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    Seen and Unseen review: George Floyd, Black Twitter and the fight for racial justice

    Seen and Unseen review: George Floyd, Black Twitter and the fight for racial justiceMarc Lamont Hill and Todd Brewster’s brilliant book considers the history of communications technology in a racist society Nearly all the books I have read about the internet have deepened my fears about the net effect of social media on the health of our body politic. For example, I thought three facts from the congressman Ro Khanna’s recent book, Dignity in a Digital Age, were enough to scare anyone concerned about the future of democracy.Dignity in a Digital Age review: a congressman takes big tech to taskRead moreKhanna reported that an internal discussion at Facebook revealed that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendations”; he revealed that before 2020, “QAnon groups developed millions of followers as Facebook’s algorithm encouraged people to join based on their profiles”; and he pointed to a United Nations report that Facebook played a “determining role” in events in Myanmar that led to the murder of at least 25,000 Rohingya Muslims and the displacement of 700,000 others.Seen and Unseen, a brilliant new book by Marc Lamont Hill, a Black professor, and Todd Brewster, a white journalist, certainly doesn’t ignore those dangers. But the authors’ focus is overwhelmingly on the positive effects of Twitter and Black Twitter, which they argue have democratized access to information, and the power of the smartphone to provide the incontrovertible video evidence needed to prosecute the murderers of men like George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery.The book is a brisk, smart, short history of the effects of new communication technologies, from the photographs of the 19th century to the movies and television of the 20th and the internet of our own time.It includes terrific mini-portraits of many of the heroes and several of the villains of the Black-and-white battle which has dominated so much of American history, including the great Black abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, who turns out to be the most photographed American of the 19th century, and the white supremacist Thomas Dixon Jr, whose novel The Clansman was the basis for the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation.There is a great section about the impact of The Birth of the Nation, which single-handedly revived the Ku Klux Klan and did more to rewrite the history of Reconstruction than any other book or movie. Its director, DW Griffith, was frank about wanting to give white southerners “a way of striking back”.“One could not find the sufferings of our family and our friends – the dreadful poverty and hardships during the war and for many years after – in the Yankee-written histories we read in school,” Griffith wrote. “From all this was born a burning determination to tell … our side of the story to the world.”As the authors note: “His movie did that spectacularly.”The book also reminds us that this was the first movie shown in the White House and the host, Woodrow Wilson, was a friend and Johns Hopkins classmate of Thomas Dixon Jr. Wilson, of course, was also the president who allowed the segregation of the federal government.But what makes this volume especially valuable is the authors’ capacity to see the good and the bad in almost everything.WEB Du Bois said The Birth of the Nation represented “the Negro” either “as an ignorant fool, a vicious rapist, a venal or unscrupulous politician, or a faithful but doddering idiot”. James Baldwin called it “an elaborate justification of mass murder”.And yet the film was so egregious it also had a tremendous positive effect – it “did more to advance the NAACP”, which had been founded six years earlier, “than anything else to that date. In essence it jump-started the movement for civil rights.” At that time, that term did not yet have any meaning.Du Bois and the NAACP hoped to hit back “in kind” with a movie called Lincoln’s Dream but were stymied by “the lack of enthusiasm” of white capital.In our own time, Hill and Brewster identify the unique power of the video of the murder of George Floyd, which “resonated with whites because the cruelty inflicted on him was so undeniable, so elemental … and so protracted (nine minutes 29 seconds) that it could be neither ignored nor dismissed”.For Black people of course it was much more personal: as they watched “the last breaths being squeezed from Floyd’s body, they could see themselves in his suffering; or an uncle, or a sister, or even a long-departed ancestor”.A beautiful mini-biography of James Baldwin includes many of his most pungent observations, including, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” And, “To be a Negro in this country, and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time”.A Lynching at Port Jervis review: timely history of New York race hateRead moreIt turns out that “one of the most frequently cited BLM counterpublic voices is Baldwin’s”. He is “the movement’s literary touchstone, conscience, and pinup” as well as its “most tweeted literary authority”.That is the most positive contribution of Twitter – and particularly Black Twitter – I have ever heard of.The authors write that Baldwin “was impatient with America because he saw it as trapped in its own history”, and wanted America to admit “that it owed its very existence to an ideology of white supremacy”.There was a time in my life when I considered that an exaggeration. But once you have acknowledged that ours is a nation that was literally founded on genocide and slavery, Baldwin’s judgment becomes an indisputable truth.
    Seen and Unseen: Technology, Social Media, and the Fight for Racial Justice is published in the US by Atria Books
    TopicsBooksRacePolitics booksHistory booksUS politicsGeorge FloydAhmaud ArberyreviewsReuse this content More

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    Meta Will Give Researchers More Information on Political Ad Targeting

    Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said that it planned to give outside researchers more detailed information on how political ads are targeted across its platform, providing insight into the ways that politicians, campaign operatives and political strategists buy and use ads ahead of the midterm elections.Starting on Monday, academics and researchers who are registered with an initiative called the Facebook Open Research and Transparency project will be allowed to see data on how each political or social ad was used to target people. The information includes which interest categories — such as “people who like dogs” or “people who enjoy the outdoors” — were chosen to aim an ad at someone.In addition, Meta said it planned to include summaries of targeting information for some of its ads in its publicly viewable Ad Library starting in July. The company created the Ad Library in 2019 so that journalists, academics and others could obtain information and help safeguard elections against the misuse of digital advertising.While Meta has given outsiders some access into how its political ads were used in the past, it has restricted the amount of information that could be seen, citing privacy reasons. Critics have claimed that the company’s system has been flawed and sometimes buggy, and have frequently asked for more data.That has led to conflicts. Meta previously clashed with a group of New York University academics who tried ingesting large amounts of self-reported data on Facebook users to learn more about the platform. The company cut off access to the group last year, citing violations of its platform rules.The new data that is being added to the Facebook Open Research Transparency project and the Ad Library is a way to share information on political ad targeting while trying to keep data on its users private, the company said.“By making advertiser targeting criteria available for analysis and reporting on ads run about social issues, elections and politics, we hope to help people better understand the practices used to reach potential voters on our technologies,” the company said in a statement.With the new data, for example, researchers browsing the Ad Library could see that over the course of a month, a Facebook page ran 2,000 political ads and that 40 percent of the ad budget was targeted to “people who live in Pennsylvania” or “people who are interested in politics.”Meta said it had been bound by privacy rules and regulations on what types of data it could share with outsiders. In an interview, Jeff King, a vice president in Meta’s business integrity unit, said the company had hired thousands of workers over the past few years to review those privacy issues.“Every single thing we release goes through a privacy review now,” he said. “We want to make sure we give people the right amount of data, but still remain privacy conscious while we do it.”The new data on political ads will cover the period from August 2020, three months before the last U.S. presidential election, to the present day. More

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    San Francisco judge rejects Trump lawsuit challenging Twitter suspension

    San Francisco judge rejects Trump lawsuit challenging Twitter suspensionThe former president was banned from from the social media platform after the deadly US Capitol attack A US judge on Friday dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Twitter that challenged his suspension from the platform.In a written ruling, US district judge James Donato in San Francisco rejected Trump’s argument that Twitter violated his right to freedom of speech guaranteed by the first amendment of the US constitution.Florida pension fund sues Elon Musk and Twitter to stop buyoutRead moreTwitter and other social media platforms banned Trump from their services after a mob of his supporters attacked the US Capitol in a deadly riot on 6 January2021 .That assault came after a speech by Trump in which he reiterated false claims that his election loss in November was because of widespread fraud, an assertion rejected by multiple courts and state election officials.Trump’s lawyers alleged in a court filing last year that Twitter “exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate”.At the time of removing Trump’s account permanently, Twitter said his tweets had violated the platform’s policy barring “glorification of violence”. The company said then that Trump’s tweets that led to his removal were “highly likely” to encourage people to replicate what happened in the Capitol riots.Before he was blocked, Trump had more than 88 million followers on Twitter and used it as his social media megaphone.TopicsDonald TrumpTwitterUS Capitol attackSocial medianewsReuse this content More

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    Eu segui alguns grupos brasileiros de direita no Telegram. Encontrei uma maré de insanidade.

    SÃO PAULO, Brasil — Quando Elon Musk fechou um acordo para comprar o Twitter, os grupos brasileiros de direita no Telegram foram à loucura. Ali estava, enfim, um poderoso defensor da liberdade de expressão. Mais que isso, ali estava alguém que – como os usuários se apressaram a confirmar – queria Carlos Bolsonaro, filho do presidente da República, como presidente do Twitter no Brasil.É claro que isso não era verdade. Mas não fiquei nem um pouco surpresa. Tenho seguido esses grupos no aplicativo de mensagens há semanas, a fim de entender como a desinformação é disseminada em tempo real. No Brasil, as fake news parecem ser algo que atinge a população em geral – o Telegram apenas oferece um tipo de buraco de coelho dos mais profundos onde se pode cair. De modo que eu sabia – a partir de uma experiência horrível e capaz de derreter as retinas – que, para muitos ativistas de direita, as fake news se tornaram um artigo de fé, uma arma de guerra, a forma mais certeira de turvar o debate público.“Fake news faz parte da nossa vida”, disse o presidente Jair Bolsonaro no ano passado, ao receber um prêmio de comunicações oferecido por seu próprio Ministério das Comunicações. (Não dá pra ser mais orwelliano do que isso, certo?) “A internet é um sucesso”, ele prosseguiu. “Não precisamos de regular isso aí. Deixemos o povo à vontade.”Dá para entender a lógica. Afinal, as fake news produziram uma suposta manchete do The Washington Post que dizia: “Bolsonaro é o melhor presidente de todos os tempos” – e alegaram que uma recente motociata em apoio ao presidente entrou para o Guinness World Records. Contudo, meu mergulho nos grupos de Telegram do país revelou algo mais sinistro do que notícias adulteradas. Desregulados, extremos e delirantes, esses grupos servem para difamar os inimigos do presidente e conduzir uma operação oculta de propaganda. Não é de admirar que Bolsonaro esteja tão ávido para manter uma atmosfera de vale-tudo.O grande alvo é o principal adversário de Bolsonaro nas eleições de outubro, o ex-presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Em grupos bolsonaristas de tamanho médio, como “Os Patriotas Br” (11.782 membros) e “Bolsonaro 2022 – Grupo de Apoio!” (25.737 membros), o foco é implacável. Usuários disseminaram à exaustão uma foto digitalmente alterada de um Lula sem camisa de mãos dadas com o presidente da Venezuela Nicolás Maduro, como se eles tivessem sido um casal homossexual nos anos 1980. (Preciso dizer que é falsa?)As alegações são infindáveis e excêntricas: Lula é patrocinado pelo narcotráfico; ele irá perseguir Igrejas; ele é contra as pessoas de classe média terem mais de uma televisão em casa. As pessoas usam tudo o que podem. Um vídeo obviamente satírico – que mostra um ator como se fosse um dos advogados do Partido dos Trabalhadores, confessando praticar fraude eleitoral – é ostentado como prova absoluta e irrefutável. O nome do advogado, “Avacalho Ellhys”, ou seja, “eu avacalho eles”, deveria ter sido suficiente para entregar o jogo. Mas em seu afã de demonização, os seguidores de Bolsonaro não são exatamente dados a uma leitura atenta.Por trás dessa atividade frenética está um desespero mal disfarçado. Segundo a pesquisa eleitoral mais recente, Lula está em primeiro lugar com 41% das intenções de voto, contra 36% de Bolsonaro. A realidade da popularidade de Lula é claramente muito dolorosa de se suportar, de modo que os usuários de Telegram buscam refúgio na fantasia. “Até que enfim uma pesquisa de verdade”, disse um usuário, alegando que um instituto imaginário de pesquisa colocou Bolsonaro em primeiro lugar com 65% das intenções de voto, contra 16% de seu adversário. Quando inventar pesquisas não é suficiente, sempre se pode suspender a corrida. “Com medo de prisão internacional, Lula vai desistir da disputa”, alegou outro. O anseio é quase tocante.Os apoiadores de Bolsonaro têm outro bicho-papão: o Supremo Tribunal Federal, que abriu inúmeras investigações contra o presidente, seus filhos e aliados. No Telegram, esse escrutínio não foi bem recebido. As pessoas acusam os ministros do STF de defender publicamente o estupro, a pedofilia, o homicídio, o narcotráfico e o tráfico de órgãos. Eles disseminam uma foto manipulada de um ministro posando ao lado de Fidel Castro. Eles espalham um vídeo editado no qual outro ministro confessa estar sofrendo chantagem do PT por participar de uma orgia em Cuba. (O ministro realmente disse isso – mas ele estava dando um exemplo bizarro de fake news contra ele, um rumor que o próprio Bolsonaro ajudou a criar no Twitter.)Uns poucos passos foram tomados para conter esse dilúvio de fake news. Algumas plataformas de mídia social removeram vídeos do presidente que propagavam desinformação sobre a Covid-19 e o sistema de urnas eletrônicas. O WhatsApp decidiu não lançar no Brasil uma nova ferramenta chamada Comunidades, que agrega vários grupos menores, até o fim das eleições presidenciais. Em março, o STF baniu o Telegram por dois dias porque a empresa estava ignorando as ordens da Corte de remover um post enganoso sobre o sistema eleitoral brasileiro publicado na conta oficial do presidente (1.34 milhão de membros). A empresa então concordou em adotar algumas medidas contra a desinformação, incluindo o monitoramento diário manual dos 100 canais mais populares do Brasil e uma parceria futura com organizações de checagem. Um problemático projeto de lei contra as fake news está sendo considerado pelo Congresso.Não é nem de longe o suficiente. Uma recente investigação da Polícia Federal identificou um sistema orquestrado – o chamado “gabinete do ódio” – formado por aliados próximos a Bolsonaro, e provavelmente também seus filhos e assessores. O objetivo do grupo é supostamente identificar alvos como políticos, cientistas, ativistas e jornalistas, e então criar e propagar desinformação para “ganhos ideológicos, político-partidários e financeiros”. (Todos eles negam as acusações.) O problema é muito maior do que alguns poucos e dispersos posts de lunáticos.No fim das contas, não sabemos o que pode ser feito para conter de forma efetiva as campanhas massivas de desinformação nas plataformas de mídia social, sobretudo às vésperas de importantes eleições nacionais. Como é possível argumentar com pessoas que acreditam que “os esquerdistas permitem que bebês sejam mortos 28 dias após o nascimento” ou que “a vacina possui parasita que pode ser controlado por impulsos eletromagnéticos”? Alguns especialistas defendem incluir rótulos de checagem, tornar mais difícil o compartilhamento de mensagens ou implementar a verificação dos usuários. Nenhuma dessas medidas, acredito, seria suficiente para refrear a maré de insanidade que encontrei no Telegram.Pelo menos há uma solução à qual sempre podemos recorrer: votar para demover do cargo os políticos que defendem as fake news.Vanessa Barbara é a editora do sítio literário A Hortaliça, autora de dois romances e dois livros de não-ficção em português, e escritora de opinião do The New York Times. More

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    Telegram, la desinformación y la derecha en Brasil

    SÃO PAULO, Brasil — Cuando Elon Musk llegó a un acuerdo para comprar Twitter, los grupos de derecha en Telegram se volvieron locos. Por fin había un sólido defensor de la libertad de expresión. Además, se trataba de alguien que —los usuarios se apresuraron a confirmar— quería que Carlos Bolsonaro, hijo del presidente, fuera el director general de Twitter en Brasil.Eso, por supuesto, no era cierto. Pero no me sorprendió. Llevaba semanas siguiendo a esos grupos en la aplicación de mensajería para ver cómo se difundía la desinformación en tiempo real. En Brasil, las noticias falsas parecen ser algo de lo que la población en general aparentemente es víctima; Telegram simplemente ofrece el tipo de agujero negro más profundo en el que se puede caer. Así que supe —por una experiencia horrible, que me dejó boquiabierta— que para muchos activistas de derecha, las noticias falsas se han convertido en un artículo de fe, un arma de guerra, la forma más segura de opacar el debate público.“Las noticias falsas son parte de nuestras vidas”, dijo el presidente Jair Bolsonaro el año pasado, mientras recibía un premio de comunicación de su propio Ministerio de Comunicaciones. (No se puede ser más orwelliano, ¿verdad?). “Internet es un éxito”, continuó. “No necesitamos regularlo. Dejemos que la gente se sienta libre”.Se puede entender su punto de vista. Después de todo, las noticias falsas produjeron un titular supuestamente en The Washington Post que decía: “Bolsonaro es el mejor presidente brasileño de todos los tiempos”, y afirmaba que un mitin reciente de la caravana pro-Bolsonaro entró en el Guinness World Records. Sin embargo, mi incursión en los grupos de Telegram del país reveló algo más siniestro que unos artículos manipulados. Estos grupos —que no están regulados, son extremos y desquiciados— sirven para calumniar a los enemigos del presidente y llevar a cabo una operación de propaganda en la sombra. No es de extrañar que Bolsonaro esté tan interesado en mantener una atmósfera en la que todo se vale.El objetivo primordial es el principal oponente de Bolsonaro en las elecciones de octubre, el expresidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. En grupos medianos pro-Bolsonaro, como “Los Patriotas” (11.782 suscriptores) y “Grupo de apoyo a Bolsonaro 2022” (25.737 suscriptores), el enfoque es implacable. Los usuarios compartieron exhaustivamente una imagen alterada digitalmente de un Da Silva sin camisa tomado de la mano con el presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, como si hubieran sido una pareja homosexual en la década de 1980. (¿Es necesario decir que es falsa?).Las afirmaciones son interminables y extravagantes: Da Silva está patrocinado por narcotraficantes; perseguirá a las iglesias; está en contra de que los brasileños de clase media tengan más de un televisor en casa. La gente utiliza lo que pueda conseguir. Un video evidentemente satírico —que muestra a un actor, disfrazado de abogado del Partido de los Trabajadores de Da Silva, confesando el fraude electoral— se presenta como una prueba fehaciente. El nombre del abogado, que se traduce en algo así como “Me Burlo de Ellos”, debería haber dado una pista. Pero en su prisa por satanizar, los seguidores de Bolsonaro no leen las cosas con detenimiento.Detrás de esa frenética actividad hay una desesperación apenas disimulada. Da Silva supera actualmente a Bolsonaro en la encuesta más reciente con un 41 por ciento frente al 36 por ciento. La realidad de la popularidad de Da Silva es claramente demasiado dolorosa de soportar, por lo que los usuarios de Telegram se refugian en la fantasía. “Por fin una encuesta real”, dijo un usuario, asegurando que una encuestadora imaginaria ponía a Bolsonaro en primer lugar con el 65 por ciento de las intenciones de voto, frente al dieciséis por ciento de su oponente. Cuando no sirve inventar encuestas, siempre se puede suspender la carrera presidencial. “Temeroso de una detención internacional, Lula va a renunciar a su candidatura”, afirmaba otro. El deseo es casi conmovedor.Los partidarios de Bolsonaro tienen otro gran miedo: el Supremo Tribunal Federal, que ha abierto varias investigaciones sobre el presidente, sus hijos y sus aliados. En Telegram, ese escrutinio no ha sido bien recibido. La gente acusa a los magistrados de defender públicamente la violación, la pederastia, el homicidio, el narcotráfico y el tráfico de órganos. Comparten una fotografía manipulada de un magistrado posando con Fidel Castro. Comparten un video editado en el que otro juez confiesa que el Partido de los Trabajadores lo chantajea por haber participado en una orgía en Cuba. (El juez sí dijo eso, pero en realidad estaba dando un ejemplo extraño de noticias falsas en su contra, un rumor que Bolsonaro ayudó a propagar en Twitter).Se han tomado algunas medidas para frenar este diluvio de noticias falsas. Algunas plataformas de redes sociales han eliminado videos del presidente que difundían información errónea sobre la COVID-19 y el sistema de votación electrónico del país. WhatsApp decidió no introducir en Brasil una nueva herramienta llamada Comunidades, que reúne varios grupos de chats, hasta que no hayan pasado las elecciones presidenciales. En marzo, el Supremo Tribunal prohibió el uso de Telegram durante dos días porque la empresa había ignorado la petición del tribunal de eliminar una publicación engañosa sobre el sistema electoral del país en la cuenta oficial del presidente (1,34 millones de suscriptores). La empresa aceptó entonces adoptar algunas medidas contra la desinformación, entre ellas un control manual diario de los cien canales más populares de Brasil y una futura asociación con organizaciones de verificación de hechos. En el Congreso se está estudiando un imperfecto proyecto de ley sobre las noticias falsas.No es suficiente. Una investigación de la policía federal identificó hace poco un esquema orquestado —el llamado gabinete del odio— formado por los aliados más cercanos de Bolsonaro, y probablemente también sus hijos y ayudantes. El propósito del grupo es, supuestamente, identificar blancos como políticos, científicos, activistas y periodistas, y luego crear y difundir desinformación para obtener “beneficios ideológicos, partidistas y financieros”. (Todos ellos niegan las acusaciones). El problema es mucho mayor que unas cuantas publicaciones dispersas de lunáticos.Al final, no sabemos qué se puede hacer para contener de manera eficaz las enormes campañas de desinformación en las plataformas de las redes sociales, sobre todo antes de unas elecciones nacionales tan importantes. ¿Cómo podemos razonar con personas que creen que “los izquierdistas permiten matar a los bebés a los 28 días de nacer” o que “las vacunas implantan parásitos que se pueden controlar con impulsos electromagnéticos”? Algunos especialistas abogan por añadir etiquetas de comprobación de hechos, dificultar el reenvío de mensajes o introducir la verificación del usuario. Ninguna de esas medidas, supongo, haría mucho para frenar la marea de locura que encontré en Telegram.Al menos hay una solución a la que podemos recurrir: votar para que dejen su puesto los políticos de las noticias falsas.Vanessa Barbara es editora del sitio web literario A Hortaliça, autora de dos novelas y dos libros de no ficción en portugués y colaboradora de la sección de Opinión del Times. More

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    Bolsonaro-Supporting Brazilian Telegram Channels Are Wild and Sinister

    SÃO PAULO, Brazil — When Elon Musk reached a deal to acquire Twitter, right-wing Telegram groups in Brazil went wild. Here at last was a muscular champion of free speech. Even more, here was someone who — users rushed to confirm — wanted Carlos Bolsonaro, son of the president, to be Twitter’s managing director in Brazil.That was, of course, not true. But I wasn’t surprised. I had been following these groups on the messaging app for weeks, to watch how misinformation was spread in real time. In Brazil, fake news seems to be something that the population at large seems to fall victim to — Telegram just offers the sort of deepest rabbit hole you can go down. So I knew — from horrible, eye-sapping experience — that for many right-wing activists, fake news has become an article of faith, a weapon of war, the surest way of muddling the public discussion.“Fake news is part of our lives,” President Jair Bolsonaro said last year, while receiving a communication award from his own Ministry of Communications. (It doesn’t get more Orwellian, does it?) “The internet is a success,” he went on. “We don’t need to regulate it. Let the people feel free.”You can see his point. After all, fake news produced a headline supposedly in The Washington Post that read, “Bolsonaro is the best Brazilian president of all times” — and claimed that a recent pro-Bolsonaro motorcade rally made the Guinness World Records. But my plunge into the country’s Telegram groups revealed something more sinister than doctored articles. Unregulated, extreme and unhinged, these groups serve to slander the president’s enemies and conduct a shadow propaganda operation. No wonder Mr. Bolsonaro is so keen to maintain a free-for-all atmosphere.The chief target is Mr. Bolsonaro’s main opponent in October’s elections, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In medium-size pro-Bolsonaro groups, such as “The Patriots” (11,782 subscribers) and “Bolsonaro 2022 support group” (25,737 subscribers), the focus is unrelenting. Users exhaustively shared a digitally altered picture of a shirtless Mr. da Silva holding hands with President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela as if they had been a homosexual couple in the 1980s. (Do I need to say it’s false?)The claims are endless, and outlandish: Mr. da Silva is sponsored by drug traffickers; he will persecute churches; he is against middle-class Brazilians having more than one television at home. People use what they can get. An obviously satirical video — which shows an actor, in the guise of an attorney for Mr. da Silva’s Workers’ Party, confessing to electoral fraud — is paraded as cold hard proof. The name of the attorney, which translates as something like “I Mock Them,” should have given the game away. But in their rush to demonize, Mr. Bolsonaro’s followers aren’t exactly given to close reading.Underlying this frenetic activity is barely disguised desperation. Mr. da Silva currently leads Mr. Bolsonaro in the latest poll, 41 percent to 36 percent. The reality of Mr. da Silva’s popularity is clearly too painful to bear, so Telegram users take refuge in fantasy. “Finally a real poll,” one user said, asserting that an imaginary pollster put Mr. Bolsonaro in first place with 65 percent of voting intentions, against 16 percent for his opponent. When inventing polls won’t do, you can always call off the race. “Afraid of an international arrest, Lula is going to give up his candidacy,” another claimed. The wishfulness is almost touching.Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters have another great boogeyman: the Supreme Court, which has opened several investigations of the president, his sons and his allies. On Telegram, this scrutiny has not been well received. People accuse the justices of publicly defending rape, pedophilia, homicide, drug trafficking and organ trafficking. They share a manipulated picture of one justice posing with Fidel Castro. They share an edited video in which another justice confesses that the Workers’ Party is blackmailing him for participating in an orgy in Cuba. (The justice did say that — but was actually giving a bizarre example of fake news against him, a rumor that Mr. Bolsonaro himself helped to create on Twitter.)A few steps have been taken to curb this deluge of fake news. Some social media platforms have been removing videos from the president that spread misinformation about Covid-19 and the country’s electronic voting system. WhatsApp decided not to introduce in Brazil a new tool called Communities, which gathers several groups chats, until the presidential election is over. In March, the Supreme Court banned Telegram for two days because the company had been ignoring the court’s request to remove a misleading post on the country’s electoral system from the president’s official account (1.34 million subscribers). The company then agreed to adopt a few anti-misinformation measures, including a daily manual monitoring of the 100 most popular channels in Brazil and a future partnership with fact-checking organizations. A flawed “fake news bill” is being considered by Congress.It’s not nearly enough. A federal police investigation recently identified an orchestrated scheme — the so-called cabinet of hate — formed by Mr. Bolsonaro’s closest allies, and probably also his sons and aides. The group’s alleged aim is to identify targets such as politicians, scientists, activists and journalists, and then to create and spread disinformation for “ideological, party-political and financial gains.” (They all deny the accusations.) The problem is much bigger than a few scattered posts by lunatics.In the end, we don’t know what can be done to effectively contain enormous misinformation campaigns on social media platforms, especially before important national elections. How can we reason with people who believe that “leftists allow babies to be killed 28 days after being born” or that “vaccines implant parasites that can be controlled with electromagnetic impulses”? Some specialists advocate adding fact-check labels, making it harder to forward messages or bringing in user verification. None, I’d guess, would do much to hold back the tide of madness I found on Telegram.There is one solution we can fall back on, at least: voting the fake-news politicians out of office.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. More

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    Jon Ronson on the fall of Alex Jones: Politics Weekly America

    A couple of weeks ago, the far-right website InfoWars filed for bankruptcy. Its founder, Alex Jones, is facing multiple compensation claims brought by parents of victims of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, an event Jones previously told his followers was a hoax.Documentary maker Jon Ronson has followed Jones’ career from the very beginning. This week, Jonathan Freedland asks him for his take on the fall of one of America’s most famous conspiracy theorists

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    Archive: CNN, ABC News, BBC Sign up to First Edition for free at theguardian.com/firstedition Listen to Weekend Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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    How Conservatives and Progressives Reacted to Musk Buying Twitter

    When Elon Musk reached a deal to buy Twitter on Monday, he promised to return free speech and debate to the platform, saying it was “the bedrock of a functioning democracy.”Whether a less moderated social network will be a good or bad thing has become a top topic of debate on Twitter itself among influencers and politicians from across the political spectrum.On the right, the deal was widely celebrated. Mr. Musk’s ownership, many conservatives tweeted, presaged a new era of free speech — where topics that were previously moderated could now be aired openly.Several members of the far right started testing the limits of a less regulated platform, tweeting criticism of the transgender community, doubting the effectiveness of masks, or claiming that the 2020 election results were fraudulent — topics that had been moderated by labeling or removing the false information or suspending accounts that spread it.“Millions of Americans have been choking back their thoughts and opinions on this platform for YEARS out of fear of being suspended/canceled,” John Rich, a member of the country music duo Big and Rich, said in a tweet that received more than 50,000 likes. “I have a feeling the dam is about to break.”Michael Knowles, a conservative podcaster, repeated on Monday the false claim that “the 2020 presidential election was obviously rigged,” receiving more than 70,000 likes. Representative Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky, said that stories about “Hunter Biden’s laptop or evidence that COVID originated in the Wuhan lab” could no longer be censored.And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia known for pushing conspiracy theories, asked that several banned accounts — including those of former President Donald J. Trump, the conspiracist podcaster Alex Jones and even her own personal account — be reactivated.“Something is deeply wrong in this country when one person can buy a social media company on a whim for $44 billion while others have to skip meals to keep their kids fed,” said Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat.Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesHer sentiment was echoed off the platform among members of the far-right who were banned from Twitter after violating its terms of service. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser for Mr. Trump who is now aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory, reposted a message on his Telegram account suggesting that Twitter could be used to recruit — or “wake up” — others to their cause.“This is mind blowing,” read the post, which was originally posted by a user, named BioClandestine, who was also banned from Twitter. “The impact of the Twitter buyout is going to be colossal as it pertains to waking normies. It’s already begun.”On the left, much of the conversation was focused on how the deal exemplified the outsize power of billionaires.“Something is deeply wrong in this country when one person can buy a social media company on a whim for $44 billion while others have to skip meals to keep their kids fed,” said Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who is backing antitrust reforms to target the tech giants, in a tweet. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said Mr. Musk’s purchase was a sign the United States needed to institute a wealth tax.Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said that “protection of Americans’ privacy must be a condition of any sale.” Former antitrust officials have said they think regulators will look closely at the deal but may struggle to find a cause to block it since Twitter does not compete with Mr. Musk’s other major holdings. More