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Category: Social media

Bannon has his MAGA megaphone back. GOP candidates know it

Bannon has his MAGA megaphone back. GOP candidates know it

NBC News reports: Steve Bannon has a new MAGA megaphone, and Republicans eager to shine in a party still tethered to former President Donald Trump know it. Bannon, the former Breitbart News executive and one of the architects of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, has increasingly leveraged his “War Room: Pandemic” podcast into a kind of proxy primary. Ambitious Republicans are flocking there for the chance to demonstrate loyalty to Bannon’s former boss and pitch themselves to Trump’s voters…

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Study finds nearly one-in-five Americans believe QAnon conspiracy theories

Study finds nearly one-in-five Americans believe QAnon conspiracy theories

Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann write: Washington, we have a problem — politically, informationally and societally — when 15 percent of Americans agree with the QAnon statement that the U.S. government, media and financial worlds “are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” Or when 20 percent agree with this statement: “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.”…

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Social media and the neuroscience of predictive processing

Social media and the neuroscience of predictive processing

Mark Miller and Ben White write: Levi Jed Murphy smoulders into the camera. It’s a powerful look: piercing blue eyes, high cheekbones, full lips and a razor-sharp jawline – all of which, he says, cost him around £30,000. Murphy is an influencer from Manchester in the UK, with a large social media following. Speaking on his approach to growing his fans, he says that, if a picture doesn’t receive a certain number of ‘Likes’ within a set time, it gets…

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Associated Press employees want answers after reporter’s firing

Associated Press employees want answers after reporter’s firing

Brian Stelter writes: More than 100 employees at the Associated Press have signed an open letter calling for more information about the recent firing of 22-year-old journalist Emily Wilder. Wilder’s ouster, and the newswire’s lack of candor about its cause, has caused a rare uproar inside the storied news organization. Monday’s open letter said the lack of communication about Wilder’s firing “gives us no confidence that any one of us couldn’t be next, sacrificed without explanation. It has left our…

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Facebook calls links to depression inconclusive. These researchers disagree

Facebook calls links to depression inconclusive. These researchers disagree

NPR reports: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ biggest fear as a parent isn’t gun violence, or drunk driving, or anything related to the pandemic. It’s social media. And specifically, the new sense of “brokenness” she hears about in children in her district, and nationwide. Teen depression and suicide rates have been rising for over a decade, and she sees social apps as a major reason. At a hearing this March on Capitol Hill, the Republican congresswoman from Washington confronted Facebook CEO…

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Mob violence against Palestinians in Israel is fueled by groups on WhatsApp

Mob violence against Palestinians in Israel is fueled by groups on WhatsApp

The New York Times reports: Last Wednesday, a message appeared in a new WhatsApp channel called “Death to the Arabs.” The message urged Israelis to join a mass street brawl against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Within hours, dozens of other new WhatsApp groups popped up with variations of the same name and message. The groups soon organized a 6 p.m. start time for a clash in Bat Yam, a town on Israel’s coast. “Together we organize and together we act,”…

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The new ‘Arab street’: online, global and growing

The new ‘Arab street’: online, global and growing

The New York Times reports: The video traveled at 4G speed, leapfrogging across international borders, social media platforms and social justice movements: a young Palestinian woman in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, shouting in furious English at a Jewish man, “You are stealing my house!” “If I don’t steal it, someone else will steal it,” he retorts. This doesn't describe the Israeli occupier's logic only; it also describes the rudeness of those who support the Israeli colonial policies…

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Chinese businessman with links to Steve Bannon is driving force for a sprawling disinformation network

Chinese businessman with links to Steve Bannon is driving force for a sprawling disinformation network

The Washington Post reports: A sprawling online network tied to Chinese businessman Guo Wengui has become a potent platform for disinformation in the United States, attacking the safety of coronavirus vaccines, promoting false election-fraud claims and spreading baseless QAnon conspiracies, according to research published Monday by the network analysis company Graphika. The report, provided in advance to The Washington Post, details a network that Graphika says amplifies the views of Guo, a Chinese real estate developer whose association with former…

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Lies on social media inflame Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Lies on social media inflame Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The New York Times reports: In a 28-second video, which was posted to Twitter this week by a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip appeared to launch rocket attacks at Israelis from densely populated civilian areas. At least that is what Mr. Netanyahu’s spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, said the video portrayed. But his tweet with the footage, which was shared hundreds of times as the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis escalated, was not…

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Just 12 people are behind most vaccine hoaxes on social media, research shows

Just 12 people are behind most vaccine hoaxes on social media, research shows

NPR reports: Researchers have found just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. “The ‘Disinformation Dozen’ produce 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” said Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which identified the accounts. Now the vaccine rollout is reaching a critical stage in which most adults who want the vaccine have…

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Trump ‘wants cash money up front’ from an ‘indestructible’ social media platform

Trump ‘wants cash money up front’ from an ‘indestructible’ social media platform

The Wall Street Journal reports: Donald Trump, sidelined by Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc., has been talking with numerous platforms as he seeks a new online megaphone. Jeff Brain, the chief executive of CloutHub, a fledgling social media network that has become popular with conservatives, thinks his company fits the bill. He took a trip to Mar-a-Lago last month and chatted with the former president, and has been talking to Mr. Trump’s advisers as they consider what his new social-media…

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The ringmaster is gone but the circus remains

The ringmaster is gone but the circus remains

Quinta Jurecic writes: The internet has been a bit quiet lately. Or, more specifically, it’s been quiet since the days after the Capitol riot, when Twitter, Facebook, and a string of other social-media companies banned Donald Trump from their platforms for his role in egging on the violence in Washington, D.C. And now the Facebook oversight board has ensured that social media will remain peaceful for at least a little while longer: The panel, asked by Facebook to review the…

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The age of misinformation in which ‘belonging is stronger than facts’

The age of misinformation in which ‘belonging is stronger than facts’

Max Fisher writes: There’s a decent chance you’ve had at least one of these rumors, all false, relayed to you as fact recently: that President Biden plans to force Americans to eat less meat; that Virginia is eliminating advanced math in schools to advance racial equality; and that border officials are mass-purchasing copies of Vice President Kamala Harris’s book to hand out to refugee children. All were amplified by partisan actors. But you’re just as likely, if not more so,…

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Oversight Board: ‘Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities’

Oversight Board: ‘Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities’

Will Oremus writes: [T]he problems with Mr. Trump’s presence on Facebook — the lies, the propaganda, the incitements — are not just Trump problems. They’re Facebook problems (and to be fair, Twitter problems). Manipulation, misinformation, fear and loathing are endemic to today’s social media platforms, whose engagement-driven algorithms are built to spread whatever messages tap into users’ viscera and provoke a quick “like” or an angry comment. Yet the platforms have delegated much of the work of moderating this content…

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The problem is Facebook

The problem is Facebook

Helen Lewis writes: Back to you, Zuck. Facebook’s oversight board earlier today declined to act as a human shield for the social network. Asked to rule on the suspension of Donald Trump’s account in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot, it passed the ultimate decision back to Facebook. For now, Trump’s suspension stays in place. But the board has given Facebook six months to “reexamine the arbitrary penalty it imposed on January 7 and decide the appropriate penalty.”…

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Facebook ban hits Trump where it hurts: messaging and money

Facebook ban hits Trump where it hurts: messaging and money

The New York Times reports: The decision by Facebook on Wednesday to keep former President Donald J. Trump off its platform could have significant consequences for his political operation as he tries to remain the leader of the Republican Party, thwarting his ability to amplify his message to tens of millions of followers and hampering his fund-raising ability. Facebook has increasingly become one of the most vital weapons in a political campaign’s arsenal, with its ability to juice small-dollar online-fund-raising…

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