Has the 9/11 Truth Movement Stagnated?

Statistics time!
Part 1: AE911Truth


The anniversary month of September has ended, and so I am ready to present my number and graphs on the dynamics of the Truth Movement. First, my Numbers on AE911Truth.

A) Facebook-"Likes"

Here is their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ae911truth/?fref=ts

I have been systematically monitoring it (frequently jotting down the number of "Likes" in an electronic spreadsheet) since December 2014. Before that, I only have occasional snapshots. I don't remember how I determined this, but my spreadsheet says the page was created on 2009/02/28 and presumably got its first "Like" the same day. I then have these data points (European date format):
23.08.2012: 88725
03.02.2013: 117900
16.02.2013: 121100
28.06.2013: 155811
12.06.2014: 215000
07.12.2014: 244125
05.01.2015: 250000
Since then, I have numbers for every month. Here's the graph for total Likes:

FB_Likes_20171001.gif

The gradients are reflect in the number of Likes/day - averaged over whole months (after December 2014; before that, averages for longer periods):

FB_LikesPerDay_20171001.gif

You see a wild up and down that ended in November 2016; since then, a downward trend. The last month, September, is up from the five preceding month. This is completely, and more, due to a peak in interest because of the 9/11 anniversary: From August 20 until Sept 10, and after Sept. 18, the number of Likes has been shrinking!

What about the huge peaks of January 2016 and around July 2016? September 2016 was only one data point in a series of declining values. I am not aware of any campaign, media interest, or other factor that would explain such changes. My only explanation is that AE911Truth actively pimped these numbers by buying fake Likes, or something to similar effect. If any of you know Facebook, and how it can be manipulated, better than I do, I'd love to hear your opinion!

Here are the "Likes/day" averaged over entire calendar years (obviously: only first 9 months of 2017):

FB_LikesPerDay_Yearly_20171001.gif
It almost looks like a downward trend, puctuated by an unreal 2016. If, let's guess roughly, 2016 had been quare on the middle of the trend in 2016 and had scored 90 Likes/day instead of 300, and if we assume that this is realistically the most that could come from real people, then 210/day were fake Likes - more than 75,000 total in 2016! That's 18% of today's total. My private estimate is that 40% or more of their likes are not real.


B) Homepage traffic
Their homepage (http://www.ae911truth.org/) currently has no counter of visitors (page hits...), it only shows a message similar to "We have 174 guests and no members online". Their old webdesign had a counter; this is still available at: http://www1.ae911truth.org/
At the bottom of that page, there is a counter for "Content View Hits": it currently stands at "16622418", and that number constantly increases, which is best interpreted the web server being actively queried to provide this statistic.

Now, I am neither exactly sure nor interested in what a "Content View Hit" is, such that I wouldn't know if, say, 10,000 CVHs in a day is a lot or little. I have no other site to compare this to. But no matter - this counts visitor activity, and has been counting in an apparently consistend fashion fro many year: You can find the counter archived on the WayBackMachine as long ago as 2007/06/07! The only time the counter did not advance was from April to August 2010. That caused the hole in my graph of Hits/day, averaged over whole months:

20171001_AE911T_PageHitsMonthly.gif
(for some reason, the counter lost 78,000 hits between March 11 and March 16 - that's the unusual downward peak there; I could have excluded that from the graph)

This graph is rather straightforward to interprete: Traffic increased from inception to 2011, and since then, it's been up and down a bit with no overall trend. That's stagnation. Every year before 2017, September saw a local maximum, with September 2011 (10th anniversary) still the busiest month by far. There has been a general upward trend since spring 2015, but for the first time, no peak in September. I am speculating this may be due to an increase in bot visits rather than human interest.

I am of course aware of some the pitfalls of reading page hits: They depend not only on the number of actual human visitors and their level of interest, but may also depend on the structure of the web design, and it may include any level of non-human traffic.


C) The Petition

The AE911Truth Petition has been online since May 2007. Again, you can use the WayBackMachine to check past values. When they first went online, they had more "Architects & Engineers" than "Other Supporters" (or "General Public") - I suppose they manually had entered a few dozend A&E they already knew, such as Tony Szamboti. Their strongest years were 2009 and 2010, and they have stagnated since - having particularly bad years (2012, 2015) mixed with surprisingly good years (2013, 2016).

I'll just drop a number of thumbnailed graphics for you to peruse. The ups and downs of "new signatures per day" often do not reflect the level of signatures actually coming in, but the level of attention Gage has his team focussing on processing the signatures. You see, there is a verification process involved that needs to be executed before a signature shows up online. When they did not add any signatures from May to September 2015, despite having announced that they got "hundreds" of on-paper signature at various eventy, it was clear that the bext few months would see much more activity - working down the backlog.

For the "Architects & Engineers" category:

AE_Month_total_20171001.gif AE_Month_PerDay_20171001.gif AE_Quarter_PerDay_20171001.gif AE_Quarter_Exp_20171001.gif AE_YearJunMay_PerDay+Exp_20171001.gif

For the "General Public" category:

OS_Month_total_20171001.gif OS_Month_PerDay_20171001.gif OS_Quarter_PerDay_20171001.gif OS_Quarter_Exp_20171001.gif OS_YearJunMay_PerDay+Exp_20171001.gif

I think the steady decline of new signatures to the "Other supporters" (general public) count demonstrates more than anything else the decline of AE911Truth and the TM: not even 22,000 from the entire US and the World in more than 10 years is a document of being a fringe issue. Since a year ago, this category has added 762 signatures. That's 0.0002% of the US population. In the largest city of the USA, NYC with 8.5 million inhabitants, that percentage is 20 people. Not even half a busload.

Both the A&E and the Others counts are growing at under 5% annually. The best explanation for this is that they are not far away from their total potential. I wouldn't hazard too specific a guess about what that potential is, but we are talking about an order of magnitude of 100,000 Americans. There is no possibility whatsoever that an order of 1 million Americans (0.3% of the population) will ever come close to supporting their woo.

Here is why:


D) The "ReThink911" petition.

Im 2013, Gage and AE911Truth ran a major campaign they called "Rethink911": http://rethink911.org/

This involved setting up big billboards in many cities (US and abroad), including the Times Square in NYC, pestering the NYT, and it had on its frontpage a new, fresh Petition:
To All Authorities Who Have the Sworn Duty and Legal Authority to Investigate the Events of September 11, 2001, Including Those in the United States, Those in Other Sovereign Nations, and International Bodies,

Please Take Notice That:

We the undersigned hereby petition for a truly independent investigation in order to uncover the full truth surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that contradicts the official 9/11 Commission Report and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s reports on the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7 and the Twin Towers, and to which the U.S. government has been unresponsive. Therefore, a new and independent investigation must be opened. This investigation should include a full inquiry into the evident use of explosives in the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7 and the Twin Towers.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned
Content from External Source
This
Petition, believe it or not, has a goal of surpassing 1 million signatures (they are at 23,287 as I write - 4 years after it started). From the homeage:

When this petition reaches one million signers, it will be delivered to the Head of State of every nation that lost citizens in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Content from External Source
The following graphics show that
- The petition decays naturally since a somewhat furious start
- It flatlines when plotted against its 1-million target (at 1000 signatures per day, it would take 3 years to get there - they actually do get a bit over 2/day)
- The annual September peaks are also shrinking dramtically (~500 - ~20 - 12.4 - 7.0 - 3.3)

This latest September peak of 3.3/day, against previous months and most recent days clocking in 2.1/day, means that the anniversary brought them 36 additional signatures. 36. Thirty-six.

Rethink911_20171001_perYear.gif Rethink911_20171001.gif Rethink911_20171001_Scale2Target.gif
 

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Statistcs Time!
Part 2: Other Petitions


For years now, I have been monitoring varius 9/11 Truth petitions other than the AE911Truth one. There was a general trend that, before 2008, it was possible to get several 10,000, before 2013, it was possible to get several 1,000 signatures, but today, only well promoted petitions (started and marketed by established Truth groups) can break the 1,000 mark. Few petitions have been tried in most recent years, most got nowhere. Two examples from whitehouse.gov, the US government's own petition site. Introduced by Obama, they have a rule that if you get 100,000 signatures within 30 days, the administration will issue a public response.
Example 1: "Open a new investigation into the events of 911 and incorporate the forensic evidence offered by ae911truth.org.
Created by K.W. on January 23, 2017"
I saw this one marketed on several of the Truther social media sites I frequent. It got 1,008 signatures in 30 days - 1% of the required 100K

Example 2: "We ask President Trump to explain his statements and position on the 9/11 attacks
Created by R.R. on September 01, 2017"
I discovered this on someone's person FB page 3 weeks ago, when it had 10 signatures. It is still stuck at 10 signatures. It should end today (30 day limit).

Now I have two ongoing petitions set up by "extablishment" truthers - the groups are spin-offs, of have co-operation with, AE911truth, although AE911Truth has not, to my knowledge, officially endorsed or linked to either.

1. The 911TAP Petition
The 9/11 Truth Action Project, or 911TAP, has been founded by Wayne Coste, a former AE911Truth board member. Some of the active people, such as Bill Jacoby and David Fura, also come from the AE universe. I have seen several truthers and group promote one this. Homepage has the current number of signatures prominently displayed: http://911tap.org/
In a December 2012 news release, David Fura explains the objectives of their Petition project:
This multi-purpose project is a cornerstone of the 9/11 Truth Action Project's top-level goal of achieving an independent, comprehensive investigation of 9/11. The project has a four-year lifespan with a million-plus signer target by the end of year 2020. A number of enabling objectives need to be met to achieve this target, but none are more important right now than the First Wave objective of 32,000 signers in calendar year 2017. Nothing is more important to 911TAP right now than convincing you to help achieve 32,000.
Content from External Source
So here we have the specific and clear objectives:
  • 32,000 signatures by 2017/12/31 (within one year)
  • 1 million+ signatures by 2020/12/31 (within four years)
In the first paragraph, Fure imagines how it will be in the glorious and near future when Americans newly approached find out that this petition already has 2.3 million signatures, and on March 30 this year, TAP board member Chris Gruener asked:
Can you hold a vision wherein, by the end of 2020, our joint generation of 4,000,000+ activists, working in tandem, successfully demands a credible investigation of the 9/11/01 attacks and subsequent appropriate prosecutions of all the American traitors – including those with dual citizenship - who perpetrated those attacks? Together we can do this!
Content from External Source
So these men do not limit their imagination to one million supporters - no, they imagine that millions will follow!

Now here is reality plotted against that vision: The time-axis goes to the end of 2020, the left-hand signatures y-axis to the minimum target of 1 million, the right-hand y-axis goes to the 700 signatures/day that they'd need every day through four years to get there.

TAP911_Petition_ScaledTo1Million_20171001.gif

Flatline.

The same against a target of 32,000 by the end of 2017 - which is their single most important objective:

TAP911_Petition_ScaledTo32000_20171001.gif

We see them not even clearing the 10% line!

And not the same, in readable scales: We see a downward trend, as opposed to the upward swelling of enthusiasm they hoped for:

TAP911_Petition_20171001.gif

September - the anniversary month - was their worst yet. You will not find any of these guys admitting that their project has already failed completely, and that their expectation that there are 32,000 potential Truthers they can reach in the USA was seriously deluded, plain madness, from the outset.

B) The Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry

Meet the Committee: https://lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org/
As you can see on their homepage, the personel heavily draws on AE911Truth: David Meiswinkle has been featured in several AE news items, Bill Jacoby has been with them for years, and actor Ed Asner volunteers his voice for introduction.

They set up a petition:
"Support Legal Action on 9/11--At Last!" https://www.change.org/p/support-legal-action-on-9-11-at-last
And that petition comes with a fundraiser:
"Build a People's Legal Team for 9/11 Transparency!" https://www.change.org/f/build-a-peoples-legal-team-for-911-transparency

The fundraiser has specified targets:
"We will be seeking to raise $700,000 in six stages via crowdfunding and will seek another $325,000 through grassroots events and committed individuals, to fund the first year of operations.
STAGE 1. $7,000 to cover expenses associated with the current FOIA appeal.
STAGE 2. $28,000 for key additions to the management team.
STAGE 3: $50,000 to mobilize ongoing grassroots and independent media support worldwide for the Lawyers Committee's work.
STAGE 4: $150,000 to hire investigators, researchers, and law interns to help senior staff and the Board to map a well-grounded litigation strategy using all available data and developing new evidence where needed.
STAGE 5: $165,000 to file lawsuits, inform the public, and work with the Justice Department and members of Congress where possible.
STAGE 6: $200,000 to prosecute the lawsuits filed, while building increasing grassroots, independent media, and institutional support."

Petition and fundraiser started this March. Now, more than half a year later, they have collected 1,473 signatures and $1,230 - that's 7.3 signatures and 6.1 dollars per day. Wow! At this pace, they'll reach the first money target in two and a half years, and the last one in about 320 years. That'll miss their goal "to fund the first year of operations" by quite a bit!

Interestingly, the fundraiser text says:
In June of this year, the Committee received a generous six-figure donation, sufficient to offer an employment contractor to its chosen candidate for Executive Director. Mick Harrison, Esq., of Bloomington, IN. has agreed to join the LC full-time on July 1, 2017.
...
The latest donation will allow the Committee to proceed with its current FOIA litigation and plan other legal action, but additional funds will be required to fully implement its work plan. The committee has raised $125,000, or about 11% of the amount it is seeking in order to field and fully support a staff of nine. The new donation enables us to revise our staged fundraising plan.
Content from External Source
What's that? The general public donates $1230, but a single, anonymous source throws in $125,000?? I smell a rat. I know of indications that AE911Truth, likewise, depends on a single, or at most a handful of big time donors, while receiving only a pathetic trickle of donations from the "millions" they imagine on their side.

Anyway, here is the useless Petiton they are fielding on the side:

LCfor911_Petition_20171001.gif
 
What about the huge peaks of January 2016 and around July 2016? September 2016 was only one data point in a series of declining values. I am not aware of any campaign, media interest, or other factor that would explain such changes. My only explanation is that AE911Truth actively pimped these numbers by buying fake Likes, or something to similar effect. If any of you know Facebook, and how it can be manipulated, better than I do, I'd love to hear your opinion!

Possibly genuine interest related to the 15 year anniversary?

Apart from that, it is pretty much beyond doubt from what you've posted that the advocacy groups mentioned have suffered slow growth in recent years. Nonetheless, for anyone keen to defend the official account from challenge, there are some reasons to be pessimistic. Building 7 searches are relatively high and stable. The WTC 7 study has already reached the national press in the UK, albeit in a minor way, and that's before it's finished. Trust in politicians and the 'elite' is at an all-time low, and annual interest in 9/11 is higher now than it was 10 years ago. Then there are the innumerable events that could occur (with some degree of predictability) that may draw uncomfortable attention to 9/11.
  • Trump is destabilized or unseated by the Robert Mueller Russia investigation and lashes out at the old guard, establishment, Hillary-supporting, democratically subversive CIA. Or Trump is co-opted and his supporters riot.
  • Belligerent rhetoric over North Korea/Iran/China/Russia reminds people of the existence of faked border incidents, illegitimate war pretexts and false flag attacks. (We've already seen the highly suspect 1/19/17 Tehran Plasco incident, whatever the significance it carries)
  • High rises continue to catch fire but not fall down, prompting comparisons to 9/11 and increased questioning of the Twin Towers' demise

Add to this the consideration that, if there really are inconvenient truths about 9/11, the evidence will continue to be corroborated in unexpected ways by new studies and by more academics and professionals no longer so gripped by the taboo.
 
without any proof, I would be wary of bandying around the "buying Fake likes" thing, just be stumped as to an explanation for the spike in an otherwise downwards trend
 
Then there are the innumerable events that could occur (with some degree of predictability) that may draw uncomfortable attention to 9/11.
  • Trump is destabilized or unseated by the Robert Mueller Russia investigation and lashes out at the old guard, establishment, Hillary-supporting, democratically subversive CIA. Or Trump is co-opted and his supporters riot.
  • Belligerent rhetoric over North Korea/Iran/China/Russia reminds people of the existence of faked border incidents, illegitimate war pretexts and false flag attacks. (We've already seen the highly suspect 1/19/17 Tehran Plasco incident, whatever the significance it carries)
  • High rises continue to catch fire but not fall down, prompting comparisons to 9/11 and increased questioning of the Twin Towers' demise

Add to this the consideration that, if there really are inconvenient truths about 9/11, the evidence will continue to be corroborated in unexpected ways by new studies and by more academics and professionals no longer so gripped by the taboo.

Soooo.... Things are going happen, truthers are gonna look for CD in places where there wasn't any (eg Plasco), scream false flag at every opportunity, keep comparing apples to oranges (eg Grenfell) and new evidence is coming 'real soon'...

Haven't the 9-11 CT crowd been chanting the same mantra for the past 16 years now? Yet still the real killer evidence is not forth coming.
 
Soooo.... Things are going happen, truthers are gonna look for CD in places where there wasn't any (eg Plasco), scream false flag at every opportunity, keep comparing apples to oranges (eg Grenfell) and new evidence is coming 'real soon'...

Haven't the 9-11 CT crowd been chanting the same mantra for the past 16 years now? Yet still the real killer evidence is not forth coming.

Events will happen that put 9/11 back in the spotlight.
 
Possibly genuine interest related to the 15 year anniversary?
No, impossible. The largest numbers of new "Likes/day" came in June (509) and July 2016 546, summer months that are usually markedly unbusy. Numbers then dropped to averages of 371 (August), 290 (September), 220 (October), 21 (November).
There was no discernible rise in media or other activity in mid-summer 2016. Nothing. Nada. The extra interest that the anniversary sparks never extends to more than maybe 3 weeks around the date itself, with more coming after 9/11.

without any proof, I would be wary of bandying around the "buying Fake likes" thing, just be stumped as to an explanation for the spike in an otherwise downwards trend
How can you say "without any proof" when I just presented part of the proof?
The other part is the lack of marketing or other activity that could explain the extreme differences in numbers. I HAVE been loooking at what AE911truth, and other groups, have been doing, I am signed up for their newsletter, I am member of several of their FB groups. If there was something big going on, I would be very unlikely to have completely missed it.

Like I said, the only explanation on the table at the moment is manipulation - fake "Likes".

Only thing I would concede is that I suspect AE911Truth themselves have actively been causing the manipulation, when it is possible the pimping had another author.
But pimping it is, as preliminary theory, until a better is proposed.
 
Events will happen that put 9/11 back in the spotlight.
Doubtful. The genuine areas of concern consequent on 9/11 are the ongoing "War on Terror" and the links to contemporary middle east conflicts. Those current activities have their own motivational dynamics. 9/11 probably too far back in history to have any current value as "leverage".

If you eliminate all the false technical claims which are still of interest to US and some other western truth activists the politics specific to 9/11 are swamped to insignificance by current political realities. And what "events" from past history could change that? If the new events are significant the new events will grab the spotlight.
 
I just saw this video of Christopher Bollyn described as "the best 9/11 video ever". It's two halves, the first being mostly a very poor recitation of the various conspiracy claims, then the second half is all "pin it on the Jews". Again, I think the 9/11 Truth movement is being reduced to this - simple classical anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
 
Events will happen that put 9/11 back in the spotlight.
Yes, every year we will take time to remember the victims of 19 murderers who were inspired to kill by UBL. We will remember Flight 93 Passengers who took action after they figured out 9/11 in minutes, something which eludes 9/11 truth, a movement of overwhelming speculation based on zero evidence.

9/11 was an event, a future event can't change a past event. Although in the case of Alabama and Clemson, a future event (now also a past event) can help ease the impact of the past-past event. And the the event already happened, it was sending UBL to his reward of 72 Virginians, who beat him up... did you miss it, it did put 9/11 in the spotlight, Killing UBL, wanted for worldwide terrorism.

Is 9/11 truth stagnated? The 9/11 truth false claims, like Bigfoot, Moon Landing Denial, and Flat Earth, will never die out as long as evidence is ignored. There will always be people in the future who have no idea steel fails in fire, ripe for falling for the conspiracy speculation of inside job and CD fantasy.

Many people fall for the 9/11 truth claims. The one which made me look at 9/11 truth was the claim of "fantastic flight maneuvers no one can do but skilled pilots", which is like steel can't fail in the world's biggest office fires in history. I found the "fantastic maneuvers" were what bad pilots do, and then crash. For 16 years, I have failed to find a 9/11 truth claim which is valid. 9/11 truth never had evidence to support claims made. Something that could lead to stagnation, as those once fooled coach those who are being fooled.

I am curious: what kind of an event will change the fact fire caused the WTC collapse, terrorists took four planes to use as WMDs? Does this involve time travel?
 
Doubtful. The genuine areas of concern consequent on 9/11 are the ongoing "War on Terror" and the links to contemporary middle east conflicts. Those current activities have their own motivational dynamics. 9/11 probably too far back in history to have any current value as "leverage".

If you eliminate all the false technical claims which are still of interest to US and some other western truth activists the politics specific to 9/11 are swamped to insignificance by current political realities. And what "events" from past history could change that? If the new events are significant the new events will grab the spotlight.

Is it doubtful that events will happen that put 9/11 back in the spotlight? Something is already causing people to google 9/11 more and more.

There is of course a risk that 9/11 becomes an inert part of history. But as the heat from it fades, it becomes easier to study in-depth and objectively. As Graeme MacQueen argues, the left needs to move beyond postmodern, esoteric critiques of the meaning of 9/11 in contemporary society and ask questions about the events of that day. As it stands, many on the left adopt a view that the Bush administration gained a perfect pretext out of the blue, by sheer chance, to implement long-desired policy changes. When serious study of the events of 9/11 becomes possible, the implications will seep out of university seminars and lectures into the media and popular culture. It will then affect politics.
 
I just saw this video of Christopher Bollyn described as "the best 9/11 video ever". It's two halves, the first being mostly a very poor recitation of the various conspiracy claims, then the second half is all "pin it on the Jews". Again, I think the 9/11 Truth movement is being reduced to this - simple classical anti-semitic conspiracy theories.

I'm not convinced that this selection of material represents the truth movement. For a start, I would not assume there is one single, unified movement. There are different pressure groups who may not have met each other or coordinated on a campaign.
 
How can you say "without any proof" when I just presented part of the proof?
The other part is the lack of marketing or other activity that could explain the extreme differences in numbers
they could have paid for FB advertising. basically the more you pay FB the more they advertise your page. And based on the content, I imagine FB would advertise them to other CT type groups.
 
I'm not convinced that this selection of material represents the truth movement. For a start, I would not assume there is one single, unified movement. There are different pressure groups who may not have met each other or coordinated on a campaign.

No, it's just his personal take. But it seems, from my observations, more and more this is where the group is heading, a superficial acceptance of the AE911 style "evidence", then a rambling anti-semitic conspiracy theory that largely just consists of listing everyone they can find connected who is a Jew.
 
@Oystein it seems to me, scrolling through their page (fun stuff) your peaks coincide with FB shares.
In June there were 2 "mainstream media things", a german tv show and Express.uk.
In January the documentary with Ed Asner got 50,000 shares.. which no other posts I saw on their page come even close to that!! so my guess is it was one of those things where CTers just repost stuff for the heck of it. It might have brought them more page likes, but in the months following the individual post likes and shares were pretty low. So most people weren't "keepers" I would say.

Same thing after the June media coverage. in the autumn there are still some individual posts with rather high likes and shares (sept 11 745 shares, oct 649 shares on one post,) but as you see from "new page likes" they seem to have reached maximum saturation because those autumn shares didn't raise page-like numbers much.

I think if you look at their individual post "likes" and shares, you will see the pattern. So I don't think they paid for fake likes. I think they got lucky and certain posts were shared with the larger CT community.

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Just some other screen grabs with high shares, attached.. so you can compare. But best to scroll through yourself so you can see that surrounding individual post likes and shares are pretty low.
 

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Thanks for finding these postings, deirdre!
I went back to that time frame (first half of 2016) and found a few more posts that had at least 500 shares - see attached.
I'll put these posts in charts now as finely-grained as I have them - split in three charts for 2 months each, for best resolution.

1. January & February 2016.
Had these widely shared posts:
Jan 02 - Dubai Fire - 2,870 shares / 3.3K reactions
Jan 14 - Es Asner video pulled - 48,554 shares / 10K reactions / 1,500K video views
Jan 29 - Gage vs. Blacksmith - 6,375 / 3.4K / 180K
Feb 20 - MSNBC clip - 504 / 0.6K / 28K
Feb 20 - The Sun article - 3,919 / 5.5K / -
Feb 24 - Freefallin' video - 43,403 / 11K / 1,400K
FB_AE_201601+02.gif
You see that I have a data point for every day until Feb 21, after that, my data points come every few days, in unequal intervals. The two videos with more than 40K shares and more than a million views evidently resulted in peaks - but short-lived ones: Ed Asner added about 5,000 Likes above base level in January - or about 160/day (monthly average). The Freefallin' video added perhaps 3,300 Likes - or +115/day in February.
Most of the time, posts get a few dozend or barely over 100 shares, and new Likes/day simmer between 150 and 300.


2. March + April 2016
Had the following hot posts:
Mar 07 - 9/11 Experiments - 760 shares / 1.1K reactions / -
Mar 22 - wtc7evaluation intro - 1,143 / 1K / 28K views
Apr 03 - ActivistPost article - 631 / 1.9K / -
Apr 08 - McKee blog post - 1,008 / 1.7K / -
Apr 09 - 2500 Milestone - 1,439 / 1.3K / 32K
FB_AE_201603+04.gif
My time intervals have grown longer here - but it appears that none of the "hot posts" had a discernible effect. The interval from Apr 16 to 28 had the highest average Likes/day, but no hot posts that I spotted.


3. May + June 2016
Hot posts:
May 24 - AIA business meeting video - 660 shares / 0.7K reactions / 21K views
May 27 - German TV special - 1,600 / 972 / 65K
Jun 23 - Express UK - 828 / 1,7K / -
Jun 30 - collective-evolution - 543 / 1.6K / -
FB_AE_201605+06.gif
(The last data point goes through July 06; I'll look at hot posts in July after I submit this)
That period has no reeeeaaaally hot posts - and yet a solid base level of at least 300 Likes/day.

A few days ago, Sep 28, there was a post ("Dr. David Ray Griffin Takes On Bush, Cheney, and the ‘Miraculous’ Destruction of the WTC Towers") with 281 shares and 687 reactions, also 56 comments - that is quite a good normal for posts a year ago - and yet, the page LOST Likes!

In the evening of Sep 14, they posted a video ("The Bobby McIlvaine Act September 11th News Conference") which has 1,717 shares, 1.1K reactions and 111K views - a hot post. On Sep 14, they had 60 new Likes. The next 2 days, they averaged 164 Likes, then dropped to 30, and then to negative performance - so indeed this video seems to have brought them something like 300 additional Likes.

But the BASE level is negative now, and it used to be 200+ last year. I have no explanation for that - the difference seems too massive for me.


CONCLUSION
Apparently, hot videos that are shared thousands of times and hundreds of thousands of times create peaks of real human interest and explain SOME of the peaks in Likes/day, but they don't explain all peaks, nor do they explain the increased base level of Likes/day that they had between August 2015 and October 2016. Or conversely, there is no explanation for why the base level has been so low (under 40) since November 2016, and why it is now even negative.
 

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To add real quick:

4. August + September 2017
These last two months had the 9/11 anniversary, plus 3 "hot" posts. I have done more regular intervals in that timeframe - usually 4, sometimes 3, days until Sep 05 and after Sep 23; and 2, then 1, days around the anniversary, to capture the anticipated higher dynamics.
Hot posts were:
Aug 07 - Torch Tower Fire - 764 shares / 1.3K reactions
Aug 21 - Dick Gregory RIP - 565 shares / 1.1K reactions
Sep 14 - McIlvaine Act News Conf - 1,717 shares / 1.1K reactions / 111K views
FB_AE_201708+09.gif
I think the difference to the 2016 graphs is striking: There is simply NO base level today, where there used to be hundreds.
The Truth Movement is decaying - but it is not dying this suddenly.
That's why I believe the numbers before November 2016 were to a significant extent pimped.
 
Oystein--your documentation here and observations are both spot on. One additional observation is that the rates of AE911Truth membership growth among professionals and general public seems to offer a natural experiment. If experts are regularly distributed sub-portion of the population, then we'd expert their support growth/decline rate to follow closely with the support growth/rate of the general public (i.e., if there was some big exogenous event that brought an increase in the rate of support from the general public, we'd expect the same event to generally bring a comparable increase in the rate of support from professionals). Yet that relationship broke down completely in 2016. While there was a slight uptick in the support rate of professionals, it was dwarfed by the increase in the support rate of the general public. This, in my opinion, is pretty convincing evidence that the general public numbers were manipulated. (And, it could be that even the increase in support among professionals that year was the effect of the increase in support of the general public (as juiced by paid likes) as that may have increased AE911Truth's visibility on the net during that period.)

From your post above for reference:

 
Oystein--your documentation here and observations are both spot on. One additional observation is that the rates of AE911Truth membership growth among professionals and general public seems to offer a natural experiment. If experts are regularly distributed sub-portion of the population, then we'd expert their support growth/decline rate to follow closely with the support growth/rate of the general public (i.e., if there was some big exogenous event that brought an increase in the rate of support from the general public, we'd expect the same event to generally bring a comparable increase in the rate of support from professionals). Yet that relationship broke down completely in 2016. While there was a slight uptick in the support rate of professionals, it was dwarfed by the increase in the support rate of the general public. This, in my opinion, is pretty convincing evidence that the general public numbers were manipulated. (And, it could be that even the increase in support among professionals that year was the effect of the increase in support of the general public (as juiced by paid likes) as that may have increased AE911Truth's visibility on the net during that period.)

From your post above for reference:

I think you are misreading the graph: Both curves are A&E signatures: The blue curve is average signatures per day (against the left hand y-scale), the orange curve is the increase expressed as an annual growth rate in % (against the right hand y-axis).
This shows a marked uptick in 2016/17 (June 2016 - May 2017) of the professionals! Second best year ever. At the same time, the General Public had decreased to its lowest value ever, the 8th straight decrease.

What this shows is that there is a steady loss of interest from the general public, which Gage has, in recent years, much focussed on getting the attention of professionals at conventions and bamboozling them into signing paper forms. It's possible that 1/3 of the 16/17 total may be such paper signatures; and it is also possíble that they had carried over a back-log of unprocessed signatures from a previous period. A&E signatures thus sometimes come in bursts that are temporally decoupled from the "natural" development of interest in 9/11 CTs.
 
I think you are misreading the graph: Both curves are A&E signatures: The blue curve is average signatures per day (against the left hand y-scale), the orange curve is the increase expressed as an annual growth rate in % (against the right hand y-axis).
This shows a marked uptick in 2016/17 (June 2016 - May 2017) of the professionals! Second best year ever. At the same time, the General Public had decreased to its lowest value ever, the 8th straight decrease.

What this shows is that there is a steady loss of interest from the general public, which Gage has, in recent years, much focussed on getting the attention of professionals at conventions and bamboozling them into signing paper forms. It's possible that 1/3 of the 16/17 total may be such paper signatures; and it is also possíble that they had carried over a back-log of unprocessed signatures from a previous period. A&E signatures thus sometimes come in bursts that are temporally decoupled from the "natural" development of interest in 9/11 CTs.

You are correct--I grabbed the wrong graph from the above in haste. I really meant to compare these two to show the decoupling of the facebook likes and the professional petitioner signers:








IT would be interesting to run some regressions on the periods in question.
 
Well, the data is noisy, they are subject to different delays, and we must be mindful of the pitfalls of datamining. If you just do enough regressions of any randomly picked datasets, you are sure to get statistically significant results by pure chance.

One of the bigger problem of my datasets is that I don't have constant sample rates. That makes it difficult to compare signals across the same dataset, and more treacherous to run two different datasets against one another.
 
I think both of you are conflating "proof" and "evidence" - they are not the same although closely related :)
Yes, you are correct, but since we made the same mistake, no serious confusion arose :D
I should have said "evidence" indeed ;)

(My excuse is that my native language, German, uses the same word for both more than colloquial English does: "Beweis" can be a correct translation for both "evidence" and "proof", depending on context.)
 
I must say I find it rather remarkable that some people are actually tracking and charting data looking for trends as to whether the movement for a new investigation into 911 is gaining or losing popularity.

Why not just have the investigation and redo the obviously erroneous WTC 7 analysis and after that interrogate/investigate people who had access to the building (other than office workers)? That was never done, in case there is any question about that.
 
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I am glad you are asking, Tony.

This work documents that the Truth Movement is tiny, and that it is not growing. It overlaps more and more with the antisemitic fringe. It does not convince people in the broad middle of society - neither the professionals nor the general public.

Take for example the 19 FAIA signatories to the AE petition that Gage had placed prominently at the top of the list: they recently deleted more than half of them! I am not sure whether that means they never actually supported a new investigation, or have since changed their minds and withdrawn their support (ask Gage next time you talk to him, please!). At any rate, AE and the TM delude themselves about their numbers. The fact is there won't ever be a new and truthy investigation because no one gives a damn. No one will throw money away to please a tiny and weird fringe.
 
I must say I find it rather remarkable that some people are actually tracking and charting data looking for trends as to whether the movement for a new investigation into 911 is gaining or losing popularity.

Why not just have the investigation and redo the obviously erroneous WTC 7 analysis and after that interrogate/investigate people who had access to the building (other than office workers)? That was never done, in case there is any question about that.
Oops, that was done, by the FBI.
The biggest FBI investigation in history, found no CD, no inside job bad guys. I think there is an obviously erroneous WTC 7 analysis, and it was not NIST's.

The ability of 9/11 truth to get support from engineers stagnated from the beginning, with less than 0.1 percent of all engineers signing the AnE petition based on evidence free speculation of an inside job CD.
 
More than 65,000 New Yorkers petitioned for the re-investigation of WTC7 in 2014, and their petition was denied on a technicality. I don't think those people will have changed their minds, and I don't think you can track them on Facebook.
http://highrisesafetynyc.org
 
More than 65,000 New Yorkers petitioned for the re-investigation of WTC7 in 2014, and their petition was denied on a technicality. I don't think those people will have changed their minds, and I don't think you can track them on Facebook.
http://highrisesafetynyc.org
a Facebook hacking service? what's up with that?

the initiative reports 30,000
Wooten did call the City’s attempt to have the case dismissed on a procedural technicality “irrational and misplaced, particularly, when the result would be the voter disenfranchisement of more than 30,000 registered voters, without due process.”
Content from External Source
 
More than 65,000 New Yorkers petitioned for the re-investigation of WTC7 in 2014, and their petition was denied on a technicality. I don't think those people will have changed their minds, and I don't think you can track them on Facebook.
http://highrisesafetynyc.org
A technicality called... The law.

"New York City has plenty of conspiracy theorists, but apparently not enough of them are registered voters.

A group pushing to get a city investigation into the collapse of 7 World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, suffered a setback Tuesday when the City Clerk’s Office refused to accept 37,688 of the group’s 65,000 referendum petition signatures.

That left the NYC Coalition for Accountability Now short of the minimum 30,000 signatures needed to put the issue on the November ballot.

Many of those backing the referendum are 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

“Instead of wasting New Yorkers’ time and hard- earned taxpayer dollars humoring conspiracy theorists with wild fantasies, the City Council will continue to focus on passing sound legislation,”
said City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito."


http://nypost.com/2014/08/06/bid-to-put-911-probe-on-ballot-lacks-sufficient-signatures/

The FBI does crime, take the evidence (which there is none for a new investigation) to the FBI. The studies and investigations have already satisfied the goal of this 9/11 truth inspired web site initiative - http://highrisesafetynyc.org/about/ Engineers know steel fails in fire, it is a fact. In fact, if we had the money to build a new WTC 7 type building, we could pay reality based engineers to study the demise of the WTC buildings to help improve our new highrise.
 
No, that's just the number of signatories the court decided to exclude from the total on technical grounds, meaning the petition fell slightly short of the required total.

I'm not saying these people had their Facebook accounts hacked. I'm saying they may not have Facebook accounts, or choose not to engage in social media on these subjects.
 
What makes you think that (all of) the petitioners have not changed their minds? Or lost interest?

Also, being in favor of mandatory investigations is not equal to believing the commonly agreed history of 9/11 needs rewriting.

You might have had evidence that they did't change their minds if the iniative had tried again in 2016, but they did not. This may indicate that indeed even the organizers changed their minds, or no longer have faith that a sufficient number of New Yorkers would subscribe to wasting City money on this nonsense.
 
I'm not saying these people had their Facebook accounts hacked. I'm saying they may not have Facebook accounts, or choose not to engage in social media on these subjects.
on your link it says the sponsor of the petition is :
yy.JPG

that Sponsor and the text there, sounds extremely odd to me. At first I thought it was just a satire site.
But looking around more I see now where you got your number

On July 3, 2014, the High-Rise Safety Initiative submitted over 67,000 petition signatures calling for ballot measure that would require the City of New York to investigate the collapse of WTC 7 and any future high-rise collapses. Most unfortunately, but also as we anticipated and prepared for, the City has attempted to block the High-Rise Safety Initiative from appearing on the ballot this November.

On Monday, we received the City Clerk’s certificate, which claims first that the petition has only 27,892 valid signatures, 2,108 less than the 30,000 threshold
Content from External Source
 
It's illegal to walk around NYC on Sundays with an ice cream cone in your pocket. Don't risk it Keith.

Are you suggesting that civil servants should be allowed to ignore laws when it suits them?

now THAT would be a good conspiracy "theory".....
 
I just learned of something called 'crowdtangle'. Has anyone used that? Would that be useful to someone in this debate? Seems like a way of measuring trends on facebook, etc.
 
My most reacted-to post so far, with 5 funnies and 3 disagrees. A quote from it:

Apart from that, it is pretty much beyond doubt from what you've posted that the advocacy groups mentioned have suffered slow growth in recent years. Nonetheless, for anyone keen to defend the official account from challenge, there are some reasons to be pessimistic. Building 7 searches are relatively high and stable. The WTC 7 study has already reached the national press in the UK, albeit in a minor way, and that's before it's finished. Trust in politicians and the 'elite' is at an all-time low, and annual interest in 9/11 is higher now than it was 10 years ago. Then there are the innumerable events that could occur (with some degree of predictability) that may draw uncomfortable attention to 9/11.
  • Trump is destabilized or unseated by the Robert Mueller Russia investigation and lashes out at the old guard, establishment, Hillary-supporting, democratically subversive CIA.

Look what happened since I wrote that.

On Oct 19, Obama and Bush criticized Trump's leadership. They are the old guard. Both reflected on how society has become more divided. Bush said:

“Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrications,”
Content from External Source
Which I agree with. I would say that is simply an empirical statement that reflects the mood in the US at the moment. In this context, it is not surprising that there is increasing interest in WTC 7 in Google searches.

Today, in the press we see that Trump is threatening to open classified files related to JFK. Speculations on his motive in the Independent:

Classified documents were due to be released under law - but timing could prove convenient if they discredit the agencies involved in the Russia investigation
Content from External Source
Again, I agree with the analysis. Conspiracy theories can serve as a political football under current societal conditions and in this case can be directed towards factions within the government perceived as anti-Trump. As we all know, drawing attention to one conspiracy theory often directs attention to others. This may also increase interest in WTC 7.

In other words, I said there were events that could happen with some degree of predictability, and events like these are occurring now. I said they could draw uncomfortable attention to 9/11. Let's see if they do.
 
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