The New York Times reports: Four days into the war in Ukraine, Russia’s expansive surveillance and censorship apparatus was already hard at work. Roughly 800 miles east of Moscow, authorities in the Republic of Bashkortostan, one of Russia’s 85 regions, were busy tabulating the mood of comments in social media messages. They marked down YouTube… Read More »
Ellen Barry reports: Linda Sarsour awoke on Jan. 23, 2017, logged onto the internet, and felt sick. The weekend before, she had stood in Washington at the head of the Women’s March, a mobilization against President Donald J. Trump that surpassed all expectations. Crowds had begun forming before dawn, and by the time she climbed… Read More »
Noah Berlatsky and Aaron Rupar write: Ukraine’s successes have made right wing Putin apologists look like fools, bounders, and quislings. Tucker Carlson, all-purpose fascist shill, has constantly insisted that Putin’s victory is inevitable — refusing to change his line even after the most recent defeat. Tucker: By any actual reality based measure, Vladimir Putin is… Read More »
Vice News reports: Former President Donald Trump has now shared his most explicit endorsement of the QAnon conspiracy movement to date. Trump shared a picture of himself wearing a Q lapel pin, overlaid with the QAnon phrases “The Storm is Coming” and “WWG1WGA,” on his Truth Social account on Monday evening. The post was originally… Read More »
The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump has failed to win another vote — this time, from the shareholders of an investment ally his social network Truth Social had been counting on for cash. Digital World Acquisition, a special-purpose acquisition company, said Thursday it had not yet gained enough shareholder votes to extend its… Read More »
Mark Scott writes: Ivana Stradner opened her iPhone and typed a simple call-to-arms: Unleash the hounds. A Washington think-tanker and an expert in Russian propaganda, Stradner is also a member of NAFO — or the North Atlantic Fellas Organization — an informal alliance of internet culture warriors, national security experts and ordinary Twitter users weaponizing… Read More »
The New York Times reports: In a 24-hour period this week, former President Donald J. Trump posted to his social media platform, Truth Social, 88 times, amplifying one conspiracy theory after another. Among his unsupported claims: A retiring F.B.I. agent was behind both the search of his Mar-a-Lago property on Aug. 8 and the investigation… Read More »
CNN reports: Twitter has major security problems that pose a threat to its own users’ personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy, according to an explosive whistleblower disclosure obtained exclusively by CNN and The Washington Post. The disclosure, sent last month to Congress and federal agencies, paints a picture of a… Read More »
Sophie Fullerton writes: Last November, around the same time the Irish travel vlogger Janet Newenham was filming videos of her strolls through Damascus and Aleppo, five members of a family, including three children, were killed in a Russian airstrike in northwest Syria. But none of Newenham’s 170,000 YouTube subscribers would have learned that from her… Read More »
Kevin Roose writes: It would be too simple to blame (or credit) Mr. Jones for inspiring the entire modern cranksphere. But it’s safe to say that many of today’s leading conspiracy theorists have found the same profitable sweet spot of lies and entertainment value. It’s also probable that we’ve become desensitized to conspiracy theories, and… Read More »
Farhad Manjoo writes: Early in 2009, I offered the world some tech advice that I have regretted pretty much ever since: I told everyone to join Facebook. Actually, that’s putting it mildly. I didn’t just tell people. I harangued. I mocked. Writing in Slate, I all but reached through the screen, grabbed Facebook skeptics by… Read More »
The Associated Press reports: The global public relations firm Edelman has conducted surveys about public trust for more than two decades, beginning after the 1999 World Trade Organization’s meeting in Seattle was marred by anti-globalization riots. Tonia Reis, director of Edelman’s Trust Barometer surveys, said trust is a precious commodity that’s vital for the economy… Read More »
Politico reports: Elon Musk officially terminated a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter on Friday, a move that would appear to dash the hopes of former President Donald Trump and his supporters that the social media platform would loosen content restrictions that have frustrated conservatives. The move spurred fresh attacks on Twitter’s existing management, including… Read More »
The New York Times reports: In the months since President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called the invasion of Ukraine a “denazification” mission, the lie that the government and culture of Ukraine are filled with dangerous “Nazis” has become a central theme of Kremlin propaganda about the war. A data set of nearly eight million… Read More »
The Observer reports: A network of more than two dozen conspiracy theorists, frequently backed by a coordinated Russian campaign, sent thousands of disinformation tweets to distort the reality of the Syrian conflict and deter intervention by the international community, new analysis reveals. Data gathered by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) identified a network of… Read More »
The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump’s supporters scrambled to defend him online in the hours after the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings began, seeking to sow doubt about his involvement via the same social media channels that had captured clear evidence linking him to the Capitol assault. In so doing, they reinforced the unmistakable… Read More »