Notices by Caroline Orr Bueno (rvawonk@newsie.social), page 3

Over on the bad site, Twitter has lifted restrictions on Kremlin accounts and is no longer limiting the reach of Kremlin media accounts.

Russian government tweets are appearing in Twitter’s algorithmically-driven “For You” feed for newly created accounts, even when they did not follow them. So Twitter is not just *showing* these Kremlin accounts — it's algorithmically *boosting* them.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2023/04/07/elon-musk-twitter-lifts-restrictions-putin-kremlin-russia/

I wrote about all the stuff that Elon Musk & Matt Taibbi didn’t tell you in the “TWITTER FILES” regarding the GOP’s demands for censorship on social media, the repeated changes Twitter made to its own rules to avoid taking action against Trump’s account, & the myth of Twitter’s anti-conservative bias. #disinformation #politics #Journalism
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/10/gop-congressional-hearing-accidentally-debunks-twitter-files-trump-not-biden-tried-to-censor-tweets/

I did a reverse image search based on the screengrab I got from Fox News. The visually-similar images were all from police websites, and “Find Image Source” told me the source was … the NYPD (which, I figured, was likely because of the NYPD shield in the image — more on that in a second). Tineye didn’t find any matching images. So I kept hunting. 4/

Additional searching led me to this tweet from from “Rob O’Donnell,” which is the first appearance I’ve been able to find of the supposed “antifa poster” online. The Daily Mail article was published about an hour after the tweet.

The person who tweeted it (“Rob”) is a former NYPD detective. So perhaps that reverse image search was leading me in the right direction? 5/

Fox News opened up its 7pm and 8pm blocks with coverage of the “antifa poster”. This was the first time the supposed poster was actually included in news coverage, but still no info about where it came from or how it was verified.

A brief glimpse at the “antifa poster” — with instructions to “bring rocks, heavy objects, pipes, etc” — makes it clear that it’s fake. They manufactured an entire news cycle based on a fake antifa poster. But that’s just the beginning! 3/

The Daily Mail article was recycled & reproduced by a bunch of non-credible & right-wing websites, including the Post Millennial & Free Republic. Again, all of these articles are sourcing a Daily Mail article about a supposed “antifa poster” that wasn’t even pictured in the article.

This is how the right-wing media ecosystem works: They launder information until its original, non-credible source is obscured, and they manufacture truth through repetition and volume. 2/

Before the Tyre Nichols video was even released, right-wing media had already launched a disinformation campaign surrounding a supposed “antifa poster” calling on protesters to “burn it all down.” The claim stems from a Daily Mail article, which didn’t report where it obtained the alleged “antifa poster,” nor did it show any proof of its existence. 1/

And here is possibly the most offensive 60-seconds of television I’ve ever seen, in which Tucker Carlson’s guest said Tyre Nichols’ brutal killing by the police is what happens when you have “young black men being supervised by a single black woman” (Memphis PD has a black woman police chief). He blamed a lack of “male authority” and said this is what happens in cities “run by single black mothers.”

Attacks on the US power grid — a preferred method of attack among extremists, particularly accelerationists — have surged to a decade-high peak this year, with more than 100 attacks reported in the first 8 months of 2022. So that’s not even including the recent spate of attacks in NC, SC, FL, GA, WA, & OR.

These kinds of attacks are seen by extremists as a crucial step towards inciting a race war.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/26/physical-attacks-electrical-grid-peak-00075216

Two Jan. 6th defendants were just charged with conspiracy, retaliating against a federal official, interstate communication of a threat, and solicitation to commit a crime of violence.

They were plotting to kill the FBI agents who were investigating them.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-tennessee-men-arrested-planning-attacks-law-enforcement-personnel-and-fbi-s-knoxville

The concern isn’t that letting Nazis back on Twitter (or any other major platform) is going to make people suddenly start thinking Nazis are good. The concern is that when people get used to hearing their ideas, other extreme ideas start sounding kind of reasonable and even acceptable. That’s the Overton Window, and it explains a lot about what’s going on right now. Far-right extremists use this tactic more effectively than any other group I’ve ever seen. 3/

Elon Musk seems to think it’s ok to allow white supremacists and Nazis on Twitter as long as they aren’t tweeting overt hate speech, but the problem with that is that it inherently sends a message that their ideas are worthy of consideration — even though we know the endpoint of those ideas is violence, death, and ultimately genocide. Those ideas are not, in fact, worthy of consideration. 2/

Now seems like a good time to talk about how far-right extremists are using the Overton Window theory to force their ideas into the mainstream. The premise here is that today’s fringe ideas/beliefs can become tomorrow’s normal by shifting the boundaries of acceptable discourse. You do that by introducing people to more & more extreme ideas, so everything else seems reasonable in comparison.

eg, when “praising Hitler” becomes the comparison point, low-key bigotry suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. 1/

As right-wing extremists are re-platformed everywhere from Twitter to Mar-a-Lago, it’s more important than ever that we hold our journalists, researchers, & others to high standards of accountability when it comes to reporting on extremism and extremists. We need journalists who will tell us the truth, not stake out a position in the middle of two unequal sides. I keep coming back to this quote about reporting on the weather, but it was missing something — so I modified it to make it complete.

Here’s an open secret that no one wants to admit about this whole Twitter fiasco: The negative/hostile engagement is good for business — not just for Twitter’s business, but for media and journalism and politicians and influencers — and that’s part of the reason they need Twitter. You’ll never convince them to switch over primarily to Mastodon because that dynamic is absent here.