How I Triggered a Weaponized Troll Farm
A Series on Misinformation, Disinformation and Subterfuge
Original publication date, March 4, 2022
To call my recent exchanges with multiple individuals accused by prominent Q-hunter and embattled indy journalist Jim Stewartson as being a deeply interconnected disinformation troll farm as anything less than a fascinating dissection of human behavior, misdirection and intrigue, would be an understatement. For one, I didn’t expect that all the players that I wanted to invite in, to test and get on record, would show up without an explicit invitation when I shouted into the inter-nether-void-net of Twitter with the tagged name of he-who-is-not-to-be-named @jimstewartson in the vain belief that would somehow dog whistle and rope in such sophisticated social networked alleged paid political operatives that should in theory, know better.
So of course it worked.
I laid the honey drop on Yoel Roth’s quote retweet of Eli Dourado’s request of Twitter safety to protect OSINT accounts under attack, with the added note that Twitter was part of the battlefield now. I responded directly to Yoel, who is the head of Site Integrity for Twitter according to his profile.
Just say his name.
Why did I pick this spot for a honey drop? Well, simple, I have long studied human behavior as a Special Education teacher, including an eight-year stint heavily documenting student behavior and making predictions based on it. Behavior is behavior, with antecedents, behaviors and consequences, so based on my eight years of work as a SpEd behavior analyst I started by looking at the antecedents, the A of the ABCs of behavior.
Kassandra, whom I call K7, Kass, Sue, Agent 7 throughout these dialogues with her and her interconnected account following, has rigged up quite the reputation playing the role of “…retweeting about: Misinformation, Disinformation, News & Info Literacy, Politics and sometimes Music,” as her profile states. To appear to be what she claims to be, as an authentic prolific exposer of disinformation, requires considerable effort to collect, curate and generate content on her feed that fits her profile while also targeting her main social media campaign objectives of her overall operation. She tweets a lot at genuine accounts, in an effort to build up or maintain her purported credibility.
She had replied to Yoel, so I thought what the Heck, might as well do the same. I replied directly to him, not her, requiring her to choose to engage with what should be under normal behavioral circumstances, a miniscule possibility of even catching her attention. If she did do as I predicted, search for Jim Stewartson’s handle or name drop, the mere fact it happened to be responding to a thread she herself as a bad actor had commented on in her LARP, would compel her to engage without explicitly being asked to or invited. Like cheese sitting directly on a rat trap,
just say his name.
“This is a reminder that Russian operatives did manage to mass report @jimstewartson a disinformation specialist, with his first ban being quickly overturned. His account was invaluable for researching QAnon and Russian disinformation networks, and should be restored.”
Just say his name.
A day and a half later, late February 25th, my hypothesis she couldn’t resist, proved correct with a tweeted reply K7 emoji single character side eye roll.
🙄
Kassandra Seven, whose entire purpose in life these past few months was to cyberstalk Jim and anyone that dare say anything nice about him to put down, harass and intimidate, was on the baited hook ready to swallow a big fat juicy wriggly worm down her soon to be ever-widening gullet. Yum!
“I know right. Jim should have his account restored. Pronto. He is one of the best researchers on Russian disinformation, criminal networks, QAnon and Mike Flynn that they feared him greatly.”
Knowing she wanted to engage, based on past behaviors, this part was much too easy. Looking through her tweets, which she regularly purges after binges of presumably rancorous behavior she doesn’t want saved for fear of getting outed and booted off the platform, her modus operandi of disparagement and belittling was expected.
“He shouldn’t have evaded his second ban. And he’s horrible at research as he is at being honest. But good luck convincing people of nonsense.”
Ouch! I mean it. As a teacher, I teach kids how to properly do an inverted sentence structure using a conjunction, then fragment to start an informal sentence, but never would I ever use that stylized structure in TWO sentences back to back.
“I am not the one who is good at convincing a large audience (of) well-intentioned people, nonsense. Obviously. His research on Michael Flynn and Russian disinformation networking using US-based assets made him a target by those same networks. Also obviously.”
Twittering when things cannot be edited and is saved leads to some mistakes like my missing the word ‘of’ in my message screwing up writing conventions. My compulsive nature as an educator of eighteen and a half years, means I correct mistakes, even my own, when I find them.
“Plenty of people research those things and do not repeatedly get banned from Twitter for breaking multiple TOS. He is not an honest person. His research is overwhelmingly trash. Feeding into his narcissism doesn’t help anyone.”
So, I am feeding into his narcissism? Has she a psychology degree or formal specialized degree that allows her to diagnose people whom she has never met with a clinical diagnosis? I ask these things now because one of the common traits of serial abusers, performance artists, so-called Mean Girls and political operatives, is in that they all employ the same set of tools in their attack methods. This one point of reference will come up later in the second exchange on February 28th, with sneaky and not-so-sneaky Sue from Michigan, here.
“Jim was absolutely correct on Ron Watkins, Michael Flynn and Q Anon, so his being correct does lead to a certain amount of narcissism to others. You do know it was against TOS to target him. You have again admitted to it.”
This is a point I need to make clear. Kassandra’s timeline celebrating her and others getting Stewartson booted off the platform is a badge of honor to her. With this tweet combined with others, she was essentially saying that she was in on the details by describing how he was kicked off, so I asked her in a triggering way to get her response so she was unlikely to dodge it like many conmen do. You don’t generally know the details unless you are personally invested emotionally in those details from a minor event that happened well over a month ago.
“And here you are. Attacking his work. Attacking him. And identifying that you were part of the coordinated effort to take down his research exposing Russian disinformation. His ban was not organic. You know that. @TwitterSafety knows that. He didn’t avoid a second ban either.”
“His third ban was for ban evasion which he admitted to doing. I haven’t identified anything, You’re as ridiculous as he is. Bye.”
“So why do you go out of your way to target @jimstewartson now admitting that you did so multiple times? Why are you targeting others? Why did you search out my comment days later and respond to it as you were not in the loop on my tweet.”
“I haven’t admitted to targeting anyone. And you aren’t the first one of his fans to try this game with me. Go play Harry Potter with him or something. I’m busy.”
With that tweet, she attached a screenshot.
Context is everything in a world of subterfuge and misdirection. The “damnable” screenshot, meant to make Stewartson look like a crazed loon by taking things out of context, is intentionally a screenshot, not a link to a likely well-detailed article of one of K7s hanger-on recruits, the grand wizard of bafoonery, or whatever, on Stewartson’s substack.
I am subscribed to that substack at the free level, so haven’t read it. I do however know the context.
The above screenshot was for an article postdated to February 24th, the same day that my interactions with K7 began. That shows how obsessive her interest is with Kass, something that is to be fairly stated amongst the two appears to be mutual.
It’s nice though that Stewartson gives enough of his articles free to read, including details I presume match the paid subscriber only article to a free March 1st story on a LARPer Warlock that gives all the context needed. If you have seen Hawkeye on Disney Plus, you’ll know what I mean by LARPing.
You can subscribe at either the free or paid level via this link for Jim Stewartson’s Substack:
“Sure. And this SO doesn’t prove that you are still obsessed with and cyberstalking @jimstewartson across platforms. When your accounts violated TOS after @twitterSafety had restored it following your other attack, his work exposing Flynn and the Russian trolls didn’t end.”
And with that parting shot that wasn’t meant as the final one as she went off to lurk again in the shadows silent to me, I expected the troll to vanish, move on, never to reappear again as I hadn’t yet landed the intended hook.
Going back and looking at that short thread of our initial cat and fish engagement, I found that there were three of her unleveled-up social networked attack dogs yapping unnoticed, likely because that sort of constant harassing behavior gets one ratioed as people tend to block or report them. In order to even see their rantings with my current settings set to filter out malignant disruptive goofballs, I would have to click to each of my comments where I had multiple responses to, then another click to have their comments revealed.
These trolls were djddogie, Mega Man, and Matt who tweeted twice, one that was very pro-Mike Flynn and the other a pic that to me represented creepy Matt Gaetz’s upcoming problems he telegraphed are upcoming when he said on live TV we would be hearing about him and his being with child prostitutes, and to so not listen or to believe it. None of their comments, hidden in the dark abscesses of Twitter purgatory, really matter in the overall context of the op, just that they are more or less the sort of recruits to @Kassandraseven ‘s troll farm, reliable grunts meant to fling and scatter their feces on her behalf.
Basic human malignant social behavior, weaponized on the Internet, by an obsessed cyber stalker and her recruits.
I reached out to Jim Stewartson via his email link on his substack for comment with the following exchange:
Mr. Stewartson,
I am a casual acquaintance of your associate, Heidi Cuda, who became a mutual follow on Twitter after a brief discussion regarding my work, published book, and articles on identifying Trump behavior associated with undiagnosed Autism. I am currently writing a series of articles of which you are heavily featured in, the first of which I intend to publish today via my blog at Medium, regarding Kassandra Seven, Louise Mensch and others whom you allege are engaged in a Russian troll farm to discredit, harass and deplatform.
Here is a link to my blog, via an article I wrote regarding the Trump campaign’s creation and use of Pizzagate as political psyop:
Here is a link to the first Twitter thread of which today’s piece is about:
In this article I describe my own interactions with Kassandra, however I am reaching out to you for your own comment as well as to ensure I am describing you accurately in this first piece.
Here is the relevant portion:
“…individuals accused by prominent Q-hunter and embattled indy journalist Jim Stewartson as being a deeply interconnected (Russian) disinformation troll farm”
Is this a correct description of the work you do? Any comment you’d like to add regarding the attached thread? I am leaving my contact information below.
Respectfully,
Steven Jarvis
Here is Mr. Stewartson’s response:
Hi Steven!
Thanks for reaching out. I’ve seen your work on Twitter. Thank you so much for what you do.
One important correction. I never said they are a “Russian troll farm.”
It’s much more complex than that. Yes, they are ultimately doing the work of anti-democratic forces underwritten by the Russians but there are many different ways and reasons people get involved in this kind of harmful activity.
It’s also not just one “farm” it’s an overlapping Venn diagram of different ideologies, undue influences, money, ego and other factors. They cooperate and coordinate but it’s not a single organization by any means.
Just want to make sure we don’t end up sounding like Mensch. None of these people are Ivan in St. Petersburg being paid in rubles.
Let me know if that makes sense and thanks again,
Jim
I took out the “Russian” adjective in the opening. Better to be precise.
Before I start work on the next item in this series, I just have to address the really poor photo shop job on the “five-paw” length mini-papers that Kass tweeted out March 2.
:)
Back when I was still a child, I worked on graphics and video editing for CALI Inc, developing what was the number one TOEFL ESL adult language program in the world for the better part of two decades. Simplistic fake images like this one are easy to spot.
The sizing isn’t the only thing wrong with this low-level amateurish fake. The huge shadow added to the paper on the left is a perfect absurdly large rectangle when nearly any reasonable person would realize mostly flat objects cast minimal shadowing at all. There is also some issues with the job she did on the dog sizing, lighting and color contrasts because the program obviously didn’t account for the color differences between the three separate images likely screen grabbed and plugged in together.
And this after getting herself blocked by Asha Rangappa who mistakenly tweeted out the Ukranian Iron Man joke, from an old footage reel I recall seeing years ago of a man in flight using a jetpack.
“Don’t tell her how ridiculous it is to spread misinformation and avoid correcting it cuz she might block you.”
