Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: The user on Gab who identifies as Nora Berka resurfaced in August after a yearlong silence on the social media platform, reposting a handful of messages with sharply conservative political themes before writing a stream of original vitriol. The posts mostly denigrated President Biden and other prominent Democrats, sometimes obscenely. They also lamented the use of taxpayer dollars to support Ukraine in its war against invading Russian forces, depicting Ukraine’s president as a caricature straight…

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The Washington Post reports: Devastating cuts to Twitter’s workforce on Friday, four days before the midterm elections, are fueling anxieties among political campaigns and election offices that have counted on the social network’s staff to help them combat violent threats and viral lies. The mass layoffs Friday gutted teams devoted to combating election misinformation, adding context to misleading tweets and communicating with journalists, public officials and campaign staff. The layoffs included a number of people who were scheduled to be…

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Knight Foundation: More than half of all Americans (58%) say they are somewhat or very concerned that people in their community could be deceived by election disinformation. But at the same time, few think they will fall victim themselves: only 27% say they might fall victim to false or misleading information, while 25% say misleading information might sway their decisions at the polls. This pattern holds across party lines. Most Democrats, Republicans and Independents feel confident they won’t be misled…

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NBC News reports: Mass layoffs at Twitter on Friday battered the teams primarily responsible for keeping the platform free of misinformation, potentially hobbling the company’s capabilities four days before the end of voting in Tuesday’s midterm elections, one current and six former Twitter employees familiar with the cuts told NBC News, five of whom were recently laid off. Two former Twitter employees and one current employee warned that could bring chaos around the elections, as the layoffs hit especially hard…

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Yair Rosenberg writes: [M]ost of Twitter’s pathologies that people are pinning on Musk predate his ownership. I know this from personal experience. During the 2016 presidential-election campaign, I was inundated with anti-Semitic invective on Twitter over my critical commentary on Donald Trump’s candidacy. An Anti-Defamation League study found that I received the second-most abuse of Jewish commentators on the site during that cycle. Twitter subsequently vowed to clean up its act, but though some strides were made, most anti-Semitic bigotry…

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Kaitlyn Tiffany writes: When Donald Trump was banned from Twitter in January 2021, it was obvious that he would have to find somewhere else to post. His own platform, Truth Social, was still a distant dream, so he had to choose one of the “alt-tech” platforms hosting professed free-speech absolutists, vaccine skeptics, Hunter Biden obsessives, and MAGA shitposters. He could have gone to Parler, where much of the pregaming for the January 6 riot took place, or Gab, where an…

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Siva Vaidhyanathan writes: It took less than 48 hours for Elon Musk to reveal just how dangerous his new toy can be to this world. Replying to a tweet from former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the man worth more than $210bn with more than 112 million Twitter followers spread a dangerous conspiracy theory intended to distract people from an attempted political assassination just one week before a major US election. Clinton had warned that “the Republican party and…

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Politico reports: Even as Republican leaders condemn the brutal assault on Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s husband, other GOP figures are broadcasting a much different message on social media — at turns downplaying, mocking and trading in disinformation about the attack. Former Republican President Donald Trump has so far remained silent online about the Pelosi home invasion, but his son Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a proposed “Paul Pelosi” Halloween costume featuring men’s underwear and a hammer, saying “The Internet remains undefeated.” Rep….

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The Washington Post reports: In 2010, Republicans launched a “Fire Pelosi” project — complete with a bus tour, a #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames — devoted to retaking the House and demoting Pelosi from her perch as speaker. Eleven years later, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joked that if he becomes the next leader of the House, “it will be hard not to hit” Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel. And…

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The Washington Post reports: Longtime watchdogs of antisemitism say there is nothing new about the kinds of derogatory comments about Jews that the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, former president Donald Trump, sundry far-right political candidates and others have made in recent weeks. But what has struck some experts is how blatant the comments about Jews are at a time when incidents of harassment, vandalism and violence against them have been at their highest levels since at least…

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