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      Far-Right Protesters Stormed Germany’s Parliament. What Can America Learn?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyFar-Right Protesters Stormed Germany’s Parliament. What Can America Learn?It might be time to crack down, rather than reach out.Ms. Sauerbrey is a contributing Opinion writer who focuses on German politics and society.Jan. 8, 2021, 4:53 p.m. ETProtesters gathered in front of the the Reichstag in Berlin on Aug. 29. Credit…John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBERLIN — When the first pictures of rioters mounting the steps to the Capitol started to beam across the world on Wednesday, many Germans felt an unpleasant twinge of familiarity.On Aug. 29, during a demonstration in Berlin against government restrictions to rein in the spread of the coronavirus, several hundred protesters climbed over fences around the Reichstag, the seat of Germany’s national Parliament, and ran toward the entrance. They were met by a handful of police officers, who pushed the crowd back and secured the entrance.Things went differently at the American Capitol, of course. Still, even if the German protesters weren’t able to enter the building, the shock was similar: an assault on a democratically elected legislature. Some of the German protesters were far-right activists; several waved the “Reichsflagge,” the black, white and red flag of the German Empire, the colors of which were later adopted by the Nazis.In the days that followed, Germans asked themselves a series of questions: Was this “a storming of the Reichstag,” evoking dark memories of the building being set on fire in 1933, which led to the suspension of the Weimar Republic’s constitution? Was it a sign that our democracy was under threat? Or was this just a bunch of extremist rioters exploiting a blind spot in the police’s strategy?In a way, it feels inappropriate to compare what happened in Berlin in August to what happened in Washington on Wednesday. The crowd here was much smaller, it did not enter the building, and luckily, nobody was hurt, much less killed. The goals were different, too. American protesters wanted to overturn an election; Germany’s wanted to overturn a set of policies. And most importantly, while some far-right populist politicians backed the Berlin demonstrations, they did not have the support of the country’s leader.And yet, the similarities are too big to ignore — and I fear that they indicate the arrival of a new phenomenon that may be found in many other countries, too: the decoupling of protest from the real world.What connects the protesters on both sides of the Atlantic is a deep distrust in officials and a belief in conspiracy theories. In fact, many in both countries believe in the same conspiracy theories. The QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that President Trump will defend the world from a vast network of Satanists and pedophiles, is shockingly popular with many in Germany’s anti-lockdown movement, as it is with the president’s fiercest partisans at home.The woman who uttered the decisive call to storm the stairs to Reichstag claimed in her speech that President Trump was in Berlin and that the crowd needed to show that “we are fed up” and would “take over domestic authority here and now” and to “show Donald Trump that we want world peace.” She was referring to QAnon.The similarity that struck me most, however, was how aimless and lost some of the rioters both in Berlin and Washington appeared to be once they had reached their target. At the Capitol, some trashed offices or sat in chairs that weren’t theirs. In Berlin, too, there was no plan beyond this spontaneous gesture of rage and disobedience. Many just pulled out their smartphones and started filming once they had reached the top of the stairs. Is this their revolution? A bunch of selfies?It seems like protesters on both sides of the Atlantic long for some sort of control, and want to assert their power over legislative headquarters that they see as representative of their oppression. But all they get in the end is a cheap social media surrogate. Their selfies may resonate in their digital spheres — and eventually spill back into the real world to create more disruption — but their material effect may be pretty limited.In that case, what can politicians do to deal with these extremists?So far, many politicians have tried to defang the far-right by placating its voters. Since the rise of the Alternative for Germany party in 2015, the mainstream consensus in Germany has been to stress that these voters should not be viewed as extremists, but as angry people, who can and should be won back. Many of them, particularly people in Eastern Germany where the AfD is much stronger than in the West, are seen angry about real grievances, like deindustrialization, job loss, and all the other cultural and economic traumas of Reunification. In some places, this has worked to peel off right-wing voters and bring them back to the mainstream.But the remaining fringe has only drifted further away. Right-wing leaders and conspiracy theorists have now redirected the anger at made-up causes largely decoupled from real world grievances: Many on the far-right in Germany believe that Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to create a “corona dictatorship” and that vaccines will be used to alter people’s genes. The American equivalent, of course, is that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump.This is a problem. Political compromise, and ultimately, reconciliation, starts with recognition. But real-world politics cannot follow those who become believers in their alternate realities. A different strategy is needed.German policymakers have started to realize this — and it’s only become clearer since the August protests. Germany’s secret service has decided to put sub-organizations of the AfD, which is increasingly radical, “under observation,” an administrative step that allows for the collection of personal data and the recruitment of informants within the party. Organizers of the coronavirus protest in August are becoming a focus, too. The minister of the interior banned several right-wing extremist associations in 2020.Of course, attempts to win voters back, to wrestle them from the grip of the cult, must never stop. But there are no policies and no recognition politics we could offer people who adhere to a cult. Instead, to protect our democracies, we must watch them, contain them, and take away their guns.Anna Sauerbrey, a contributing Opinion writer, is an editor and writer at the German daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Did the Capitol Attack Break Trump’s Spell?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyDid the Capitol Attack Break the President’s Spell?Either the beginning of the end for Trump, or America.Opinion ColumnistJan. 7, 2021A scarf discarded at the Capitol after the mob incursion on Wednesday.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesIt was probably always going to come to this. Donald Trump has been telling us for years that he would not accept an electoral defeat. He has cheered violence and threatened insurrection. On Tuesday he tweeted that Democrats and Republicans who weren’t cooperating in his coup attempt should look “at the thousands of people pouring into D.C. They won’t stand for a landslide election victory to be stolen.” He urged his supporters to mass on the capital, tweeting, “Be there, will be wild!” They took him seriously and literally.The day after Georgia elected its first Black senator — the pastor, no less, of Martin Luther King Jr.’s church — and its first Jewish senator, an insurgent marched through the halls of Congress with a Confederate banner. Someone set up a noose outside. Someone brought zip-tie handcuffs. Lest there be any doubt about their intentions, a few of the marauders wore T-shirts that said “MAGA Civil War, Jan. 6, 2021.”If you saw Wednesday’s scenes in any other country — vandals scaling walls and breaking windows, parading around the legislature with enemy flags and making themselves at home in quickly abandoned governmental offices — it would be obvious enough that some sort of putsch was underway.Yet we won’t know for some time what the attack on the Capitol means for this country. Either it marked the beginning of the end of Trumpism, or another stage in the unraveling of American liberal democracy.There is at least some cause for a curdled sort of optimism. More than any other episode of Trump’s political career — more than the “Access Hollywood” tape or Charlottesville — the day’s desecration and mayhem threw the president’s malignancy into high relief. For years, many of us have waited for the “Have you no sense of decency?” moment when Trump’s demagogic powers would deflate like those of Senator Joseph McCarthy before him. The storming of Congress by a human 8chan thread in thrall to Trump’s delusions may have been it.Since it happened, there have been once-unthinkable repudiations of the president. The National Association of Manufacturers, a major business group, called on Vice President Mike Pence to consider invoking the 25th Amendment. Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr, who’d been one of Trump’s most craven defenders, accused the president of betraying his office by “orchestrating a mob.”Several administration officials resigned, including Trump’s former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who’d been serving as special envoy to Northern Ireland. In an interview with CNBC, Mulvaney was astonishingly self-pitying, complaining that people who “spent time away from our families, put our careers on the line to go work for Donald Trump,” will now forever be remembered for serving “the guy who tried to overtake the government.”Mulvaney’s insistence that the president is “not the same as he was eight months ago” is transparent nonsense. But his weaselly effort to distance himself is still heartening, a sign that some Republicans suddenly realize that association with Trump has stained them. When the rats start jumping, you know the ship is sinking.So Trump’s authority is ebbing before our eyes. Having helped deliver the Senate to Democrats, he’s no longer much use to Republicans like Mitch McConnell. With two weeks left in the president’s term, social media has invoked its own version of the 25th Amendment. Twitter, after years of having let Trump spread conspiracy theories and incite brutality on its platform, suddenly had enough: It deleted three of his tweets, locked his account and threatened “permanent suspension.” Facebook and Instagram blocked the president for at least the remainder of his term. He may still be able to launch a nuclear strike in the next two weeks, but he can’t post.Yet the forces Trump has unleashed can’t simply be stuffed back in the bottle. Most of the Republican House caucus still voted to challenge the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election. And the MAGA movement’s terrorist fringe may be emboldened by Wednesday’s incursion into the heart of American government.“The extremist violent faction views today as a huge win,” Elizabeth Neumann, a former Trump counterterrorism official who has accused the president of encouraging white nationalists, told me on Wednesday. She pointed out that “The Turner Diaries,” the seminal white nationalist novel, features a mortar attack on the Capitol. “This is like a right-wing extremist fantasy that has been fulfilled,” she said.Neumann believes that if Trump immediately left office — either via impeachment, the 25th Amendment or resignation — it would temporarily inflame right-wing extremists, but ultimately marginalize them. “Having such a unified, bipartisan approach, that he is dangerous, that he has to be removed,” would, she said, send “such a strong message to the country that I hope that it wakes up a number of people of good will that have just been deceived.”In a Twitter thread on Thursday, Kathleen Belew, a scholar of the white power movement, wrote about how, in “The Turner Diaries,” the point of the assault on Congress wasn’t causing mass casualties. It was “showing people that even the Capitol can be attacked.”Trump’s mob has now demonstrated to the world that the institutions of American democracy are softer targets than most of us imagined. What happens to Trump next will tell us all whether this ailing country still has the will to protect them.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Be There. Will Be Wild!’: Trump All but Circled the Date

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesCongress Confirms Biden’s WinBiden Denounces ViolenceHow Mob Stormed CapitolScenes From InsideAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Be There. Will Be Wild!’: Trump All but Circled the DateInside Trump supporters’ online echo chambers, the chaos of Jan. 6 could be seen coming. People posted their plans to come to Washington — and showed the weapons they would carry.“We will never concede,” President Trump said at a rally on Wednesday.Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York TimesDan Barry and Published More

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      Trump's Georgia Call Was Brought to You by Q

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWith One Presidential Phone Call, QAnon Shows Its PowerThe sprawling online conspiracy network is at the center of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.Opinion ColumnistJan. 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Illustration by Mike McQuade; photograph by Doug Mills/The New York TimesForgive me for failing, at first, to find much news in the news that President Trump had pressured officials in Georgia to overturn the election results. That he had been caught doing so on tape was even more dog-bites-man.Not many people remember this, but we once had a lengthy impeachment hearing centered on a corrupt Trump phone call. It’s only natural that he’d reprise his biggest hit — “Perfect Call Feat. Senate Toadies” — in his grand finale as president.Then I spent an hour listening to the full recording of Trump’s call, and my stomach sank. What got me was how thoroughly Trump’s arguments involved conspiracy theories hatched or spread by QAnon, the online cultlike thing that seems to be gaining a death grip on the American right.In that phone call, I heard a president who is somehow both rabbit and rabbit hole — as much a rabid consumer of online conspiracy propaganda as he is a producer of it. The plot to undo the 2020 election isn’t Trump’s alone — it is also the product of a sprawling online phenomenon whose goals, logic and methods are as unpredictable as the internet itself.Trump will soon step out of office, but that won’t diminish his standing with a conspiracy-media apparatus that has become so adept at transforming rumor into political reality. Through QAnon, the mendacity that has defined the Trump era will remain an enduring feature of right-wing politics, long after Trump slinks away.QAnon originated in 2017 as an exceptionally bizarre conspiracy theory, centered around the premise that the country is run by a cabal of pedophiles whom Trump is bringing down. It has since morphed into something even stranger. More than a single conspiracy theory, QAnon is best regarded as a general-purpose conspiracy infrastructure, spreading lies across a range of subjects, from coronavirus denial to mask and vaccine skepticism and, now, to a grab bag of theories about election fraud.The conspiracy theories seem ridiculous, but the consequences are real.The movement’s acolytes take inspiration and guidance from the eponymous Q, an anonymous figure who has posted cryptic notes on the troll-infested internet forums 4Chan and 8Kun. But QAnon’s theories don’t come down fully formed from Q, nor from Trump; in a manner that resembles an online game, they are created collectively, giving the movement a flexible, almost religious quality.QAnon’s participatory thrill has alarmed misinformation researchers. Because every pronouncement from Q can spark endless “research” and commentary, new adherents are made to feel like they have a role in uncovering the deepest secrets about the world. “It is insufficient to be persuaded by the anti-vax or QAnon movements — those who’ve joined the movement feel an obligation to share the ‘truth’ with those who’ve yet to be enlightened,” the media scholar Ethan Zuckerman wrote in 2019. “Those who are most successful in converting others are rewarded with attention, a commodity that is easily convertible into other currencies.”In the Church of Q, Donald Trump is the one and only messiah. But the Georgia call shows how fully he participates in it, too.Travis View, a co-host of the excellent Q-tracking podcast “QAnon Anonymous,” told me that when Trump was rattling off his litany of false claims on the call, “he was sounding a lot like a thread on the Q research board, on which people spit out ideas, conspiracy theories and snippets, and people sort of build upon them.”View described a symbiotic relationship between Trump, QAnon message boards and pro-Trump news outlets like One America News and Newsmax. It’s a bit like jazz musicians improvising, each one punching up the other’s riff.“We’ve seen OAN and Newsmax basically regurgitate baseless conspiracy theories from QAnon world,” View said. The stories from pro-Trump outlets “get into Trump’s brain, and then he regurgitates them back, and of course because he’s regurgitating the conspiracy theories he heard on the internet, all the internet conspiracy theorists believe that their conspiracy theory is validated, because Trump repeated it.”On the call, Trump claimed that voting machines made by a company called Dominion Voting Systems were rigged to help Biden win. The theory has been debunked; it is also moot, because officials in Georgia confirmed Biden’s victory through a hand recount of paper ballots.The Dominion idea was one of several stolen-election theories that started on QAnon-friendly forums. Pro-Trump outlets then echoed the theory — as NBC News recently pointed out, Ron Watkins, the administrator of 8Kun, has been featured on One America News as a voting-systems expert, which he is not. When Trump inevitably tweeted out the OAN segment, the circle was complete: OAN had given its aggrieved audience “news” that confirmed its belief in the conspiracy. Trump promoted self-serving misinformation, and QAnon grew just a little bit more powerful.The atmosphere of fear and mistrust that has pervaded America’s response to the pandemic has been very good for QAnon, and now this dangerous movement holds real political power.In November, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon supporter, won a seat representing Georgia’s 14th District in the House of Representatives. Some Republican officials have attempted to downplay Greene’s political success and distance themselves from her ideas, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Greene becomes a G.O.P. star. On Monday, at Trump’s rally to support the two Republicans running in Georgia’s Senate runoffs, the crowd’s wildest cheers came when Greene took the stage. The audience sounded much more enthusiastic about Greene than about Kelly Loeffler, one of the actual Republican candidates.If the Republican Party has given up entirely on fighting QAnon’s influence, it might be because Q has grown too big to tame. Late last month, NPR and Ipsos published the disturbing results of a poll assessing QAnon’s hold on the nation. People who responded to the survey were asked whether it was true or false that “a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media,” QAnon’s central lie. Seventeen percent said “true,” and 37 percent more said they didn’t know. In other words, a majority of Americans think it is at least possible that QAnon’s nuttiest theory might be fact. A third of respondents also said that voter fraud had helped Biden win.This level of influence isn’t going to disappear at noon on Jan. 20. QAnon’s vast reach, and Trump’s deep hold on it, are here to stay.Office Hours With Farhad ManjooFarhad wants to chat with readers on the phone. If you’re interested in talking to a New York Times columnist about anything that’s on your mind, please fill out this form. Farhad will select a few readers to call.[embedded content]The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Did the Resistance Defeat Donald Trump?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyDid the Resistance Defeat Donald Trump?Some reasons to doubt a theory that’s shared by liberals and Trump supporters alike.Opinion ColumnistDec. 15, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETMedia members watching Joe Biden onscreen and the White House in front of them in November. Credit…Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesTwo of the most intense factions in our politics, the anti-Trump Resistance with its claim to be standing against fascism and the conservatives trying to delegitimize Joe Biden’s victory with claims of widespread voter fraud, agree on almost nothing, but they do agree on one point: The Trump administration was successfully undermined — the Trump agenda thwarted and Donald Trump himself defeated — by liberal institutions that refused to normalize him, maintained a persistent alarm about his presidency and took every opportunity to obstruct, investigate, protest and impeach.The liberals urging constant vigilance and outrage against Trump’s challenge to the 2020 outcome are trying to see this project of resistance through to its Biden-inauguration end. Meanwhile, the Trumpian side is trying to imitate it, since lurking below the right’s fantasy politics is a more cynical assumption that it’s a great idea, a highly effective political counterpunch, for Republicans to act like Biden is an anti-president, a Great Pretender — because that’s what liberals did to Trump and it obviously worked.I think both of these groups are mostly wrong — that what defeated Trump was Trump himself, that the “fascism” discourse around his presidency was often a distraction, and that the most successful strategies pursued by the Democrats were strategies of normalcy rather than alarm. But now that the Electoral College has voted and a Biden presidency seems essentially assured, let’s consider the best arguments for how and why the Resistance undid Trump.From the Resisters themselves, those arguments accuse anyone who was skeptical of their alarmism of ignoring the importance of passion, organization and mobilization in American politics. To eye-roll at the would-be defenders of liberalism and democracy, Laura K. Field of the Niskanen Center asserted just before the election, is to engage in an “implicit denial of the work that has gone into attempting to defeat Trump.” If his authoritarianism has fizzled out in fantasy and hopeless lawsuits, it still could have been much, much worse if people hadn’t felt a world-historical incentive to resist — an effort that merits “gratitude and respect, not dismissive call-outs and belittling tweets.”Rather than emphasizing mobilization, meanwhile, the Trumpist version of Field’s argument emphasizes elite power — the way that the media and the judiciary and the bureaucracy joined with congressional Democrats in denying Trump any of the normal space of action that his predecessors enjoyed. This newspaper’s famous Op-Ed by “Anonymous” (later revealed to be Miles Taylor, the homeland security secretary’s chief of staff) claiming to represent the Resistance inside the Trump White House offers a condensed symbol of what these Trump supporters have in mind — a kind of inside-outside game of obstruction, with media entities and government officials cooperating to keep the agenda that Trump actually campaigned on from taking shape.To these arguments I would offer a concession and a rejoinder.The concession first: There’s no question that the anti-authoritarian, America-imperiled narrative of the last four years had some benefits for Trump’s opponents. It helped pressure the disparate factions of the American elite, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, to close ranks against the president. It created an ideological home and a compelling self-understanding for anti-Trump Republicans. It contributed to the mobilization of suburban and minority voters in crucial states like Georgia and to the general sense of purpose that a successful political movement needs. And in its inside-game form, elite resistance definitely obstructed at least some of Trump’s expressed desires, from Gary Cohn and John Bolton maneuvering deceptively on NAFTA or NATO to the generals who repeatedly slow-walked orders to withdraw forces from the Middle East or Afghanistan.My rejoinder, though, is that it’s not clear whether the Resistance mentality was more effective than more politically normal modes of fighting Trump, and whether the inside-the-system obstruction of the president actually derailed a real agenda rather than just adding extra layers of chaos to a presidency that never had a vision or a plan.On the first point, one might observe that the Trump-era controversies most dominated by Resistance theatrics were conflicts that the Resistance didn’t win — the long Russiagate investigation and imbroglio, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle, the impeachment fight.At the same time, Trump’s actual defeats were the work of very conventional political campaigning: a midterm campaign in which the Democrats organized around health care and other kitchen-table issues and a presidential election in which they nominated their most moderate candidate and ran on normalcy and decency, casting Trump as a terrible person and a bad president but not a Mussolini in the making.Then, too, the gains from the Resistance mentality came with a political price. The anti-Trump closing-of-ranks within elite institutions helped shore up the president’s populist bona fides, his claim to represent outsiders and non-elites, even when his actual policies favored insiders and the rich. The tendency to see an authoritarian depredation behind every policy move, however banal, weakened the credibility of the media, especially putatively neutral outlets like CNN. The pitch of anti-Trumpism bound once-dubious Republicans to his cause, almost matching the mobilization on the Democratic side.And the liberal belief that Trump was obviously, self-evidently a white supremacist and semi-fascist left liberalism somewhat blindsided by the voters who disagreed: not just the white shy-Trumpers of the suburbs but also the Trump-voting Latinos and African-Americans who helped keep the 2020 race competitive, denying Biden his blowout and the Resistance the full repudiation of Trumpism that it sought.On the right, meanwhile, the Trumpist conceit that the Mueller investigation or MSNBC hysteria were the main forces preventing a more successful Trump agenda gives that opposition way too much credit — and Trump himself way too little blame. It was not the Resistance but his own indifference that induced Trump to outsource policymaking to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell during the two years when his party actually controlled the government. It was not the Mueller investigation but the attempted Obamacare repeal and a not-very-populist tax plan that drove his polling numbers to their notable lows.When Kayleigh McEnany complained recently that her boss “was never given an orderly transition of power,” she had a point — but the major source of disorder was not Crossfire Hurricane or the Steele dossier but just the Trump team’s own incompetence, notably Jared Kushner’s decision to ditch Chris Christie’s transition plan without having a replacement.The Resistance may have induced Democrats to take a lot of party-line votes against the president, but if Trump actually pursued his promised infrastructure bill he would have found Democratic takers. In areas where he had competent people working for him (judicial nominations, above all), the political and media opposition was impotent to stop him. Impeachment was just a segue into his presidency’s peak, a triumphant State of the Union address just before the coronavirus came calling. Even late in 2020, Nancy Pelosi was willing to make a deal with him on a big new round of coronavirus relief, which might have helped save his re-election bid — yet Trump preferred instead to go down tweeting.So treating Biden the way Trump was treated, opposing him as Trump was opposed, is only a devastating strategy if you assume that Biden and his White House will miss as many opportunities and perform as many face-plants as Trump’s administration did.And that’s without even getting into the fact that the Republican campaign to delegitimize Biden can’t really emulate the Resistance, since the whole point of the anti-Trump effort was to mobilize a political and cultural establishment from which the populist right is notably excluded. At most a refusal to recognize Biden’s legitimacy could keep congressional Republicans voting in lock step against whatever the new president supports. But most would vote in lock step anyway, and the Republican senators most likely to break ranks, a Mitt Romney or a Susan Collins, are the least likely to be swayed by appeals to Biden’s supposed illegitimacy.Which means the attempt to build a right-wing Resistance narrative should probably be understood less as an effort to actually impede Biden’s administration and much more as a project to maintain Donald Trump’s position as his party’s leader, a president in exile — because, after all under its theory, he never really lost.If the idea of Trump 2024 appeals to you, as it currently does to many Republicans, then this kind of Resistancing may sound like a good way to keep anybody else from claiming any kind of real position in the party. But the primary claim being made for it — that it will obstruct and defeat Biden the way Resistance liberals took down Trump — is a twofold error: They didn’t, and it won’t.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Facebook se debate entre combatir la desinformación y no afectar su crecimiento

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      SAN FRANCISCO — En los tensos días posteriores a la elección presidencial, un equipo de empleados de Facebook presentó al director ejecutivo, Mark Zuckerberg, un hallazgo alarmante: la desinformación relacionada con las elecciones se estaba volviendo viral en la plataforma.El presidente Donald Trump decía que la elección había sido amañada, y las historias de los medios de comunicación de derecha con afirmaciones falsas y engañosas sobre los votos desechados, los votos mal contados y los conteos sesgados estaban entre las noticias más populares de la plataforma.En respuesta, los empleados propusieron un cambio de emergencia en el algoritmo de noticias del sitio, que ayuda a determinar lo que más de 2000 millones de personas ven todos los días. Se trataba de hacer énfasis en la importancia de lo que Facebook denomina puntuaciones de “calidad del ecosistema de noticias”, o NEQ (por su sigla en inglés), una clasificación interna secreta que asigna a los medios noticiosos en función de las señales sobre la calidad de su periodismo.Por lo general, los puntajes NEQ desempeñan un papel menor en la determinación de lo que aparece en los muros de los usuarios. Sin embargo, varios días después de la elección, Zuckerberg acordó aumentar el peso que el algoritmo de Facebook le dio a los puntajes NEQ para asegurarse de que las noticias autorizadas aparecieran de manera más prominente, según dijeron tres personas que tienen información sobre la decisión y que no están autorizadas a divulgar las discusiones internas.El cambio forma parte de los planes de “remodelación” que Facebook desarrolló durante meses para lidiar con las secuelas de una elección disputada. Dio como resultado un aumento de visibilidad para grandes medios como CNN, The New York Times y NPR, mientras que los mensajes de páginas hiperpartidistas muy comprometidas, como Breitbart y Occupy Democrats, se volvieron menos visibles, señalaron los empleados.Era una visión de lo que podría ser un Facebook más tranquilo y menos polarizador. Algunos empleados argumentaron que el cambio debía ser permanente, aunque no estaba claro cómo podría afectar la cantidad de tiempo que la gente pasaba en Facebook. En una reunión de empleados celebrada la semana posterior a la elección, los trabajadores preguntaron si el “canal de noticias mejorado” podía mantenerse, dijeron dos personas que asistieron a la junta.Guy Rosen, un ejecutivo de Facebook que supervisa la división de integridad encargada de la limpieza de la plataforma, dijo durante una llamada con reporteros la semana pasada que los cambios siempre fueron temporales. “Nunca ha habido un plan para volverlos permanentes”, afirmó. John Hegeman, quien supervisa el canal de noticias, dijo en una entrevista que, aunque Facebook podría dar marcha atrás a estos experimentos, los analizaría y aprendería de ellos.El debate sobre las noticias ilustra una tensión central que algunos miembros de Facebook están sintiendo en la actualidad: que las aspiraciones de la compañía de mejorar el mundo a menudo están en conflicto con su deseo de dominio.En los últimos meses, a medida que Facebook ha sido objeto de un mayor escrutinio en cuanto a su papel en la amplificación de información falsa y divisiva, sus empleados se han enfrentado por el futuro de la empresa. Por un lado están los idealistas, incluyendo a muchos trabajadores de base y algunos ejecutivos, que quieren hacer más para limitar la desinformación y la polarización del contenido. Por otro lado están los pragmáticos, quienes temen que esas medidas puedan perjudicar el crecimiento de Facebook o provocar una reacción política que ocasione una regulación dolorosa.“Hay tensiones en casi todas las decisiones de productos que tomamos, y en toda la compañía hemos desarrollado una política llamada ‘Mejores decisiones’ para asegurarnos de que las tomamos con precisión, y que nuestros objetivos están directamente conectados con el hecho de ofrecer las mejores experiencias posibles para las personas”, dijo Joe Osborne, portavoz de Facebook.Estas batallas han afectado la moral. En una encuesta a los empleados aplicada este mes, los trabajadores de Facebook reportaron sentirse menos orgullosos de la compañía en comparación con años anteriores. Solo cerca de la mitad sentía que Facebook tenía un impacto positivo en el mundo, por debajo de las tres cuartas partes que opinaron eso a principios de este año, según una copia de la encuesta, conocida como Pulse, que fue analizada por The New York Times. La “intención de quedarse” de los empleados también disminuyó, así como la confianza en el liderazgo.BuzzFeed News informó previamente sobre los resultados del sondeo.Aunque el día de las elecciones y sus secuelas han pasado con pocos incidentes, algunos empleados desilusionados renunciaron; alegaron que ya no podían trabajar para una compañía cuyos productos creen que son perjudiciales. Otros se han quedado, bajo el razonamiento de que pueden cambiar las cosas desde el interior. Otros han hecho el cálculo moral de que, a final de cuentas, incluso con sus defectos, Facebook hace más bien que mal.“Los salarios de Facebook están entre los más altos del sector tecnológico en este momento, y cuando te vas a casa con un cheque gigante cada dos semanas, tienes que convencerte de que es por una buena causa”, comentó Gregor Hochmuth, exingeniero de Instagram, propiedad de Facebook, quien dejó la compañía en 2014. “De lo contrario, tu trabajo no es muy diferente del de otras industrias que destrozan el planeta y pagan a sus empleados de manera exorbitante para ayudarles a que se olviden de eso”.Con la mayoría de los empleados trabajando a distancia durante la pandemia, gran parte del examen de conciencia ha tenido lugar en Workplace, la red interna de Facebook.En mayo, al calor de las protestas de Black Lives Matter, Zuckerberg enfureció a muchos empleados cuando se negó a remover una publicación del presidente Trump que decía “cuando empieza el saqueo, empieza el tiroteo”. Los legisladores y los grupos de derechos civiles dijeron que la publicación impulsaba la violencia contra los manifestantes y pidieron que fuera retirada. Pero Zuckerberg dijo que la publicación no violaba las reglas de Facebook.Para señalar su insatisfacción, varios empleados formaron un nuevo grupo en Workplace, llamado “Take Action”. La gente en el grupo, que se incrementó hasta alcanzar más de 1500 miembros, cambiaron sus fotos de perfil a una imagen de un puño levantado de Black Lives Matter.El grupo se convirtió en un hogar para la disidencia interna y el humor negro sobre las debilidades de Facebook. En varias ocasiones, los empleados reaccionaron a las noticias negativas sobre la compañía publicando un meme de una escena de una comedia británica en la que dos nazis tienen una epifanía moral y se preguntan: “¿Somos los malos?”.En junio, los trabajadores organizaron un paro virtual para protestar por las decisiones de Zuckerberg sobre las publicaciones de Trump.En septiembre, Facebook actualizó sus políticas para los empleados con el fin de desalentar a los trabajadores de mantener debates políticos contenciosos en foros abiertos de Workplace, al decir que deberían limitar las conversaciones a espacios específicamente designados. También exigió a los empleados que usaran sus rostros reales o la primera inicial de sus nombres como la foto de su perfil, un cambio interpretado por algunos trabajadores como una medida represiva.Varios empleados dijeron que se sentían frustrados porque, para abordar temas delicados como la desinformación, a menudo tenían que demostrar que las soluciones propuestas no enojarían a los poderosos partidarios ni se harían a expensas del crecimiento de Facebook.Las ventajas y desventajas se evidenciaron este mes, cuando los ingenieros y científicos de datos de Facebook publicaron los resultados de una serie de experimentos llamados “P (Malo para el Mundo)”.La compañía había encuestado a los usuarios acerca de si ciertas publicaciones que habían visto eran “buenas para el mundo” o “malas para el mundo”. Encontraron que las publicaciones de alto alcance —vistas por muchos usuarios— tenían más probabilidades de ser consideradas “malas para el mundo”, un hallazgo que algunos empleados dijeron que les alarmaba.Así que el equipo entrenó un algoritmo de aprendizaje automático para predecir los mensajes que los usuarios considerarían como “malos para el mundo” y rebajarlos en los canales de noticias. En las primeras pruebas, el nuevo algoritmo redujo con éxito la visibilidad de los contenidos censurables. Pero también redujo el número de veces que los usuarios abrieron Facebook, una métrica interna conocida como “sesiones” que los ejecutivos monitorean de cerca.“Los resultados fueron buenos, excepto que llevó a una disminución de las sesiones, lo que nos motivó a probar un enfoque diferente”, según un resumen de los resultados, que fue publicado en la red interna de Facebook y revisado por el Times.Luego, el equipo realizó un segundo experimento en el que ajustaron el algoritmo para que un conjunto más grande de contenido “malo para el mundo” fuera rebajado con menos fuerza. Aunque eso dejaba publicaciones controversiales en los canales de noticias de los usuarios, no reducía sus sesiones o el tiempo empleado.Ese cambio fue aprobado en última instancia. Pero otras características que los empleados desarrollaron antes de la elección nunca lo fueron.Una, llamada “corregir el registro”, habría notificado retroactivamente a los usuarios que habían interactuado con noticias falsas y los habría dirigido a una verificación independiente de los hechos. Los empleados de Facebook propusieron ampliar el producto, que actualmente se utiliza para notificar a las personas que han compartido información falsa sobre la COVID-19, para que se aplique a otros tipos de información falsa.Pero eso fue vetado por los ejecutivos de políticas que temían que mostrara desproporcionadamente las notificaciones a las personas que compartían noticias falsas de sitios web de derecha, según dos personas familiarizadas con las conversaciones.Otro producto, un algoritmo para clasificar y degradar el “cebo de odio” —publicaciones que no violan estrictamente las reglas de discurso de odio de Facebook, pero que provocan una avalancha de comentarios de odio— se limitó a ser utilizado solo en grupos, en lugar de páginas, después de que el equipo de políticas determinó que afectaría principalmente a los editores de derecha si se aplicaba más ampliamente, dijeron dos personas familiarizadas con esa estrategia.Rosen, el ejecutivo de integridad de Facebook, impugnó esas caracterizaciones en una entrevista, que se celebró con la condición de que no se le citara directamente.Dijo que la herramienta “corregir el registro” no era tan eficaz como se esperaba, y que la empresa había decidido centrarse en otras maneras de poner freno a la información errónea. También dijo que la aplicación del detector de “cebo de odio” a las páginas de Facebook podría castigar injustamente a los editores por los comentarios de odio dejados por sus seguidores, o hacer posible que los malos actores dañen el alcance de una página al enviar spam con comentarios tóxicos. Ninguno de los dos proyectos fue archivado por preocupaciones políticas o porque redujo el uso de Facebook, dijo.“Ningún cambio en el canal de noticias se realiza únicamente por su impacto en el tiempo empleado”, dijo Osborne, el portavoz de Facebook. Añadió que las personas que hablaron con el Times no tenían autoridad para tomar decisiones.De alguna manera, al final del gobierno de Trump, los cambios de Facebook para limpiar su plataforma se volverán más fáciles. Por años, Trump y otros líderes conservadores acusaron a la compañía de tener sesgos anticonservadores cada vez que tomaba medidas para limitar la desinformación.No obstante, incluso con el gobierno de Biden entrante, Facebook deberá equilibrar el deseo de los empleados de tener responsabilidad social con sus objetivos comerciales.“La pregunta es esta: ¿qué han aprendido de estas elecciones para dar forma a sus políticas en el futuro?”, opinó Vanita Gupta, directora ejecutiva del grupo de derechos civiles Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Mi preocupación es que reviertan todos estos cambios a pesar de que las condiciones que los impulsaron se sigan presentando”.En una reunión virtual de empleados celebrada la semana pasada, los ejecutivos describieron lo que vieron como éxitos electorales de Facebook, dijeron dos personas que asistieron. Mientras que el sitio seguía lleno de publicaciones que afirmaban falsamente que la elección estaba amañada, Chris Cox, jefe de producto de Facebook, dijo que estaba orgulloso de cómo la compañía había aplicado etiquetas a la información errónea relacionada con la elección, e indicado a los usuarios la información autorizada sobre los resultados, dijeron las personas.Luego la transmisión se cortó para mostrar un video que era una suerte de refuerzo moral por el Día de Acción de Gracias y que presentaba un desfile de empleados que hablaban sobre lo que estaban agradecidos este año.Kevin Roose es columnista de tecnología para el Times. Su columna The Shift, analiza la intersección de la tecnología, los negocios y la cultura. Puedes encontrarlo en Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, o Instagram. • FacebookMike Isaac es reportero de tecnología y autor de Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, que ha estado en la lista de los más vendidos del NYT sobre el dramático ascenso y caída de la compañía de transporte de pasajeros. Cubre regularmente Facebook y Silicon Valley, y tiene sede en el buró de San Francisco del Times. @MikeIsaacSheera Frenkel cubre temas de ciberseguridad desde San Francisco. Pasó más de una década en el Medio Oriente como corresponsal en el extranjero para BuzzFeed, NPR, The Times of London y los diarios McClatchy. @sheeraf More