Attention to the Unseen

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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The Independent reports: A Meta whistleblower testified before Congress Wednesday about how she witnessed the company repeatedly “undermine‬ U.S. national security.” Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook employee who released an explosive memoir last month accusing the social media giant of retaliating against her after she reported sexual misconduct, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism with another revelatory allegation: the company was engaged in “illegal and dangerous activities” with China. Wynn-Williams worked at Facebook for seven years,…

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Charlie Warzel writes: On March 18, the official White House account on X posted two photographs of Virginia Basora-Gonzalez, a woman who was arrested earlier this month by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The post described her as a “previously deported alien felon convicted of fentanyl trafficking,” and celebrated her capture as a win for the administration. In one photograph, Basora-Gonzalez is shown handcuffed and weeping in a public parking lot. The White House account posted about Basora-Gonzalez again yesterday—this…

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Tom Uren writes: We have consistently argued for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. as it could be a powerful tool for the Chinese government to interfere with American political discourse. For U.S. allies, a similar argument now applies to X. Commentators in Canada and the United Kingdom have already floated the idea of banning X. Meanwhile, in France, prosecutors have announced they’ve opened an investigation into X over alleged algorithmic bias. The investigation was launched after the prosecutor’s office received complaints about X’s interference in French democratic debate….

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Meta’s Joel Kaplan announced in January, “Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely. That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display. But that’s free expression.” Steven Levy writes: It was Meta itself that first told me about the new book attacking Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the allegedly bankrupt morals of their company. On March 7, a Meta PR…

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Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren write: On the morning of Nov. 7, 2024, the pro-Russian X account @OCanonist posted a video of men in Ukrainian military uniforms shooting and setting ablaze a mannequin wearing a Trump 2024 T-shirt and red hat. With it, @OCanonist shared the message, “It’s time to defund this degenerate country.” Over the course of the following day, the post was shared more than 26,000 times and viewed by 12.4 million users. From X, the video exploded…

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Brock Colyar writes: [T]he youngest, most online members of Trump’s party have acquired his knack for turning the culture wars into something as entertaining as reality TV. Attention is power. One honoree of the night [at the Power 30 Awards, held at Sax nightclub in Washington DC, the night before the inauguration] was DuRousseau, whose TikTok is full of sometimes transphobic rants for a target audience he describes as “Beverly Hills conservatives.” “When you look back, this was the first…

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