# Dave Troy Dave Troy is an American tech entrepreneur turned investigative journalist and disinformation researcher, based in Baltimore. He is the principal modern proponent of [[The Octopus]] frame, having revived and broadened it in his 2021 series [[The Big History Behind January 6th]]. ## Background A serial founder since the 1980s (his ventures included the early ISP ToadNet and the email startup 410 Labs), Troy began studying social-media data around 2007 and is credited as one of the first developers to build on the Twitter API; his data-visualization work was shown at MoMA and TED. He later pivoted to network analysis of online extremism and threats to democracy, affiliating with New America and curating TEDxMidAtlantic. ## The Octopus revival Troy's six-part Medium series [[The Big History Behind January 6th]] (2021) culminates, in Part 4, in an explicit revival of the Octopus metaphor, drawing a line from [[Danny Casolaro]] and [[Mark Lombardi]] to contemporary intelligence, oil, finance, and Russian-aligned networks he argues lay behind [[January 6 Capitol Attack]]. ## Epistemic status Troy's biography and authorship are documented. His network-mapping conclusions are interpretive synthesis, not adjudicated fact, and the deaths he weaves into the lineage (Casolaro, Lombardi) were officially ruled suicides. He himself foregrounds caveats -- "groups are not monoliths" -- a stance this vault preserves. ## See also - [[The Octopus]] - [[The Big History Behind January 6th]] - [[Danny Casolaro]] - [[Mark Lombardi]]