Thursday, 18 December 2025
Brandjacked for social media advert fraud: Microcelebrities' experiences of digital crime in South Africa
i. Digital crime cybervictimisation as a neglected research problem in the Global South
2 Identity theft (impersonation and brandjacking of small businesses)
3 Internet health scams (weightloss ads brandjacking doctors)
4 Advert fraud (marketing fake “pop concert” tickets)
5 E-commerce and product scams (non-existent “flash sales”)
6 Online harassment (cyberstalking, cyberbullying and doxxing)
7 Social engineering (business phone fraud and cold calling scams)
8 Crowdfunding and charity scams (a fake crowdfunding site purportedly linked to a political party’s “fundraiser for student bursaries and groceries”)
9 Lottery and prize scams (unsolicited messages claiming recipients have won prizes, and that they should pay a fee or provide their bank details)
10 Employment scams (impersonate hiring companies to request fees for job placements)
11 Romance and relationship fraud (cyberdating that leads to “employment” offers)
12 Spam (unsolicited SMS and email communications featuring marketing offers or scams)
13 Miscellaneous (QR phishing code scams that elude email security software)
ii. Literature review
iii. Research and key findings
iv. Broader implications from our research
v. Suggested areas for future research
Help support our future research
Not so for The Noakes Foundation which has worked with Price Green Creative Studio to prepare a funding proposal 'Protecting South Africans from “petty” digital crimes: a case for urgent funding'. It proposes to tackle key areas in (v) future digital research, and research funders are welcome to contact me for a copy on noakest@cput.ac.za. I also welcome advice on any related external funding opportunities linked to digital crime in SA.
Gratitude
In the press
Lyse Comins from the Mail and Guardian has covered our concerns in Meta criticised for slow action as deepfake adverts target South African celebrities (2024).Comments welcome
Monday, 20 October 2025
Understanding the resistance health experts face in dissenting from medical science orthodoxy and challenging its dogmas during COVID-19 #WNS2025
On Saturday the 18th, I gave a talk that addressed the World Nutrition Summit (2025)'s theme- 'Rewriting the Rules: Nutrition, Science and Chronic Disease'. My speech focused on two cases of evidence-based contributions from health experts being confronted by heavy resistance for challenging COVID-19 policy. This talk’s three sections addresses the many ways in which even the agency of eminent experts is not as free to shape public health policy as they might hope, or even reasonably expect. This talk's insights emerge from a new research project with Dr Piers Robinson aiming to develop a framework for the challenges that eminent experts negotiate whilst criticising dogmas. Below is the talks slides on Slideshare, and the transcript that I read:
Section 1 - Two cases of resistance
#2
As regards “Rewriting the rules" this talk’s three sections speaks to the many ways in which even the agency of eminent experts is not as free to shape public health policy, as they might hope, or even reasonably expect. This presentation’s insights emerge from a new research project aiming to develop a framework for the challenges that eminent experts negotiate whilst criticising dogmas. Hopefully, such research helps us better understand all the ways in which critics' autonomy is reduced. Particularly as they become vulnerable to strategic campaigns from powerful decision makers.
Section 2 - Unanswered questions from the COVID-19 “public health” response (AKA a Global Biodefence Public-Private Partnership’s Chorus Effect)
Section 3 - Flagging the impacts of powerful resistance to experts
Monday, 6 October 2025
The Meat vs EAT-LANCET report as a targeted smear - the example of misinformation on Emeritus Professor Tim Noakes
Written to highlight bias in a report with a covert agenda, plus to defend Prof Noakes’ online reputation from yet another Big Food-funded smear.
Published in September 2025, The Changing Markets Foundation’s Meat vs EAT LANCET publication positions itself as a credible, investigative report. By contrast, I argue that it should rather be understood as a covert 'smear' communication event. In simple terms, a smear is 'an effort to manipulate opinion by promulgating an overblown, scandalous and damaging narrative' (Attkisson, 2017). The goal is often 'to destroy ideas by ruining the people who are most effective at communicating them' (p.3). The ‘Meat vs EAT-LANCET’ report fulfils a smear's criteria; its investigation uses inconclusive evidence to defame critics of the original “planetary health” diet (Willett et al, 2019) as shills for the meat industry.
As a communication event, ‘Meat vs EAT-LANCET’ is located within a long-running scientific argument and diet controversy. This concerns; what constitutes a healthy diet for individuals, the best food systems to support this, who gets to decide, and what research merits funding. In the Health Sciences and related fields, this rivalry pits two sides against each other. The dominant orthodoxy promotes high carbohydrate diets that suit the interests of the plant-based and processed food industry. In contrast, dissenting experts advocate for low carb lifestyles, plus real foods from the farming of livestock and regenerative agriculture (Teicholz, 2014). It is not co-incidental that the Meat vs EAT-LANCET report's release occurred shortly before the next communication from the orthodoxy- the EAT-Lancet Commission report (2025). The former's release was planned to pre-empt criticism of 2025's report by smearing the most influential critics of its 2019 pre-cursor. Such blowback seems motivated by the low-carb critics' initial successes- for example, a flagship launch event was planned at the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, but the WHO pulled out. Its withdrawal ‘followed a massive online backlash, which had concentrated on one of the report’s recommendations: to cut global red meat consumption by 50 percent’ (Carlile, 2025).
As described in Lars Magne Sunnanå’s Substack post (‘A diet to save the planet - brought to you by a Wall Street bet on margarine’), the supporters of Environment, Agriculture, and Transformation (EAT)'s Commission learnt from this failure. The EAT-Lancet Commission 2025 report's release will be better co-ordinated- with 70 scientists, new safeguards against "misinformation", plus many more partners and allies ready to defend the research. Other plans include involving scientific institutions like Harvard and Cornel to produce and publish a range of translation articles, alongside a campaign with a “celebrity influencer group”. Funders that include the Rockefeller Foundation and Gates Foundation, plus sponsors such as the Flora Food Group are providing additional support. Widespread coverage can be expected in scientific publications and key media to promote the revised diet. It merits consideration why the steep fees of a large PR campaign were supported by the report's funders to make this the report 'du jour', versus funding other forms of outreach (such as open debates on its merits?).
Published on the 3rd of October, The EAT-Lancet Commission 2025 report is part of a broader campaign for EAT and its collaborators to establish themselves as an “independent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for food systems. Should they succeed, their IPCC will likely be able to increase its sponsorship and attract more funders. At the same time, the proposed IPCC for Food is part of an agenda to "streamline" decisions on food systems. Driven by an few highly influential actors, this initiative has the risk of imposing a narrow view of science by excluding many voices on food systems (IPES, 2021).
From a PR perspective, the Meat vs EAT-LANCET communication event is part of a pre-emptive campaign. Its funders hope that by framing the most influential critics of the “planetary health” diet (PHD 🙄) as surrogates for the meat industry, the content of their arguments can be ignored. The report frames critics of the 2019 report as: (i) being funded by an “evil” meat industry; (ii) taking funds from its PR agencies; and (iii) being co-ordinated by them in an attempt to discredit “the science”. This frame suggests that influential individuals' criticism of the “planetary health” diet is commercially-driven, anti-science heresy. Such framing illustrates Wolpe's (1994) insight that "heresy" is socially constructed by orthodoxy. Its defenders have the power to define which views are unacceptable and will face marginalisation. Here the orthodoxy presents critics of the EAT-LANCET commission to be an amoral group of duplicitous outsiders. They are “attacking” a virtuous group of meat-industry-fighting truth seekers, whose noble role is to “defend the science”. In stark contrast, critics of the PHD are presented as basely-motivated. They are defamed as reliant on the meat industry’s financing and planning for launching a significant online “backlash”. This publication's argument is very close to calling for action to get rid of influential experts who have dared to contest the EAT-Lancet's scientific guidance (Stanton, 2025).
A biased “research” report with a covert agenda
As a communication event, the report is a patently transparent smear tool which seeks to create a digital pillory for the critics of the original EAT-Lancet 1999 reports’ many flaws (Hirvonen et al., 2020, Zagmutt et al. 2019, 2020). The Meat vs EAT-LANCET report is biased, its authorship is opaque, and its funding sources are hidden:
The obfuscation of funding sources is typical for the network funding man-made climate change research (Nordangård, 2024A), plus other projects that support of Agenda 2030 (Nordangård, 2024B). The Meat vs EAT-LANCET report does not disclose who its funders are, nor does it make an ethical acknowledgment for how that funding shapes its choice of subject and potential biases. The report is a co-production of two non-profits embedded within the Davocracy (Camus, 2022). Renaud Camus' neologism blends "Davos" (referring to the World Economic Forum and its global elites) with "-cracy," describing a managerial, cybernetic regime. Its financial powers—such as banks, multinational corporations and Big Tech - strive to exert sovereign control over human populations. This is facilitated via Global Public-Private Partnerships (GPPP) that stoke exaggerated fears, such as climate change catastrophism (West, 2023), that the GPPP's Social Development Goals (SDG) grant it the mandate to address. Dovetailing with this ideology, The Changing Markets Foundation strives to ‘shift market share away from unsustainable products and companies, and onto environmentally and socially beneficial solutions’.
Changing Market’s analysis in the Meat vs EAT-LANCET report was built off original research done by Ripple Research an “AI-for-Good advisory firm”, owned by the NPO Śrāvaṇa in Switzerland. Ripple is committed to ‘designing solutions for the most pressing global challenges and to effectuate enduring large-scale social impact through our unique Human+AI approach.’ Both non-profits are are bedfellows in having GPPP stakeholder clients who benefit directly from scientific dissent to their industries being miscast as “misinformation”. As part of an "Infodemic", all dissent versus climate change, mRNA vaccines and the WHO’s COVID-19 policies can be simplistically grouped. All such content becomes labelled as "misinformation" from amoral “misinfluencers", even when produced by eminent experts with decades of scholarship in their field! Such simplistic analysis for an "Infodemic" ignores the fact that disinformation, misinformation and malinformation (MDM) from authorities may well have far worse impacts than voices raising dissent, as was evident during COVID-19 (Noakes, Bell, & Noakes, 2022).
It the Meat vs EAT-LANCET report was ethical, it would disclose that its creation is riddled with conflicts of interest. Even with such disclosure, this negative PR exercise would not warrant being placed in the ‘research report’ genre. As an academic report, it would be desk-rejected as unworthy of peer review; it is not a fair-minded exploration of evidence, but merely serves to support a witch-hunt based on tendentious allegations stretched to seem credible. This is another hallmark of the smear, it salaciously works to confirm what a lot of people (e.g. vegetarians, vegans and processed food addicts) want to believe. A smear works by confirming its audiences' pre-existing suspicions (Attkisson, 2017, p.4). As Goebbels observed in his diary, propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident that they acting in their own free will. In this case, sympathetic readers are primed to ignore that it was not poor science that motivated the independent experts' critique. Instead they are asked to believe the Meat vs EAT-LANCET report's claim that the "potential of the report to lead to regulation and societal change" posed a serious threat to the interests of Big Meat and Dairy. In response it co-ordinated a 'significant online backlash – against the report’s findings and the Commission itself' (p.5).
Misinformation in the report regarding @ProfTimNoakes
Despite being four years in the making, the Meat vs EAT-LANCET report is riddled with errors and falsehoods. This post's focus is on the errors in my father's example, Emeritus Professor Tim Noakes, following the example of Dr Georgia Ede's line-by-line rebuttal on X.
Mentioned by name 18 times in the report, he is often referred to as “mis-influencer Tim Noakes”, instead of by his hard-earned academic titles (Dr or Emeritus Prof). The "mis-influencer" GPPP neologism describes ‘individuals or entities actively spreading or amplifying mis- or disinformation within digital spaces, to influence wider narratives and opinions'. (p.3) Presumably the report’s choice strives to hypnotise readers- hoping a lie repeated often enough becomes true. Smearing also demeans its target, following another tactic of Goebbels. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred. In this reports' case, all twenty mis-influencers are demeaned. At the same time, this open report's smear seems also to be an attempt at tying the term "mis-influencer" to "Tim Noakes" results via search engine results and AI answers that have crawled Meat vs EAT-LANCET's pages.
On page 14, the report shows that @ProfTimNoakes has not shared original tweets featuring the #ClimateFoodFacts or #Yes2Meat hashtags. The report asserts that the ClimateFoodFacts tag was co-ordinated via the Red Flag agency, “likely on behalf of” the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA). By its own criteria, this page suggests that Emeritus Professor Tim Noakes was NOT involved in the AAA influence campaign via Red Flag. He never posted any original (e.g. "sponsored") #Yes2Meat tweets.
Page 16’s two-sentence smear “biography” for the 'Doctor/health influencer' Tim Noakes alleges he has a “Career built out of promotion of high meat diets. Red Flag consulting identifies his content in a report back about the success of its campaign to discredit EAT-Lancet. He is also likely one of the ‘experts’ Red Flag refers to having briefed." Firstly, Emeritus Professor Tim Noakes only endorsed the low-carb lifestyle from 2010, having taught a high-carb diet for the previous thirty years of his academic career. To claim that his career was “built out” of promoting red meat is defamatory and false. Secondly, neither Emeritus Professor Tim Noakes nor The Noakes Foundation even knew that Red Flag consulting existed before the report. Nor has either ever been approached by the Animal Agriculture Alliance or any other of its representatives. Just as it is defamatory and false to term Tim Noakes a “mis-influencer”, it is also patently false to claim that he and/or his foundation have been paid to critique a seriously flawed EAT-Lancet report. That said, the Meat vs EAT-LANCET report does use plenty of hedging expressions and false innuendo, instead of factual statements. A wise choice, as the use of insinuation, not stating facts, protects the Changing Markets Foundation from being at risk for a defamation suit from this report's twenty targets.
On page 22, the report continues its smear of red meat funding collusion by asserting that Tim Noakes and other experts were identified as “relevant” to Red Flag’s campaign in its leaked document. Given the high Twitter visibility of @ProfTimNoakes and the other 19 accounts, it is not surprising that they would be mentioned in any report on influential low-carb, keto and/or carnivore lifestyle accounts. However, this should not be conflated with them being social media “influencers”- individuals desirous of using their large audience reach to peddle marketing campaigns for advertisers. Based on the Changing Markets Foundation and Ripple’s analysis of the engagement levels of these accounts, “it is likely that these are the ‘experts’ Red Flag highlights as having briefed and who ‘substantively engaged’ with criticising EAT!Lancet.” Again, the analysts hedge their false claims with “it is likely”, and do not not explain the basis for asserting such a "likelihood".
On page 29, "Tim Noakes" is described as a “Health influencer” here, rather than the doctor, scientist and academic (or Professor Emeritus) that he is. In contrast, page 36's section, Doctors, and health and wellness ‘experts’, acknowledges that “Tim Noakes” has medical training. But it claims that he, Shawn Baker and Gary Fettke have all had “issues with their medical licences because of the dietary advice they promote.” Again this is a false assertion, Emeritus Professor Tim Noakes has never had any concern with “issues” regarding his medical license. Any issues were in the minds of the diet dictators that tried, and failed, to end his academic career (Noakes and Sboros, 2022). Their attacks had no legitimate basis, and therefor no credible chance for success. Further, the claim that since Prof Noakes fell under the category of doctor mis-influencer that he “played a pivotal role in the pushback against EAT!Lancet, unleashing #Yes2Meat…” is false. As the report states on page 14, @ProfTimNoakes did not share original tweets featuring the #Yes2Meat hashtag.
Instead of focusing on Emeritus Professor Tim Noakes’ significant contribution to the academic literature on nutrition in page 37, the report’s profile for him one-sidedly focuses on controversies. This is a hallmark of authors more intent on writing a smear than preparing a balanced appraisal (Attkisson, 2017). For example, the Changing Markets Foundation writes: ‘Noakes was investigated by South African health authorities in 2014, after a dietician complained about a tweet in which he had told a mother she should wean her baby onto low-carbohydrate, high-fat foods. He was cleared of misconduct in April 2017.’
Another clear indicator of bias in The Changing Markets Foundation's and Ripple Research’s report lies on page 63. None of Professor Tim Noakes’ books or seminal articles are referenced in this one-sided bibliography. Perhaps if the reports"investigators" had read Challenging Beliefs, Waterlogged, Lore of Nutrition or Real Food on Trial, they would appreciate that Prof Noakes if highly critical of industry’s influence on science. A red flag (pun alert 😉!) that he is highly unlikely to be persuaded to participate in a paid-for campaign by Red Flag, or any other funder. Rather his participation in the debate is driven by a concern for the actual science that the EAT-LANCET Commission neglects. This is due to the false-beliefs associated with a plant-based, climate catastrophe ideology (well-described by West, 2023). It is therefor unsurprising that ‘Meat vs EAT-LANCET’ report is shockingly inaccurate, written to serve as the propaganda smear agenda of the EAT-LANCET Committee. As Dr Zoe Harcombe wisely stated, the report is “the very epitome of misinformation - disinformation indeed - of which it accuses others.”
A report mirroring the Davocracy groupthinkers' biases
The globalist group, EAT-Lancet, is a well-funded by NGOs and corporations. Like most GPPP linked charities, it is unaccountable to the public. Its funders are keen for a high -carbohydrate, mostly plant-based “planetary diet" to be prescribed everywhere, and for everyone. EAT-Lancet and its co-believers work primarily through cities to force/"nudge" reductions in red meat, aiming to drastically reduce livestock for reducing climate emissions. This planetary friendly diet is apparently intended to provide a scientific basis for a ’1.5 degree-aligned’ global food system. While beautifully designed by Pietro Bruni of www.toshi.ltd, this report’s tosh (pun #2 alert 😉!) conceals the funding money grabbing aims of researchers behind it. As too, the nefarious globalist agenda of GPPP stakeholders keen to sideline meat and dairy in favour of the industrial slop that its stakeholders would prefer we eat to “save the planet” (not incidentally reducing our health, boosting the wealth of billionaire "philanthropists", and aiding depopulation).
The GPPP has been criticised as being an unelected network of governments, corporations, and international organisations, that use manipulative control mechanisms to seize global resources and achieve economic dominance. Critics including civil society groups and organisations, such as Public Services International, have highlighted concerns with the GPPP. These include its lack of transparency, accountability, and undue private influence over public policy. The GPPP skirts these issues through deploying deceptive terminology. Terms like "inclusive," "sustainable," "equity," and "resilience" mask the GPPPs true intentions, promoting a false image of environmental care, whilst advancing a covert agenda. Notably, the GPPP has created an asset rating system tied to Sustainable Development Goals and Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics, that serve to support technocratic economic and social control by redefining and commodifying the "global commons." Hubristic claims like the "planetary diet" are all part of a well-considered propaganda approach to shape and control media discourse via definitional pattern control. The authors of the ‘Meat vs EAT-LANCET’ report use of the neologism "mis-influencer" serves as an example of this in enabling them to determine who falls under this new category, rather than speak to earlier examples. In addition to such control, another aim of the report is to serve as a wrap-up smear that can be linked in results from Search Engines, Artificial Intelligence chats, plus on Wikipedia to the twenty "mis-influencers" profiles. This is a contemporary tactic through which high-profile dissidents are targeted by the playbook of 'Big Food'... who copied and built on the Tobacco industry’s original edition (Brownell et al., 2009).
Online resources
Stanton, A. A. (2025, October 11, 2025). Understanding The EAT-Lancet 2.0. cluelessdoctors.com. Retrieved
10/14 from https://cluelessdoctors.com/2025/10/11/understanding-the-eat-lancet-2-0/
Books
Thursday, 4 September 2025
How to label DJ mixes in Apple Music and organise them into a playlist - an Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival exemplar
Bedroom DJ TraVice here- poorly tagged music files are a pet peeve of mine. I like 'em well-tagged for easy selection. Hopefully this post suggests the value of doing this with the example of a proper playlists creation from Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival's downloads: This Facebook community is dedicated to the 'past, present and future of the atmospheric genre’s sound', as championed by its pioneers LTJ Bukem & DJ Fabio from the early 1990’s. Building on facebook.com/share/g/16JMzzdxzA, this group’s leadership launched a mix series to showcase its community’s DJ mixing talent in 2023. At the time of writing, 20 mixes are available to stream off Soundcloud at soundcloud.com/atmosphericdrumandbass, with 13 offered for free downloaded (see example in Figure 1).
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| Figure 1. Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival soundcloud download selection |
In Apple Music a new playlist is simply created by pressing Apple and N at the same time. After downloading the mixes, they can be placed in a playlist by dragging them there from Songs, or simply right clicking on the mix and selecting <Add to playlist>, then choosing ’ Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival’.
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| Figure 2. Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival mixes playlist in Apple Music |
With all 13 mixes in the playlist (see Figure 2), it’s now time to improve the labelling of each mix. To improve on Figure 3’s example below, I must enter labels into DJ Illesta’s mix’s fields.
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| Figure 3. DJ Illesta Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival 1 Apple Music info's starting point |
There's much that can be added- artist, album, album artist composer, year, rating, bpm and comments. The extent of which depends on your interest(s). Likewise some labelling choices will be fairly subjective. Take genre for example, I use “drum and bass”, because most of this genre in my library defaults to the softer atmospheric style. However, aficionados of the hard jungle style may choose that to be their default. They may also prefer using DnB or drum & bass, while I use “drum and bass - hardstep” for grittier tracks/mixes.
It’s also important to appreciate that Apple Music’s labelling/tagging system is not designed around labelling DJ mix-sets. This is a meta-problem, since DJs are musicians whose medium is often a blend of other musical artists’ production and sounds. Apple Music’s labelling is understandably geared to the latter’s conventional works. It would struggle to cope with the "meta-mentalness" of a DJ doing a continuous remix of another DJs productions and remixes- for example, try labelling the producer DJ Lenzman’s 2020 mix of DJ Redeyes' tracks!
With an academic hat on, this challenge suggests the multimodal difficulty of labelling DJ’s music work via Apple Music (and iTunes)'s textual labels. Its indexing system caters to original musicians/composers, versus producers, remixers and DJs. For example, there is no dedicated option for adding a DJs setlist. Instead one can appropriate <Comments> (for very short set-lists) or <Custom Lyrics> (for more typical ones, eg. over thirty minutes). Since Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival provides setlists for each mix, these are easy enough to copy-and-paste as “Custom Lyrics”- see Figure 4.
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| Figure 4. DJ Illesta Atmospheric Drum & Bass Apple Music track listing in lyrics |
Since there is no <DJ> identifier, I often add DJ before an artist's name. This makes it easier to select from DJs under the Artists view, depending on one’s mood… Also for a mix of one artist’s work by another DJ (such as Sasha’s “Voyage of Ima” remix of producer BT’s album), it seems apt to use “Composer” to reflect the DJ’s role. {That said, for popular/mainstream DJs, I do lose the DJ to ensure Apple Music manages them by their artist name}.
Figure 5 shows what the completed details page looks like- much better than Figure 2's starting point!
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| Figure 5. DJ Illesta Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival 1 Apple Music info complete + cover |
Working to update the labels of many files is a schlep, so speed things up by creating a cut-and-paste file. This also helps ensure consistency across labelling.
My txt file simply contained the:
Album title format
0# Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series - DJ
Album
0# Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series
Grouping
Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series
Date
Track
1
In each song, I set the track number to be 1 of 1 to reflect an entire DJ's mix. In contrast, the disc number follows the Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival mix series' order, e.g. disc number of 1 to start my curation of 13. This seems apt in being similar to the sequential serialisation of podcasts.
N.B. As you work to add information to each "song" please note that these updates do not automatically reflect in your Apple Music playlist’s display. So, click to another list, then return to yours for updating its view.
And here’s Figure 6's end result- an Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival playlist with all mixes extensively labelled, plus all album covers added.
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| Figure 6. Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series playlist with full information |
Fellow trainspotters welcome to rant-&-RAVE in the moderated comments below 👇
Posts
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