Your inside scoop on the week’s biggest stories
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From far-right influencers on social media platforms to sensationalist newspaper headlines, the Hate Economy is on the rise. We’re fundraising for our project to expose who is profiting from the spread of hate, and who is being targeted the most. Any donation you can spare, no matter how big or small, will go towards this vital work.
Frankie Goodway,
Saturday Editor
What links Danny Bones and Tommy Robinson? Quite a lot, actually: far-right politics, racist views, a constant push of merch to their followers. They both appeared at the Unite the Kingdom rally in London, one in the flesh, the other decidedly digital. Oh, and they both love a nom de guerre – Tommy Robinson was born Stephen Yaxley. And Danny Bones, as an AI creation, was made by two men who kept their names secret… until now.
Danny Bones unmasked and named
In March, our tech reporter Effie Webb revealed that Danny Bones, an up-and-coming “working class” rapper, was an AI creation made by the Node Project, an anonymous collective. His song turned up in a video promoting the far-right Advance UK, and other videos showed him driving an immigration van, pushing an Asian man to the ground, and marching in military gear through the streets of London. He’s asked his followers if the world is “run by Jews or the Master Masons” and speculated that King Charles converted to Islam.
Now we can reveal he’s the brainchild of Den Bamber, a music producer, and Theo Blackledge, a 3D artist. Their response? Danny Bones is “an art project”.
⚡ Immediate impact
Soon after we went to Spotify with questions about Danny Bones, the platform announced that AI content would soon be clearly labelled – and AI-generated artists will be excluded from recommendations. Instagram and TikTok also took down accounts for the Node Project.
Would you take financial advice from Tommy Robinson?
Vantage Markets thinks you might. Or if not from him, from a wellness guru, or a beauty influencer, or a mumpreneur on TikTok or Instagram. We’ve seen undercover footage of Vantage staff recruiting influencers to promote its platform – including telling them to fake successful trades to get their followers to sign up. Vantage’s products are inherently risky, but new UK traders also found themselves funnelled to a platform in Vanuatu, which is beyond our regulators – meaning they had nowhere to turn when all their money vanished.
Inside the story
The first step to this story was taken a few months ago – in fact, you may have seen us take it, when Effie went to the Tommy Robinson rally in London and spotted QR codes promoting Core Signals. That rang a bell for our Enablers editor, Lawrence Marzouk – there’d been reports of official warnings from financial regulators about the company. Core Signals actually acts just like any of the influencers in this story, pushing people towards Vantage and its high-risk trades. We had a chain: Robinson, to Core Signals, to Vantage. But in working that out, we realised there was a much bigger network of influencers joining forces with Vantage – from the manosphere to mumpreneurs.
⚡ Impact this week
Last year, our community organiser and impact producer Lucy Brisbane-McKay wrote about how she and the Bureau Local team put together our investigation into employment tribunals. They worked with an advisory group of experts from support organisations, unions, law firms and academia to make sure they saw all sides of the issue – as well, of course, as speaking to many, many people who’d gone through the tribunal process and been let down. Now, that work has been cited in a report on collaborative reporting by the Danish Center for Investigative Journalism – spreading a model of journalism that works with people, not against them, even further.
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What we’ve been reading
🔴 Teenage boys are using Meta’s smart glasses to harass teachers and fellow students – usually young girls – at their schools futurism.com
🔴 A knife crime campaigner called ‘role model of the year’ has been in prison twice for violence against women, including domestic abuse nnjournal.co.uk
🔴 Parliamentary groups are being run by lobbyists working for – and in at least one case funded by – foreign governments democracyforsale.substack.com
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