#wkz

Sitara, here. You can probably tell since I don’t capitalize half of every other word, unlike some people (cough-Wrench-cough).

As Wrench so thoughtfully reminded me, there’s a ton of BS out there on the web pretending to be news when it isn’t. It’s made up to con you. Let’s talk about how to tell a fake news story from a real one, okay?

Here are the top 3 reasons people post fake news:

1. They’re selling something. 

A research group that’s paid for by a cigarette company has a conflicting interest in not saying anything bad about cigarettes. Nudle saying their smart cars are awesome isn’t reliable—it’s not like they’re going to say their own product sucks. A TV station is really unlikely to criticize their major investor.

2. It gets them ratings or traffic, which means influence. 

News outlets will sensationalize things (like this Shuffler BS) because they know it gets them clicks, and those clicks matter to the advertisers who buy space on their pages. Websites will post insane articles about celebrities to increase their traffic.

3. For shits and giggles. ‘Cause some people are just trolls. 

Yeah, that one’s pretty self-explanatory.

I can’t emphasize this enough—do your research! We don’t go into an op half-cocked (not if we can help it). You shouldn’t make major decisions without knowing the facts. So check if someone else is saying the same thing. If it’s WKZ, take it with a grain of salt. We already know they’ll take money to kill a story. But, if it’s WKZ and the local radio station, and the Valley newspaper, and a Stanford researcher… better chance it’s real. Because we’ve got a bunch of different independent sources saying it. This isn’t foolproof, but it’s a good test.

Because the truth matters.

Hacker Group Exposes Police Shooting

The hacker group known as DedSec recently released footage of a deadly encounter between a police officer and an unarmed youth. They claim there was a cover-up within the police department and that officials attempted to “bury the truth”.

The released footage shows a police officer approaching a young African American man identified as Mike Nassan. The encounter quickly escalated with the officer throwing the young man to the ground and the young man pushing the police officer in return. There were two shots fired and paramedics said the young man was dead before they arrived on the scene.

Amidst accusations of corruption, the police department released a statement declaring they “deeply regret this tragic event” and they offer their heartfelt “sympathy to the young man’s family and community.” They refuse to release the name of the officer involved.

DedSec claims the death was a result of poor police training, which allowed the incident to escalate, and erroneous ctOS information. Nassan was apparently marked as a high risk criminal in his ctOS profile, although there is no record of him committing any crime and, indeed, he appears to have been a promising high school athlete. The hacker group claims the police officer was primed to consider Nassan a threat because of the ctOS profile.

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Mysterious Disappearances Haunt Oakland

It’s been a year since Richard Jackson disappeared and still we have no new information, just more disappearances. The young man was reported missing in January 2016 by his girlfriend, Seema Mashruwana, who herself went missing four months later. A well-known street artist, she was last seen working near the train tunnels in south-east Oakland. Two other members of the same social circle have also disappeared.

Josh stumbled on something really interesting while he was looking into Prime_Eight’s police file. Looks like the PD has been suppressing reports of a fatal shooting. Cop shot an unarmed black kid. A witness recorded it on their cell phone, which the cops of course confiscated for evidence.

You’d think this would be a huge f!@#$%$ deal, but someone over at WKZ massively edited the released footage and most of the other media outlets don’t seem to know about it. It looks like ctOS flagged the vic (Mike Nassan) as high threat. Just like they flagged Marcus. And just like with Marcus, so far we aren’t finding any actual evidence of dangerous behavior in the boy’s background. We won’t know more until we get a hold of the rest of that footage—and trust me, we will—but it looks like a cover-up.