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Category: Social media

The secret tactics behind Stop the Steal and other right-wing disinformation campaigns

The secret tactics behind Stop the Steal and other right-wing disinformation campaigns

Caroline Orr Bueno writes: A sophisticated strategy is playing out in plain sight that few outside of digital war rooms truly understand or even notice. It doesn’t require hacking servers or bribing tech executives. It doesn’t even break any rules. It simply requires understanding exactly how algorithms work — and turning them into accomplices. I call this tactic the Feedback Loop Coup. Last week, I introduced the concept of Reverse Algorithmic Capture — a tactic used to force platforms to rewrite their…

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Musk pushes the view that women are ‘anti-white’ because they’re ‘weak’

Musk pushes the view that women are ‘anti-white’ because they’re ‘weak’

Gizmodo reports: Elon Musk has long shared extremist views on X, the social media platform he purchased in late 2022. But every once in a while, his activity on the platform is so extreme that it can still manage to shock even the most jaded Musk observer. That’s what happened Wednesday when the billionaire Tesla CEO retweeted an account that insisted women are “built to be traded” and are “anti-white” because they’re physically weak. The social media exchange started on…

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Mamdani gets modern messaging in ways other Democrats just don’t

Mamdani gets modern messaging in ways other Democrats just don’t

Greg Sargent writes: Despite being mired in a cutthroat New York mayoral campaign, Zohran Mamdani recently released a video announcing that he was taking a vacation. A vacation, that is, in his childhood home of Uganda. In the video, he mocked right-wing trolls for telling him to go back to Africa and joked that his return there showed that he’s “listening” to those “critics.” He offered New York tabloids suggestions for headlines mocking his African heritage—one read “MIA? MAMDANI IN…

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The U.S. government’s growing trove of social media data

The U.S. government’s growing trove of social media data

Brennan Center for Justice reports: Reviewing individuals’ social media to conduct ideological vetting has been a defining initiative of President Trump’s second term. As part of that effort, the administration has proposed expanding the mandatory collection of social media identifiers. The proposal would widen the government’s social media surveillance dragnet to include not only travelers, visa applicants, and visa holders, but also their U.S. citizen contacts. By linking individuals’ online presence to government databases, officials could more easily identify, monitor,…

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How Musk’s X is fueling the MAGA-Trump rift

How Musk’s X is fueling the MAGA-Trump rift

Politico reports: The Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy saga is blowing up in the White House’s face — and social-media experts say that Elon Musk’s remake of X helped light the fuse. Conspiracy theories about Epstein, and the Trump administration’s supposed complicity in silencing them, are starting to split MAGA’s unruly factions and turn part of the movement against the president. (For those not following closely: The Department of Justice and FBI issued a joint report last week claiming that Epstein did…

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Grok 4 seems to parrot Elon Musk when answering controversial questions

Grok 4 seems to parrot Elon Musk when answering controversial questions

TechCrunch reports: During xAI’s launch of Grok 4 on Wednesday night, Elon Musk said — while livestreaming the event on his social media platform, X — that his AI company’s ultimate goal was to develop a “maximally truth-seeking AI.” But where exactly does Grok 4 seek out the truth when trying to answer controversial questions? The newest AI model from xAI seems to consult social media posts from Musk’s X account when answering questions about the Israel and Palestine conflict,…

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Grok is spewing antisemitic garbage on X

Grok is spewing antisemitic garbage on X

Wired reports: Grok, the chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, made a series of deeply antisemitic remarks in response to several posts on X on Tuesday. A large language model that is integrated into X, Grok acts as a platform-native chatbot assistant. In several posts—some of which have been deleted but have been preserved via screenshot by X users—Grok parroted antisemitic tropes while insisting that it was being “neutral and truth-seeking.” In some posts, Grok said that…

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Joe Rogan feels betrayed by Trump on immigration

Joe Rogan feels betrayed by Trump on immigration

Gizmodo reports: Joe Rogan, one of the most influential voices in American media, is turning on Donald Trump. And the reason cuts deep: immigration raids. Rogan, who endorsed Trump just hours before the 2024 presidential election, now says he was misled by the man he helped boost into office. The podcaster and UFC commentator, known for giving a platform to anti-cancel culture figures and free speech advocates, is now accusing Trump of betraying the very values he campaigned on. “We…

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The online tools that fueled the No Kings protests and the Trump resistance

The online tools that fueled the No Kings protests and the Trump resistance

Wired reports: Jack and Fiona wanted to do something, but they didn’t know where to start. For months, the couple had watched as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, then spearheading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), had turned the US into what they thought was “a fascist hellscape.” But they live in a deeply red county in a deeply red state in the South, and were worried that speaking out publicly could mean putting them and their children…

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Trump regime and TikTok interfere in Polish presidential election

Trump regime and TikTok interfere in Polish presidential election

  ABC News reports: The “Make America Great Again” roadshow arrived in Europe this week with events in two nations where American conservatives see prime opportunities for a new transatlantic political culture — one molded by President Donald Trump’s right-wing populism and imbued with grand “clash of civilizations” rhetoric. The Conservative Political Action Conference — CPAC — opened its week of European events on Tuesday in Jasionka, Poland, where Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was among the speakers,…

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Bluesky is plotting a total takeover of the social internet

Bluesky is plotting a total takeover of the social internet

Kate Knibbs writes: As I waited to meet with Jay Graber, the CEO of Bluesky, on the 25th floor of an office building in downtown Seattle, I stared out at the city’s waterfront and thought: God fucking damn it. Stretching in every direction was a wall of dense, gray, tragically boring fog. And here I was about to interview the head of a social platform named after good weather. On camera, no less. Then something miraculous happened. Moments before Graber…

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Trump’s evidence of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa: victims of fighting in Congo

Trump’s evidence of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa: victims of fighting in Congo

AFP reports: US President Donald Trump brandished a stack of printed articles at the White House Wednesday that he claimed documented a genocide taking place against white people in South Africa. Mixed into the deck of papers he unveiled before South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa, however, was a months-old blog post featuring a photo from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “Death of people, death, death, death, horrible death, death,” Trump said as he flipped through the headlines, which he said…

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The day Grok told everyone on X about ‘white genocide’

The day Grok told everyone on X about ‘white genocide’

Ali Breland and Matteo Wong write: Yesterday, a user on X saw a viral post of Timothée Chalamet celebrating courtside at a Knicks game and had a simple question: Who was sitting next to him? The user tapped in Grok, X’s proprietary chatbot, as people often do when they want help answering questions on the platform—the software functions like ChatGPT, except it can be summoned via reply to a post. And for the most part, Grok has performed reasonably well…

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They criticized Musk on X. Then their reach collapsed

They criticized Musk on X. Then their reach collapsed

The New York Times reports: Anastasia Maria Loupis runs a popular account on X that used to receive hundreds of thousands of views each day for her far-right commentary, conspiracy theories and antisemitic statements. In late December, she criticized Elon Musk, the site’s owner, over his support for visa programs that many of President Trump’s supporters despise. Her reach plummeted on X and never recovered. When Mr. Musk purchased X in 2022, he promised to create a free speech haven…

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How Ed Martin ghostwrote online attacks against a judge — and still became a top Trump prosecutor

How Ed Martin ghostwrote online attacks against a judge — and still became a top Trump prosecutor

By Jeremy Kohler and Andy Kroll This story was originally published by ProPublica The attacks on Judge John Barberis in the fall of 2016 appeared on his personal Facebook page. They impugned his ethics, criticized a recent ruling and branded him as a “politician” with the “LOWEST rating for a judge in Illinois.” Barberis, a state court judge in an Illinois county across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, was presiding over a nasty legal battle for control over the…

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Leaks reveal massive Israeli campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Facebook and Instagram

Leaks reveal massive Israeli campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Facebook and Instagram

Waqas Ahmed, Nicholas Rodelo, Ryan Grim, and Murtaza Hussain report: A sweeping crackdown on posts on Instagram and Facebook that are critical of Israel—or even vaguely supportive of Palestinians—was directly orchestrated by the government of Israel, according to internal Meta data obtained by Drop Site News. The data show that Meta has complied with 94% of takedown requests issued by Israel since October 7, 2023. Israel is the biggest originator of takedown requests globally by far, and Meta has followed…

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