Summary
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responded to Elon Musk’s conspiracy theory that Democrats move the same group of paid protesters to different events.
Right-wing influencer Mario Nawfal claimed GPS data showed only 20,000 attendees—less than the reported 34,000—at recent rallies and suggested most had attended multiple past protests.
Musk amplified this claim, alleging the use of paid protesters.
Ocasio-Cortez dismissed Musk’s claim with “Someone’s butthurt,” adding he should find “a new, more interesting conspiracy theory to peddle.”
They do not, at least not in the way that this couple of Twitter influencers is claiming.
If you are a bounty hunter (bail bondsman) for instance you can pay a fee to get a rough location on a phone number that you provide. That does not work in this instance, there’s no service that allows you to ask, “send me the phone numbers and account ownership names of every single mobile device in this 3 mile radius during the protest”.
There is absolutely no way they have tracking data for the 30,000-odd attendees across all the various mobile providers and platforms (Apple/Google/etc) just a day or so later without state-level surveillance agencies access. And even then, the picture would be incomplete and need a LOT of work for them to make the claims they’re making about it overlapping with other groups they’re monitoring.
Its all made up.
Plus it’s not the government making this claim, but an “alt-right influencer”. Their audience isn’t going to fact-check anything they agree with anyway, so why not just lie?