An April 8 LA Times profile of the “KHive” attempted to put a positive spin on Twitter’s nest of Vice President Kamala Harris super fans, omitting the group’s online abuses, offline harassment, and alarming origins. Describing the KHive as “the type of modern political army that politicians increasingly rely on for both support and defense,” the LA Times painted its members as political realists united by a desire to defend one of the most powerful politicians in the country from unfair attacks.
It turns out that Harris’ “modern political army” was manufactured with the aid of an even larger army of fake Twitter accounts. After the term “KHive” was formally branded by MSNBC pundits like Joy Reid, KHive leaders received a boost from a Democratic Party operative-controlled bot farm. One of the people most advanced by the botnet is the widely recognized founder of KHive, Bianca Delarosa.
According to Vox, KHive credited Delarosa with organizing KHive in a Facebook group that started in 2017. Bustle confirmed that many KHive accounts point to Delarosa as the creator of KHive, as did the LA Times’ source, Reecie Colbert, whom it identified as “one of the more prominent members.” During an appearance on CNN pundit Bakari Sellers’ podcast , Colbert credited Delarosa with creating KHive.
Beyond its omission of this obviously salient fact, the Times failed to inform readers that Colbert and the Twitter account @BlackWomenViews were the same person. Instead, the Times quoted Colbert as two separate people.
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