5. Craig Kelly’s other Facebook account, triple j Twitter mystery solved and Telegram tracking
"Since 1996 [my relationship with Tamagotchis] has been non-existent. That was until..."
Craig Kelly’s other Facebook account, triple j twitter mystery solved and Telegram tracking
Hello friends,
How are you? I hope you are keeping well in these post-Facebook times.
I write to you with a few little bits and pieces that I’ve been meaning to share.
Love,
Cam
P.S. If you like my work, the best way you can help me is by sharing on social media or forwarding it on. Thank you!
CRAIG KELLY’S OTHER FACEBOOK ACCOUNT
I’ve been thinking about Craig Kelly a lot over the past year and a bit.
He has one of the biggest social media audiences out of any Australian politician. He uses that enormous platform and his position as an MP to mostly promote misinformation and conspiracy theories.
(I reported this week that he is currently suspended from Facebook. If you missed it, here’s my bonkers 46 minute interview with the man).
His bread and butter back in 2019 was climate change denialism. That pivoted to promoting unproven and disproven COVID-19 treatments while opposing other public health measures during the pandemic.
So, how far does this interest in bullshit go back? Does Kelly promote his climate change denial and other conspiracy views in his personal life? And how deep are his connections to the anti-lockdown communities?
Like with George Christensen’s private Facebook account, a look at Kelly’s personal Facebook account used as his primary professional Facebook presence until 2013 can provide some insight into his interests and what content he’s seeing in his Facebook newsfeed.
The account’s likes and friends show a consistent interest in climate change denialism, other fringe views, and an evolution of his views away from scientific consensus.
Kelly’s account’s likes appear to be mostly filled out in the early part of last decade, as many of the liked Pages have been dormant post-2013.
Kelly lists multiple climate denialist books as his favourites. These include
Blue Planet in Green Shackles. What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? (“The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism or communism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism”.
the 2009 Australian book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming — The Missing Science.
Kelly’s account is friends with an account called ‘Australia IsDying’ AND likes a Facebook Page also called ‘Australia IsDying’, which has been sharing Islamophobic, racist and sexist content.
It shares both crazy predictions of ‘jihads’ against Australia once the Muslim population reaches 9%,
And anti-refugee & anti-immigration boomer memes & content.
Kelly’s account hadn’t liked any of the Page’s content that I could see, and there’s no evidence showing that he engaged with any of it.
Kelly’s account is also currently Facebook friends with a few known Australian anti-lockdown activists.
His account is friends with the Reignite Democracy Australia Facebook account run by Monica Smits. (The Guardian’s Anne Davies did some great coverage of the group).
It’s also friends with another Victorian anti-mask and anti-lockdown YouTuber, Real Rukshan.
Another friend is Drbeen, a Facebook account for a service that offers “the world’s best medical lectures” over the internet for a fee.
The name comes from its founder Mobeen Syed, who has been promoting unproven and disproven COVID-19 treatments including hydroxychloroquine on YouTube and Facebook.
In August, Texas Standard reported that he also gave a platform to a Texas doctor promoting an asthma drug as a COVID-19 treatment despite a lack of clinical evidence.
All this goes to show that Kelly’s interest in content that promotes extreme, conspiracy beliefs spans the decade he’s spent as the Member for Hughes.
One other thing I noticed is a subtle shift in his public stance about vaccines.
Kelly is not an anti-vaxxer, but he certainly has adopted anti-vaxx rhetoric. He’s shared anti-Bill Gates conspiracy memes, is vocally against mandatory vaccination and is vaccine skeptical (he says he will “wait to see the evidence” before being vaccinated).
But back in 2015, he was proudly posting about the importance of immunisation when the government brought in its ‘no jab no pay’ policy.
How times change, hey?
TRIPLE J TAMAGOTCHI TWITTER MYSTERY SOLVED
Late last year, I noticed something strange.
Australia’s youth broadcaster triple j has an automated Twitter account @triplejplays that tweets out every song played on air.
The account’s posted thousands of times. It’s only liked one tweet EVER: a Japanese tweet about a new line of Tamagotchis.
How did that happen?
After I tweeted about it, I received a tipoff from an anonymous source about who was responsible for (presumably) accidentally liking a tweet from the work account.
So I sent them a DM.
To my surprise, the anonymous tweet liker wasn’t really into the electronic toys, but the anime seriesthat inspired this specific Tamagotchi.
“Since 1996 [my relationship with Tamagotchis] has been non-existent. That was until the announcement of the release of the seminal anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion getting the tamagotchi treatment,” they said via DM.
Mystery solved!
SOMETHING FROM THE INTERNET REPORTER’S BAG OF TRICKS
As the major social media platforms have cracked down further on conspiracists, grifters and extremists, there’s been a migration to the barely moderated messaging service Telegram.
Telegram channels are a little bit harder to track than something like a Facebook Page or Twitter account. But there are a few tools out there that can help.
The one that I use the most is tgstat.com. It gives you some basic analytics on a public Telegram channel, like how fast the channel is growing and even which other channels are mentioned most.
Otherwise, I find searching Google for a specific Telegram name will often return third party websites that have scraped Telegram channels, meaning you see posts and members from even deleted channels.
If you’re interested in keeping across my work, I’m experimenting with quite a few different things at the moment: I’m streaming live interviews on Twitch, putting up videos on TikTok, writing here, and I’ve even got a community going on Discord.
The easiest way to see all of that is to go here and join what you’re interested in.
xo,
@cameronwilson
P.S. I am ALWAYS looking for tips for weird / interesting / important internet stuff. Please email or DM me if you see anything I might be interested in. Nothing is too niche!