“In an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) on ABC’s This Week last March, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Donald Trump, now the president-elect, had been “found liable for rape.” A week later, Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos for defamation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, noting that a jury had deemed Trump civilly liable for “sexual abuse,” not “rape.” Over the weekend, ABC News announced that it had reached a $15 million settlement with Trump in the form of a contribution to Trump’s presidential library. ABC also agreed to cover $1 million in Trump’s legal expenses.
The settlement is highly unusual in the annals of Trump’s many lawsuits against news outlets, which typically feature claims with a much weaker legal and empirical basis. Some Trump critics explicitly or implicitly faulted ABC for folding, saying its decision is apt to have a chilling impact on journalism. But any such threat can be mitigated by applying normal standards of journalistic care—standards that Stephanopoulos conspicuously failed to uphold in this case.
In his interview with Mace, Stephanopoulos was talking about two cases involving the journalist E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. In one case, a New York jury last year concluded that Carroll had proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Trump had “sexually abused” her. The jurors also agreed that Trump had defamed Carroll by calling her a liar and awarded her $5 million in damages. But they expressly concluded that Carroll had failed to prove Trump had “raped” her.”
“The law defined the term “controlled by a foreign adversary” to include not only companies owned wholly by Chinese entities but also one in which a citizen of an adversarial nation “directly or indirectly own[s] at least a 20 percent stake.” In other words, even if the overwhelming majority of a company’s shares were owned by Americans, it could be banned or forced to divest so long as the remaining shares were held by Chinese, Russian, or Iranian citizens.
In order to continue operating within the United States, the only recourse would be to sell TikTok to an American company by January 19, 2025—Joe Biden’s last full day in office.
TikTok and ByteDance sued, asking courts to declare the law unconstitutional. “For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban,” the lawsuit argued. Lawmakers’ “speculative concerns fall far short of what is required when First Amendment rights are at stake.”
The plaintiffs claimed that the law’s restrictions were subject to strict scrutiny—the highest standard of review that a court can apply to an action, reserved for potential burdens on fundamental constitutional rights. “The Act represents a content- and viewpoint-based restriction on protected speech,” the lawsuit said, and the law’s divest-or-be-banned provision constitutes “an unlawful prior restraint.”
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“a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the plaintiffs, finding “the Government’s justifications are compelling” and that it did not violate the First Amendment for the state to single out one company for disfavored treatment.
“We conclude the portions of the Act the petitioners have standing to challenge, that is the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities, survive constitutional scrutiny,” Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote for the majority. “We therefore deny the petitions.”
Ginsburg notes that while the law does require “heightened scrutiny,” it satisfies the requirements of strict scrutiny because of how narrowly tailored it was: “The Act was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents. It was carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC.”
In fact, that “national security threat” was not very “well-substantiated” at all—but the court didn’t seem to mind.
“TikTok contends the Government’s content-manipulation rationale is speculative and based upon factual errors,” Ginsburg wrote, referring to lawmakers’ concerns that Beijing could manipulate content on TikTok to promote Chinese propaganda. “TikTok fails, however, to grapple fully with the Government’s submissions. On the one hand, the Government acknowledges that it lacks specific intelligence that shows the PRC has in the past or is now coercing TikTok into manipulating content in the United States.” But “the Government is aware ‘that ByteDance and TikTok Global have taken action in response to PRC demands to censor content outside of China'” and “‘have a demonstrated history of manipulating the content on their platforms, including at the direction of the PRC.'”
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“It may be that the PRC has not yet done so in the United States or, as the Government suggests, the Government’s lack of evidence to that effect may simply reflect limitations on its ability to monitor TikTok,” Ginsburg shrugs. “In any event, the Government reasonably predicts that TikTok ‘would try to comply if the PRC asked for specific actions to be taken to manipulate content for censorship, propaganda, or other malign purposes’ in the United States.”
The court’s decision is yet another instance where vague claims of “national security” trump individuals’ First Amendment rights. Claiming that Congress has the authority to force a company to sell one of its holdings—not through an established power like antitrust, but simply because they don’t like how it could be used in the future—is not only a weak justification; it is a plainly unconstitutional one.”
Trump pick accused of sexual assault and abusing women claims accusations are based on nothing when there’s a police report and the words of his own mother. He acts like “they” are out to get him rather than dealing truthfully with the evidence against him. Megyn Kelly lets such bullshit go unchallenged like she doesn’t care or didn’t do basic homework before talking to an important guest.
“Based on an analysis of posting behavior and subsequent suspensions on Twitter, Oxford Internet Institute professor Mohsen Mosleh and four other researchers confirmed that Republicans and conservatives were much more likely to run afoul of moderators than Democrats and progressives were. But they also found that right-leaning social media users were much more likely to share information from “low-quality news sites.” Those findings, the authors say, suggest that “differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions.”
I know what you’re thinking: Since “misinformation” is a vague, subjective, and highly contested category, it can easily serve as a cover for bias against particular opinions or ideologies. But Mosleh et al. took that possibility into account by judging the quality of news sites based on “trustworthiness ratings” by a nationally representative and “politically balanced” sample of 970 Republicans and Democrats. They also considered how sites ranked when they were rated only by the Republicans.”
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“Mosleh et al. found further evidence that “the tendency to share misinformation” is politically skewed when they analyzed data from seven other sources, including information about “YouGov respondents’ on-platform Facebook sharing in 2016,” “prolific respondents’ on-platform Twitter sharing in 2018,” and “the on-platform sharing of Twitter users sampled in various ways in 2021.” And again, that association was apparent based on the “politically balanced” trustworthiness assessments as well as “fact-checker ratings.”
These results are consistent with previous research, Mosleh et al. say. They cite studies finding that “links to websites that journalists and fact-checkers deemed to be low-quality ‘fake news’ sites were shared much more by conservatives than liberals on Facebook” during the 2016 election and the 2020 election and on Twitter during the 2016 election and during Donald Trump’s first impeachment.
Other studies have found that “conservatives on Twitter were much more likely to follow elites [who] made claims fact-checkers rated as false compared with Democrats” and that “Republican-oriented images on Facebook were much more likely to be rated as misleading than Democratic-oriented images.” Mosleh et al. also note evidence from surveys that “present participants with politically balanced sets of headlines,” which “typically find that conservatives indicate higher sharing intentions for articles deemed to be false by professional fact-checkers than liberals.”
Such associations can be seen in other countries as well as the United States. “A survey experiment conducted in 16 countries found widespread cross-cultural evidence of conservatives sharing more unambiguously false claims about COVID-19 than liberals,” Mosleh et al. note. “An examination of Twitter data found that conservative political elites shared links to lower-quality news sites than liberal political elites in the USA, Germany and the UK.””
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“”differential treatment of those on one versus the other side of the aisle does not on its own constitute evidence of political bias on the part of social media companies.””
“A Gallup and Walton Family Foundation study showed that Gen Z teens are twice as likely to identify as more conservative than their parents in comparison to millennials and their parents 20 years before. This was especially true for male Republican teenagers. Younger people are also more skeptical of major American institutions, including political parties, the government, and the media.
Trump’s campaign directly spoke to this demographic: He echoed that same mistrust in institutions, and did so while stopping at seemingly every podcast, Twitch stream, YouTube channel, and TikTok page whose viewership is dominated by Gen Z men and boys. He joined Adin Ross, a now 24-year-old streamer who once famously looked up and struggled to read the definition of “fascism” on camera, for an interview during which Ross presented Trump with a Rolex and a Cybertruck.
He went on the mulleted comedian Theo Von’s podcast, where they discussed cocaine, golf, and UFC.
He palled around with YouTube millionaires like the Paul brothers and the Nelk Boys, known for their distasteful pranks and crypto scams.
And, of course, he talked to Joe Rogan, the most famous podcaster in the world; the two rambled to each other for three hours. For this, he received Rogan’s much-coveted endorsement.”
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“Nearly half of men between 18 and 29 say there is “some or a lot” of discrimination against men in America, up from a third in 2019, according to the Survey Center on American Life, which is affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. They believe the Me Too movement was an overreach and that many women are simply lying about being abused.
It’s not exactly surprising they’re drawn to media that speaks to these grievances — and more often than not, that media comes in the form of individual influencers who are unaffiliated with existing media institutions.”
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“men are even lonelier, more likely to be single, more skeptical, and more afraid than ever. They find solace and community online, in places that older folks still don’t understand, where they see idealized versions of masculinity winning. They cheer on UFC fights and boxing matches, use “edgy” slurs, trade in risky crypto investments, bootlick Silicon Valley billionaires, listen to toxic dating advice, and denigrate women.
They vote for a man who has done everything you’re not supposed to do — steal, lie, rape, idolize Hitler — because his election fulfills their fantasy that men really can get away with whatever they want.”
The algorithm is not free speech. It puts people in contact with misinformation and anger-inducing content. Inciting people to violence is not protected free speech. In England, people were attacked and property was destroyed because people were incensed by what turned out to be false information.
“An FBI investigation found evidence that the media outlet RT, previously called Russia Today, which is run by the Russian government, “secretly plant[ed] and financ[ed]” a Tennessee content creation company; the indictment describes Tenet in all but name. The company is then alleged to have stealthily spread pro-Russian, anti-democracy propaganda to millions of people across the internet, primarily via YouTube, TikTok, and other major social media platforms.”
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“According to the indictment, the pair, who worked on digital projects for the outlet, used shell companies in the Middle East and Africa to secretly provide nearly $10 million to the company believed to be Tenet between October 2023 and August 2024, while directing it to spread anti-US and anti-Ukraine messaging. Per the indictment, the RT staffers “covertly fund[ed] and direct[ed]” Tenet and its content, including personally editing and posting content themselves and directing what others posted.”
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“The associated influencers who have responded to the news have all claimed they knew nothing of Tenet’s Russian affiliations. “Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims,” Pool tweeted Wednesday.”
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“two of the pundits entered into contracts of between $400,000-$500,000 a month to create video content for the fake Grigoriann. Most of the $10 million in funding that Tenet received went to creator studios, including, per the indictment, “$8.7 million to the production companies of Commentator-I, Commentator-2, and Commentator-3 alone.””
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“The Russians not only contracted the most prominent influencers to create content for them through their fake financier, at various points they directly edited the footage submitted to them. One Tenet staffer identified as a “producer” in the indictment protested, when asked to post a video promoting a US influencer’s visit to a Russian grocery store, that it felt like “shilling.” He was ordered to post the content anyway. The Russians would also request that creators make specific content, including, for example, videos about a terrorist attack in Moscow.
The sad part of all this, however, is that this kind of content has become so mundane across the conservative internet that it’s nearly impossible to distinguish what comes directly from the Russian government and what originates from the influencers they employed. After all, while the six figures who were contracted with Tenet might have been unaware of or unbothered about who was paying them, they raised no objections to the content itself. (In fact, the only objection noted in the indictment is a complaint one of the podcasters raised that Grigoriann’s bio was suspect because he mentioned a focus on “social justice.”)
That, perhaps, speaks to how effective Russia’s disinformation war has really been. The indictment claimed that from November 2023 to August 2024, Tenet network members created over 2,000 videos among them, which generated 16 million views for Tenet and its Russian benefactors. At the time the scandal broke, Tenet Media’s YouTube channel had a not-insignificant 300,000 subscribers.
That’s not a shabby number by any means, but it pales beside the larger, unquantifiable scale of influence itself.”