In recent days, this site’s Twitter account has been repeatedly blocked. The first complaint regarding doxing was filed due to a tweet about geolocation (4 Cowley Street London SW1P 3NB) of the main thug of Derwick Associates, Alejandro Betancourt (read this update). Twitter demanded the immediate removal of the tweet in question for “publishing private information.” However, none of the information used was private. In fact, Betancourt had already made it public himself, along with various media outlets like the Daily Mail. We suspect that Twitter’s complaint procedure is not managed by humans. Regardless of the counterarguments presented during the appeal processes, Twitter refuses to 1) provide coherent responses and 2) consider the counterarguments. Community managers, like Betancourt and other Venezuelan “entrepreneurs,” have realized this and are continually manipulating Twitter to censor evidence of their criminal activities. Unknowingly, Twitter might be aiding and abetting criminals.
Following Betancourt’s false doxing complaint, Twitter demanded the immediate removal of tweets exposing the criminal activities of Javier Alvarado Ochoa, Raúl Gorrín, Diego Salazar, Luis Mariano Rodríguez Cabello, Rafael Ramírez, and Baltasar Garzón. All of the above have something in common: they have been prosecuted, arrested, imprisoned, are wanted, or are part of ongoing criminal investigations in various jurisdictions. Is this just a coincidence?
Raúl Gorrín is the most wanted (ICE list).
As mentioned earlier, we are not discussing parking fines here, but rather the thefts of billions of dollars and thugs on wanted lists.
Twitter announced yesterday that it would remove “state-linked information operations” from the platform. Venezuela, of course, received special mention. Thanks to a collaboration with the local partner Cazadores de Fake News, Twitter was able to identify “277 Venezuelan accounts that amplified accounts, hashtags, and topics in support of the government and its official narratives.”
One of the “official narratives” that these accounts amplify is the one related to Alex Saab. Cazadores de Fake News recently published an extensive report on Saab’s propaganda-amplification operation. Additionally, Cazadores released another report titled “Toxicing Google,” which identified the editor of this site as a target of defamation in Saab’s Twitter operations and explicitly showcased some examples of such behavior:
“The digital marketing company Arroba Percepción was involved in creating a network of at least 22 fake news portals between April and June 2021, which published defamatory articles accusing investigators Roberto Deniz from Armando.info and Alek Boyd from Infodio.com of being ‘extortionists.’”
Alex Saab was arrested in Cape Verde and extradited to the U.S. after a lengthy legal battle. Saab is currently in jail in Miami, facing criminal charges based on an investigation published by this site in October 2013. But Saab is by no means the only criminal who has tried to take this website down. Among Venezuela’s investigative journalism platforms, this site and its editor have become the most critical over the years. The attacks have not been limited to online defamation; we have faced a barrage of legal threats, lawsuits, theft, laptop thefts, and outright terrorism from what Twitter describes as “state-linked” actors.
Unfortunately, Twitter is entirely unconcerned by the ample evidence of targeted harassment against this site. It boasts about removing 277 Venezuelan accounts linked to Chavismo but ignores our calls when we are targeted by associates of Chavismo. Worse still, it consistently upholds the absurd and unfounded claims made by community managers who are deeply involved in criminal activities, and whose involvement is public knowledge.