Deciphering Digital Trails: Ashton Forbes on the new MH370 Internet Investigation

In March 2014, the world watched in collective disbelief and growing concern as Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 mysteriously vanished from radar screens, sparking one of the most extensive search operations in aviation history.

The flight, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, never reached its destination. Despite considerable efforts from multiple nations, the Boeing 777's whereabouts remain largely unknown, leaving behind a trail of questions and a void that theories and speculations have sought to fill.

New findings, including remarkable footage purportedly from a US drone and satellite, have breathed new life into the discussions and speculations surrounding this lasting air travel enigma.

This refreshed theory explores the mysterious domain of UAPs, a term recently brought into the spotlight by Retired Maj. David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer, during congressional testimonies.

Initial conversations and footage about MH370, alongside purported UAP encounters, first re-appeared on Reddit, later transitioned to 4Chan, and have since spread to X/Twitter.

Today Mr. Fireside sits down with Ashton Forbes, the digital-citizen-investigator who has recently delved into the online realm to unravel the intricacies of this mystery.

Hello! Who are you, and what do you do?

Hi, I’m Ashton Forbes. I’m the organizer of MH370x, a group dedicated to solving the mystery of the MH370 videos that reemerged in August, after having been on the internet for 9+ years.

What's your backstory, and how did MH370X come about?

I saw the videos on Reddit and started collecting the various analyses I saw the community put together. When I saw the proof that the satellite video was a Citrix session logged into the actual spy database, I decided I would start writing about them and working on the story. I started gaining a following and became the defacto spokesperson for the authenticity of the videos. I realized it would be difficult to impeach me, I was never part of the UFO community before seeing these videos. I have always looked into airplane crashes because I found them interesting and was never satisfied with the conclusion for MH370. Even before I saw these videos I knew the US Government had to know what really happened.

A rogue 777 doesn’t just go missing in a post-9/11 world.

Describe the process of investigating MH370.

My strategy has been meticulously planned in order to leave no doubt as to the authenticity of the videos. I’ve watched whistleblowers that have been attacked like Bob Lazar and David Grusch and realized that the mainstream media would never give these videos a platform as it implicates them directly in the coverup. Instead, we had to build a following that was well-informed as to the evidence that cannot be denied.

My following has steadily grown, and after The Confessionals podcast and revealing my full identity, exploded. I went from 30 followers 2 months ago to 5100 now, and growing each day. Now we have more engagement than accounts 10x our size. Everything we’ve done has been sleuthing on the internet, pulling old deleted web archives, or just research from the time of the incident. I don’t do anything anymore except my normal job and research MH370, though one day I’d like to go back to being a normal person when we get the answers we seek. The MH370x team is based out of our discord and it’s a very respectful place. There are some really dedicated and intelligent people pulling information I would have never found myself.

Now the good stuff.

Why do you think what we’re seeing on video, 3 orbs dancing around a plane before it vanishes is real, and why do you think this is MH370?

The videos are real due to the evidence we’ve provided.

The Citrix session proof negates all prosaic explanations. But I know that’s not enough because many people are close-minded and believe what the TV tells them is true. So we’ve established the assets filming, the location, the time, a witness, and the person who likely leaked the videos, AND we’ve now shown that it was likely an emergency event from a fire with the 221kg of lithium-ion batteries in the cargo hold.

We follow the scientific method. Come up with a theory/hypothesis, then try to use the evidence we can find to support that theory and fit it within the story. We only exclude evidence if we find it not credible or not supported by any facts, such as the idea that the plane crashed into the ocean without leaving a debris field, which is impossible.

I question my own understanding of the videos every single day. To date, there’s been not a single reason to doubt the authenticity of the videos, and I find that very telling.

I would show a judge the flyover of USA-229 with its sister satellite pair and the 3D video and have the judge wear blue and red glasses to watch it. Then I would give them the list of requirements to fake the videos within the time period of just 4 days. I would show them the anomalous Inmarsat ping data at 18:40UTC, the same time as the satellite video and the quotes from the company themselves that showed they didn’t even believe their own data.

Finally, I would explain how the SOSUS system heard the Titan sub implode and the Navy lied about it for 5 days while the oxygen counters went down on national TV, and that the same system would have heard MH370 hit the ocean but didn’t. I’d also then give them the evidence that 19 family members could call the cell phones of the victims including one on live television.

What about the debunkers, there are some people who say that this is a hoax and they point to things like the wormhole being a visual effect that has been edited in.

The #1 ‘debunk’ is the ‘VFX’ debunk that a sock puppet 1-day-old account on Reddit posted without defending that has been linked to Mick West of metabunk. He is the only real person to claim to have found the effect from an obscure 90s video game, in under one day, after repeatedly stating he wouldn’t look into the videos. He was forced to because the momentum that they were real became overwhelming.

As to the 2D, low-quality, VFX itself, it objectively doesn’t match as a statement of fact, not even on a single frame. All dispersion patterns are similar, but it doesn’t make them the same.

All anyone has to say to debunk this is “How many pixels match,” and no one has answered the question to date because it would prove them to be a liar showing the effects don’t match. Furthermore, a 2D effect can’t be used in a 3D rendering, which would be required to fake multiple perspectives in perfect synchronicity. The VFX is not even the same color. The VFX effect is a white explosion. Our videos are a dark, black, cold event. There’s no basis for a hoaxer to even think to make the videos look as they do. Lastly, even if it were a match, which it’s not, it wouldn’t debunk the videos.

They’re still real videos of MH370 where the US government lied.

Tell us about the families of the passengers. Have any of them reached out to you?

I reached out to all the family members I could find from the Netflix documentary on Twitter after several weeks and respectfully told them about the videos and that they could ask me any questions. None have responded to date. 19 of the victim’s family members signed a statement saying they could call the phones of the victims and as far as I can tell it was not responded to nor did they try to trace the phones, which should have been possible if they could ring.

You’ve mentioned an image that Chinese authorities shared at the time which also showed orbs, tell us about this image.

Just google ‘Chinese Satellite MH370’ and you’ll find the image. It was reported in Western media as ‘debris’ but no debris was found thereupon the search. If you look at this picture it looks like 3 orbs in a triangle formation. Not sure what the purpose of this was but it feels like a spycraft.

The Phillip Wood 4Chan post is odd, tell us about it.

I rebuked this picture using a source I found online that showed that the picture is not modified and consistent with what a real picture and real EXIF data would look like. Mick West objectively lied when debunking this photo.

Conclusions

1. Any photo taken using iPhone 5 and later edited using Picasa software does not result in the 'Picasa' ASCII string being inserted into the "Software" IFD entry data*, unlike what is seen in the 1395192158752.jpg photo.*

2. When non-standard camera app features in a smartphone or the camera inside an app like Picasa Web Albums App are used to take a picture, it can result in the shorter 2 coordinates (Latitude and Longitude) format GPS info being stored in the EXIF data. This would definitely be the case when the GPS info was added later by the app, because of the unavailability of the GPS satellite signal when the photo was taken.

3. Since, in the "Software" IFD entry data seen in the 1395192158752.jpg photo, the 'Picasa' ASCII string is present as one of the strings in the 6-string format characteristic of an iPhone photo, the software that inserted this string into the image must have been aware that this image was taken using an iPhone and so in all likelihood, it was the Picasa Web Albums App on Phillip's iPhone 5*, which inserted that string into the "Software" IFD entry data.* So, this was an authentic post from Philip's iPhone and it is in alignment with the fact that the original post was deleted, most likely, when Philip's captors found out about it and confiscated the iPhone, using which they could have deleted the original post.

https://x.com/JustXAshton/status/1706761097053688291?s=20

Knowing what you know now, why would someone do this? What would their motivation be?

Given the new evidence of the lithium battery fire, the rationale would seem to be to save the airplane from certain doom. Whether or not you believe it was done to save the VIPs with reverse-engineered technology or Non-Human Intelligence, I leave it to the community to decide.

Where do you think the plane is now?

It's the place Marc Dugain, Kate Tee, and pretty much every conspiracy theory claimed it went. Diego Garcia.

It's one of the only places that can hide a 777. It's in the middle of the Indian Ocean and not open to commercial craft. They had no departures for 3 days after March 8th, 2014. There are doppelgangers on the island for both pilots and all the crew. The Phillip Wood EXIF data that Mick West falsely debunked, and I rebunked, is not fake, and points to Diego Garcia. He made a message on 4chan claiming to be drugged and held prisoner.

What if you are wrong about all this?

That won’t happen. It’s been 9 years. They searched everywhere already where the plane could even have theoretically gone. I’m 100% confident. It would have happened by now.

Where do you see this story of MH370 (MH370x) going next?

We’ll keep going until we get an admission from the US Government that the videos are real, or until the entire world knows the official story is a lie, whichever comes first.

How do we know you’re not some 3 letter agent?

None of the evidence requires trusting me. People who lie tell you what to think. I simply present the evidence and let you come to your own conclusions on what to believe. I don’t string people along and I always deliver.

Where can we go to learn more?

@JustXAshton on Twitter. Our Subreddit, /r/MH370x was falsely banned by people who hope to silence us. You can find my content on /r/conspiracy on occasion, I’m u/additional_ad3796.

Thank you, Ashton!

Mr. Fireside.

Also published here.