Defrauder Drought: How Online Confidence Scams Are Being Defeated
The only reason to watch and listen now would be to recall nostalgia. Just a deranged person’s melancholy longing for and reminiscences of that glorious four years from 2012 to 2016 where it seemed anything was possible in online grifterville. The salad days of Barack Obama’s last four years in office that brought scammers, grifters, fakes, phonies, and poser progressives out of the woodwork to cash in on the racist political polarization happening in the country and the golden years of online activism however tenuous and fraudulent. They had a good run. They spouted misinformation with the best of the Conservative breed. Their mirrors on the other side of the aisle. Their false equivalencies were legendary. Not only comparing Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump but actually accusing her of surpassing him in evil. Comparing Barack Obama to everyone from Stalin to Satan. All the while making the liberal case for Donald Trump because he was a “Dove” to Hillary’s “Hawk” They set-up podcasts and YouTube channels and many ways for people to pay for it by sending them money as they spewed propaganda in podcasts and articles and blogs disguised as news and suckered a lot of people out of their cash and into voting for Republicans. But the glorious long fiber optic ride of the grifter cowboys of the world wide web for all intent and purposes is sunsetting into a footnote of history. In the last six years there has been a raft of events and happenings that have helped expose, shut the door, and make it stay shut on this group of hucksters. One of the greatest tools the con artists had in their arsenal was the weapon of imagination. People could only wonder what a Trump presidency might look like and how it might be better than a Hillary Clinton presidency. Trump’s presidency is no longer a what if? but a what happened? No longer a daydream but an actual nightmare of a reality of the four horrendous years that actually was. The big set up to this confidence scheme to gain trust from leftists to draw them into this liberal honey trap of a Republican business disguised as progressive news was that if Trump was elected it wouldn’t be the horrible thing people thought because the natural opposition would coalesce against him and accidentally bring in the revolution. That never happened as Republicans didn’t oppose Trump in any way, they made him their deity and ripped off their masks and seconded his calls to Liberate Michigan and that vaccines were unamerican. They pushed his supreme court picks right through. Of course, Grifters haven’t all stopped they do all of these things now and still, but most of the venom has been removed from the poisonous snake. The election of Joe Biden has caused massed roadblocks in grifter country. There is a competent administration in place holding people accountable. They have been able to clear the smoke mirror and fog left behind by MAGA White House. There just isn’t the need for everything to be an “emergency, so send me some money” that there was back then so there isn’t as much supply to fill the even less demand. Lifting chaos agent grifters on the left were Russian bot farms who have since been chopped down by Russian sanctions sucking a major portion of the funds dry and turning grifters who used to be in cahoots against each other. Selling Democrats are the same as Republicans as news was such a viable option online it still persists as even longtime mainstream news outlets like CNN got into the act but it has cost them dearly. Constantly playing both sides do it and creating a fake crisis for Biden for ratings has helped them achieve the exact opposite of their goal. They’re averaging 178,000 viewers in the 25 to 54 demographic the most sought-after age group for advertisers. They’re ratings in this vital demographic is down 69%. Total advertising revenue fell 2%. Lost viewership = lost advertising= loss revenue. Trying to bring back the mega ratings they gained with the tabloid freak show that was Donald Trump but they have a big disadvantage using Joe Biden in the area of garnering big ratings. He’s not outrageous because he’s not hiding and covering up anything. He is where he is supposed to be. Where the majority of American people put him by voting for him more than any other President was ever voted for. He’s not using the fog of chaos and war he’s using transparency and compassion, inclusion, and positivity to further his agenda and the democratic platform. He’s not trying to gain followers. He’s trying to gain trust. He’s not trying to confuse and cause turmoil. He’s not trying to drag people along or stomp over them if they don’t come. He’s trying to lead by taking their hand and walking with them by going through it with them as it’s much harder to build than to blow up and tear down. He’s not holding hate rally’s every other day across the country, when he tested positive for covid he stayed home. He doesn’t expose the secret service and citizens to a deadly contagion so he can stroke his ego by going on car ride to wave at his delusional fans. Joe Biden is simply not current media blitz or progressive revolution material. As CNN falters and stumbles the same has happened with the online news world whose content has been virtually identical to CNN since the election that brought Joe Biden into the white house. They never came to the realization that republicans don’t bring revolutions they only bring decay and misery. They also don’t bring money if even if at first, they have it they always lose it and will lose yours. Internet grifters have paid the price by losing it too. When Vice President Kamala Harris suggested Trump be removed from twitter for his dangerous racist and hateful tweets attempting to stir up violence, she was mocked and laughed at by many including even in her own party like Senator Elizabeth Warren because it threatened the way they also want to use Trump and use twitter to accomplish their own grifts. Eventually Trump was banished from twitter and the man who online grifters thought would bring their pay days and revolution ended up being the man who destroyed it. It’s because of him that those online platforms have clamped down on misinformation and lies, hateful bigoted and racist rhetoric and ways to make money while doing it. Advertisers have folded up and have taken their products to other options. They have stopped advertising on these kinds of shaky outlets. They have removed misinformation and racism from them. The avenue of using the internet to make money by passing political misinformation on as fact has dried up greatly in six years’ time. There are still ways to make money and make a living online but not by doing that. As a result of Donald Trump’s lies several prominent and useful fact checking platforms have also been established helping to clear the air between fact and fiction. All of these things were not there prior to 2016. When disinformation happens now it’s not as effective as a cash cow because of these new instituted roadblocks. Trump’s history of bringing down the people who get close to him and it’s been no exception for those hoping to use him to push their own grift into a parlay for a big money score who have seen their grifter dreams turn into ashes in their hands. Consequences of his actions have narrowed the avenues other grifters can use for scams themselves and has also placed the risk vs reward for doing them off balance. As grifters who lie are now surrounded and called out by larger groups of marginalized people online. Mostly black people who have been reduced to being called The K Hive as a racial slur by angry grifter bigots. The K Hive has been so successful in log jamming and bringing the wrong kind of attention to progressive grifting immediately that they have even been accused of taking over the internet by bullying white people making it woke. Generally, what happens is white people have their truth and then black people come along with the real truth and it ruins them. The more black people online the more lying grifters are exposed for who they really are. The frustration of all of this is seen and heard on the faces and in the voices of the few grifters who are still hanging around like bats in the night. One of the most recognizable outlets is the group over at The Young Turks. They predicted a Bernie Sanders win against Joe Biden in the Democratic primary and when Sanders was embarrassingly shellacked. TYT moved to announcing and even vocally hoping for a Trump win. In their mind there was no way Biden could beat Trump and they tweeted it out and announced it every day on their show leading up to the election when Biden got the most votes ever and sent Trump packing. A sturdier Democracy is bad for TYT’s bottom line and the last year and a half they have gotten angrier and angrier at viewership and money they have lost because of Joe Biden’s boring presidency and The K Hive. TYT has become a nightly temper tantrum of overgrown children making up stories to be victims as they go to hammer Biden any way they can. Screaming and shouting at the top of their lungs how useless and ineffective he is. Saying “Democrats are bastards” lies and screaming and yelling desperate canards. The only purpose they have today is to suppress voter turnout to help republicans win the midterms in an attempt hang on to the little inherits they have left who are too slow on the uptake to realize they’re being had and try to make as much money as they still can while doing it without actually having to get resort to getting real jobs and doing any actual work to make it. They need Republicans to win otherwise it puts their narrative that the Democratic party can’t win elections and make progress in dire straits. America and the world have not only seen the real dangers of online misinformation, manipulation and lies in many ways the last six years they have experience it firsthand. The January 6th attack on the capitol brought to you by Trump’s election lies exclusively brought by his twitter account. Trump claimed the election was stolen, stop the count, stop the steal. Hillary Clinton has had the opportunity to tell her side of the story including in her best-selling book “What Happened?” A woman carded out as the devil herself by conservatives and progressive liars has shown the majority of voters in America that the country really lost out on having a capable qualified and groundbreaking President. Instead of the Russia and Putin Hacks and collusion with Trump and Republicans to rig the election against her and over a million Covid_19 deaths. The withdrawal from Afghanistan. People saw one thing as the media reported another in real time. Info Wars and lies about School shootings. The GOP voting against assault weapons, Covid_19 relief and veteran benefits and protections. The hateful and dishonest media coverage of Biden. Reporters even making fun of his stutter. A total turnround from how Trump was covered. Reporters missing Trump so they decided to turn into him. Covid_19. This isn’t an issue you can pretend doesn’t exist like racism and be okay. Over a million deaths that could have been avoided if not for key pieces of misinformation going out on a mass level has made it almost impossible to ignore how lies led to mass death. Black Lives Matter. The public has seen the misinformation that led to racism and murder. The killing of George Floyd in broad daylight and the blatant lies that followed as the entire thing was on tape right for our very eyeballs to witness. Yet there were still denial and lies going out 24/7. The public response shows that people may be tired of the lies and what the lies lead to. Perhaps evens some viewers and victims of grifter scams came to their senses. Viewership for all of the outfits have plummeted. The grifters disguised as activists didn’t accomplish anything and it could be more obvious to people who have learned that you don’t need activists or pay to play progressive news groups to get change or even to get the news. You have to vote. You have to stand in solidarity with the people on the correct side of the issues. Because of the removal of Donald Trump and Democratic administration The Government is functioning closer to how it should be now. It’s working. Something the majority of online political grifters might have learn about very soon.
References:
Vladimir Putin’s war of fog: How the Russian President used deceit, propaganda and violence to reshape global politics https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-vladimir-putins-war-of-fog-how-the-russian-president-used-deceit/
https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2022/04/russian-disinformation-all-bot-no-bite/363897/
Bots targeting the U.S. slowed their anti-vax campaigns while accelerating pro-Russia messaging, which doesn’t stick as well in the West.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-youtube-influencers-suspends-monetization-1686690
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