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      Kim Kardashian exhibe productos de Tesla y desata teorías políticas

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      Sale de fiesta con Ivanka Trump y ha convertido productos de Tesla en accesorios de moda en las redes sociales. Pero asumir que se trata de declaraciones políticas podría ser incorrecto.¿Se ha vuelto Kim Kardashian parte del movimiento MAGA?Esa pregunta circuló por internet esta semana después de que Kardashian, la personalidad de la telerrealidad y preeminente influente de las redes sociales, publicara una serie de fotografías suyas en Instagram y X posando delante y dentro de un Tesla Cybercab.Llevaba tacones negros y medias de encaje sobre su característico conjunto moldeador de color nude, con un liguero y una chaqueta negra abultada. Un robot Optimus —que al parecer será capaz de hacer prácticamente cualquier cosa, ya sea manejar un Cybertruck o freír un huevo— iba sentado en el asiento del conductor.Había fotos de Kardashian de pie fuera del vehículo. Había fotos de ella sentada en el regazo del robot. Un representante de Kardashian, quien ha ocultado algunos contenidos patrocinados en el pasado, dijo que no se recibieron pagos a cambio de las publicaciones.El momento elegido para hacer estas publicaciones fue sin duda curioso. El director ejecutivo de Tesla, Elon Musk, ha ganado nueva prominencia como uno de los aliados más notables del presidente electo Donald Trump, e incluso Trump le ha pedido que se una a Vivek Ramaswamy para dirigir un nuevo “departamento de eficiencia gubernamental”.Esa conexión fue suficiente para que la gente empezara a especular sobre sus motivaciones, y algunos llegaron a conectar esos cargos con la aparente amistad de Kardashian con Ivanka Trump, la hija de Donald Trump, para reforzar la teoría de que había respaldado políticamente a Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Interview’: K-Pop Trained Rosé to Be ‘a Perfect Girl.’ Now She’s Trying to Be Herself.

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      South Korean pop, known as K-pop, is not just a type of music — it’s a culture, where bold style, perfectly choreographed dance moves and ebullient earworms that draw from pop, hip-hop and traditional Korean music attract a huge and particularly devoted global fan base. The genre’s stars, known as idols, are trained, often for years, by entertainment companies that then place the most promising trainees in groups, write and produce their music and obsessively manage their public images. It’s a system that works for the idols who make it big, but it has also drawn criticism for its grueling methods, which some call exploitative.One of the biggest stars to come out of that system is Rosé. Born Roseanne Park, she trained for four years with one of K-pop’s largest agencies, YG Entertainment, eventually breaking through as part of the girl group Blackpink. Now at age 27, she is striking out on her own with her first full-length solo album, “Rosie,” which comes out on Dec. 6 from Atlantic Records. (The album’s first single, “APT.” a collaboration with Bruno Mars, is a true bop and has made history as the first track by a female K-pop artist to break into the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.) She is still a member of Blackpink, and the group re-signed with YG in 2023. But after years of singing other people’s songs and performing as Rosé, which she described to me as “a character that I really worked hard on as a trainee,” writing her own songs for this solo album has made her think about where she came from and who she is, separate from the system that turned her into a global phenomenon.Listen to the Conversation With RoséThe Blackpink star talks about striking out on her own, away from the system that turned her into a global phenomenon.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppYou’re about to release your first full-length solo album. Can you tell me what you’re feeling? Like I’ve been waiting to release this album for my whole life. I grew up listening to a lot of female artists. I used to relate to them, and they used to really get me through a lot of tough times. And so I would always dream of one day having an album myself. But I never really thought it would be realistic. I remember last year when I first began the whole process of it, I doubted myself a lot.It probably would be surprising to anyone who would look at Rosé, with all your success, with the enormous fan base that you have, to know that you doubted yourself so much. I don’t think I ever learned or trained myself to be vulnerable and open and honest. So that was the part I feared, because it was the opposite of what I was trained to do.You were born in New Zealand to South Korean immigrant parents and then you moved to Australia when you were 8. In 2012, when you were 15, you auditioned for a slot in YG Entertainment’s trainee program, which is basically a boarding school for becoming a K-pop star. It was your dad’s idea, right? Yes. More

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      U.S. Plans to Propose Breakup of Google to Fix Search Monopoly

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      In a landmark antitrust case, the government will ask a judge to force the company to sell its popular Chrome browser, people with knowledge of the matter said.The Justice Department and a group of states plan to ask a federal court late Wednesday to force Google to sell Chrome, its popular web browser, two people with knowledge of the decision said, a move that could fundamentally alter the $2 trillion company’s business and reshape competition on the internet.The request would follow a landmark ruling in August by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that found Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search. Judge Mehta asked the Justice Department and the states that brought the antitrust case to submit solutions by the end of Wednesday to correct the search monopoly.Beyond the sale of Chrome, the government is set to ask Judge Mehta to bar Google from entering into paid agreements with Apple and others to be the automatic search engine on smartphones and in browsers, the people said. Google should also be required to share data with rivals, they said.The proposals would likely be the most significant remedies to be requested in a tech antitrust case since the Justice Department asked to break up Microsoft in 2000. If Judge Mehta adopts the proposals, they will set the tone for a string of other antitrust cases that challenge the dominance of tech behemoths including Apple, Amazon and Meta.Being forced to sell Chrome would be among the worst possible outcomes for Google. Chrome, which is free to use, is the most popular web browser in the world and part of an elaborate Google ecosystem that keeps people using the company’s products. Google’s search engine is bundled into Chrome.Google is set to file its own suggestions for fixing the search monopoly by Dec. 20. Both sides can modify their requests before Judge Mehta is expected to hear arguments on the remedies this spring. He is expected to rule by the end of the summer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cómo gestiona Bluesky, la alternativa a X y Facebook, su crecimiento explosivo

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      En febrero de 2023, media decena de expertos en tecnología presentaron un prototipo de red social a la que solo se podía acceder por invitación. Estrenaron deliberadamente su creación, Bluesky, con poca fanfarria para poder gestionar de cerca su crecimiento.Pero últimamente ha sido todo menos lento.En la última semana, el crecimiento de Bluesky ha estallado, duplicándose con creces hasta superar los 15 millones de usuarios, ya que la gente busca alternativas a X, Facebook y Threads. Se ha disparado hasta los primeros puestos de las tiendas de aplicaciones de Apple y Google como la aplicación gratuita más descargada. Su ascenso ha sido tan rápido que la empresa se ha visto obligada a crecer prácticamente de la noche a la mañana.Los 20 empleados a tiempo completo de Bluesky han estado trabajando sin descanso para hacer frente a los problemas que conlleva el hipercrecimiento: caídas del sitio, fallas en el código y problemas de moderación de contenidos. Y lo que es más importante, han intentado contentar a los primeros usuarios a medida que llegaban nuevos miembros.“Como equipo, estamos orgullosos de nuestra capacidad para crecer rápidamente”, dijo en una entrevista Jay Graber, de 33 años, directora ejecutiva de Bluesky. “Pero siempre hay algunas dificultades mientras creces”. Añadió que la aplicación —que sigue siendo eclipsada por Facebook, Instagram y X— estaba sumando más de un millón de nuevos usuarios al día.Bluesky está surgiendo en medio de la agitación en el mundo de las redes sociales. Después de que Elon Musk comprara Twitter en 2022, lo transformó en X, cambiando muchas de sus funciones y alejando a algunos de sus usuarios más fieles. Threads, una aplicación similar a X que Meta introdujo el año pasado, se basa principalmente en una opaca selección algorítmica que reduce la política de los contenidos que ve la gente. Esto ha provocado que algunas personas se dirijan a otras redes, como Bluesky, para debatir cuestiones sociales candentes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Is this (finally) the end for X? Delicate Musk-Trump relationship and growing rivals spell trouble for platform

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      Was that the week that marked the death of X? The platform formerly regarded as a utopian market square for exchanging information has suffered its largest exodus to date.Bluesky, emerging as X’s newest rival, has amassed 16 million users, including 1 million in the course of 24 hours last week. Hundreds of thousands of people have quit the former Twitter since Donald Trump’s election victory on 6 November.The catalyst is X’s owner, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who transformed the social media site and used it as a megaphone to blast Trump into the White House.The US president-elect said Musk would head the new Department of Government Efficiency, the acronym for which, Doge, is a pun on the dog internet meme and the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, started as a joke by its creators, which jumped in value after Musk dubbed it “the people’s cypto” in 2021.Musk now sits at the heart of the US government, yet requires no Senate approval for his actions and can continue to work in the private sector. He’s allowed to keep X and his 204 million followers, as well as head his electric car company Tesla and rocket company SpaceX. For the first time in history, a big tech billionaire is now shaping democracy not just indirectly, via his media, but directly.“I’m not aware of any precedent for this approach,” said Rob Enderle, president of the technology analyst firm Enderle, who has worked with companies including Microsoft, Sony and Dell.View image in fullscreenAs recently as 2022, Musk tweeted that “for Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” He tweeted that “Trump would be 82 at end of his term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.”Months later, when Musk bought Twitter for $44bn, he fired content moderators and charged for account verification, which meant people could buy influence. Twitter was rebranded to X, shed millions of users and reinstated Trumps’s account, suspended after the White House insurrection in January 2021.The proliferation on X of alt-right diatribe, hate speech and bots, as well as Musk’s own clash with the UK government during the riots in August, have led to mounting disquiet among X users. The Guardian and Observer announced last week that their presence on the site was now untenable and they would no longer post. Stephen King, the author, left, saying it had become “too toxic”. Oscar-winners Barbra Streisand and Jamie Lee Curtis have departed the platform.“X has become effectively Truth Social premium,” said Mark Carrigan, author of Social Media for Academics, referring to Trump’s hard-right social media platform. And the talk in technology circles is that Trump’s Truth Social could be folded into X.If that happens, whose interests take priority? Would Musk suppress criticism of the authoritarian governments he does business with, or promote it? In the Donald and Elon media show, who is the puppet or paymaster?“If that happens, it will be the ultimate amplification machine for Trump’s ideas – a political super-app masquerading as social media,” said James Kirkham of Iconic, which advises brands including Uber and EA Sports on digital strategies. “Forget Facebook or Fox News; the true heart of the GOP’s digital strategy could be X.”“I’m expecting X and Truth Social to merge,” said Enderle. “But this could be one of the efforts that will come between Musk and Trump, given how overvalued Truth Social now is.”The bromance between the world’s two biggest egos is mutually beneficial only as long as the two transactional, power-hungry and impulsive men play nice. Trump is hawkish on China, one of Tesla’s most lucrative markets. Trump essentially campaigned against electric car manufacturing. Trump is protectionist; Musk opposes tariffs. On climate change, they are opposed.Jonathan Monten, a political science professor at UCL, is sceptical over the durability of their relationship.“Musk’s use to Trump was both private money and providing a platform, or using a platform, to a more favourable pro-Trump line,” he said.“It’s unclear what continued purpose or use Musk actually has to him. Yes, it’s sort of this celebrity story, but that’s Trump’s brand. He has one celebrity story today and tomorrow we’ll have another.”The early 2010s were the halcyon days of Twitter when activists, artists, lawyers, academics, policymakers, journalists and specialists of every flavour could connect, share information, exchange ideas and follow events in real time.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenIt would be easy to portray Musk as the bogeyman, but some argue that it was TikTok and the advent of the algorithmic timeline that fundamentally destroyed Twitter. As social media began optimising for scale and for profit at the expense of user experience, algorithms prioritised the “best” content – the content that shouted loudest or was most specifically tailored to users. Curated accounts to follow, and “most recent” content, fell by the wayside.“As much as I think Musk has acted in harmful ways, I think part of this is about the logic of social media platforms as they evolve,” said Carrigan. “The consequences of an advertising-based model incentivise certain ways of organising the platform that create negative effects.”Bluesky, which became the most popular app on the app store on Friday, is the choice for X refugees, although its 16 million users pale in insignificance compared to Meta’s Threads, which reported reaching 275 million monthly active users, and X with about 317 million..View image in fullscreenFor some tech nerds, the X-odus is not something to mourn, but could herald the era of decentralised social networks they have been dreaming of known as the “Fediverse”.Advocates of the “Fediverse” argue that there should be one account for any social media network in the same way that Gmail accounts can email any email addresses, or mobile numbers call users on any other network.In walling off social networks so users can’t leave, the platform has the power. Instead, newer social networks including Bluesky are being built on “ecosystems” that enable them to interconnect.No one knows what will happen to X, with predictions ranging from collapse, to flipping to an anti-Trump platform if Musk and the president lock horns, to becoming a training ground for Musk’s xAI venture. AI could gobble up social media, and xAI is valued at $40bn – almost the price Musk paid for Twitter. More

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      in US Politics

      To the stars vowing to flee Trump’s America: maybe your excruciating endorsements were part of the problem | Marina Hyde

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      I wish celebrities would learn the art of the French exit. But they can’t, which is why Eva Longoria has announced she no longer lives in America. “I get to escape and go somewhere,” she explained. “Most Americans aren’t so lucky – they’re going to be stuck in this dystopian country.” What’s brought this on, apart from the obvious? “Whether it’s the homelessness or the taxes … it just feels like this chapter in my life is done now.” Great to learn that Eva dislikes both homelessness and taxes. America’s loss of this major political thinker is some other country’s gain – and this highly called-for intervention reminds us why celebrities should speak their brains even more often. If only into a pillow, or an abyss.As always in these moments of the silly voters making a silly mistake, many stars have pledged to follow her. We’ll see. Either way, celebrities seem totally unaware that these high-handed statements of first-class migration are not the admonishment to the lesser orders that they are meant to be, and may even encourage them.But then, stars have always been totally unaware of how very little they bring to this particular party. The last few days of the Harris campaign were an increasingly excruciating riot of celebrity bandwagonning. Did the Kamala campaign ask man-born-in-Pennsylvania Richard Gere to make his video for her – or did the actor freelance one out of fear of not having “used his platform”? It was certainly Richard’s most critically misunderstood electoral outing since his address to the Palestinians before their 2005 elections. “Hi, I’m Richard Gere,” that one began, “and I’m speaking for the entire world …”If anything good were to come out of the wreckage of the Harris campaign, let it be the final death of the idea that showbiz endorsements can help swing elections. They can’t. Not one bit. Not even if it’s Taylor Swift in the 2024 US presidential election, not even when it was Russell Brand in the 2015 British general election, and not even if they have tens of millions of followers. (It does move the dial, however, if you own the platform.) Election issues and politicians swing elections.The minuscule amount of positive data we have on celebrity endorsements suggests they might have some effect in getting their fans to register to vote and volunteer for campaigns. I suspect these days that is more than offset by the perception of elitism that actively harmed the Harris campaign and others before it. If anything could turn you hard Maga, it’s watching Lady Gaga sing Edge of Glory at Kamala’s eve-of-polling-day concert – the worst thing she’s been in since Joker II – and then discovering that Oprah, who also appeared, had billed the Harris campaign $1m via her company. This week, Winfrey insisted she wasn’t paid personally, with the Harris campaign simply required to pay for “production costs” on an earlier “townhall” featuring her, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and Jennifer Lopez. Hmm. If only there was some billionaire – but the good kind! – or even just some mega-rich folk involved in said event, who could perhaps have picked up the wage bill herself/themselves, rather than siphon it off the campaign.Meanwhile, it is easier to leave Twitter than America, as I think Marcus Aurelius once remarked. In the week the Guardian exited X – though not in the French style – you couldn’t move for people informing you they were herding with almost impossible dignity over to Bluesky.And it does feel slightly hilarious that huge numbers of people who have spent the past decade-plus shrieking about the evils of social media – usually on social media – have been “liberated” from one platform, only to promptly rush and enslave themselves to another. Really? You can see it all stretching ahead of you – fun period, emergence of Blueskyocracy, the first Bluesky cancellation of someone, the exponentially intensifying purity spiral, followed by legacy titles or legacy humans announcing an exit from that one too. It’s all such a predictable timesuck. Bluesky might be the new email.Speaking of which, when people ask me for my email, I have to tell them very truthfully that I am so old-fashioned that I only have one – my Guardian one. I always used to follow this up by saying something along the lines of “I know, it’s ridiculous. If I ever stopped working there, no one would be able to contact me.” But now I keep thinking – oh my God! No one would be able to contact me via email! THE MODERN DREAM!This has felt particularly desirable since the election, when I’ve been drowning in emails from the multiple liberal publications I already subscribe to, stagily rending their garments and assuring me that “we do this for you”. It seems like every cloud has a silver lining – ideally a gold one, with all sorts of titles dreaming of the Trump subscription bump they got last time around. Again: we’ll see.My unfashionable view is that the world would benefit from less partisan media, not more. Over in the US for the election, I mistakenly kept turning on CNN for news, and was genuinely shocked at the offering since the last time I seriously paid attention to it (admittedly some years ago now). It didn’t really even have headlines on the hour, let alone coverage of “news”, and appeared to be a talking shop that saw itself purely as an active agent for the Harris campaign. To this outside observer, it didn’t seem to be doing anything different from Fox News, except that it was doing it for the other side.And it doesn’t even work. Retreating into ideas of “resistance” is a big part of how we got here. People hate on Trump for cashing in with his merchandise, but isn’t rather a lot of the current liberal media convulsion just another form of Trump merchandise? Off-brand, yes. But still Trump merchandise – and as tacky, intentionally commercial and likely to lead to regret in the end as the official stuff.

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

      A Year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live More

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      in Elections

      Meta Fined $840 Million in Europe for Boosting Marketplace Unfairly

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      Meta said it would appeal the decision by the European Union, which said the company had abused its dominance in social networking to strengthen its shopping and classified ads service.​The European Union on Thursday fined Meta roughly $840 million for breaking competition laws with Facebook Marketplace, its shopping and classified ads platform, the latest action by regulators trying to limit the ability of tech giants to expand into new product areas.In issuing the 800 million euro fine, European regulators said Meta had given itself an unfair advantage over rival services by bundling Marketplace into Facebook’s wider social network, providing it with immediate access to millions of potential users. They added that Meta had abused its dominance in online advertising to impose unfair business terms on rival shopping services, allowing it to collect data that could be used to strengthen Marketplace.European regulators, led by Margrethe Vestager, the E.U. competition chief, have for years sought to limit the ability of tech companies to use their power in one area, like social networking, to gain a foothold in new markets such as shopping. Authorities in Europe have also accused Apple of using its dominance in smartphones to bolster music and payment services.In linking Marketplace to Facebook’s social network, the company gave itself “advantages that other online classified ads service providers could not match,” Ms. Vestager said in a statement. “This is illegal under E.U. antitrust rules. Meta must now stop this behavior.”The company said it would appeal the decision, setting up a legal battle that could drag out for years. Meta said Marketplace, introduced in 2016, was created in response to consumer demand and had not hindered competition from companies such as eBay and Vinted.On Marketplace, people buy, sell and trade items with others, including furniture, clothing, sports equipment, cars and home goods.“Facebook users can choose whether or not to engage with Marketplace, and many don’t,” the company said in a statement. “The reality is that people use Facebook Marketplace because they want to, not because they have to.”Meta has been a target of efforts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to crimp the power of the largest technology companies. Last year, the company was fined 1.2 billion euros, or about $1.26 billion, for violating regional data protection rules. In the United States, the company is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations.Whether the United States and Europe will stay aligned on tech regulation with President-elect Donald J. Trump returning to office is an open question. Some of his supporters, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, have raised concerns about the power of Silicon Valley firms like Meta and Google, while others have pushed for less regulation.The European Union started the Marketplace investigation in 2019. In 2023, the company reached a settlement with British regulators on a similar case, but was unable to find an agreement with E.U. authorities. More

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      in US Politics

      First came the bots, then came the bosses – we’re entering Musk and Zuck’s new era of disinformation | Joan Donovan

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      I’m a researcher of media manipulation, and watching the 2024 US election returns was like seeing the Titanic sink.Every day leading up to 5 November, there were more and more outrageous claims being made in an attempt across social media to undermine election integrity: conspiracy theories focused on a tidal wave of immigrants plotting to undermine the right wing, allegations that there were millions of excess ballots circulating in California, and rumors that the voting machines were already corrupted by malicious algorithms.All of the disinformation about corrupt vote counts turned out not to be necessary, as Donald Trump won the election decisively. But the election proved that disinformation is no longer the provenance of anonymous accounts amplified by bots to mimic human engagement, like it was in 2016. In 2024, lies travel further and faster across social media, which is now a battleground for narrative dominance. And now, the owners of the platforms circulating the most incendiary lies have direct access to the Oval Office.We talk a lot about social media “platforms”. The word “platform” is interesting as it means both a stated political position and a technological communication system. Over the past decade, we have watched social media platforms warp public opinion by deciding what is seen and when users see it, as algorithms double as newsfeed and timeline editors. When tech CEOs encode their political beliefs into the design of platforms, it’s a form of technofascism, where technology is used for political suppression of speech and to repress the organization of resistance to the state or capitalism.Content moderation at these platforms now reflects the principles of the CEO and what that person believes is in the public’s interest. The political opinions of tech’s overlords, like Musk and Zuckerberg, are now directly embedded in their algorithms.For example, Meta has limited the circulation of critical discussions about political power, reportedly even downranking posts that use the word “vote” on Instagram. Meta’s Twitter clone, Threads, suspended journalists for reporting on Trump’s former chief of staff describing Trump’s admiration of Hitler. Threads built in a politics filter that is turned on by default.View image in fullscreenImplementing these filtering mechanisms illustrates a sharp difference from Meta’s embrace of politicians who got personalized white-glove service in 2016 as Facebook embedded employees directly in political campaigns, who advised on branding and reaching new audiences. It’s also a striking reversal of Zuckerberg’s free speech position in 2019. Zuckerberg gave a presentation at Georgetown University claiming that he was inspired to create Facebook because he wanted to give students a voice during the Iraq war. This historical revisionism was quickly skewered in the media. (Facebook’s predecessor allowed users to rate the appearance of Harvard female freshmen. Misogyny was the core of its design.) Nevertheless, his false origin story encapsulated a vision of how Zuckerberg once believed society and politics should be organized, where political discussion was his guiding reason to bring people into community.However, he now appears to have abandoned this position in favor of disincentivizing political discussion altogether. Recently, Zuckerberg wrote to the Republican Jim Jordan saying he regretted his content moderation decisions during the pandemic because he acted under pressure from the Biden administration. The letter itself was an obvious attempt to curry favor as Trump rose as the Republican presidential candidate. Zuckerberg has reason to fear Trump, who has mentioned wanting to arrest Zuckerberg for deplatforming him on Meta products after the January 6 Capitol riot.X seems to have embraced the disinformation chaos and fully fused Trump’s campaign into the design of X’s content strategies. Outrageous assertions circle the drain on X, including false claims such as that immigrants are eating pets in Ohio, Kamala Harris’s Jamaican grandmother was white, and that immigrants are siphoning aid meant for Fema. It’s also worth noting that Musk is the biggest purveyor of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories on X. The hiss and crackle of disinformation is as ambient as it is unsettling.There are no clearer signs of Musk’s willingness to use platform power than his relentless amplification of his own account as well as Trump’s Twitter account on X’s “For You” algorithm. Moreover, Musk bemoaned the link suppression by Twitter in 2020 over Hunter Biden’s laptop while then hypocritically working with the Trump campaign in 2024 to ban accounts and links to leaked documents emanating from the Trump campaign that painted JD Vance in a negative light.Musk understands that he will personally benefit from being close to power. He supported Trump with a controversial political action committee that gave away cash to those who signed his online petition. Musk also paid millions for canvassers and spent many evenings in Pennsylvania stumping for Trump. With Trump’s win, he will need to make good on his promise of placing Musk in a position on the not-yet-created “Department of Government Efficiency” (Doge – which is also the name of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency). While it sure seems like a joke taken too far, Musk has said he plans to cut $2tn from the national budget, which will wreak havoc on the economy and could be devastating when coupled with the mass deportation of 10 million people.In short, what we learn from the content strategies of X and Meta is simple: the design of platforms is now inextricable from the politics of the owner.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis wasn’t inevitable. In 2016, there was a public reckoning that social media had been weaponized by foreign adversaries and domestic actors to spread disinformation on a number of wedge issues to millions of unsuspecting users. Hundreds of studies were conducted in the intervening years, by internal corporate researchers and independent academics, showing that platforms amplify and expose audiences to conspiracy theories and fake news, which can lead to networked incitement and political violence.By 2020, disinformation had become its own industry and the need for anonymity lessened as rightwing media makers directly impugned election results, culminating in January 6. That led to an unprecedented decision by social media companies to ban Trump, who was still the sitting president, and a number of other high-profile rightwing pundits, thus illustrating just how powerful social media platforms had become as political actors.In reaction to this unprecedented move to curb disinformation, the richest man in the world, Musk, bought Twitter, laid off much of the staff, and sent internal company communications to journalists and politicians in 2022. Major investigations of university researchers and government agencies ensued, naming and shaming those who engaged with Twitter’s former leadership and made appeals for the companies to enforce its own terms of service during the 2020 election.Since then, these CEOs have ossified their political beliefs in the design of algorithms and by extension dictated political discourse for the rest of us.Whether it’s Musk’s strategy of overloading users with posts from himself and Trump, or Zuckerberg’s silencing of political discussion, it’s citizens who suffer from such chilling of speech. Of course, there is no way to know decisively how disinformation affected individual voters, but a recent Ipsos poll shows Trump voters believed disinformation on a number of wedge issues, claiming that immigration, crime, and the economy are all worse than data indicates. For now, let this knowledge be the canary warning of technofascism, where the US is not only ruled by elected politicians, but also by technological authoritarians who control speech on a global scale.If we are to disarm disinformers, we need a whole of society approach that values real Talk (Timely, Accurate Local Knowledge) and community safety. This might look like states passing legislation to fund local journalism in the public interest, because local news can bridge divides between neighbors and bring some accountability to the government. It will require our institutions, such as medicine, journalism, and academia, to fight for truth and justice, even in the face of anticipated retaliation. But most of all, it’s going to require that you and I do something quickly to protect those already in the crosshairs of Trump’s new world order, by donating to or joining community organizations tackling issues such as women’s rights and immigration. Even subscribing to a local news outlet is a profound political act these days. Let that sink in.Joan Donovan is the founder of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and assistant professor of journalism at Boston University More