Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: President Trump launched into a tweetstorm in April, banging out nine retweets of the Centers for Disease Control’s account on the dangers of misusing disinfectant and other topics — two days after he himself had suggested that people could inject themselves with bleach to cure covid-19. But those tweets spread in an odd pattern: More than half the 3,000 accounts retweeting Trump did so in near-perfect synchronicity, so that the 945th tweet was the same number…

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Kevin Roose reports: For years, The Epoch Times was a small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-China slant that was handed out free on New York street corners. But in 2016 and 2017, the paper made two changes that transformed it into one of the country’s most powerful digital publishers. The changes also paved the way for the publication, which is affiliated with the secretive and relatively obscure Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, to become a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation….

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The Guardian reports: One in four people in Britain agree with conspiracies propagated by QAnon, the global movement claiming there is a secret satanic network of child-abusing politicians and celebrities, a survey has found. The research for Hope Not Hate also found that 17% of people questioned said they believed Covid-19 was intentionally released as part of a “depopulation plan” by the UN or “new world order”. It found that QAnon, which originated in the US where the FBI has…

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Yahoo News reports: A full 50 percent of President Trump’s supporters now believe the bizarre, made-up claims about an international ring of child sex traffickers at the core of the extremist conspiracy theory known as QAnon, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll — a disturbing sign of how susceptible partisans have become to bogus stories in an age of rampant polarization and unbridled social media. The survey, which interviewed 1,583 registered voters from Oct. 16 to 18, shows that…

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The New York Times reports: During the 2016 presidential election, Russian operatives used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms to spread disinformation to divide the American electorate. Since then, the social media companies have spent billions of dollars and hired tens of thousands of people to help clean up their act. But have the platforms really become more sophisticated at handling misinformation? Not necessarily. People are engaging more on Facebook today with news outlets that routinely publish misinformation…

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Politico reports: Twitter is making sizable changes to retweets and other features aimed at making it harder for politicians and other users to spread misinformation about the Nov. 3 election, the company announced Friday — the latest attempt by Silicon Valley platforms to protect the vote. The changes are part of a push to protect the “critical dialogue” on Twitter “from attempts — both foreign and domestic — to undermine it,” said Twitter’s general counsel Vijaya Gadde and head of…

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Politico reports: Throughout 2020, Democrats have denounced Facebook with growing ferocity as a “right-wing echo chamber” with a “conservative bias” that’s giving an edge to Donald Trump in November. But Facebook says there’s a reason why right-wing figures are driving more engagement. It’s not that its algorithm favors conservatives — the company has long maintained that its platform is neutral. Instead, the right is better at connecting with people on a visceral level, it says. “Right-wing populism is always more…

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The Guardian reports: Facebook has warned that it may pull out of Europe if the Irish data protection commissioner enforces a ban on sharing data with the US, after a landmark ruling by the European court of justice found in July that there were insufficient safeguards against snooping by US intelligence agencies. In a court filing in Dublin, Facebook’s associate general counsel wrote that enforcing the ban would leave the company unable to operate. “In the event that [Facebook] were…

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Joshua Yaffa writes: In the summer of 2017, Nina Jankowicz, a twenty-eight-year-old American, was working in Kyiv as a communications adviser to Ukraine’s foreign ministry as part of a yearlong Fulbright fellowship. Jankowicz had an interest in digital diplomacy and in countering disinformation that was matched by a passion for musical theatre: in Washington, D.C., where she lived for several years before moving to Ukraine, she played Sally in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” and Audrey in “Little Shop…

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The Washington Post reports: Facebook removed a network of fake accounts and pages created by Russian operatives who had recruited U.S. journalists to write articles critical of Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris, in an apparent bid to undermine their support among liberal voters. Facebook said it caught the network of 13 fake accounts and two pages early, before it had a chance to build a large audience — an action that the company…

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BuzzFeed reports: In a companywide meeting on Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that a militia page advocating for followers to bring weapons to an upcoming protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, remained on the platform because of “an operational mistake.” The page and an associated event inspired widespread criticism of the company after a 17-year-old suspect allegedly shot and killed two protesters Tuesday night. The event associated with the Kenosha Guard page, however, was flagged to Facebook at least 455 times…

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