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Category: Social media

Sandy Hook families are fighting Alex Jones and the bankruptcy system itself

Sandy Hook families are fighting Alex Jones and the bankruptcy system itself

The New York Times reports: The Infowars conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones, who faces more than $1.4 billion in legal damages for defaming the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, has devised a new way to taunt them: wriggling out of paying them the money they are owed. Mr. Jones, who has an estimated net worth as high as $270 million, declared both business and personal bankruptcy last year as the families won historic verdicts in two lawsuits over his…

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Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate

Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate

The Associated Press reports: Soon after a train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals in Ohio last month, anonymous pro-Russian accounts started spreading misleading claims and anti-American propaganda about it on Twitter, using Elon Musk’s new verification system to expand their reach while creating the illusion of credibility. The accounts, which parroted Kremlin talking points on myriad topics, claimed without evidence that authorities in Ohio were lying about the true impact of the chemical spill. The accounts spread fearmongering posts that…

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Dallas Humber, narrator of neo-Nazi ‘Terrorgram,’ promoter of mass shootings

Dallas Humber, narrator of neo-Nazi ‘Terrorgram,’ promoter of mass shootings

Christopher Mathias reports: On Oct. 12, 2022, Juraj Krajčík used a laser-sighted gun to open fire outside a popular LGBTQ bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, killing two queer people and wounding a third. “Feeling no regrets, isn’t that funny?” he tweeted. He killed himself a short time later. The 19-year-old had also tweeted a link to a 65-page screed he’d authored advocating the genocide of queer people, Jewish people and Black people. Krajčík mimicked and cited the writings of other white…

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Elon Musk defends Scott Adams’ racism

Elon Musk defends Scott Adams’ racism

The Washington Post reports: Twitter and Tesla chief Elon Musk defended Scott Adams, the under-fire creator of “Dilbert,” in a series of tweets Sunday, blasting media organizations for dropping his comic strip after Adams said that White people should “get the hell away from Black people.” Replying to tweets about the controversy, Musk said it is actually the media that is “racist against whites & Asians.” He offered no criticism of Adams’s comments, in which the cartoonist called Black people…

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How retired U.S. Colonel Douglas Macgregor serves as a propagandist for Vladimir Putin

How retired U.S. Colonel Douglas Macgregor serves as a propagandist for Vladimir Putin

Polygraph.info reports: On February 15, Russia’s RIA Novosti state news agency quoted retired U.S. Colonel Douglas Macgregor’s interview with the “Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom” program, streamed on YouTube that same day. The Russian translation of Macgregor’s claim isn’t precise but represents his ideas accurately: “We just don’t have ammunition to send. We have reached the limit; our own reserves are rapidly coming to an end.” This statement is misleading and fits into the Kremlin’s anti-U.S. and anti-Ukraine propaganda targeting…

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How Putin’s Russian goon squad used Mexican gig workers to troll an American election

How Putin’s Russian goon squad used Mexican gig workers to troll an American election

Mattathias Schwartz reports: In March 2020, a freelance writer in Mexico City was browsing the internet at home when he saw an ad for a self-described “social media” company that was looking for writers to post messages online. The company didn’t appear to have a name. Instead, there was a WhatsApp number and an address for an account on an encrypted email service. “Fluent English is a must,” the ad emphasized. The freelancer — I’ll call him Carlos — thought…

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Punished by despotic regimes for nothing more than speaking out on social media

Punished by despotic regimes for nothing more than speaking out on social media

An editorial in the Washington Post says: On Feb. 27, 2022, Danuta Perednya, a 21-year old university student, reposted a message on the social media app Telegram criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for the war in Ukraine. On Dec. 28, 2020, a young Saudi woman, Salma al-Shehab, tweeted an appeal to release Loujain al-Hathloul, an activist who was in prison for seeking the right of women to drive in the kingdom. In October, a 19-year-old…

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Snowden and Hersh: Useful idiots, posing as political dissidents, promote disinformation for Russia

Snowden and Hersh: Useful idiots, posing as political dissidents, promote disinformation for Russia

TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency, reports: The situation around three unidentified flying objects that were shot down over North America is designed to distract reporters’ attention from the investigation into the sabotage on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, former NSA (National Security Agency) employee and whistleblower Edward Snowden said on Monday. “I wish it were aliens, but it’s not aliens,” Snowden wrote on Twitter on Monday, commenting on the downing of balloons and UFOs in the United States and…

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Steve Bannon’s ‘War Room’ podcast is top misinformation spreader, study says

Steve Bannon’s ‘War Room’ podcast is top misinformation spreader, study says

The New York Times reports: When Stephen K. Bannon, the White House strategist turned podcaster, was explaining the latest Covid-19 developments in 2021, he passed the microphone to a special guest: Clay Clark, an evangelist and anti-vaccine activist. For nearly 10 minutes, Mr. Clark rattled off one false and misleading statement after another. Covid is “100 percent treatable” with hydroxychloroquine and other drugs. (No.) Covid vaccines are filled with fetal tissue. (False.) Concentration camps are coming. (Nope.) Bill Gates owns…

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Twitter kept entire ‘database’ of Republican requests to censor posts

Twitter kept entire ‘database’ of Republican requests to censor posts

Rolling Stone reports: When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down. That exchange — revealed during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on Twitter by Rep. Gerry Connolly — and others like it are nowhere…

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How deepfake videos are used to spread disinformation

How deepfake videos are used to spread disinformation

The New York Times reports: In one video, a news anchor with perfectly combed dark hair and a stubbly beard outlined what he saw as the United States’ shameful lack of action against gun violence. In another video, a female news anchor heralded China’s role in geopolitical relations at an international summit meeting. But something was off. Their voices were stilted and failed to sync with the movement of their mouths. Their faces had a pixelated, video-game quality and their…

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In social-media exile, Trump has increasingly amplified extremism

In social-media exile, Trump has increasingly amplified extremism

The New York Times reports: In September, former President Donald J. Trump went on Truth Social, his social network, and shared an image of himself wearing a lapel pin in the form of the letter Q, along with a phrase closely associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory movement: “The storm is coming.” In doing so, Mr. Trump ensured that the message — first posted by a QAnon-aligned account — would be hugely amplified, visible to his more than four million…

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Facebook was a cash cow for Trump. It could end up being a ‘bronze goose’

Facebook was a cash cow for Trump. It could end up being a ‘bronze goose’

Politico reports: Trump was suspended from Facebook for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 riot in early 2021. But the suspension wasn’t permanent and Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said earlier this week that it would be lifted soon. “President Trump should have never been banned, so getting back on this platform allows the campaign access to that universe once again,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. “We are getting closer to the full spectrum of building…

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Elon Musk bows to pressure from India to censor BBC documentary critical of Modi

Elon Musk bows to pressure from India to censor BBC documentary critical of Modi

The Intercept reports: Twitter and YouTube censored a report critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in coordination with the government of India. Officials called for the Big Tech companies to take action against a BBC documentary exploring Modi’s role in a genocidal 2002 massacre in the Indian state of Gujarat, which the officials deemed a “propaganda piece.” In a series of posts, Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser at the Indian government’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, denounced the BBC documentary…

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Is Twitter broken?

Is Twitter broken?

New York Magazine and The Verge report: In April 2022, Elon Musk acquired a 9.2 ­percent stake in Twitter, making him the company’s largest shareholder, and was offered a seat on the board. Luke Simon, a senior engineering director at Twitter, was ecstatic. “Elon Musk is a brilliant engineer and scientist, and he has a track record of having a Midas touch, when it comes to growing the companies he’s helped lead,” he wrote in Slack. Twitter had been defined by the…

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What the Jan. 6 probe found out about social media, but didn’t report

What the Jan. 6 probe found out about social media, but didn’t report

The Washington Post reports: The Jan. 6 committee spent months gathering stunning new details on how social media companies failed to address the online extremism and calls for violence that preceded the Capitol riot. The evidence they collected was written up in a 122-page memo that was circulated among the committee, according to a draft viewed by The Washington Post. But in the end, committee leaders declined to delve into those topics in detail in their final report, reluctant to…

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