“Democrats are increasingly worried about the influence of misinformation on social media aimed at Latino voters in the runup to the election. The misleading narratives continue to spread on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, as well as in closed chat groups like WhatsApp and Telegram, in addition to the more traditional platforms like television, radio, and talking points coming directly from elected officials.
Several misinformation researchers told Recode that they’re seeing alarming amounts of misinformation about voter fraud and Democratic leaders being shared in Latino social media communities. Biden is a popular target, with misinformation ranging from exaggerated claims that he embraces Fidel Castro-style socialism to more patently false and outlandish ones, for instance that the president-elect supports abortion minutes before a child’s birth or that he orchestrated a caravan of Cuban immigrants to infiltrate the US Southern border and disrupt the election process.
“What I’ve seen during this election looks to be a multifaceted misinformation effort seeking to undermine Biden and Harris’s support amongst the Latino community,” said Sam Woolley, a misinformation and propaganda researcher at the University of Texas Austin. “I think that political groups understand that the Latino vote matters and they are showing they are willing to use any and all informational tactics to get what they want.””
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“Some of the misleading messages — like that Biden is a radical socialist — aren’t uniquely aimed at the Latino community; Trump often made this claim during his campaign. But these comparisons take on a new intensity with some immigrants from countries like Cuba or Venezuela who have lived under socialist governments and may be deeply opposed to them.”
“But despite the recent attention, some say the rise of Parler fits into the larger history of American conservatives and their relationship with the media.
“This follows a pattern of what the right wing has done [since] the rise of talk radio in the ’80s, and then through live cable TV, and then the rise of social media,” Lawrence Rosenthal, the chair of the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Right-Wing Studies, told Recode. “In each case, what you found is that the right wing gives up on participating in mainstream media and creates an alternative universe.””
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“Based in Nevada, the company behind Parler is run primarily by two people: Matze and Jared Thomson, who serves as CTO. Neither of them had a particular public profile before creating the app. Jeffrey Wernick, a bitcoin enthusiast and early Airbnb investor, serves as the company’s chief operating officer. But there are other people funding the app.
Earlier this month, Parler confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that conservative megadonor Rebekah Mercer was the company’s lead investor and agreed to fund Parler only if it gave users control over what they saw on the platform.”
“Last week, I argued that President Donald Trump’s own behavior—rather than a vast nationwide voter-fraud conspiracy—caused his election defeat. I’m used to all types of angry responses (and even had ones over the years that required police intervention), but many of the responses have left me more fearful about the nation’s future than I’ve been in a while.
The comments’ tenor were not the problem. Almost everyone who contacted me was remarkably civil, including those who believe that yours truly is a blithering idiot. Differences of opinion are what makes the world go round, but I am worried about the vast differences in the sources that people rely upon—and by the fundamental lack of trust that many people have in the nation’s institutions.”
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“Let’s look at how debates should work. For example, I’ve repeatedly railed against income-tax hikes. I argue that the state should get its spending in order before taxing us again and taxes depress economic growth. In response, tax supporters argue that the rich don’t pay their fair share. We then look at the numbers and argue over what they mean. We draw different conclusions but accept the premise even if we pick nits with some of the data.
Now imagine having that taxation argument with someone who claims (without a scintilla of evidence) that the Department of Finance is rigging the numbers and that none of its data can be trusted. Or with a person who believes that poor people pay the bulk of state taxes. What if upon seeing evidence to the contrary, that person accuses me of ignoring the TRUTH!!! and directs me to a brilliant but unknown economist Grandpa found on YouTube?
You can see the problem. Regarding the Trump voter-fraud conspiracy, many of us rely on the 38-plus judicial rulings that have thus far rebuked the president’s arguments. We trust the nation’s elections system, which—despite its obvious flaws—has been one of the world’s democratic triumphs. If the president had evidence of systemic fraud, we figure most of that would emerge in the courts.
The ensuing debate would center on specific legal cases and judicial findings. What happens, though, when large numbers of people believe that the entire court system, election process, and federal government are essentially in on the scam? As a libertarian, I’m fully aware of flaws in every political and governmental system, but still believe that sufficient checks and balances exist—and that our system is fundamentally legitimate.
What happens when people believe that most journalists are establishment tools who refuse to report that the election was stolen—perhaps by Venezuelan communists who rigged the electronic-voting software? That particular allegation can be disproven with hand counts, but never mind such petty details. It only proves that I’m listening to “lamestream” media sources rather than seeking out the real truth-tellers.”
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“What can you say when a major political movement (Trumpism) finds it easier to believe that every major American institution is potentially corrupt than it is to think that a president with a history of telling whoppers is being dishonest again?”
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“I used to think the proliferation of sources—including access to primary source material—would save our democracy by empowering people to go around gatekeepers. The biased media system used to limit our voices, after all. In our newly democratized media world, however, Aunt Ethel’s post from some errant numbskull is as credible as a well-researched report in The Wall Street Journal.
A 2018 report from Rand Corporation refers to the situation as “Truth Decay,” which results in “the erosion of civil discourse, political paralysis, alienation and disengagement of individuals from political and civic institutions, and uncertainty over national policy.” That’s putting it mildly. If Americans cannot figure out how to agree on basic facts and restore trust in our institutions, then how long will we remain a peaceful and free society?”
“it’s often difficult to understand which comes first: a polarized situation or the social media that aggravates that situation. Rather, it’s become a self-reinforcing system.”
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“Animosity toward members of opposing parties is very high even though our divisions over policy preferences don’t appear to have grown, according to new research published in Science magazine. The paper brings together a number of different studies on the topic and is written by scholars from six disciplines who found that, these days, we’re more likely to hate the opposing side and consider them to be “different,” “dislikable,” and “immoral.” The result is a “political sectarianism” in which one’s party identity seems to come first, before policy, religion, or common ground. Political identity, in turn, shapes our other views instead of the other way around. For example, after seeing a clip of Donald Trump espousing a liberal policy, followers exhibited a more liberal attitude, according to the paper, which presumes Democrats would do the same for their political leaders.”
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“The results of this kind of alignment are disastrous for a functioning democracy. As the researchers argue, “holding opposing partisans in contempt on the basis of their identity alone precludes innovative cross-party solutions and mutually beneficial compromises.””
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“Then there’s distrust — encouraged by the president — of facts and journalism organizations, which are necessary to protect democracy. A series of Pew Research Center polls shows that Republicans rely on and trust fewer news sites for politics than they used to, with Fox News, Trump’s mouthpiece and a fount of disinformation, being one of few sources they regularly read and believe. However, research by Andy Guess, assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, looks at web traffic rather than people’s survey responses to reveal that there’s considerable and consistent overlap in media consumption between the parties, except among a smaller set of extremists. This suggests many people might be reading the same sources but coming to totally different conclusions. Wildly divergent interpretations of the same news is a more difficult problem to fix.”
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“Hyperpartisanship, tense societal factors, and divergent news diets — or at least divergent interpretations of the news — are then fed back through social media, which is likely amplifying our divisions. We don’t know exactly how the social media algorithms work that select what information we see because the technology is a black box controlled by the respective social media company that built it.
What we do know is that Facebook has put less of an emphasis on news and more on engagement, and that posts with strong, emotional language have more engagement. We also know Facebook has continually promoted Groups since 2016, which can function as their own echo chambers, even without algorithmic help. YouTube, whose algorithms like other platforms were designed to make people spend more time on the site, has been shown to radicalize people through inflammatory messaging. Most recently, it has been awash in election misinformation.”
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“The share of Americans who often get their news from social media grew 10 percentage points to 28 percent last year, according to Pew. Those who mainly get their news that way were also less informed about current events and more likely to have been exposed to conspiracy theories.”
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“A new study from the University of Virginia found increased Facebook usage among conservatives is associated with reading more conservative sites than they normally do. The effect was less dramatic among liberals.
The study’s authors conjectured that the way Facebook works might have something to do with this outcome. In addition to algorithms favoring engagement, the very structure of Facebook limits who we talk to: You have to “friend” others to see their posts, meaning you’re less likely to see people outside of your real-life friends and family, who are more likely to have similar lives and viewpoints. Facebook also tweaked its algorithms after the 2016 election to promote posts from friends and family and show far fewer posts from news outlets, which likely further contributed to filter bubbles and division.”
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“Research highlighted in the Wall Street Journal suggests that people on social media do see opposing viewpoints. But since sites like Facebook are calibrated to highlight posts that elicit reactions, we’re seeing the most acerbic of opposing views, which can lead people to be even more repelled by them. The result is even more entrenched viewpoints and more polarization.”
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““It’s not just a matter of coming into contact with the other side,” Pariser told Recode about how his conception of filter bubbles has changed since he first coined the term. “It’s doing so in a way that leads us to greater understanding.””
“Trump’s new order aims to limit social media companies’ legal protections if they don’t adhere to unspecified standards of neutrality. It comes just two days after Twitter fact-checked two of his tweets that made misleading claims about voting-by-mail in the 2020 elections.”
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“The order calls for limiting protections that a law called Section 230 offers tech companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google by not holding them responsible for what users post on their platforms.”
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“To do this, the order tasks regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to create new rules that could pull back some of those protections, potentially opening them up to a litany of lawsuits for libel, defamation, and other complaints.”
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“Critics — including, reportedly, some of Trump’s most conservative advisers — have warned the order could set a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent that the president can use executive powers to effectively censor companies for political reasons. Many legal experts say the order is largely toothless and will be challenged in court.”
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“Ironically, it’s actually Trump — not Twitter — who is wading into unconstitutional territory here. If Trump were to try to shut down social media companies in retaliation for Twitter’s fact-check of his tweets, that would be a clear violation of the First Amendment. It would be sure to invite a fierce legal challenge and would signal an alarming attempt by the president of the United States to wield his executive power against one of the most fundamental rights in this country.”
“Fox News’s article about how Vaughn supposedly “faces liberal outrage after he was seen with Trump during national championship game” prominently features a tweet from Washington Examiner staffer Siraj Hashmi, who is hardly a liberal, sarcastically quipping that “Ladies & gentlemen, I regret to inform you Vince Vaughn is CANCELED” — but the tweet is presented in David Aaro’s article as though Hashmi is a liberal who meant it earnestly.
Hashmi later noted on Twitter that the Fox News article caused right-wing trolls to flood his Instagram page with abusive comments. And the few other examples of “liberal outrage” in the piece were gleaned from the far fringes of Twitter. (Fox News still hasn’t figured out that Hashmi isn’t actually liberal as of Tuesday afternoon — his tweet was falsely cited as an example of “liberal cancel culture” on Outnumbered.)”
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“a few left-wing accounts did react to Burke’s clip with comments like, “Sad. Vince Vaughn is one of my favorites. I always knew he was Republican but this, so gross … I don’t need a Wedding Crashers sequel anymore.” But the idea that there was some sort of concerted liberal backlash to the clip is make-believe aimed at ginning up outrage.”