour la campagne et est (((avocate))), il y a dans les campagnes électorales, comme dans les sectes, beaucoup d'alcool et de fêtes, Macron n'a pas pu s'en empêcher, quelque chose est arrivé, et les Français doivent savoir... Macron Et Tiphaine», dit la capture d'écran ci-dessus.

boards.4chan.org

Un utilisateur américain a ensuite partagé un montage photo du visage de Tiphaine Auzière à côté de Macron. «Quelque chose pour démarrer les mèmes», écrit-il sous la photo.

boards.4chan.org

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A defaced Macron poster in Paris.

Joel Saget / AFP / Getty Images

In news that will seem rather familiar to anyone who endured the 2016 US presidential election, the leading contender to be the next president of France on Friday night confirmed his campaign had been the subject of a "massive hacking attack."

The "En Marche" (or Onwards!) campaign of Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist candidate favored by pollsters to defeat far right candidate Marine Le Pen, announced various internal documents, including emails and contracts, were being circulated on social media.

"The files circulating were obtained several weeks ago thanks to a hacking of the personal and professional email accounts of several leaders of the movement," the campaign said in a statement.

The campaign said fake documents had also been added to the online dump to "sow doubt and misinformation."

"Coming in the last hour of the official campaign, this operation is obviously a democratic destabilization, like that which took place in the United States during the last presidential campaign," the En Marche statement read.

The news broke shortly before midnight local time when all French media and the rival campaigns were plunged into silence on the issue of Sunday's vote, as mandated by the country's election laws.

France's commission on the presidential election met early on Saturday to discuss the attack, releasing a statement warning that disseminating fraudulently obtained data that has "in all likelihood" been mixed with false information could be a criminal offense.

"On the eve of the most important election deadline for our institutions, [the commission] calls on all actors present on websites and social networks —primarily the media, but also all citizens — to act responsibly and not to relay these contents, in order not to alter the sincerity of the vote," the statement read.

The Le Pen campaign did not release a comment before the blackout began, but her top aide was promoting the hashtag #MacronLeaks on Twitter earlier on Friday.

WikiLeaks, which last year published the hacked email contents of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, also promoted the leaks, sharing a link to the online dump via Twitter and stating it was looking into the contents.

Le Pen, who met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow during the campaign, and her party, the National Front, have drawn scrutiny for their connections to Russia. In 2014, the party received Russian loans worth $12 million. One of the loans, for $10 million, came from a small bank with links to the Kremlin.

Le Pen has advocated for France to exit the European Union and sought closer ties with Russia, stating that if elected president she would drop sanctions imposed on Moscow by the EU.

During Wednesday’s presidential debate, Macron blasted Le Pen's ties to Russia.

“I will not accept to have my behavior dictated by Mr. Putin, and that’s the difference with Mrs. Le Pen,” he said. “We will not submit to Russia or Mr. Putin’s values, as they are not the same values as ours.”

Users of the internet site 4chan have been working aggressively to take down Macron in recent days.

After Le Pen accused Macron of having a secret offshore bank account during a televised debate this week (a charge he denied and reported to French election officials), 4chan users began a concerted effort to support her claims using flimsy evidence.

Last month, 4chan users also spread false hoaxes that Macron was secretly sleeping with his wife's 30-year-old daughter. Supporters of President Donald Trump have also pretended to be French citizens online in an effort to support Le Pen's candidacy.

Former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and former spokesman Brian Fallon both shared news of the Macron hack on Twitter on Friday.

The Macron campaign said Friday that it had been targeted by "intense and repeated" online attacks throughout the campaign.

"It is not a simple piracy operation but an attempt to destabilize the French presidential election," the campaign said, urging media to report the leak "conscientiously."

"We will take all necessary initiatives with public and private actors to clarify this unprecedented operation in a French election campaign," the En Marche statement read.

Ryan Broderick contributed to this report.

Trump Supporters Online Are Pretending To Be French To Manipulate France's Election

Here's How Far-Right Trolls Are Spreading Hoaxes About French Presidential Candidate Emmanuel Macron

Bob Edme / AP

L'équipe d'Emmanuel Macron a saisi la Commission Nationale de Contrôle de la Campagne électorale après avoir été hackée, et des fichiers présentés comme venant de mails de membres de l'équipe. Ils ont été diffusés par 4chan et Wikileaks sur les réseaux sociaux, à quelques heures de la trêve électorale du second tour. La Commission a recommandé aux médias de ne pas rendre compte du contenu des fichiers, rappelant que la diffusion de fausses informations était légalement répréhensible. Nous publions ci-dessous la traduction française d'un article écrit par une chercheuse en sciences de l'information et sociologie, contributrice du BuzzFeed américain, et qui donne son analyse et ses conseils à la France en tirant les leçons du hack des emails de l'équipe d'Hillary Clinton pendant la présidentielle américaine.

Oh la la*... Alors voilà, ça vous est tombé dessus à vous aussi. Les documents du favori de votre élection présidentielle ont été piratés, tous ses mails ont été balancés en ligne dans un cache géant. WikiLeaks tweete dessus. Il existe un hashtag dédié. Le forum /pol/ de 4chan ne parle que de ça. Des captures d'écran prétendant révéler des faits de corruption et des transferts bancaires secrets sont devenues virales. La guerre des mèmes est déclarée.

Je vous en supplie: ne vous faites pas avoir comme la presse américaine qui est tombée naïvement dans le piège qui lui était tendu. Et ne passez pas volontairement à côté de ce qui se passe en ligne. Ces piratages ne sont que le décor qui va permettre le fonctionnement de la machine à désinformer.

«L'objectif de la manœuvre est de frustrer, pas de convaincre, et de créer le doute, la confusion et la paralysie.»

Certes, il existe de grandes différences entre les attaques aux États-Unis et celles qui touchent la France. Pour commencer, cet épanchement de mails volés a eu lieu 41 heures avant votre deuxième tour, et, comme par hasard, pile une heure avant que les médias français n'entrent dans la période de silence durant laquelle ils ne sont pas autorisés à communiquer d'informations sur les candidats. La rumeur va donc rester principalement en ligne. Et puis votre élection n'est pas aussi serrée que la nôtre.

Mais ce n'est pas une raison pour ne pas se faire du souci. L'expérience américaine montre de quelles nombreuses manières ce genre de publication en gros de mails piratés alimente la désinformation virale, crée de graves atteintes à la vie privée et rend le public confus au lieu de l'éclairer.

Pirater et publier tous les documents internes et les communications privées d'une équipe de campagne est une forme de sabotage politique qui peut s'avérer bien plus puissante qu'on ne croit. Personne n'aura le temps de prouver ou de déboulonner quoi que ce soit, mais la confusion va s'étendre. Il ne s'agit pas ici de lancer une alerte visant à éclairer sur les agissements des puissants. L'objectif de la manœuvre est de frustrer, pas de convaincre, et de créer le doute, la confusion et la paralysie.

Aux États-Unis, nombreux ont été les journalistes à avoir de très grandes difficultés à résister à l'appât que représentait le tas de mails non-vérifiés de la campagne Clinton. Je les ai observés sur Twitter passer un temps fou à le remuer pour dénicher des mails sur eux et leurs collègues, à glousser et à se gausser. Il ne restait que six semaines avant des élections décisives aux États-Unis, mais pas moyen d'ôter leurs mains de ce pot de confiture. La plupart des données étaient d'une banalité totale. Les rares qui pouvaient d'être d'intérêt public se sont fait écraser par des ragots très très croustillants. Beaucoup de ces commérages ont atterri dans de grands journaux, parfois même en une. Les sujets importants ont été ensevelis. Nous avons eu très peu d'articles avant les élections, par exemple, sur le conflit d'intérêt sans précédent que posait la présidence d'un homme d'affaires possédant des biens dans le monde entier et un nom qu'il vend à des édifices commerciaux.

Certes, il ne reste plus que quelques heures avant votre élection, mais ce genre d'obsession autour des ragots de la politique est également susceptible de nuire à l'attention des journalistes après le scrutin. Les rédacteurs en chef seront tentés d'affecter de nombreux journalistes à la fouille du tas dans son intégralité, et ces derniers sont susceptibles de tomber sur leurs propres noms.

«Que signifie le choix de fouiller dans les communications internes d'un camp tout en restant absolument silencieux sur l'autre, qui n'a pas été piraté?»

Vous aurez sûrement un tas de choses à dire et à commenter après les élections, et il y aura toujours 24 heures dans une journée. Les rédacteurs en chef et les journalistes ne doivent pas plonger dans le pot de confiture qu'on leur a délibérément mis sous le nez. C'est dur de résister à une tentation pareille, mais à notre époque, où la censure fonctionne en nous détournant de ce qui est important, il est crucial de bien distinguer ce qui est essentiel de ce qui n'est qu'un subterfuge pour faire diversion. Examinez soigneusement ce qu'il en coûte d'affecter un grand nombre de journalistes à la fouille du tas de données piratées. Vu la réduction actuelle des budgets de la presse, quel sujet devrez-vous sacrifier? Que signifie le choix de fouiller dans les communications internes d'un camp tout en restant absolument silencieux sur l'autre, qui n'a pas été piraté?

Mon conseil aux médias traditionnel est simple mais difficile à suivre: dans vos reportages, gardez un œil parfaitement aiguisé sur les informations qui sont réellement dans l'intérêt du public: fautes graves, corruption à grande échelle, actes criminels. Avant d'écrire sur une information obtenue par piratage, posez-vous cette question: vous donneriez-vous beaucoup de mal pour trouver un moyen de pirater ou de faire fuiter cette information si elle ne vous était pas très opportunément tombée toute cuite dans le bec? Si la réponse est non, alors elle ne mérite sans doute pas d'être relayée.

Et tout en faisant votre travail, n'oubliez pas le contexte: il s'agit d'un acte de sabotage politique, de la publication asymétrique de données internes d'une seule équipe de campagne. Le sabotage politique en lui-même est une information, il doit faire l'objet d'une couverture médiatique en tant que de telle--et pas seulement après les faits.

S'il vous plaît, souvenez-vous aussi que les gens qui sont mentionnés dans ces mails ont le droit au respect de leur vie privée. Être associé à une campagne politique n'est pas une excuse qui dispense les médias de respecter les droits fondamentaux à la vie privée de chacun. Lors de la publication par Wikileaks des mails de John Podesta, le directeur de campagne de Clinton, par exemple, il a été fait mention de la tentative de suicide d'un membre de son équipe. Wikileaks s'est fait une joie de le tweeter, et de faire le lien entre le mail et cette personne. Des commentateurs de CNN en ont parlé à la radio. Ce genre de violations grossières de la vie privée n'est pas seulement néfaste pour la personne impliquée: elles envoient à tous les jeunes le message que s'ils entrent en politique, leurs droits seront foulés aux pieds. Tous les faits ne sont pas matière à reportage, même s'ils peuvent présenter un intérêt pour un futur historien.

Et certains de ces «faits» n'en sont absolument pas. De nos jours, les piratages servent avant tout à alimenter des campagnes de désinformation destinées à être menées en ligne. Des chercheurs ont déjà découvert que des comptes Twitter pro-Trump (avec #maga, ou “make America great again” dans leur nom d'utilisateur) faisaient lourdement campagne pour Marine Le Pen, et le hashtag MacronLeaks pourrait bien avoir été lancé aux États-Unis par un partisan de l'alt-right pro-Trump. Les journalistes ont déjà signalé des trolls de 4chan qui relaient très activement de fausses accusations de corruption et contemplent, ravis, les tentatives de démenti par les médias traditionnels--mais démentir, c'est aussi répéter les fausses accusation et, par conséquent, leur faire davantage de publicité. Essayer de déboulonner des fake news et des rumeurs, c'est un peu tenter de faire disparaître une flaque de boue en marchant dessus: à chaque fois on s'enfonce. Et plus on tape dessus, plus ça colle aux semelles.

«À notre époque de diffusions d'informations jusqu'à l'indigestion, ce qui importe vraiment est ce sur quoi nous choisissons de ne pas écrire.»

Il est difficile de gérer ce genre de campagne de désinformation et de fausses nouvelles, mais nous avons tiré des leçons de la campagne électorale américaine. Malheureusement pour les États-Unis, chez nous les médias de masse ont soit ignoré le phénomène de désinformation virale en ligne, soit, plutôt rarement, vainement tenté de déboulonner les affirmations mensongères et ont fini par leur faire encore plus de publicité. Aucune des deux options n'est fantastique. Alors que faire? Le problème est épineux, c'est le moins que l'on puisse dire.

Voici ce que je suggère: relayez au maximum le fait qu'il y ait une campagne de désinformation. Rapportez l'information dans le cadre de reportages dénonçant ce piratage comme étant du sabotage politique. Mais creusez plus profond. Enquêtez sur les sites de fake news. Scrutez les bots Twitter qui poussent de fausses informations autour de ces mails, souvent dans des memes ou des captures d'écran. Retracez leur histoire, leurs réseaux. Regardez qui tire les ficelles; comment tout est coordonné.

Mais n'écrivez pas sur leurs fausses affirmations. N'écrivez que sur des éléments que vous avez vérifiés, qui sont factuels et ont une réelle importance. Relayez la vérité, relayez-la haut et fort, relayez-la en boucle. Ne démentez des désinformations en ligne que lorsqu'elles deviennent trop voyantes pour qu'on puisse les ignorer; et alors, soulignez qu'elles sont fausses, et qu'elles s'inscrivent dans le cadre d'une campagne délibérée de désinformation. Concentrez-vous sur la partie "désinformation délibérée", ne vous attardez pas sur le contenu. En d'autres termes, essayez de ne jamais faire plus de publicité à un mensonge viral que celle dont il jouit déjà. Les recherches montrent que les fake news fonctionnent à coup de répétition, et les démentis répétés ne sont pas si utiles que ça. Ils peuvent même s'avérer contre-productifs.

Cette fuite peut également contenir de fausses informations. Qui sait? Au cours des quelques heures qu'il reste, les insinuations peuvent faire assez de dégâts.

Et qui sait: peut-être que certaines sont vraies.

Mais ce n'est pas comme ça qu'on fait les choses.

Dans une démocratie saine, ce n'est pas en piratant tous les mails et les documents de campagne de partis politiques, en utilisant ces informations volées pour lancer une campagne de désinformation, le tout en pataugeant dans des marécages putrides en ligne au milieu de médias crédules, que l'on met au jour des faits de corruption et qu'on en discute. Un journalisme digne de ce nom ne se laisse pas mener par le bout du nez jusqu'aux sujets que les pirates jugent bons d'être exposés. À notre époque de diffusions d'informations jusqu'à l'indigestion, ce qui importe vraiment est ce sur quoi nous choisissons de ne pas écrire, ce que nous choisissons de ne pas amplifier, et devant quelle campagne de désinformation nous choisissons de ne pas capituler.

Ne te laisse pas déconcentrer, chère France. S'il y a des malversations à révéler, fais-le selon tes principes, à ton rythme à toi, en exerçant ton propre jugement. Tire des leçons de l'échec des médias américains. Dis aux trolls et aux fauteurs de troubles malveillants et irresponsables de la boucler. Bonne chance!*

*Expressions en italique en français dans le texte.

Yale University Press

Zeynep Tufekci est une professeure à l'université de Caroline du Nord et une contributrice du New York Times. Son premier livre sur la sphère publique et les mouvements sociaux, intitulé Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest est publié parYale University Press. Elle travaille actuellement sur un livre à propos du capitalisme de la surveillance, du big data et des algorithmes.

Pour en savoir plus sur Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest click here.

Ce post a été traduit de l'anglais par Bérengère Viennot.

TL;DR: No one on 4chan bothered to learn how to speak French.

On Sunday night, centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right populist Marine Le Pen in an election that morphed into the latest battleground for the wave of right-wing populism rippling through the US and Europe.

After the successes of both the UK's Brexit referendum and President Trump's campaign, many in the far-right corners of social media — on sites like 4chan and Reddit — expected and tried to help orchestrate a big win in France.

Here’s everything you need to know about how exactly the anonymous tribes of the right-wing internet failed to hijack the French electoral process. The main lesson here is once France's mainstream media decided to ignore the trolls, nothing they did managed to actually make it out, ironically, out of the far-right filter bubble.

David Ramos / Getty Images

The closest equivalent to 4chan that exists in France is a website called jeuxvideo.com (JVC), which translates to "videogames.com."

It has a section of its forum called the "18-25" — and over the course of this election it's grown into a hotbed of both the far-right and the far-left in France. It has a few key differences to 4chan, though, the main ones being that it's not anonymous — there are usernames — and it's moderated.

Not unlike 4chan, however, JVC was also ground zero for the French wave of Gamergate.

jeuxvideo.com

JVC has been the number one stop this election cycle for every young French person flirting with far-right ideology. The name of the board, "18-25," refers to the age group of its users.

Around January, as the American far-right was adopting the Discord chat application, so were JVC users. A Discord server called "La Taverne des patriotes" quickly swelled in popularity after it was shared on JVC threads.

jeuxvideo.com

BuzzFeed News interviewed two of the moderators of "La Taverne des patriotes" — the tavern of patriots — in February. Users going by The French Resistance and Chepamec told us that they didn't identify as being "alt-right" at all.

BuzzFeed News was using Discord at this time under the username "Flavortown."

Discord

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The document appears to contain the biographical information of thousands of people who signed a public petition from April condemning the Trump administration. Update: The organizers of the original petition have released a statement.

On Saturday night, a user named kanuke7 posted a Pastebin link into the largest Discord server for Trump supporters, Centipede Central.

Discord is essentially Slack, but for gamers. It also has audio functionality. The Centipede Central server was created by members of the /r/The_Donald subreddit. Trump supporters refer to themselves as centipedes, which is a reference to a YouTube series called “Can’t Stump The Trump" that mashed up footage of President Trump in a Republican debate with audio from a nature documentary about a centipede killing a tarantula.

The Discord server has close to 2,000 active users. BuzzFeed News has reached out to kanuke7 for comment.

D

The document posted by kanuke7 has since been removed, but according to a copy of it obtained by BuzzFeed News, it contains the names, addresses, and phone numbers of thousands of people, as well as links to their social media accounts.

BuzzFeed News has reached out to Pastebin for comment.

pastebin.com

The document appears to be incomplete, but it has guidelines for how to add to it. It also makes a point of attempting to identify the religious affiliation and sexual orientations of people listed.

It also comes with instructions on how to find and compile information on people. The process is called doxing.

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The protest appears to have started with a story on a fake antifascist Facebook account that was actually set up to troll leftists.

The first reported article about a July 1 Gettysburg antifascist protest was from a Facebook page with only a few hundred followers called Harrisburg100. It published its story on June 14.

The article appears to have been based on an Eventbu page, which has since been taken down. The author writes, "a local group of self-proclaimed anti-fascism activists called ‘ANTIFA’ are planning on holding a rally at Gettysburg National Battlefield on July 1st in protest of President Trump and asks it’s members to 'Bring and Burn Confederate Flags'."

According to Harrisburg100's website, "the mission of Harrisburg100 is to spread civic engagement, and to educate the public on local politics in interesting ways."

Facebook: hbg100

The Harrisburg100 article also links to a Facebook page called Harrisburg Antifa, which has about 100 followers. In May, they warned that they were going to be at Gettysburg National Military Park on July 1.

The page's about section reads, "ALERT! ALERT! ANTIFASCIST IN HBG. Fighting Racism, Transphobia, Homophobia and Police Brutality. #Resist #BashTheFash."

Harrisburg Antifa appears to be a troll account and hasn't updated in over a month. The page lists its website as itsgoingdown.org — a general website for antifascists. Also, the page has been called fake by the Central PA Antifa Facebook page, which has considerably more followers.

Trump supporters and far-right trolls have a history of creating fake antifascist social media accounts and then using those accounts to troll real antifascist organizations. A similar thing happened in Boston in March.

Facebook: HarrisburgAntifa

A few days later, a YouTuber named TheDelawarePatriot picked up the hoax, urging his followers to "make a stand against Antifa" on July 1.

youtube.com

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The headline for this story is peak 2017.

Last Wednesday, a Reddit user named /u/HanAssholeSolo posted a GIF titled "Trump takes down fake news (Colorized, 2017)" to Reddit's largest pro-Trump subreddit, /r/The_Donald.

Reddit

The post gained a few thousand upvotes and, according to Reddit's publicly available metrics, wasn't even in the top 20 of the most popular posts on /r/The_Donald in the last week.

Reddit

Reddit users started freaking out, and quickly set up a celebration post under the header "Congratulations to /u/HanAssholeSolo. Their dank WWE meme got TWEETED by the PRESIDENT of the United States, creating a shockwave of SJW 'REEEEEEEs' heard all the way from North Korea. You win the unofficial community MVP (most valuable pede) award. Also, now it's confirmed that Trump sees our memes."

There have been rumors circulating on Reddit since before the inauguration that members of Trump's inner circle are active on Reddit and feed the president memes and in-jokes for his tweets and speeches.

Reddit

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“Wir werden heute den Meme-Krieg gegen die Köterrasse im Bundestag eröffnen”

Screenshot BuzzFeed News

Mehrere Hundert Menschen haben sich während des TV-Duells in geheimen Chaträumen organisiert, um die Diskussion über Angela Merkel und Martin Schulz auf Twitter zu beeinflussen. BuzzFeed News hat Zugang zu den Chaträumen, in denen sich die rechten Aktivisten organisieren. Deren Ziel ist es, mit fremdenfeindlichen Fotos und Memes Stimmung gegen CDU und SPD zu machen und der AfD zu einem Aufwind in den sozialen Netzwerken zu verhelfen.

Während des TV-Duells hatten eine ganze Reihe der von den rechten Aktivisten vorbereiteten Tweets mehr als 200 Retweets und 200 Gefällt mirs.

Bereits vor einigen Tagen hatte BuzzFeed News darüber berichtet, dass sich Menschen in anonymen 4Chan-Foren verabreden und mehr als 270 Memes vorbereitet haben, mit denen sie die Bundestagswahl beeinflussen wollen. Genau diese Memes haben die Aktivisten zum TV-Duell auf Twitter nun systematisch gepostet und verbreitet. Die Aktion wurde jedoch nicht mehr von Aktivisten auf 4Chan gesteuert. Stattdessen gründete sich eine neue rechte Bewegung und verabredete sich auf einer Chat-Platform namens "Discord".

Zum Angriff auf das TV-Duell hatte der ultra-rechte YouTube-Account Reconquista Germanica erst am Freitag aufgerufen. Seine 33.000 Abonnenten hat Reconquista Germanica zu einem neu gestarteten Discord-Server eingeladen, um dort auch zukünftig Angriffe auf die Bundestagswahl zu organisieren. Discord ist eine Software, mit der sich Nutzer in Chat-Räumen verabreden oder in Sprach-Chats treffen können. Auch im Wahlkampf in Frankreich organisierten sich rechte Gruppen in Discord-Servern.

"Die erste Kampagne startet am 1. September und endet am 24. September mit der Bundestagswahl. Ziel der ersten Kampagne ist es, die AfD so stark wie möglich in den Bundestag zu hieven. Wir werden heute auch den Meme-Krieg gegen die Köterrasse im Bundestag eröffnen", heißt es in diesem YouTube-Video. Nach der Bundestagswahl wollen sie versuchen "Durchfall-Konservative wie (Markus) Pretzell and andere Heuchler in Angriff nehmen und den Höcke-Flügel stärken".

Das von Reconquista Germanica am 1. September hochgeladene Video ist 17 Minuten lang und erklärt den Anhängern die bevorstehen Ziele.

Der Rest des Videos beschäftigt sich damit, dass alle Unterstützer nun ihrem frisch gegründeten Discord-Server beitreten sollen, da dieser die Organisation der Angriffe deutlich vereinfacht.

Screenshot BuzzFeed News

BuzzFeed News ist unter einem Pseudonym dem geheimen Discord-Server beigetreten. In den Tagen vor dem TV-Duell wurden die Aktivsten dazu motiviert, Twitter-Profile anzulegen, um das TV-Duell anzugreifen. Nach Angaben der Organisatoren haben sich rund 1500 Mitglieder auf diesem Server eingefunden – in weniger als 24 Stunden.

Screenshot BuzzFeed News

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Right-wing supporters are trying to learn from similar campaigns in France and the Netherlands.

German users on 4chan are currently making plans to start a “meme war” that would influence the outcome of the upcoming German election.

They hope to organize an online campaign that would swing the election this month in favor of the country's right-wing populist party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

The discussion about German election memes has been taking place across several posts on 4chan’s “Politically Incorrect” message board. Their goal is to suppress votes for competing parties and demoralize left-wing activists. They plan to launch their "meme war" three weeks before the September 24 election.

So far, though, the 4chan users don’t seem to have much prepared. They've created an archive of about 270 memes that users can spread in support of the AfD, a list of political events the group wants to influence, and YouTube videos about far-right German politics that users can share.

The pro-AfD posters are drawing inspiration from right-wing campaigns abroad. They talk about learning from previous meme wars, such as in France when far-right trolls tried and ultimately failed to spread memes and disinformation in an attempt to influence the outcome.

AfD has been sliding in the polls and is currently tied for fifth place with the Green party.

boards.4chan.org

Unlike trolls during the French election, German 4chan users don't appear to be doing much outreach to American Trump supporters. Save for a few posts, the 4chan thread is mostly in German.

boards.4chan.org

And there seems to be an overall lack of knowledge about how to get their message beyond the 4chan echo chamber.

boards.4chan.org

In a section called “meme jihad,” users link to some YouTube videos that could help teach other people how to go viral on the internet. This one, for example, was marked as compulsory viewing.

Users are also encouraging people to donate money or volunteer as campaign workers — something not usually seen in previous meme warfare campaigns leading up to the US, Dutch, and French elections.

It's not clear if there is any official link between the party and the 4chan campaign. AfD did not respond to a BuzzFeed News inquiry.

Screenshot BuzzFeed News

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Turns out it’s actually not that easy to hijack an election with memes.

Last week, far-right German YouTuber Nikolai Alexander, who makes videos under the name Reconquista Germanica, invited his 33,000 subscribers to a newly launched Discord server.

BuzzFeed News entered the room under a pseudonym on Sunday night as members of the chatroom attempted to flood Twitter with far-right memes and posts against Martin Schulz’s Social Democratic Party and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, who were debating on TV at the time.

This strategy of moving users from 4chan to YouTube to more private online spaces like Discord isn't new. French trolls organized several aggressive disruption campaigns on Discord servers in the lead-up to their election. And Discord servers played a key role in the organization of the protests in Charlottesville last month.

Alexander hoped to use Discord in a similar way to drum up last-minute support for Germany's right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). AfD has been sliding in the polls and is currently tied for fifth place with the Green party.

Alexander says in his 17-minute video that he wants all his supporters to join the Reconquista Germanica Discord server because it makes it easier to coordinate online attacks.

"The first campaign starts on Sept. 1 and ends on Sept. 24 with the Bundestag election," Alexander says in the video. "The aim of the first campaign is to hoist the AfD as much as possible into the Bundestag. Today we will also start the meme war in the Bundestag against the race of mutts." After the Bundestag election, he says he wants to try to use the Discord room "to go after failed conservatives like [Markus] Pretzell and other hypocrites and strengthen the Höcke wing."

Screenshot BuzzFeed News

Moderators of the server regularly make it clear to new users that the server's main goal is to support AfD.

Screenshot BuzzFeed News

According to the organizers, around 1,500 members gathered there over the weekend.

Many channels carry military names such as "General Staff", "High Command," or "Officers' Mess."

Screenshot BuzzFeed News

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Introducing the adorable cartoon faces of German far-right extremism.

Alternative for Germany is Germany's far-right party. The latest polls for the AfD show it polling around 10%. That puts it pretty far from securing a chancellor spot in the coming election.

Odd Andersen / AFP / Getty Images

But it could mean it'd end up being the first far-right party to get enough votes to enter Germany's parliament in 60 years.

Nurphoto / Getty Images

BuzzFeed News has spent the last several weeks inside one of the larger Discord servers for German far-right fanboys. It's run by a German YouTuber, Nikolai Alexander, who makes videos under the name Reconquista Germanica.

Discord is a popular voice and chat application for gamers and the far right. The Reconquista Germanica server has several hundred users in it and has been increasingly aggressive in the lead-up to the German election.

Discord

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The list began traveling the dark corners of the internet around April as a scattered collection of names, addresses, phone numbers and social media accounts. It’s now a massive organized database of thousands of people.

On Thursday, a 4chan user linked to a massive pastebin document in a thread called "ANTIFA GETS DOXXED".

4chan

The pastebin file has been traveling around the internet since at least April. It started as a scattered collection of names, phone numbers, addresses, and social media accounts of about 3,000 people — and now, months later, it's grown into a massive organized database of apparently thousands more.

8chan

The sprawling document, which is still up, opens with text reading, "someone hacked Antifa, [sic] and got the entire list of people available for antifa activities."

The text at the top of the document is basically gibberish. There is no singular "Antifa" to hack. Anti-fascist communities are usually loose networks of left-wing activists and anarchists who organize locally to disrupt far-right demonstrations.

The intro to the document, however, pushes a popular conspiracy theory on far-right message boards that anti-fascist activists are actually well-organized agents working for a cabal of globalist elites.

Pastebin

The list is a hodgepodge of names and personal information collected over months, but the origins of the list date back to a petition set up in April by the organization Refuse Fascism.

Refusefascism.org’s petition was a list of people who signed a letter condemning the Trump administration and accusing it of spreading fascism.

“We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America! Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime,” the petition reads. “The Trump/Pence Regime is a Fascist Regime. Not insult or exaggeration, this is what it is. For the future of humanity and the planet, we, the people, must drive this regime out.”

The petition was linked to on 4chan, with a user writing, "These fucking imbecilic ‘antifa’ have given us a wonderful gift!! They have created a list of names for /pol/ to crawl through and cross check all the hundreds of antifa sympathizers."

A day later, 4chan users began organizing a way to look up the names on refusefascism.org’s petition by turning it into a game. Instead of usernames, 4chan gives users a number generated by the order of when they post. The original poster told users that if their post ended in 00–04, they would look up last names with A, if it ended in 05–08, they would look up last names with B, and so on.

“We will respond to this attack by exposing to the world the nature and danger posed by these fascist cowards, by defeating their attempts to destroy people’s lives, and by bringing forward even more people to stand up against the fascist regime to say: NO! We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America,” Refuse Fascism told BuzzFeed News when the pastebin file started getting compiled.

refusefascism.org

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It appears as though the far-right trolls weren’t the ones really pulling the strings.

Throughout elections in the U.S., France, and most recently Germany, there has been a question about the efficacy of the far-right's "meme magic" or "meme warfare."

In the case of Germany's federal election this week, it appears as though far-right trolls weren't the ones really pulling the strings.

What appears to have happened is Russian bots pushed far-right conspiracy theories on Twitter using bots and sock-puppet accounts. They waited for one of their honey pots to catch the eye of a far-right influencer and then used a bot net to amplify it. Then private communities on platforms like 4chan and Discord picked it up and helped push the theory to go viral on Twitter and Facebook.

4chan

In the weeks leading up to the 2017 federal election in Germany, far-right 4chan users regularly posted what they call "Kraut/pol/" updates.

They're long, largely copy-and-pasted posts full of information for far-right German users who were eager to help campaign for Alternative For Germany (AfD), the country's far-right party. On Sunday, the AfD came in third place.

4chan

Along with practical information like how to canvas for the AfD, 4chan users also crowdsourced a massive database of memes.

The memes were hosted on a large public Postimage folder. The idea was to blast German social media with pro-AfD memes in attempt to create a false sense of consensus and intimidate people who tried to speak out against the party.

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In aftermath of Sunday evening’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, visitors to Facebook’s Crisis Response page for the tragedy should have found a cascading feed of community-posted news and information intended to "help people be more informed about a crisis." Instead, they discovered an algorithmic nightmare — a hodgepodge of randomly surfaced, highly suspect articles from spammy link aggregators and sites like The Gateway Pundit, which has a history of publishing false information. Indeed, at one point Monday morning, the top three news articles on Facebook's Las Vegas Shooting Crisis Response page directed readers to hyperpartisan news or advertising-clogged blog sites trying to profit from the tragedy.

And early Monday morning, Google search queries for "Geary Danley" — a man initially (and falsely) identified as a victim of the shooting — were served Google News links to the notorious message board 4chan, which was openly working to propagate hoaxes that might politicize the tragedy.

Facebook and Google are hardly alone. Twitter — the internet’s beating heart for news — is continually under siege by trolls, automated accounts, and politically motivated fake news peddlers. In the aftermath of Sunday night’s shooting, a number of pro-Trump accounts of unknown origin tried to link the gunman to leftist groups in an apparent attempt to politicize the tragedy and sow divisions. Others hinted at false flags and crisis actors, suggesting that there was a greater conspiracy behind the shooting (Twitter told BuzzFeed News it has since suspended many of these accounts).

And on sites like YouTube, unverified information flowed largely unchecked, with accounts like The End Times News Report impersonating legitimate news sources to circulate conspiracy and rumor.

A few hours later, Facebook and Google issued statements apologizing for promoting such misinformation. “We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen in the first place and deeply regret the confusion this caused,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNN. Google issued a similarly pat explanation for featuring a 4Chan troll thread as a “Top Story” inside Google search results for Danley: “This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future.”

But neither apology acknowledged the darker truth: that despite the corrections, the damage had already been done, misinformation unknowingly shared with thousands via apparently reckless curators. One link surfaced in Facebook’s Crisis Response page from the website alt-right-news.blogspot.com has been shared across Facebook roughly 1,300 times as of this writing, according to the analytics site BuzzSumo. The article’s third paragraph hints at the shooter’s political leanings, but offers no evidence in support of that claim. “This sounds more like the kind of target a Left-wing nutjob would choose than a Right-wing nutjob,” it reads, before going on to spread unconfirmed information about other (since dismissed) suspects in the shooting. A link from the hyperpartisan site The Gateway Pundit (the same site that misidentified the shooter earlier in the day) was shared roughly 10,800 times across Facebook, according to BuzzSumo.

This is just the latest example of platforms who've pledged to provide accurate information failing miserably to do so. Despite their endless assurances and apologies and promises to do better, misinformation continues to slip past. When it comes to breaking news, platforms like Facebook and Google tout themselves as willing, competent gatekeepers. But it’s clear they’re simply not up to the task.

Facebook hopes to become a top destination for breaking news, but in pivotal moments it often seems to betray that intention with an ill-conceived product design or a fraught strategic decision. In 2014, it struggled to highlight news about the shooting of Michael Brown and the ensuing Ferguson protests. News coverage of the events went largely unnoticed on the network, while instead, News Feeds were jammed with algorithmically pleasing Ice Bucket Challenge videos. And during the 2016 US presidential election, it failed to moderate the fake news, propaganda, and Russian-purchased advertising for which it is now under congressional scrutiny. Meanwhile, it has made no substantive disclosures about the inner workings of its platform.

Google has had its fair share of stumbles around news curation as well, particularly in 2016. Shortly after the US presidential election, Google’s top news hits for the final 2016 election results included a fake news site claiming that Donald Trump won both the popular and electoral votes (he did not win the popular vote). Less than a month later, the company came under fire again for surfacing a Holocaust denier and white supremacist webpage as the top results for the query “The Holocaust."

This year alone, almost every major social network has made a full-throated commitment to rid its platform of misinformation and polarizing content, as well as those who spread it. Google and Facebook have both pledged to eradicate fake news from their ad platforms, cutting off a key revenue stream for those who peddle misinformation. And Google has told news organizations that it has updated its algorithms to better prioritize “authoritative” content and allow users to flag fake news. YouTube has pledged to cut the reach of accounts “that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content,” and Twitter continues to insist that it is making progress on harassment and trolls on its network.

Big Tech’s breaking news problem is an issue of scale — the networks are so vast that they must be policed largely by algorithm — but it's also one of priorities. Platforms like Facebook and Google are businesses driven by an insatiable need to engage and add users and monetize them. Balancing a business mandate like that with issues of free speech and the protection of civil discourse is no easy matter. Curating news seems an almost prosaic task in comparison. And in many ways, it’s antithetical to the nature of platforms like Facebook or YouTube. News is often painful, unpopular, or unwelcome, and that doesn't always align well with algorithmic mechanisms designed to give us what we want (it's worth noting that the curated platforms like Apple News and Snapchat did a far better job today sharing and promoting reliable and vetted information).

And though their words may suggest an unwavering commitment to delivering reliable breaking news, the platforms’ actions frequently undermine those ambitions. Sometimes the companies make these priorities public, like in June 2016 when Facebook announced that it would tweak its News Feed algorithm away from professional news organizations and publishers to show more stories from friends and family members. But other priorities are expressed through engineering decisions made behind closed doors.

Given the massive scale of platforms like Google and Facebook, it’s impossible to expect the platforms to catch everything. But as the Vegas tragedy proved, many of the platform’s slip-ups are simple, egregious oversights. Google, for example, claims the 4chan story appeared in its "Top Stories" widget because it was one of the few pages mentioning "Geary Danley" when today's news broke and it was seeing a lot of traffic. But why didn't Google have guardrails in place to prevent this from happening? 4chan has been a deeply unreliable and toxic news portal for years — why didn't Google have protocols in place to stop the site from appearing in news results? Why treat 4chan as a news source at all?

The same goes for Facebook. The company can't be expected to stop every single scrap of fake news. But in the case of its Crisis Response pages, why not curate news from verified and vetted outlets to ensure that those looking for answers and loved ones in a crisis aren't led astray? These are seemingly simple questions for which the platforms rarely have good answers.

The platforms always promise to do better. Why can't they?

Lam Vo contributed reporting for this piece.

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