Attention to the Unseen

The Hollywood Reporter reports: Taylor Swift‘s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris led to a surge of visitors to Vote.gov, the U.S. government website that helps citizens understand how they can register to vote. According to a spokesperson for the U.S. Government Services Administration, Swift’s endorsement post on Instagram led directly to 337,826 people visiting vote.gov. “As of 2:00 P.M. on Wednesday, September 11, there have been 337,826 visitors to vote.gov referred from the custom URL created and shared by…

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CNBC reports: The share price of Trump Media plunged more than 13% on Wednesday, a day after majority shareholder Donald Trump gave a widely panned presidential debate performance against Vice President Kamala Harris. The company’s stock price was at its lowest intraday level since the Truth Social app owner began publicly trading as DJT on the Nasdaq in late March. Investing in Trump Media stock is often seen as a way to bet on the political fortunes of Trump, the…

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The Washington Post reports: The chairman of the board of elections in Montgomery County, Pa., was well acquainted with the regular attendees at his monthly meetings who peddled old, debunked voting conspiracy theories. But something changed after April 4, the chairman, Neil Makhija, explained in an interview. That was the day Elon Musk retweeted a false claim that as many as 2 million noncitizens had been registered to vote in Texas, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Suddenly, the same people were coming…

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Tom Nichols writes: When people think of the world of espionage, they probably imagine glamorous foreign capitals, suave undercover operators, and cool gadgets. The reality is far more pedestrian: Yesterday, the Justice Department revealed an alleged Russian scheme to pay laundered money to American right-wing social-media trolls that seems more like a bad sitcom pitch than a top-notch intelligence operation. According to a federal indictment unsealed yesterday [9/4], two Russian citizens, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, worked with a Tennessee company not named in…

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The New York Times reports: In early 2022, a young couple from Canada, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, registered a new company in Tennessee that went on to create a social media outlet called Tenet Media. By November 2023, they had assembled a lineup of major conservative social media stars, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, to post original content on Tenet’s platform. The site then began posting hundreds of videos — trafficking in pointed political commentary as…

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CNN reports: Luna, a self-described 32-year-old “MAGA Trump supporter” from the battleground state of Wisconsin, has gained a huge following since she joined X, formerly Twitter, in March. Her timeline has become a digital bullhorn for the “Make America Great Again” movement, praising former President Donald Trump’s re-election bid, promoting conspiracy theories about his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and touting Republican talking points to nearly 30,000 followers, who she addresses as “patriots.” “Would You Support Trump Being The President…

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Mike Masnick writes: Two bits of news came out of the letter Mark Zuckerberg sent to Rep. Jim Jordan this week (and how people responded to it), neither of which are what you’re likely to have heard about. First, Donald Trump seems to be accusing himself of rigging the 2020 election against himself. And, second, Mark Zuckerberg has absolutely no spine when it comes to Republican pressure on Meta’s moderation practices. He falsely plays into their fundamentally misleading framing, all…

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Adam Clark Estes writes: This week Mark Zuckerberg sent Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) a letter outlining how the Biden administration pressured his company to “censor” free speech on Facebook — specifically misinformation about Covid-19. The letter also made reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop and Zuckerberg’s lack of plans to spend money on the election. This sounds bad. But none of this information is new. It’s interesting that Zuckerberg decided to dive into the free speech snake pit this week. It’s…

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The Washington Post reports: Some of the internet’s most influential far-right figures are turning against former president Donald Trump’s campaign, threatening a digital “war” against the Republican candidate’s aides and allies that could complicate the party’s calls for unity in the final weeks of the presidential race. Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and podcaster who dined with Trump at his Palm Beach resort Mar-a-Lago in 2022, said on X that Trump’s campaign was “blowing it” by not positioning itself more…

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