Kinzen And The Art Of Misinformation Maintenance

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Yesterday.

Dail Eireann.

Independent Clare/Offaly TD Carol Nolan raised the role of Kinzen, an Irish media tech start-up, hired by the state to identify online misinformation related to Covid-19 and the Covid-19 vaccines.

Last September, The Business Post reported:

“The work, which began earlier this year and consists of almost daily briefings from Kinzen to state officials, marks the first time the department has engaged the services of a third-party company to conduct work on misinformation…and the first time a government body in Ireland has paid a third-party company for this type of work.”

Deputy Nolan said:

“I note the European Council will discuss the Covid-19 pandemic in the context of the emergence of a new variant, and that participants will also exchange views on how best to tackle vaccine hesitancy and disinformation and the effectiveness of various measures and strategies adopted in this respect.

“What I would like to know, and what I need to ask, is the following question: when will we have a debate in the House on the fact the Department of Health employed a social media monitoring company to gather and report all online and Oireachtas commentary, some of which was only questions, relating to Covid-19 and the Government’s approach to the handling of the crisis? This was at a cost of almost €100,000.

“In October, it was revealed to me following a parliamentary question I tabled on this matter that the Department employed Kinzen Media in early 2021 to monitor the online dissemination of misinformation and disinformation relating to Covid-19 and the Covid vaccine. Were it not for Gary Kavanagh at Gript media the public would not have been made aware of these issues. I pay tribute to Gript for focusing on stories that are of real public concern.

“Our role as parliamentarians is to ask questions and find better ways to do things. Many Deputies were quoted in these reports. They include many statements of genuine concern from Deputies and Senators. There were also statements from others, including doctors. They were gathered together in daily reports to the Department and the HSE.

“This was unknown to us and without our consent. By an amazing coincidence, an enormous volume of the so-called misinformation and disinformation related to comments critical of the Government and the policies it has adopted.

“There was no tendering process for the particular contract awarded. There has been absolutely zero accountability for the fact that a private company was employed by the State to monitor and report the legitimate concern of Oireachtas Members as if they were a threat to the State.”

Acting Chairman (Deputy Bernard J. Durkan), interjecting:

“Next.”

Deputy Nolan:

“We are merely doing our jobs of Deputies and Senators in bringing forward the concerns of the public and medical professions to the floor of the House.”

Durkan:

“Thank you, Deputy.”

Deputy Nolan:

“I would like answers because I believe this is a very serious matter.”

Durkan:

“I know but we are under pressure.”

Deputy Nolan:

“It is very serious.”

Previously: “We Helped Flatten The Curve Of An Infodemic”

Meanwhile…

Oh.

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81 thoughts on “Kinzen And The Art Of Misinformation Maintenance”

  1. Sara

    To date, what percentage of the people of the Republic of Ireland have been infected with Covid? Just wondering.

    1. SOQ

      Given that up to 80% infected with SARS-CoV-2 are asymptomatic and never develop CoVid-19, it’s most likely the majority of the population.

      1. Sara

        Thanks. But, ‘most likely’ isn’t good enough. Half a million have been definitely recorded, but is there a more accurate figure?

        1. SOQ

          That can only be achieved by a national screen campaign to determine who has antibodies and /or T Cells, which is not going to happen because those people would then be reluctant to take the injections, because they are already immune.

          The government are contractually tied to shift a certain amount of this pharmaceutical ‘product’ and they also agreed to a gagging clause that means they cannot give any details of said contact without the written permission of Pfizer. Again, that is not going to happen.

          The whole thing stinks to the high heavens.

          3. Micko

            Contracts with Pfizer were mentioned in the Channel 4 Dispaches doc last week.. It’s on All 4 Clamps.

            Obv it’s talking about the UK, but would imagine similar contracts globally.

            It didn’t discuss the anything about the “shifting of certain amounts of product” but the clauses and hidden arbitration required if something does go wrong stink to high heaven aright.

            Maybe this is normal practice – I dunno, But Dispatches portrayed it as not.

            Worth a watch IMO

        2. Paddy

          They are not telling us
          This government is leaving the worst health service in the world to call the shots
          They strut around like rock stars

          I have absolutely no confidence in them and this government through its untruths half truths demonising sectors are like the boy who cried wolf
          It’s only a matter of time before the wolf eats them

      2. Cian

        Give it up SOQ; you’ve been saying that the majority of the population are immune for the last 18 months.

        1. E'Matty

          If over 80% of positive PCR cases to date have been asymptomatic that means they are immune to Covid-19 I.e. although they contract the virus they do not go on to develop the disease. Given many cases are never detected and those undetected are by their very nature asymptomatic, the 80% is a conservative estimate of the people fully immune to Covid-19 the disease.

          2. Cian

            If over 80% of positive PCR cases to date have been asymptomatic that means they are immune to Covid-19 I.e. although they contract the virus they do not go on to develop the disease
            This is simply not true; more than half the PCR-positive cases in Ireland have been symptomatic (at time of test).

            . Given many cases are never detected and those undetected are by their very nature asymptomatic, the 80% is a conservative estimate of the people fully immune to Covid-19 the disease.
            Where are you getting the “80%” from? That number is pulled from thin air.

          3. SOQ

            Given the scarcity of testing back then, it is highly likely that most people who were infected went unnoticed.

            As I said above- the only way to know is a national screening program and they are not going to do that because they have committed to purchasing so much product.

    2. Paddy

      Sure we do not know

      Let’s face it Harris stated that no need to test people coming into Ireland as covid 19 is here but anyone who has it quarantine themselves

      1. Cian

        632,177 confirmed cases from 5,000,000 people.
        But there are also people that got infected and didn’t get tested. The number is unknown.

    1. SOQ

      Government employing outfits to spy on its citizens is never a good thing. Personally I suspect Kinzen were, and probably still are, doing a bit more than monitoring.

          3. Daisy Chainsaw

            I linked once several months ago

            You obsessively mention him to the point that it’s embarrassing for you.

      2. Tom J

        Speaking of spying on citizens, you had a link to a guy recording a radio host not so long ago. I regard that as spying on citizens and posting on social media.

        1. Chris

          It must be quite diminishing for a person, to take the silver and lie – if they know what they say to be untrue. That would be if they aren’t already a hollowed out husk, from a lifetime of doing the same.

        2. E'Matty

          The Internet and social media is awash with posters paid for by political parties, governments, intelligence agencies and military (e.g. the British 77th Battalion). Given their numbers, one would have to ask just how many of those cheerleading the Covid narrative are bought and paid misinformation.

          1. Chris

            Within a few years, it’ll be GPT4 bots that are doing the deed. It could be the case already – training themselves on the responses of those they’ll replace. The standard internet, will probably become a wasteland of false consensus.

            Dissident voices will be lost in the deluge.

          2. Nigel

            The implication is that some sort of regulation, oversight and accountability is required to save the internet from becoming a bot-infested wasteland of ads and malware and disinformation. Which means people with authority monitoring what’s going. Or is that too Stasi-like?

          4. Nigel

            Where does authority usually come from in democracies? The governments, as elected by the people. I’m not saying it would be easy, and I’m not saying governments are actually equipped to do it, or do it well, or even be trusted to do it, but if they don’t, then according to you, the internet is pretty much doomed, and I’m not sure you’re wrong, tbh.

          5. Chris

            If Plato was around, do you imagine he’d say we were in democracies – or as he stated as inevitable, moved onto oligarchies?

            The internet of the future will be sand-boxed, AI will tailor individual online ‘realities’ for individual users. The ‘news’ I receive will be different to that of another. Entrained, rather than entertained.

        1. George

          The very same people who complain about this will be ones who complain that the government don’t listen to them.

          1. Chris

            Nonsense. It reeks of Stasi type control. You’re second point is an aberration of reality. Do you really think a body that acquires intel in this manner is doing so, to implement the public’s wishes? You’re lost at sea.

    2. Gavin

      I think they’d just like to be informed when it’s being done, and ensure the tendering process is above aboard….not a big ask really, kind of standard….well maybe it is a big ask for the likes of FF/FG they arent used to making sure everything is above aboard

    3. Tom

      Yes – I want the Department of Health a million miles away from screening political positions for “error”, thank you very much.

      1. Daisy Chainsaw

        Aren’t Youth Defence/Grift bloggers just angry that they’re not getting paid for their surveillence?

          2. Daisy Chainsaw

            Insults rom the vaxxtard who gets their news from right wing hate group Youth Defence/Grift.

            I’ve obviously hit a nerve!

          4. Chris

            As I’ve previously mentioned – vaxxed, anti-vaxxer etc only entered the public domain in 2016, likely astroturfed into existence. When I first seen the words appear they did strike me as odd.

            The two x’s – double crossed.

  4. Bitnboxy

    Lol. And “pro-life” Carol Nolan’s claims about abortion, I assume that is not mis-information?! And she quotes Grift-media aka Youth Defence online as the dogged purveyors of truth. But of course – surely a Broadsheet Grift Media collab is on the cards now?

    1. Daisy Chainsaw

      The hypocrisy of the so called “pro life”. Objecting to online surveillance of health misinformation, but can’t keep their noses out of women’s fannies while diseminating their own health misinformation!

  5. K. Cavan

    As the Covid Narrative becomes increasingly Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented, State repression, especially of a clandestine nature, will increase exponentially & the government’s Democratic mandate will wither, entirely unable to legitimise the neo-fascist coercion the State is attempting to inflict on its citizens, on behalf of external Economic & Political interests.
    Sars02 is a Coronavirus, an extremely common, run-of-the-mill type that the vast majority have been infected with at one time or another & a never-ending series of repeat injections of an ineffective but highly toxic, often fatal, experimental drug is not an acceptable solution to the dwindling threat of a Common Cold Virus that has not, in the Real World, impacted mortality beyond the level of an average Winter Flu season.
    This nonsense needs to end now, the escalating repression, the police spying on the people it’s supposed to protect, the deep divisions within our society that run right through families & sunder decades-old friendships, the economic disaster that we haven’t even begun to address, the bleak prospect of tsunamis of death from undiagnosed Cancers & Heart Disease that will inevitably dwarf the impact of this virus, the stark image of a mass media stripped of all legitamcy, the chillingly evil psychopathy driving a perverted desire to present our own children as ritual sacrifices to the false gods of corrupt Big Pharma & Fake Science, none of this can be allowed to continue to destroy the bonds that hold our very civilization together. This is Evil.
    On four previous occasions in our history, novel Coronaviruses have arrived in our midst, causing so little harm that there is no record of their arrival. Indeed, it’s highly unlikely that Sars02-type events haven’t happened before, perhaps multiple times, but those occasions weren’t seized upon by power-crazed oligarchs in order to “reimagine & reset our world”, nor exaggerated & propagandised in our prostituted mass media, while our idiot politicians cretinously chant the three-word Conspiracy Slogans simultaneously on 3 continents & blindly followed Fake Science down the rabbit-hole of Fear & Incompetence.
    Varadker, because of his basic grasp of virology, knows full well the depths of dishonesty & corruption he’s engaged in, other actors might claim ignorance, he cannot & as a result, he will face a bleak old age, reviled by all decent people. It’s hard to imagine he will not choose exile, if he’s not behind bars.
    The damage done to our societies may never be repaired, so deep are the wounds inflicted on it but unless we put the brakes on now, the repercussions of our failure to address this in an adult manner will inevitably spill over into violence, bloodshed & death on a scale never before visited on this septic isle.
    Time is running out, boosters will do nothing but kill & maim increasing numbers of victims, we need to wake up from our brain-dead reverie before the nightmare scenario engulfs us.
    It’s time to start digging up, before we end up digging our own graves.

      1. uh oh

        It’s like they only let him into the room with the computer in it at set intervals in the funny farm he’s in.

  6. f_lawless

    https://gript.ie/the-department-of-health-say-all-records-of-the-contracts-they-signed-with-kinzen-have-been-lost/

    “The Department of Health has claimed, in response to an FOI request from Gript, that they are unable to find any record of any contract signed between the Department and the social media monitoring firm Kinzen. The Department has also said that it cannot find any record of negotiations or discussions that led to the signing of those contracts with Kinzen. Similarly the Department has been unable to locate any record of discussions they had with Kinzen in the time leading up to the dissolution of the Department’s relationship with Kinzen in October 2021..

    .According to the Department they were unable to locate the information due “to the cyber attack..”.

    As excuses go, it’s a notch above “the dog ate my homework”

    1. Daisy Chainsaw

      Quoting right wing hate site Youth Defence/Grifter blog has become a habit of the antivaxx/antimask/antilockdown cohort.

      Gosh, I wonder what attracts you to a right wing hate site?

      1. U N M U T U A L

        @daisy

        While we’re on the subject of bad habits and hateful youths… and seeing as your the expert on all things alt left & alt right…
        Would you care to comment on the article below?… or do you have to run it by the high commander first? ;-)

        100 hooded people: mosque in Leipzig damaged

        A mosque in Leipzig, Germany, was attacked on Monday. About 100 masked people smashed windows of the building and set fire to trash cans along their way, the police said.

        “According to initial findings, the mosque was damaged in connection with an elevator by around 100 masked people who the police classify as a left-wing group, said a spokesman. The building is said to be a house belonging to the Islamic religious community DITIB, which is close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and has come under international criticism.”

        “’ACAB’-Day”
        According to the “Leipziger Zeitung”, the march of the “radical left”, which culminated in the acts of vandalism, was about “ACAB’-Day” – “a day that was about the Misconduct and acts of violence by police officers through to structural failure of the state ”. The abbreviation “ACAB” stands for “all cops are bastards”, the date 13.12. For the numerical code 1312 for the letters ACAB in the alphabet.

        https://www.krone.at/2580788

          2. Daisy Chainsaw

            I’m interested in your need for my commentary on an article that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

            Give me an answer I deem reasonable and I might consider it.

    2. Chris

      @ f_lawless, Yes. We’re going to have to get used to the fact, that there will be no accountability, as long as we continue along this paradigm.

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