I can tell by the pixels

November 4, 2021 8:16 AM

Bellingcat offers a beginners guide to investigating the accuracy and provenance of images shared on social media (or elsewhere), with detailed examples.
posted by eotvos (36 comments total)

Very interesting. The samples they show were easily debunked, and this may be due to the unsophisticated manipulations used by the people who post these things. I can imagine there are far more sophisticated frauds out there in internet land. How do we debunk those? I guess one category is social media where a lot of plain folks post things either as initial frauds followed by rampant reposting versus journalistic media that purports to post the truth. When reading through news media links posted here on the blue, from reliable (?) news sources, I don’t really notice any mentions of sources for photos or videos. Fine print? And even if a source was named, is that true? The reverse image tracing shown here seems to be a good tool. Do I have to use it everywhere? One of the usual things mentioned about the techniques of the right wing conspiracy is the undermining of trust in journalism and the concept of truth in general. This article furthers that goal. Though what it says and shows looks very reliable and probably true. It casts doubts on everything else. The old maxim was Don’t believe everything you read. Now it’s more like Don’t believe anything, unless you exert a lot of work to verify the veracity of what is shown. That includes anyone telling you not to believe something as this article does.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:03 AM on November 4, 2021 [3 favorites]

I also recommend @hoaxeye and @PicPedant on Twitter, and HoaxEye's Twitter lists.
posted by Peach at 9:09 AM on November 4, 2021 [5 favorites]

So this is like one of those feel good police dog does cute thing stories, but for sanitizing the reputation of a CIA / UK intelligence outsourcing firm? Cool.

Meanwhile, that link is hosted on the Greyzone. Its founder regularly appears on Sputnik & RT, and the greyzone itself is a shitshow so pick your poison.
posted by lalochezia at 9:24 AM on November 4, 2021 [6 favorites]

sanitizing the reputation of a CIA / UK intelligence outsourcing firm? Cool.

This is the same Grayzone that shouted to the rooftops that the Assad regime wasn't using chemical weapons against his own people? Can we restrict critique of the topic of the FPP to remotely credible sources?
posted by tclark at 9:27 AM on November 4, 2021 [7 favorites]

Lazy fakes propagate just fine when your audience wants to believe them. And by "wants to believe them" I'm talking about everywhere on the spectrum from a Trump supporter wanting to believe that liberals eat babies all the way to a fan of Twitter who simply wants to believe that most of what they see on Twitter is genuine content produced by individuals and not a thoroughly gamed environment pushing product and propaganda.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 9:34 AM on November 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

This informative and rage-inducing comment I'm making was actually copied from a thread about Bitcoin and turns out not to have anything whatsoever to do with cats.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:34 AM on November 4, 2021 [4 favorites]

Yeah, I'm prepared to hear critiques of Bellingcat (this whole world is murky as heck), but not from genocide deniers.
posted by feckless at 9:38 AM on November 4, 2021 [5 favorites]

Mod note: One comment deleted; let's avoid linking to The Grayzone. Fine if people want to talk pros and cons of Bellingcat.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:47 AM on November 4, 2021

This article details Bellingcat's ties to American intelligence: How Bellingcat launders National Security State talking points into the press
posted by thedamnbees at 10:14 AM on November 4, 2021 [4 favorites]

The impression I've always gotten is that Bellingcat is a bit cozy with the IC, probably because that's where its sources, and thus its scoops/exclusives, originate.

But that doesn't mean what they report isn't useful, and that they're not acting out of a desire to seek and disseminate the truth. Just important to understand their perspective on what is 'truth'.

IMO, qualitatively: they provide a very good representation of the "Beltway consensus", i.e. the consensus reality that policymakers in the US are interacting with and largely live in. How interested in that you are, and how much day-to-day relevance it has to you, will of course vary. But if you're in the US, I'd argue that it's... pretty relevant.

Anyway, I don't really see anything nefarious about this particular article. They're literally teaching you how a particular modern disinformation tactic works, and how to detect it in the wild. In the long term, that's how you inoculate against disinformation.

I'd be willing to bet that various people within the US (and other industrialized countries') ICs have already thought of the detection techniques and have ways of working around them. So, no, this probably won't help you detect a doctored photo done with care by an actor with access to state-level resources. But it could tell you how to detect one that was done by someone with Photoshop in a basement, and that's at least a step in the right direction. It raises the bar on what you have to do to deceive the public en masse.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:39 AM on November 4, 2021 [6 favorites]

This article details Bellingcat's ties to American intelligence: How Bellingcat launders National Security State talking points into the press

Reading that article, and this set my trustworthiness radar flashing.

For six years, Dan Kaszeta was a U.S. Secret Service agent specializing in chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and for six more he worked as program manager for the White House Military Office. At Bellingcat, he would provide some of the intellectual ammunition for Western accusations about chemical weapons use in Syria and Russia’s alleged poisoning of Sergei Skripal.

posted by MattWPBS at 11:16 AM on November 4, 2021 [5 favorites]

It’s the Deep State’s official news outlet and transparently so. Don’t shoot the messenger.
posted by moorooka at 11:19 AM on November 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

Just as startling as its spooky staff is Bellingcat’s source of funding. In 2016 its founder, Eliot Higgins, dismissed the idea that his organization got money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as a ludicrous conspiracy theory. Yet, by the next year, he openly admitted the thing he had laughed off for so long was, in fact, true (Bellingcat’s latest available financial report confirms that they continue to receive financial assistance from the NED). As many MintPress readers will know, the NED was explicitly set up by the Reagan administration as a front for the CIA’s regime-change operations. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” said the organization’s co-founder Allen Weinstein, proudly.

2016 - not getting funding from the NED.
2017 - getting some funding from the NED.
2019 - €500k from workshops, €250k from Dutch Postcode Lottery, unknown portion of €155k from NED.

What's startling is that MintPress don't mention where the majority of the money comes from in a section titled 'who pays the piper?'.

This isn't shooting the messenger, it's problematic reporting at the very first scratch.
posted by MattWPBS at 11:30 AM on November 4, 2021 [3 favorites]

MattWPBS, the point is that Higgins wanted to discredit the idea that he might receive NED funding, because he knows that the NED is a front for CIA regime change operations and didn't want to sully the "independence" of Bellingcat with that association. In any case, it strikes me as problematic for Bellingcat to receive any money from the NED ever, when they claim to be "independent". Back in 2016 it seemed to strike Higgins as problematic too.
posted by thedamnbees at 12:22 PM on November 4, 2021

>It’s the Deep State’s official news outlet and transparently so. Don’t shoot the messenger.
I don't mean to pour confusion on the messenger, but which deep state is this? I've lost track of the timeline we're in and there are some conspiracists who have a baby-eating deep state and others closer to mundane lived experience with a regime-change deep state. How does one tell?

>Western accusations about chemical weapons use in Syria and Russia’s alleged poisoning of Sergei Skripal.
Wait, are we on a timeline where Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei and Julia Skripal (plus Nick Bailey, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess) weren't poisoned on British soil and using highly controlled radioactive (Litvinenko) and chemical (the others) material? I too like to visist tall cathedral spires, perhaps we should arrange a meet?
posted by k3ninho at 2:16 PM on November 4, 2021 [6 favorites]

Hmmmmm.

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

Let's have a look at MintPress News, their about us seems to suggest they'd like to cast themselves in the same sort of light as Bellingcat itself, so let's use the same kind of points that MacLeod uses in his article. I'm going to lay out what I'm checking for each point before I do it, as I don't have time to do this in depth, but I don't want to cherry pick/selectively quote.

Staffing ('Citizen journalism staffed with spies and soldiers') - MintPress News has a contributors and staff page here. Let's look at the first five, and see what we find with a quick Google.

• Mnar Adley (founder). I could stop at this point, the first post on her page is a podcast with Asa Winstanley about Jackie "I still haven't heard a definition of antisemitism I can work with" Walker and others expelled from Labour for misconduct amidst the antisemitism debacle. From what I can tell, apart from MintPress News, she's been an intern at a local television station (report from the founding).
• Mike Fuksman (copy editor). Seems to have actually left in October 2017, according to his LinkedIn.
• Jonathon Simon (copy editor). Can't find anything concrete quickly.
• Aaron Nelson (social media manager). Had a look at his Twitter, which links to his latest project, Anti Media. Headline piece? "Peer-Reviewed and Published: Adoption of Ivermectin to Combat COVID-19 is Justified".
• Carlos Latuff (cartoonists and visual artists). Brazilian political cartoonist, notable enough to have a wikipedia page. Came second in 2006's International Holocaust Cartoon Competition. Plus, yikes.
• Chris Owens (video editor). Looks like he worked with them on a few episodes of a web series. All I could find quickly.

Anyone want to do a few of the contributors?

Finances ('Who pays the piper?') - going to check MintPress News's financial report as well, and also Google.

• MintPress News doesn't seem to have a financial report, or an annual report.
• All I can find on the site is this from the about us page: "Our goal is to be funded through advertising, syndication, and other traditional funding sources. Because we strongly believe in citizen driven journalism, we accept online donations. However, we are committed to rejecting any funding sources that attempt to influence what we report on and how we do so."
• $27k on GoFundMe here, and $40k here.
• 137 Patrons on Patreon.
• Questions about their funding raised in 2015 from a local paper, which also highlights their 2013 'scoop' that it was the Syrian rebels who carried out a chemical weapons attack on civilians, rather than Assad. One of the people on the byline issued legal threats to get their name removed from it, and gave a statement to the Brown Moses blog at the time. Brown Moses was the pseudonym of Elliott Higgins, before he started... Bellingcat.
• Speaking of Bellingcat, they covered MintPress News and three contributors receiving funding from an Assad supporting lobby group. MintPress itself received $10k (page 29).

Links to other media ('The Bellingcat to journalism pipeline') - going to have to Google contributors, aren't I? Let's go with the ones they've put in bold on the staff and contributors page, not sure on the reason for it, but jumped out. First five of those.

• Max Blumenthal - editor of The Grayzone, writes for Russia Today and Sputnik.
• Jon Jeter - previously at the Washington Post, two time Pulitzer finalist.
• Derrick Broze - has just completed an anti-vaxx heavy tour of the US.
• Carmen Russell-Sluchansky - freelancer whose credits include NBC, ABC and the BBC. Became Communications Director for a politician and a charity.
• Margaret Flowers - doctor, advocate for single payer healthcare, co-chair of The Green Party.

Errors ('Bad news from Bellingcat')

• Already mentioned it above, I don't think we have to go beyond the chemical attack in Syria (Human Rights Watch report - warning, headline image of dead children). Story from Buzzfeed News on MintPress at the time, which has some anonymous quotes of people apparently working there. This is already longer than I planned, and I'm not going to try to dig into those now. Click the link if you want to read them.
• The MintPress front page has a lot of pro-Assange stuff on there too, can we call that an error? I'd like to call that an error.

So, thanks for the inspiration to dig into that article and the site thedamnbees. It seems pretty damn toxic, doesn't appear very transparent, and has some extremely disturbing fellow travellers. I was already inclined to distrust it given the selective quoting on funding and the Syria/Winchester part, but I think I definitely have problems with it now. Took longer than I planned, but it's definitely an interesting can of worms.

Cherry on top, I wanted to read the context of Higgins's tweet about NED funding in 2016. This is the full text:

@Documark
Whatever you might imagine about NED and AC I've not received funding from NED. Stop reading conspiracy websites.

Here's the guy he was replying to. Have a look at his stance on trans rights. Ex Sputnik news as well coincidentally.
posted by MattWPBS at 2:35 PM on November 4, 2021 [11 favorites]

Fine if people want to talk pros and cons of Bellingcat.

Is it? The entire conversation's been derailed from the FPP. If someone wants to have one about the nature of Bellingcat, they should create a separate FPP for that.
posted by Candleman at 3:02 PM on November 4, 2021 [7 favorites]

I really don't think all that was necessary MattWPBS. We don't need to evaluate the moral correctness or trustworthiness of the author and their associates to evaluate the claims made in the article. Most importantly I think, there are very easily verifiable claims made about former intelligence officers working at Bellingcat - do you dispute those claims?

I think it's at least worth thinking about why a bunch of former spies want to teach us about social media verification, and maybe reasonable people can disagree about it?
posted by thedamnbees at 3:14 PM on November 4, 2021

If there's no need to do it for MintPress, there's no need to do it for Bellingcat.

Here's why I think it was necessary - there were two immediate red flags in that article. The denial of Skripal and Assad's chemical attacks, and the fact that the answer to 'who pays the piper?' is the Dutch Postal Lottery more than the NED.

There's definitely ex-intelligence people who've worked at and written for Bellingcat, that's without doubt. There's also definitely people from other backgrounds there (Robert Evans of Behind The Bastards/Cracked springs to mind).

And that is where the 'who pays the piper?' omission comes in again. If we can't trust MintPress to be honest about something as easy to check as who funds Bellingcat, do we trust them on the influence and weight of content split between different types of people on Bellingcat?

I didn't expect MintPress to be quite as interesting/time consuming as it turned out to be, otherwise I'd probably have done a check on a couple of pages of Bellingcat posts and the authors.
posted by MattWPBS at 3:31 PM on November 4, 2021 [3 favorites]

I’m pretty sure Bellingcat is mostly funded by anonymous donors.
posted by thedamnbees at 3:44 PM on November 4, 2021

I mean, you're able to check, they publish a financial statement every year down to the Euro level. It's on page 34.

2020 - €587k workshops, €535k non profits, €250k Dutch Postcode Lottery.
2019 - €500k workshops, €250k Dutch Postcode Lottery, €155k non profits.

2019's the one MintPress were saying showed they're dancing to the intelligence services tune. NED are going to be part of that €155k.
posted by MattWPBS at 3:59 PM on November 4, 2021

That report doesn’t name any donors (except Dutch Postcode Lottery I guess?). Seems pretty anonymous to me.
posted by thedamnbees at 4:03 PM on November 4, 2021

Derail of derail:

I'm shocked, shocked that we haven't had a national or international controversy over the use of faked footage or evidence. In the world of deep fakes and that fake voice thing Adobe invented, I expected we would be positively swimming in doctored footage. And, I expect the footage would mostly be produced as a smokescreen, to make people discredit *all* bad videos of a movement or figure.

But instead, as the article says, the fake is most likely an older image, or incorrect context, being passed off as of critical relevance.
posted by rebent at 4:06 PM on November 4, 2021 [4 favorites]

You do you thedamnbees.

Site with annual reports, record of uncovering some nasty shit, and showing how they did it - obviously suspicious that they'd publish a guide on how to spot fake images and disinformation.

Site that doesn't disclose finances, record of cheerleading truly horrific regime, and dodgy staff - absolutely trustworthy, no need to question their motivation.

Actually, assume the points in the MintPress article are all correct. Why do you think a bunch of former spies want to teach people how to do social media verification?
posted by MattWPBS at 4:39 PM on November 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

I mean, it's not hard to imagine how US spy agencies might benefit from teaching people to distrust social media (where they're on an even playing field with foreign adversaries) compared to mainstream US news sources (where they enjoy a competitive advantage in promoting their own narratives).
posted by Pyry at 5:42 PM on November 4, 2021

I think Bellingcat is trying to establish itself as an authority on digital media authentication, and this is basically PR. Given the CIA’s long history of using disinformation and propaganda, and Bellingcat’s links to that agency (and the national security apparatus more broadly) I think there is ample reason to be suspicious of their motives and of their reporting. But I dunno, I just don’t trust the CIA, and I don’t trust anybody who has ever worked for them.
posted by thedamnbees at 5:47 PM on November 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

Well sure, but if our standard of not accepting an organization’s word on anything is “I dunno, I just don’t trust those guys”, MattWPBS does make some relevant points about relying on anti-vaxxers and Ivermectin-pushers who have a specific, personal beef with Bellingcat for sourcing on the anti-Bellingcat intel.

(Also, what do you do with whistleblowers, like Edward Snowden? NSA contractor rather than CIA, I know, but kind of the same general institutional trustworthiness issues, I would think? Does not trusting anyone currently or formerly involved with the organization mean that you simultaneously don’t trust the whistleblower and don’t trust the org PR line? Do you worry that maybe the whistleblower revelations are themselves some sort of elaborate propaganda play? Or do you make exceptions and trust some whistleblowers; in which case, how do you decide that?)
posted by eviemath at 7:50 PM on November 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

Why do you think a bunch of former spies want to teach people how to do social media verification?

Okay, I mean if we're going to do this, let's do it. I'm a bit sad that the whole "who-is-Bellingcat" discussion clobbered what could have been an interesting discussion on the nuts-and-bolts of image fakery on social media, but whatever. Maybe another day.

Let's assume that Bellingcat really is an IC mouthpiece. I don't think this is really a true or fair characterization, and I think what they represent is actually a lot broader than that. But sure.

There are a couple of reasons that come to mind as to why "they" want to teach people how to detect fakes on social media:

One: it likely denies an adversary an advantage. The IC/shadow cabal/whoever have more advanced image-manipulation techniques when they want to make some l337 shoops. So by "burning" these particular methods by publicizing them, they achieve advantage. It's like a really good magician showing you how a basic trick is performed, because they've got much better ones up their sleeve. It gets rid of the amateurs, at least.

Two: "they" have a vested interest in promoting the truth. There already is a segment of the US population basically disconnected from consensus reality, their entire mental model constructed with data filtered through adversary-controlled media spaces. This "truth decay" is really threatening if you're fundamentally in the 'objective reality' business, which is basically what the IC does. (The whole idea of intelligence collection presupposes that there is objective truth, and that uncovering it—having a model of the world that is more true than an adversary's—can be used as an asset and advantage.) They are not conceptually or physically prepared to exist in a "post-truth" space, particularly not one where anything can be "true" if you have enough social media bots. They are trying desperately to inoculate the population against disinformation, and this overwhelms their normal kneejerk desire to not talk about the sneaky shit.

In either case, assuming you are also on Team Objective Reality, it suggests their information has some utility. An outlet like Bellingcat may not always provide the whole truth, but it's not advantageous to them to put out deliberate misinformation either.

Our intellectual loins thus girded, some thoughts on the article content itself:

• A lot of their advice could be boiled down to "do one or two Google searches before reposting something, you nitwit". But I guess some people do better with nice Powerpoint charts.
• Kinda surprised there's no discussion of metadata. I think the average person has an idea that metadata (like location) can travel along with a photo, but not much beyond that. It seems like it'd be good in a Beginners Guide to at least touch on the fact that it can be easily manipulated.
• Just generally, I think we need to be careful of pushing people's skepticism meter so far that it goes around and gets stuck at "nothing can be trusted, ever". There are technical means for proving authenticity that can be quite effective—we just don't use a lot of them right now. The situation in a decade might be different, and we don't need an impossible bar of cynicism to overcome when we need to convince the public that, yeah, in fact, some AP reporter's photo of some atrocity is, in fact, not a fake.

posted by Kadin2048 at 12:26 AM on November 5, 2021 [6 favorites]

Well sure, but if our standard of not accepting an organization’s word on anything is “I dunno, I just don’t trust those guys”, MattWPBS does make some relevant points about relying on anti-vaxxers and Ivermectin-pushers who have a specific, personal beef with Bellingcat for sourcing on the anti-Bellingcat intel.

As I have said, the article I posted makes claims that can be easily verified. We don't have to trust the author's motives, and this kind of smear by association is frankly, bullshit. The author as far as I can tell is not an antivaxxer, nor is he an Ivermectin-pusher. And even if he was, that would have literally no impact on the truth or falsity of the claims made about Bellingcat.

Also, what do you do with whistleblowers, like Edward Snowden?

Again, we don't have to trust Edward Snowden, because he provided evidence which can be evaluated independently of the source. We don't have to trust Julian Assange to know that Collateral Murder was a genuine document of crimes against humanity. The idea that people can be separated into those who are trustworthy, morally correct and right about everything, and those who are untrustworthy, immoral and wrong about everything is ludicrous. When it comes to evaluating factual claims about the world we shouldn't really have to trust anybody.
posted by thedamnbees at 6:24 AM on November 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

the article I posted makes claims that can be easily verified.

And the same seems to be true for the article that is the subject of this post. So… I guess what was the point of objecting to Bellingcat as a source, then? Or if the objection is just an fyi or side comment, surely it’s reasonable to make a similar point about your source?
posted by eviemath at 10:31 AM on November 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

And thinking about it the derail isn't so much that as an expansion of the original topic. If only we could all be Finland.

Personally I do think there is a distinction to be made between organisations that are compromised or biased (Bellingcat are certainly to some (probably more than is currently apparent) degree this, even if only because the ex-IC people are going to be favourably inclined towards their mates still in the industry), and those that are actively complicit.

For e.g. any person or organisation that backs Putin's gov't on Novichok. They literally signed their assassination in the most blatant way possible to make it absolutely clear they did it. They then gleefully engaged in implausible deniability as a way of fronting and making it harder for anyone to call them on it. Any journalist or high social capital person (e.g. Alex Salmond, whom @documark above is a great defender of*) prevaricating or supporting their narrative has beclowned themselves to the point where yes. They may in this case be true, but overall unless there is other immediately supporting evidence they are best ignored as they are essentially stochastically sealioning.

Given their (Bellingcat) composition, would I trust (on average) their take on Cuba (for e.g.): No.
Russian active operations, Assad's war crimes... : Probably.

* And yes I am bitter about how utterly the astroturf Russia Today/ABLA/Transphobia/Ableist/Salmond wing has destroyed a Scottish Indy movement that was once genuinely socially progressive and hopeful (for at least a little while).
posted by Buntix at 11:29 AM on November 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Yeah eviemath, i was mostly just trying to make the point that there are a bunch of former intelligence officers working at Bellingcat. As far as I can tell, nobody is disputing that point - it's a factual matter of public record. If we all agree on that fact, what is there to object to? Why do we need to play six-degrees of guilt by association, when we all agree on the issue at hand?

And I was certainly not objecting to the factual accuracy of the 'beginner's guide', I was merely suggesting that the former spies at Bellingcat might have some ulterior motives. I'm not sure why this suggestion prompted such a strenuous response.
posted by thedamnbees at 11:35 AM on November 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure why this suggestion prompted such a strenuous response.

The strenuous response _is_ the process, the whittling, the analysis, the search for the truth of the matter. TBH I was fairly convinced by the MintPress article, even did the whole skimming through loads of previous articles by the same author. But I very much over-skimmed and under investigated. Did more later after MattWPBS's replies, and they dodgy as a four penny piece.

TBF it was your original guilt-by-association suggestion that lead to a bit of a pile on.

I doubt anyone here really believes Bellingcat are playing with a straight bat.

(And now I'm off to daystory about all the different varieties on non-straight Chiroptera there may be).
posted by Buntix at 12:02 PM on November 5, 2021

Did more later after MattWPBS's replies, and they dodgy as a four penny piece.

And what did this lead you to conclude about the article? Does it contain factual inaccuracies? Is it propaganda or disinformation of some kind? Do former spies still work at Bellingcat?
posted by thedamnbees at 12:50 PM on November 5, 2021

thedamnbees: I dunno, I just don’t trust the CIA, and I don’t trust anybody who has ever worked for them.

thedamnbees 12 hours later: The idea that people can be separated into those who are trustworthy, morally correct and right about everything, and those who are untrustworthy, immoral and wrong about everything is ludicrous.

my god, they got to him...
posted by inire at 4:57 AM on November 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

What? Even CIA agents tell the truth sometimes. Just because they're immoral and untrustworthy, doesn't mean everything they say is wrong. That was my point.
posted by thedamnbees at 8:12 PM on November 9, 2021