On Motherboard, Brian Merchant's (previously) new science fiction story The Convoy poses an eerily plausible future for political deepfake hoaxing — with James O'Keefe-alikes running the show — that skillfully weaves in elements of the Innocence of Muslims hoax with the current state-of-the-art in high-tech fakery. — Read the rest

James O'Keefe, a right-wing troll with a criminal record, tried to trick the Washington Post by directing a female associate to falsely tell a reporter from the newspaper that Alabama Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore raped her when she was 15 then forced her to get an abortion. — Read the rest

James O'Keefe is the Breitbart-affiliated fraudster and fake news pioneer who staged the hoax videos about Acorn and Planned Parenthood that disrupted the last two election cycles; his MO is to dress up in disguises and then attempt to trick progressives into saying damning things on camera (he's not very good at it, having been rumbled by both CNN and Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky).

Conservatives have nothing but good things to say about James O'Keefe and Breitbart's tactics of using hostile video crews to harass people in public. They don't complain when abortion protestors bomb clinics, or when Trump encourages violence at his rallies. — Read the rest

It's a joy to watch this bumbling operative from James O'Keefe's sleazy smear organization Project Veritas realize she's been found out. Jamie T. Phillips, who tried to trick the Washington Post into running a phony story about Roy Moore, looks like she's about to throw up when it becomes clear to her that reporter Stephanie McCrummen knows she's a liar and an alt-right operative. — Read the rest

Demand Protest, a service that bills itself as providing "deliver[ing the appearance of rage] at scale while keeping your reputation intact" purportedly pays protesters $2500/month plus $50/hour for left-wing protesters to take to the streets, and claims to have run 48 campaigns, despite having only registered its domain last month (it also displays a copyright notice that spans 2015-2017).

Shirky and Rosen respond: "Lefty journalism professor tries to discredit the Tea Party by passing along sensational footage to his buddies at the Times!!!" Really, if this "sting" is the best that Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe can gin up, they might want to find another line of work. — Read the rest

The chief executive of National Public Radio has resigned, in the wake of a kerfuffle involving a James O'Keefe video sting. I am baffled by the whole affair, but the core crime that set all of this in motion appears to be the fact that another NPR executive had the audacity to use the word "xenophobic" in relation to the Tea Party. — Read the rest

Conservative activist James O'Keefe has attempted to trick CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau into a video where she'd be surrounded by sex toys, porn, and other "incriminating" stuff on a boat. He failed. O'Keefe is most infamous for the ACORN 2009 undercover video controversy. — Read the rest