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Hamilton 68

Website:

securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-dashboard/
Formation:

2017
Type:

Russian Propaganda Watchdog

Contact InfluenceWatch with suggested edits or tips for additional profiles.

Hamilton 68 (now known as Hamilton 2.0) is an “online dashboard” that operates as a watchdog for Russian influence in the American media. It is a project of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. 1

In January 2023, journalist Matt Taibbi wrote a report based on the Twitter Files alleging that Hamilton 68’s methodologies did not stand up to scrutiny. The group used 644 allegedly Russian-linked Twitter accounts to track Russian influence in the American media. According to an internal Twitter investigation, the vast majority of these accounts had no connection to the Russian government, and Hamilton 68 was erroneously ascribing Twitter conversations to Russian influence. 2 The Alliance for Securing Democracy maintains that Taibbi and many media outlets have misunderstood the methodology and function of Hamilton 68.

Hamilton 68 was named after Federalist 68, in which Alexander Hamilton warned about foreign influence in elections. 3

Operations

After the 2016 election, 4 Hamilton 68 was founded by Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent on a joint terrorism task force, a former executive officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC), and a former consultant to the FBI’s Counter Terrorism Division (CTD) and National Security Branch (NSB). 5

Hamilton 68 operated as a watchdog for Russian influence in American media by observing 644 Twitter accounts allegedly linked to the Russian government and its disinformation efforts. “Some of these accounts are directly controlled by Russia, others are users who on their own initiative reliably repeat and amplify Russian themes,” the group claimed. 6

Hamilton 68 would periodically report that particular news stories, events, or political views were being promoted by these accounts as evidence of Russian influence. Hamilton 68 refused to disclose the identity of these accounts, supposedly to protect its methodology from interference by the Russian state or its sympathizers. 7 8

Hamilton 68 quickly became a popular source in the mainstream media, and was cited by NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones, Snopes, PolitiFact, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among others. 9

Hamilton 68 was also cited by universities, including Harvard University, Princeton University, Temple University, New York University, and George Washington University, as well as politicians, including U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), James Lankford (R-OK), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Mark Warner (D-VA) and U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA). 10

Media reports cited Hamilton 68 regarding alleged Russian influence on online discourse regarding a wide range of topics, including the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s (D-HI) 2020 presidential campaign, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’s (D-VT) 2020 presidential campaign, the Parkland school shooting, and opposition to the Mueller Investigation. 11

For instance, a February 2018 news article from NBC News was entitled, “Russian trolls flood Twitter after Parkland shooting,” and cites “According to live data collected by the nonpartisan Hamilton 68 dashboard, Russian-linked Twitter accounts flooded the service with tweets using popular hashtags like #parkland, #guncontrolnow and #florida.” 12

Many articles cited Watts’s background; for instance, Fortune titled a report “Former FBI Agent Says Russian Twitter Bots Were Behind Push for [national security adviser H.R.] McMaster Firing.” 13

Skepticism

Mollie Hemingway of conservative outlet The Federalist was an early skeptic of Hamilton 68. In February 2018, Hemingway criticized U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) for promoting a conspiracy theory that President Donald Trump (R) colluded with the Russian government in the 2016 election based on Hamilton 68’s claims. When asked to confirm Hamilton 68’s claims, Twitter refused to disclose any information on the 644 Twitter accounts. 14

In April 2018, Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) communications director Bret Schafer told the right-leaning Daily Caller that most of the mainstream media reports that cited Hamilton 68 were “inherently inaccurate” because they erroneously consider the platform to be tracking bots, rather than accounts with activity correlated to bots. 15 16

Twitter Files

Taibbi Report

In late 2022, new Twitter CEO Elon Musk released the Twitter Files, a set of internal Twitter documents, to independent journalists and writers Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig, and Alex Berenson. 17

In January 2023, Taibbi wrote an expose of Hamilton 68 based on a previously unreleased internal Twitter investigation into the 644 supposedly Russian-affiliated accounts that Hamilton 68 used for its analytics. Twitter found that only 36 of the accounts were registered in Russia, 86% were English-speaking, and most were “legitimate people” based in the United States, Canada, and Britain. The few accounts which really were Russian were from Russia Today (RT), a media outlet well-known to be backed by the Russian government. The internal Twitter report stated, “These accounts are neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots” and there is “no evidence to support the statement that the dashboard is a finger on the pulse of Russian information ops.” 18

In January 2018, Twitter’s then-head of trust and safety Yoel Roth wrote in an internal communication that he was “increasingly of the opinion that [Hamilton 68] is actively damaging and promotes polarization and distrust through its shoddy methodology[.] Real people need to know they’ve been unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.” 19

According to Taibbi, “It was a scam. Instead of tracking how ‘Russia’ influenced American attitudes, Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming.” He also described it as “simply taking organic Trumpish chatter and describing it as Russian scheming.” Taibbi contacted many of the account owners and found them to be uniformly surprised to be subject to Russian bot accusations. 20

The Twitter files also revealed that Twitter declined to reveal its findings to the public. However, Twitter employees made unsuccessful attempts to “privately nudge” reporters away from using Hamilton 68 as a source. 21 22

Alliance for Securing Democracy Response

Soon after Taibbi’s expose, the Alliance for Securing Democracy released a response challenging many of his claims. Most notably, ASD claimed that Taibbi misrepresented the nature of its 644 tracked accounts; ASD maintained that the accounts were not necessarily bots, but could be non-bot accounts that were algorithmically determined to engage in activity highly correlated with confirmed bots or Russian agents. 23

ASD stated, “The dashboard was an analysis of networks that (1) reliably amplified Russian propaganda and disinformation, either wittingly or unwittingly, and (2) primarily targeted audiences in the United States. This would account for the inclusion of some genuine Americans in the account list—not because they were labelled by analysts as being a bot or even Russian, but because the analytic techniques used identified them as being a part of a network that either promoted or engaged with Russian propaganda targeting American audiences.” 24

Matt Taibbi’s Rebuttal

Taibbi quickly responded to ASD, citing old screenshots of the Hamilton 68 website with language that significantly differed from its post-exposure framing. For instance, ASD had claimed that many of its 644 Twitter accounts were not directly related to Russia, but the site originally put all accounts into two categories: “media outlets known to be controlled by the Russian government” and “bots and trolls.” 25

References

  1. Taibbi, Matt. “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New king of Media Fraud.” Racket. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton?r=2xssg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
  2. Taibbi, Matt. “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New king of Media Fraud.” Racket. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton?r=2xssg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post.
  3. Sinnenberg, Jackson. “Twitter Files 15 furthers the misunderstandings of ‘Hamilton 68’.” News Channel 9. January 30, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://newschannel9.com/news/nation-world/twitter-files-15-furthers-the-misunderstanding-of-hamilton-68-russian-disinformation-the-daily-caller-right-wing-talking-points-social-media-mainstream-media-nuance-methodolgy-extremism-donald-trump-matt-taibbi-research-interference-trolls-bots.
  4. Sinnenberg, Jackson. “Twitter Files 15 furthers the misunderstandings of ‘Hamilton 68’.” News Channel 9. January 30, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://newschannel9.com/news/nation-world/twitter-files-15-furthers-the-misunderstanding-of-hamilton-68-russian-disinformation-the-daily-caller-right-wing-talking-points-social-media-mainstream-media-nuance-methodolgy-extremism-donald-trump-matt-taibbi-research-interference-trolls-bots.
  5. “Clint Watts.” Senate.gov. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/bio-cwatts-033017.pdf.
  6. Sinnenberg, Jackson. “Twitter Files 15 furthers the misunderstandings of ‘Hamilton 68’.” News Channel 9. January 30, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://newschannel9.com/news/nation-world/twitter-files-15-furthers-the-misunderstanding-of-hamilton-68-russian-disinformation-the-daily-caller-right-wing-talking-points-social-media-mainstream-media-nuance-methodolgy-extremism-donald-trump-matt-taibbi-research-interference-trolls-bots.
  7. Hemingway, Mollie. “How The Media Enable Rep. Adam Schiff’s Russian Bot Conspiracy Theories.” The Federalist. February 21, 2018. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://thefederalist.com/2018/02/21/how-the-media-enable-rep-adam-schiffs-russian-bot-conspiracy-theories/.
  8. Taibbi, Matt. “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New king of Media Fraud.” Racket. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton?r=2xssg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post.
  9. Taibbi, Matt. “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New king of Media Fraud.” Racket. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton?r=2xssg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post.
  10. Taibbi, Matt. “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New king of Media Fraud.” Racket. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton?r=2xssg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post.
  11.  Taibbi, Matt. “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New king of Media Fraud.” Racket. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton?r=2xssg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post.
  12. Popken, Ben; Kent, Jo Ling. “Russian trolls flood Twitter after Parkland shooting.” NBC News. February 15, 2018. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/russian-trolls-flood-twitter-after-parkland-shooting-n848471.
  13. Morris, David Z. “Former FBI Agent Says Russian Twitter Bots Were Behind Push for McMaster Firing.” Fortune. August 20, 2017. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://fortune.com/2017/08/20/russian-twitter-bots-fire-mcmaster/.
  14. Hemingway, Mollie. “How The Media Enable Rep. Adam Schiff’s Russian Bot Conspiracy Theories.” The Federalist. February 21, 2018. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://thefederalist.com/2018/02/21/how-the-media-enable-rep-adam-schiffs-russian-bot-conspiracy-theories/.
  15. Sinnenberg, Jackson. “Twitter Files 15 furthers the misunderstandings of ‘Hamilton 68’.” News Channel 9. January 30, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://newschannel9.com/news/nation-world/twitter-files-15-furthers-the-misunderstanding-of-hamilton-68-russian-disinformation-the-daily-caller-right-wing-talking-points-social-media-mainstream-media-nuance-methodolgy-extremism-donald-trump-matt-taibbi-research-interference-trolls-bots.
  16. Hasson, Peter. “’We Don’t Track Bots’: What The Media’s Russian Bot Coverage Is Getting All Wrong.” Daily Caller. April 9, 2018. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://dailycaller.com/2018/04/09/hamilton-68-russian-bots-media-coverage/.
  17. Taibbi, Matt. “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New king of Media Fraud.” Racket. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton?r=2xssg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post.
  18. Taibbi, Matt. “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New king of Media Fraud.” Racket. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton?r=2xssg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post.
  19. Sinnenberg, Jackson. “Twitter Files 15 furthers the misunderstandings of ‘Hamilton 68’.” News Channel 9. January 30, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://newschannel9.com/news/nation-world/twitter-files-15-furthers-the-misunderstanding-of-hamilton-68-russian-disinformation-the-daily-caller-right-wing-talking-points-social-media-mainstream-media-nuance-methodolgy-extremism-donald-trump-matt-taibbi-research-interference-trolls-bots
  20. [1] Taibbi, Matt. “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New king of Media Fraud.” Racket. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton?r=2xssg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post.
  21. Taibbi, Matt. “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New king of Media Fraud.” Racket. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton?r=2xssg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post.
  22. Jashinsky, Emily. “The Astounding Saga of Hamilton 68 illustrates Scope of America’s Institutional Rot.” The Federalist. January 31, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/31/the-astounding-saga-of-hamilton-68-illustrates-scope-of-americas-institutional-rot/.
  23. “FACT SHEET: Hamilton 68 Dashboard (2017-2018).” Alliance for Securing Democracy. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/fact-sheet-hamilton-68-dashboard-2017-2018/.
  24. “FACT SHEET: Hamilton 68 Dashboard (2017-2018).” Alliance for Securing Democracy. January 27, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/fact-sheet-hamilton-68-dashboard-2017-2018/.
  25. Taibbi, Matt. “Hamilton 68: Brief Addendum.” Racket. January 29, 2023. Accessed February 1, 2023. https://www.racket.news/p/hamilton-68-brief-addendum?r=5mz1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web.
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