Bellingcat

At the time that the videos were posted there was nothing secret about the coup. See this bit from the Bellingcat [0] investigation:

>By the time the video was first shared on Twitter, eight of Goudreau’s men were dead and two others captured as the boat they were on was intercepted at sea by the Venezuelan authorities. A second boat, soon on its way to Venezuela, would also be intercepted at sea the following day, resulting in the capture of eight of Goudreau’s men, including two American citizens.

The videos were in or subtitled in Spanish, so my take on it is that because they had not seized TV or radio stations in the country, they took to Twitter to get their message out. It could have been a call for support from the populace.

[0] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/05/the-invasion-of-venezuela-brought-to-you-by-silvercorp-usa/

Some more links. Bellingcat broke the Discord server story 5 days ago[1]. The Washington Post has a stunning story, including barely obscured video (unaltered voice) from a teenager who was active in the group and considers himself a good friend of the leaker[2]. The Guardian story cites and quotes extensively from the WP story, so that should be considered the original source, but does add more context. Emptywheel (who has been pretty consistently excellent when it comes to leaks and the like) has more analysis[3].

[1]: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/04/09/from-discord-to-4chan-the-improbable-journey-of-a-us-defence-leak/

[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/04/12/discord-documents-oxide-wow-mao/

[3]: https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/04/13/bear-versus-pig-on-the-thug-shaker-but-not-a-fascist-recruiting-site/

It's worth replying specifically to highlight how wrong the original comment is, but the evidence that was cited by the Russian government to justify their invasion was clearly fabricated.

For instance, an alleged car bombing in Donetsk right before the invasion was staged using cadavers,[1] and a video used to claim that Ukrainian troops were moving aggressively into separatist territory was filmed far from its purported location.[2]

If Russia was so sure that Ukraine was committing these atrocities, they wouldn't need to rely on fake videos to justify attacking.

[1] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/02/28/exploiting-cadavers-and-faked-ieds-experts-debunk-staged-pre-war-provocation-in-the-donbas/

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/22/europe/russia-videos-debunking-troops-intl/index.html

This is a bold statement. I think its an untrue statement too. Sure, the main stream media may be a giant dumpster fire. However, there are more journalists then ever doing extremely fantastic work. Just because most people don't see them or read about them doesn't mean Journalism is at its lowest ever point.

Allow me to provide just 3 of the countless example of fantastic journalism that still exists today:

- Many of the journalists covering the Portland protests literally risked life and limb to uncover policing abuses.

- Data journalists at the Covid Tracking Project were compiling and producing such high quality data that governments were using them to forecast local covid health trends.

- The OSINT journalism that Bellingcat does: https://www.bellingcat.com/

The alternative is that Youtube could choose NOT to recommend videos for large categories of videos, particularly those related to kids or other categories (for example, Rohingya-related videos in Myanmar in the current time period). You need not censor the videos, however you can choose to make their discovery less easy.

There's no law that says they have to recommend videos. There is however sufficient evidence at this time around the rabbit-hole effect causing real-world harm. This isn't 2005. It's about time Youtube, and social media properties adopt the medical principle: "first, do no harm". Perhaps they will do this willingly, but somehow I doubt it.

To wit: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/11/memes-infowars-75-fascist-activists-red-pilled/

The US (and almost every government) has reliable ways to covertly move a person that don't involve putting SQLi in their own codebases.

The classic way to covertly move a person is to give them a new passport to travel under, and have them move around like every other schlub on the planet. Competent intelligence services make sure that this isn't easy to detect by making the fake passport's identifier indistinguishable from real ones. Russia has prominently failed to do this several times[1][2].

[1]: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/11/07/how-russia-issues-fake-passports-to-its-operatives-in-ukraine/

[2]: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/25/socialite-widow-jeweller-spy-how-a-gru-agent-charmed-her-way-into-nato-circles-in-italy/