Summary
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responded to Elon Musk’s conspiracy theory that Democrats move the same group of paid protesters to different events.
Right-wing influencer Mario Nawfal claimed GPS data showed only 20,000 attendees—less than the reported 34,000—at recent rallies and suggested most had attended multiple past protests.
Musk amplified this claim, alleging the use of paid protesters.
Ocasio-Cortez dismissed Musk’s claim with “Someone’s butthurt,” adding he should find “a new, more interesting conspiracy theory to peddle.”
Every accusation is a confession…
It’s amazing how consistent this is with fascists.
You can look back at their statements and it’s true like 86% of the time–every SINGLE THING they accuse others of doing is something that they, themselves are demonstrably engaged in.
When those people post on the internet, it really should just be a long line of regular people replying ‘Every accusation is a confession.’
@clonedhuman @BedSharkPal worth noting that those people have also spent their time since 2020 accusing Dems of rigging elections. Seems bizarre to me that nobody’s looked into it. All the swing states when he couldn’t fill a stadium? With the lowest approval rating of any president ever? With Elon paying people to send in their voter registration details? Yeah ok, let’s not check anything before special elections and midterms…
Some people are calling for a forensic audit. And no, it’s not getting much press at all.
https://verifiedvoting.org/publication/recounts-audits-2024-verified-voting/
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/11/19/forensic-audit-us-presidential-election/
Wisconsin completed an audit recently and published the results: no errors.
Some articles that people post about Trump drop-off votes (where they only vote for Trump) being somehow suspicious are kind of stupid. Is it really hard to believe that many of his otherwise politically-disengaged cult members vote for him and then go home? Or that Democrats were not super enthusiastic about Harris’s moderate conservative campaign?
Democrats were not super enthusiastic about Harris’s moderate conservative campaign
I suspect those still churning on the election results are the same that cheerfully swallowed the genocide pill and then lost.
So, yes. For some it is too hard to believe. It’s the easier option than contending with that reality.
The exit polls seemed to line up with the results from what I remember. But yeah I struggle to believe that these individuals of all people didn’t fuck with the system.
It’s because they completely lack empathy. The entirety of possibilities in their minds is 100% limited to things that they themselves (and MAYBE close family) have experienced first hand.
They can’t help but project because they’re literally not creative enough to think of any other reason to do a thing besides the reason they did it.
Truth. There’s a reason why they don’t have any art, don’t have any music, don’t have any movies worth watching. They lack all creativity, are almost completely devoid of imagination, and their frontal lobes just consume energy without doing any frontal lobe things. It’s a very specific type of person who obeys like this, and they just mimic their leaders; if their leaders are shitty human beings, then they think they’ll rise in the hierarchy by being shitty as well.
It’s funny I heard yesterday some guy that’s very good at a game called Trackmania talk about something similar. One day he got accused by someone even better than him of cheating. Turns out the accuser was actually the one cheating lol.
I guess you know about cheating when you are and the frustration is even greater whwn you lose because you believe deep down that it’s impossible to do better without cheating. Admitting that you lost would create cognitive dissonance so your only option left is to accuse the other one of the very thing you did.
Lack of GPS devices because 1/3 of the people that attended left their phones and other trackable devices at home just in case shit went down and they needed to fuck things up. More people need to do this.
What GPS data? It just sounds like BS being spewed.
Yea I don’t think he gets access to “GPS data”
If you use a faraday bag, there’s no need to leave your phone.
Sure, but once you get arrested the Faraday bag won’t be of any use unless you toss the whole thing -including phone- beforehand.
Why bring it if you are just crippling it away, and still risk leaks giving your position? If you want photos, bring an old school digital point and shoot.
It’s interesting that this trope about bussed or paid protesters gets repeated so often. In Germany, the AfD claimed that protesters were bussed and got paid, even with tax money. It’s like they share talking points.
All of the far right movements use the same talking points now, they just tailor them for local audiences. The GOP started spreading its filth worldwide decades ago. None of this is an accident.
It’s a pattern that was primarily established when the Reagan Administration (and Don Regan, the CEO of Merrill Lynch) took over in the 1980s. Most of the ideas come from Lee Atwater who was an absolutely horrendous human being.
They have been running almost exactly the same playbook since then.
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Because for the right, the concept of people coming together as a grassroots movement and setting aside some political differences to unite as a group, was unheard of until Tea Party/MAGA.
It’s an implicit admission - how else could ‘those radical lefties/gays/immigrants/etc’ get these crowd sizes except by astroturfing like the right has to?
Fun fact back in I want to say 2008 there was a big old anti-gay protest thing that filled up a stadium here in California, turned out a solid chunk of attendees were bussed in by the Mormon fucken church. Sadly this fact wasn’t dug up particularly well until after prop 8(?) which banned gay marriage, luckily I think we have since voted it out. Also yes it did swing public opinion that badly, luckily I think it reaffirmed our weird xenophobia here in California so I don’t think it’d work again.
In countries that are ostensibly democracies to justify your actions you have to claim you have majority support. Any crowd of people is a threat to that perception, so it makes sense (in a shitty way) that we see the “paid protestors” attack so often.
So, where does the guy get this data? Do phone companies give out their network data?
They do not, at least not in the way that this couple of Twitter influencers is claiming.
If you are a bounty hunter (bail bondsman) for instance you can pay a fee to get a rough location on a phone number that you provide. That does not work in this instance, there’s no service that allows you to ask, “send me the phone numbers and account ownership names of every single mobile device in this 3 mile radius during the protest”.
There is absolutely no way they have tracking data for the 30,000-odd attendees across all the various mobile providers and platforms (Apple/Google/etc) just a day or so later without state-level surveillance agencies access. And even then, the picture would be incomplete and need a LOT of work for them to make the claims they’re making about it overlapping with other groups they’re monitoring.
Its all made up.
Plus it’s not the government making this claim, but an “alt-right influencer”. Their audience isn’t going to fact-check anything they agree with anyway, so why not just lie?
Yep they do. Its either directly or through apps that track and sell your location data. But lots of people either wouldnt have their phone with them or have gps disabled so this 20k number is obviously stupid.
lots of
peopleliberals & other readers either wouldnt have their phone with them or have gps disabledFTFY.
Yah I think your overestimating the lot of people.
Maybe, but its just statistically unlikely that whatever dataset they used to get this number, would have included every single person there.
So, where does the guy get this data?
From his arsehole.
The government has devices called stingrays that perform a mitm attack granting access to a few types of information, including GPS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
Whistleblowers revealed NSA equipment rooms at at&t: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/memoriam-mark-klein-att-whistleblower-about-nsa-mass-spying
Almost every citizen is carrying a tracking device with a powerful microphone, all their communications, and location. It’s a little tinfoil hattish, but I would be willing to bet they can draw a shape on a map and see who was in that area during a certain timeframe.
Leave your phone home if you are attending any events that the government might not like.
You don’t even need a complicated MITM attack like that. The data is for sale by the telecoms.
They can draw a shape on a map and see who’s in there. They did it during occupy wallstreet
It’s literally why Google stopped storing location history. And people where complaining about it.
And your assuming they even have data or are just making shit up.
Try again on that last sentence.
2000
Mules!!Fools!
Good, that means the bad guys are actually scared. Let the organizing continue.
We can start saving our country by winning local elections, and I’m glad that’s part of AOC/Bernie’s plan. It’s incredible (probably deliberate) how poorly the DNC leadership understands this country.
They’ve been pouring all their resources into national elections while neglecting state and county elections. The GOP figured out 20 years ago that dominating local politics is the secret to power in the US, and it’s long past time that we actually tried to counter them.
If you have GPS turned off, would it register? I don’t know why people have GPS on unless they’re actively using it.
GPS itself isn’t the issue. Devices like smartphones are GPS receivers only, meaning they can only receive GPS signals. It’s what those devices do with GPS that’s the actual problem.
The thing is, smartphones can be tracked by multiple methods. You can locate them via cell tower triangulation. And to a lesser extent even WiFi tracking, Bluetooth tracking, etc. So if you really don’t want to be tracked then turn your devices completely off. Or better yet leave them home.
Leave them on at home specifically engaged in some idle game, like Cookie Clicker et al. so it looks like you were engaging with it.
For the question here (whether the GPS count is accurate for Harris’ rally) I’m asking only about the GPS tracking, not wifi tracking or cell tower tracking. That’s assuming musk meant GPS and not generalized location.
GPS does not track anything. There is no possible way it can.
GPS satellites transmit time coded signals. That’s all they do. They don’t receive any signals from the devices that use them.
GPS receivers (which include everything from car navigation systems to smartphones to dedicated GPS receivers, etc) only listen for those time coded signals, decode them, and use that information to triangulate your location. That’s all that GPS itself can do.
Smartphones, tablets, etc. can determine their location by GPS if they have GPS receivers built into them. They can then take that location data and forward it on to companies like Google, Apple, etc. But that is done over either a cellular or WiFi connection.
Any claim of GPS based counting of crowd sizes should be taken with a huge grain of salt. The only way counts based on mobile phones could really be done is by asking companies like Google or Apple how many of their devices are being tracked in the area, or by asking mobile providers like Verizon or AT&T how many mobile phones are connecting to their cell towers in the area.
The total number of people/ devices identified by GPS in a given area is exactly 0. Because GPS by itself is simply incapable of doing anything like that on it’s own.
Smartphones, tablets, etc. can determine their location by GPS if they have GPS receivers built into them. They can then take that location data and forward it on to companies like Google, Apple, etc. But that is done over either a cellular or WiFi connection.
Sorry but holy fuck dude. We all know this. This what everyone is referring to when people say GPS tracking. You realllllly don’t need to go on a rant about how our cell phones don’t beam data back to the GPS. JFC. WE ALL KNOW THAT. The question still is and always was can they tell/gather/transmit the GPS location (VIA SOFTWARE THAT SENDS THE INFO OVER CELL DATA OR WIFI JFC) if the GPS is turned off and can Musk/the government get that data. But something tells me trying to get an answer from you is trying to get water from a stone. I’m out.
Because Republicans ALWAYS accuse others of what they are doing. Jan6 folks were bussed in, free of charge. You can find a number of the same people at Krasvov’s rallies - don’t any of them have jobs?
Not so fun fact: Ginny Thomas, the wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, helped organize and pay for those buses.
Because they are stupid. They think that if they accuse someone else everyone will look at the distraction and not you.
It’s just like when Elon accused that dive guy of being a pedophile. It was that very moment I knew it was Musk that was the pedo.
Fascista used to move around cattle by plane to show it off at various events as local to lay claims of wealth. It’s always projection.
This article is just commentary about some tweets, with nothing additional.
“This asshole ‘meh meh meh’, and then this other douche bag said ‘yeah like meh’, and then everyone’s favorite lefty said ‘butt’.”
Sounds like someone is butthurt over this article
Witty!
That’s basically every RawStory article, tbh.
It’s not going to do much at this point, but I’ll give you a +1. I’m all in on AOC, but this isn’t even an article. No insight, no attempt to discern any truth, and barely even able to contextualize the tweets. It’s trash for clicks.
