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Category: Social media

How right-wing information warfare works

How right-wing information warfare works

Greg Sargent writes: By now it should be obvious that for large swaths of the right-wing media ecosystem, the Triggering of the Libs has become an end in itself. In the brutal competition of the so-called attention economy, provoking large-scale outrage and loathing is not an incidental feature of making controversial arguments. It has become a key marker of success. Over the weekend, Elon Musk called for the prosecution of Anthony S. Fauci, the leading infectious-disease expert in the Biden…

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Elon Musk uses QAnon tactic in criticizing former Twitter safety chief

Elon Musk uses QAnon tactic in criticizing former Twitter safety chief

The Washington Post reports: Elon Musk escalated his battle of words with previous managers of Twitter into risky new territory over the weekend, allying himself with far-right crusaders against a purported epidemic of child sex abuse and implying that the company’s former head of trust and safety had a permissive view of sexual activity by minors. Musk told more than 30,000 listeners in a live Twitter Spaces audio session Friday night that he recently discovered that child sex abuse material…

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Elon Musk is a far-right activist — one tweet says it all

Elon Musk is a far-right activist — one tweet says it all

Charlie Warzel writes: If there’s one tweet that will tell you everything you need to know about Elon Musk, it’s this one from early this morning: My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022 In five words, Musk manages to mock transgender and nonbinary people, signal his disdain for public-health officials, and send up a flare to far-right shitposters and trolls. The tweet is a cruel and senseless play on pronouns that also invokes the right’s fury…

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Elon Musk uses Twitter for partisan ends so he can denounce Twitter’s use for partisan ends

Elon Musk uses Twitter for partisan ends so he can denounce Twitter’s use for partisan ends

Eric Levitz writes: Twitter is not what it seems. The social media platform poses as a neutral marketplace for the exchange of ideas and information; an agora where journalists, politicians, academics, cultural icons, business titans, and ordinary citizens can engage in a dialogue unbounded by gatekeeping elites. But it is actually a tool of progressive power. While you were hypnotized by viral memes, a cabal of social-justice STEM majors seized the commanding heights of the attention economy. And they have…

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Musk and Taibbi said ‘Twitter Files’ revealed a political scandal, but the information itself did the opposite

Musk and Taibbi said ‘Twitter Files’ revealed a political scandal, but the information itself did the opposite

Nicholas Grossman writes: It was hyped as a big revelation, proof of a political conspiracy. Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk gave journalist Matt Taibbi access to some of Twitter’s internal communications from before he took over, saying they would show “what really happened with the Hunter Biden story suppression,” referring to an October 2020 New York Post article about a laptop allegedly belonging to then presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son. Musk promised it’d be “awesome.” Conservative media figures, Elon Musk…

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Musk brings one of America’s most prominent Nazis back to Twitter

Musk brings one of America’s most prominent Nazis back to Twitter

Rolling Stone reports: Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin has been reinstated to Twitter under Elon Musk’s new policies for the platform. The founder of the white supremacist website The Daily Stormer had been banned from Twitter since 2013. Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, who was booted off Twitter in 2013, has had his account restored. pic.twitter.com/sEv5UDVUw2 — Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) December 2, 2022 Anglin has publicly indicated that the goal of his operation and adherence to white nationalist ideology is to “ethnically cleanse White nations…

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Surging Twitter antisemitism unites fringe, encourages violence, officials say

Surging Twitter antisemitism unites fringe, encourages violence, officials say

The Washington Post reports: Current and former federal officials are warning that a surge in hate speech and disinformation about Jews on Twitter is uniting and popularizing some of the same extremists who have helped push people to engage in violent protests including the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress. The officials are predicting that Twitter will contribute to more violence in the months ahead, citing the proliferation of extreme content, including support for genocidal Nazis by celebrities with wide…

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Hate speech’s rise on Twitter is unprecedented, researchers find

Hate speech’s rise on Twitter is unprecedented, researchers find

The New York Times reports: Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day. Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day. And antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61…

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Left-wing voices are silenced on Twitter as far-right trolls advise Elon Musk

Left-wing voices are silenced on Twitter as far-right trolls advise Elon Musk

The Intercept reports: Elon Musk claims to be “fighting for free speech in America” but the social network’s new owner appears to be overseeing a purge of left-wing activists from the platform. Several prominent antifascist organizers and journalists have had their accounts suspended in the past week, after right-wing operatives appealed directly to Musk to ban them and far-right internet trolls flooded Twitter’s complaints system with false reports about terms of service violations. As the Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike…

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Twitter not safer under Elon Musk, says former head of trust and safety

Twitter not safer under Elon Musk, says former head of trust and safety

Reuters reports: Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth on Tuesday said the social media company was not safer under new owner Elon Musk, warning in his first interview since resigning this month that the company no longer had enough staff for safety work. Roth had tweeted after Musk’s takeover that by some measures, Twitter safety had improved under the billionaire’s ownership. Asked in an interview at the Knight Foundation conference on Tuesday whether he still felt that…

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Elon Musk is turning Twitter into a haven for Nazis

Elon Musk is turning Twitter into a haven for Nazis

Vice News reports: Twitter has a problem with white supremacist and neo-Nazi content proliferating on the platform—and Elon Musk is making that problem worse. In recent days, the platform’s new CEO has reactivated the accounts of known neo-Nazis; shared a picture of a white supremacist who said he’d like Trump to be more like Hitler; failed to prevent users from posting videos of the Christchurch massacre; tweeted a popular alt-right meme; used a known antisemitic trope; and, inadvertently or not,…

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Musk says Apple threatened to remove Twitter from App Store

Musk says Apple threatened to remove Twitter from App Store

The Washington Post reports: Elon Musk on Monday went on a tear against Apple, Twitter’s top advertiser, after he said the company threatened to block the social network from its App Store without explanation and mostly had stopped advertising on Twitter. Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022 The tirade underscored the immense power that Apple, the world’s most valuable company, wields over the…

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Twitter grapples with Chinese spam obscuring news of protests

Twitter grapples with Chinese spam obscuring news of protests

The Washington Post reports: Twitter’s radically reduced anti-propaganda team grappled on Sunday with a flood of nuisance content in China that researchers said was aimed at reducing the flow of news about stunning widespread protests against coronavirus restrictions. Numerous Chinese-language accounts, some dormant for months or years, came to life early Sunday and started spamming the service with links to escort services and other adult offerings alongside city names. The result: For hours, anyone searching for posts from those cities…

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‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts

‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts

The Washington Post reports: Elon Musk plans to reinstate nearly all previously banned Twitter accounts — to the alarm of activists and online trust and safety experts. After posting a Twitter poll asking, “Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” in which 72.4 percent of the respondents voted yes, Musk declared, “Amnesty begins next week.” The Twitter CEO did not respond Thursday to a request…

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Twitter is becoming Elon

Twitter is becoming Elon

John Herrman writes: In government, there are numerous terms for rule-by-guy, most of which bring to mind repression, suffering, and cultishness — “I alone can fix it,” etc. But it’s a common enough way to run companies, which tend to be internally authoritarian. Plenty of businesses are clear and direct extensions of their founders’ or executives’ desires, whims, and flaws, although few operate at such a massive scale or under such a well-known figure. In a 2018 Wired investigation into…

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Chaos on Twitter leads a group of journalists to start an alternative on Mastodon

Chaos on Twitter leads a group of journalists to start an alternative on Mastodon

The New York Times reports: It’s one thing to hope for a better community online, and another, very different one, to build it. Just ask the users and administrators of journa.host, which was started by journalists concerned over the direction of Twitter. “Come on in, the water’s confusing but fine — and more swimmable,” the journalist Virginia Heffernan wrote on journa.host on Nov. 6. On Nov. 7 the MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan posted: “I feel like a new kid in…

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