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A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men

by Aurelia Butler 23 February 2024, 02:12

This box represents a real photo of a 9-year-old girl in a golden bikini lounging on a towel. The photo was posted on her Instagram account, which is run by adults. 1 🔥🔥🔥 wooowww Mama mia ❤️❤️🥰💯🤗 Great body😍🔥❤️ Love 😍😍😍😍 Perfect bikini body ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️😋😋😋😍😍😍🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Mmmmmmmmm take that bikini off 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ You’re sooooo hot ❤️🤗💋🌺🌹🌹💯 […] More

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Five Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Child Influencers
by Aurelia Butler 23 February 2024, 01:55
Instagram does not allow children under 13 to have accounts, but parents are allowed to run them — and many do so for daughters who aspire to be social media influencers.What often starts as a parent’s effort to jump-start a child’s modeling career, or win favors from clothing brands, can quickly descend into a dark underworld dominated by adult men, many of whom openly admit on other platforms to being sexually attracted to children, an investigation by The New York Times found.Thousands of so-called mom-run accounts examined by The Times offer disturbing insights into how social media is reshaping childhood, especially for girls, with direct parental encouragement and involvement.Nearly one in three preteens list influencing as a career goal, and 11 percent of those born in Generation Z, between 1997 and 2012, describe themselves as influencers. But health and technology experts have recently cautioned that social media presents a “profound risk of harm” for girls. Constant comparisons to their peers and face-altering filters are driving negative feelings of self-worth and promoting objectification of their bodies, researchers found.The pursuit of online fame, particularly through Instagram, has supercharged the often toxic phenomenon, The Times found, encouraging parents to commodify their daughter’s images. These are some key findings.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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Voter Fraud Claims Are Not as Prominent as in 2020
by Aurelia Butler 15 November 2022, 02:05
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On Social Media, Hunting for Voter Fraud Becomes a Game
by Aurelia Butler 4 November 2022, 13:55
On the messaging app Telegram this week, 300 people gathered in a channel devoted to Arizona politics to play an online game.The rules were simple: Find examples of voter fraud and win virtual points. If members of the group had names of undocumented immigrants who intended to vote illegally in Tuesday’s midterm elections and posted details, they were awarded two points. If they identified people who might be organizing buses to transport those immigrants to voting stations, they got 50 points.“I have a name for you,” one participant wrote in the Telegram channel on Monday. He submitted a common Latino name and said the person was undocumented and planned on voting. Though he didn’t provide evidence backing up his claim, he was given two points anyway.The group erupted in congratulations. “One down, one million to go,” another participant responded, according to messages viewed by The New York Times. “Gotta find them all.”That many of the posts, photos and videos used to score points have been widely debunked as misinformation did not slow down the group. Nor has it impeded the spread of the game to other social platforms, where dozens of private messaging channels are also engaged in a hunt for voter fraud.The Times reviewed 26 such games being played on the messaging apps and social platforms Telegram, WhatsApp, Gab and Truth Social over the past two months. In each, players were granted a loose system of points or honorary titles if they shared supposed evidence of voting irregularities. Many of the participants were encouraged to post as much as possible, egged on by raucous carnival-like conversations and posts.The games originated in online groups that purported to be about voter integrity and securing elections. It was unclear how long the games have existed, because many of the channels have changed names or cleared their digital histories. None appeared to turn up proof of voter fraud, which is exceptionally rare.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.But facts are often not the point of these games. Instead, they are part of a broader trend of “participatory misinformation,” in which people become more actively involved in sharing falsehoods and conspiracy theories. That leads to people integrating with a wider community and earning kudos, which makes them more likely to believe and invest in the misinformation, researchers said.“There’s a feeling that you can participate in the construction of a narrative and have impact,” said Kate Starbird, a professor of human-computer interaction at the University of Washington who studies misinformation. “It’s very empowering.”Fences surrounded the Maricopa County elections center in Phoenix this month. Misinformation about voting has flourished online.Olivier Touron/Agence France-Presse, via Getty ImagesThe gamification of voter fraud on social media has implications for how the legitimacy of the vote will be seen in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Confidence in the electoral process has eroded in recent years, with former President Donald J. Trump casting doubt on the 2020 presidential election’s outcome by falsely claiming he was the victim of duplicitous voting practices.In recent months, candidates such as Kari Lake, a Republican running for Arizona governor, have amplified voting misinformation on the campaign trail, such as questioning the accuracy of voting machines. Falsehoods about voting have circulated widely on Twitter, TikTok, Truth Social, Rumble and Gab.Some people now are so suspicious of the voting process that they have set up watch parties to monitor ballot boxes and prevent tampering on Election Day. States such as Georgia have passed laws that require people to show new IDs to vote. On Wednesday, President Biden condemned Mr. Trump and other Republicans for imperiling American democracy with lies about voting and the 2020 election.The voter fraud games add to the fraught atmosphere, Ms. Starbird said. They are “one more way that people are being pushed to spread, and even create, examples of voter fraud to fuel their false narratives and sow distrust in the midterms,” she said.Participatory misinformation has a history of spurring online conspiracy theory movements, researchers said. QAnon, a movement that revolved around the falsehood that the world was run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping Democrats, was nurtured by people seeking clues online about the identities of those running the group and seeing hidden meanings in supposed symbols and coded messages.After the 2020 election, the “Stop the Steal” movement, which falsely claimed that Mr. Trump had won, was also fueled by online participation. On Facebook, dozens of groups encouraged their followers to find examples that proved the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump.Since then, claims of voter fraud have grown to include unsubstantiated theories that voting machines were rigged, that dead people and pets had voted and that corrupt election officials were not counting certain kinds of ballots.In the voter fraud games on Telegram, WhatsApp and other platforms, the groups viewed by The Times ranged in size from a few dozen people to several hundred. Many players appeared to use pseudonyms and shared only scant personal information. While some of the games awarded points, others bestowed titles like “master” and “grand master” to those who posted multiple examples of purported voter fraud.The points and titles do not appear to add up to any real-world prizes. Instead they gave participants online clout and bragging rights over fellow players.In one Pennsylvania-based Telegram group, 200 people raced this week to find examples of “unverified ballots,” or ballots that were sent without verifying voters’ identities, after Mr. Trump falsely claimed on Tuesday that 250,000 of these ballots had been mailed to voters in the state.“There are hundreds of thousands, makes them easy to find,” one person in the group wrote. “I say one point a person.”In a WhatsApp group that was an offshoot of a larger Ohio-based Telegram group, nine participants recently kept a leaderboard as they played their game. At the top of the board was a member who the group said had uncovered cases of dead people who had voted. The player had not provided evidence of his accusations.Not all of the games have a formal structure, or take place in dedicated channels. On Truth Social, the platform started by Mr. Trump, the gamelike approach of awarding points or acclaim to users participating in misinformation has spilled into the comments sections.When Mr. Trump asserted to his 4.4 million followers on Truth Social on Monday that voter fraud was rife in Pennsylvania, for example, comments and links to his post included promises that those who found any alleged wrongdoing would be rewarded.One person who shared Mr. Trump’s post said he would give “special status” to anyone who captured footage of the unverified ballots. Others said they would go door to door to verify voters themselves and “get a point” if they found the ballots.On Telegram, some groups that have exhorted people to watch ballot boxes in Arizona to prevent voter fraud have also treated it like a game. “Ten points if you spend an hour” monitoring a ballot box, one person wrote in a Telegram channel with nearly 100 people. “1,000 if you catch them,” the person added, using expletives to describe undocumented immigrants.Similar Telegram channels have popped up in other states. In New Hampshire and Wisconsin, groups dedicated to monitoring the elections next week were also conferring points to players for finding local cases of voter fraud.In one Wisconsin-based Telegram group, where 100 people were engaged in scoring points by finding voter fraud, one participant, whose user name contained a racial slur, posted a video last week of someone claiming to burn ballots.The player obtained 10 virtual points for the video. But the footage had already circulated widely on the internet after the 2020 election and was debunked as fake. The person shown in the video was burning sample ballots, not ones that voters had used. More
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Debunking Voting Misinformation About the Midterm Elections
by Aurelia Butler 2 November 2022, 12:37
Here are some of the main falsehoods and rumors that have spread on social media in the lead-up to Election Day.Voting-related falsehoods and rumors are flourishing across social media in the final stretch before Election Day on Tuesday.Much of the misinformation and conspiracy theories, which are swirling on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, build on familiar and unsubstantiated narratives spread about the 2020 presidential election. They include debunked claims of meddling with voting equipment, falsehoods about fraudulent ballots, alleged malfeasance by elections officials and unsubstantiated rumors about mail-in voting.Many of the posts are outright falsehoods, while others appear intended to simply raise doubts and undermine confidence in voting, researchers said. And they are spreading through more conduits, such as the fast-rising video app TikTok and right-wing social media sites like Truth Social, Rumble and Telegram, according to the data research firms Zignal and Graphika and researchers.“People are primed, much more mobilized and more soaked in conspiracy theories,” said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist who studies election misinformation at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.Here are some of the most widespread falsehoods and rumors related to voting.Voting machines aren’t rigged.President Donald J. Trump and his allies falsely claimed in 2020 that ballot-tabulating machines had changed votes for him to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. They claimed the voting machines were connected to the internet, allowing corrupt election officials and outsiders to tamper with the equipment.While voting machines sometimes encounter programming errors, they are rare, and the equipment is tested before and after Election Day, election officials said. For example, in Maricopa County, Ariz., a political battleground and focal point of conspiracy theorists around the 2020 election, four independent auditors check the security of the equipment, which does not connect to the internet.Even so, falsehoods about the machines have picked up online in recent weeks.On Twitter, “voting machines” has been a top voting-related narrative related to the midterm elections, with more than 89,888 mentions in October, nearly double the 49,765 mentions during the same month in 2021 but down from 191,391 in October before the midterm elections in 2018, according to Zignal.Last month, a Wisconsin state representative said voting machines in the state were connected to the internet. Equipment makers and security experts refuted the claim, but Mr. Trump seized on the falsehood and posted the Wisconsin official’s statement on his social media site, Truth Social.“Rigged Election, what a mess,” he wrote. The post was shared more than 5,000 times and liked more than 13,000 times.Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and a Trump supporter, was featured last week in several interviews on the video-sharing site Rumble saying that voting machines were connected to the internet and had been tampered with to steal elections. One of his interviews on Rumble was viewed more than 20,000 times.Ballot fraud isn’t rampant.Over the past month, there were more than 365,592 mentions of “voter fraud” on Twitter, up 25 percent from October 2018, according to Zignal.Claims of voter fraud have often centered on ballot drop boxes. One false theory involves Democrats paying people to stuff the boxes with illegal ballots. The idea was stoked by the May release of the film “2000 Mules,” which asserted with little evidence that illegal drop box stuffing could be traced through cellphone location data. Security experts and former Attorney General William P. Barr have refuted the claims.Last month, Melody Jennings, a Trump supporter and the founder of CleanElectionsUSA, an activist group that has spread unfounded rumors of illegal drop-box stuffing, warned on Truth Social that “mules” — or people who were allegedly vote-trafficking — were “doing their thing” at drop boxes in Maricopa County. She and other conspiracy theorists falsely said these mules had stuffed boxes with illegal ballots and called for volunteers to watch over the boxes. Her post was shared more than 3,000 times and liked 7,400 times.Conspiracy theories about the handling of ballots by election officials are also circulating on social media. According to one unsubstantiated theory, election officials are purposely confusing voters over the kinds of pens that can be used to mark ballots — and declaring that ballots marked with Sharpie pens aren’t counted.Those false claims, which have circulated since 2020, resurfaced in July when a Maricopa County election office sent an advisory suggesting that voters use felt-tip pens on their ballots. The advisory created a backlash online, with several voters posting on Twitter and Facebook that they would instead use blue ballpoint pens because they worried that ballots marked with felt-tip pens provided at polling stations would not be counted.Dead people and illegal immigrants aren’t being exploited.False rumors of voting by dead people and illegal immigrants have long circulated, including after the 2020 election in states such as Arizona, Virginia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. In all of these states, a small fraction of ballots were cast in the names of dead individuals.The trope has reared its head again online ahead of the midterms.Politicians including Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, have recently said without evidence that Democrats want immigrants who are in the United States illegally to vote.“Any illegal alien who attempts to vote in our elections should be arrested and deported,” Mr. Gaetz tweeted on Sunday. His post was shared more than 7,000 times and liked more than 48,000 times.Last week, Texas Scorecard, a self-described citizen journalism group, posted a video on YouTube claiming without evidence that Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for governor in Texas, had sent pre-filled voter registration applications to dead people. Texas officials validate all voter registration applications. The video was viewed 5,000 times.An election worker sorted ballots in October 2020 at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix.Matt York/Associated PressVoting by mail isn’t untrustworthy.Some Republican candidates and voters are using social media to cast doubt on whether ballots sent by mail or submitted into drop boxes are counted. “Mail-in voting” and “mail-in ballots” have been mentioned over 338,528 times in the past month on Twitter, up from 137,507 in the October 2021 and 114,159 in October 2018, according to Zignal.Conspiracy theorists also seized on a story last month of the burning of a mail truck that was allegedly carrying ballots in Georgia. Images of the burning truck were spread across social media as a sign of cheating in the election, even though an election official later said there were no ballots on the truck.Social media users have used such incidents to warn against mail-in voting. The hashtag #GetOutAndVoteInPerson has spread widely on Telegram from communities with pro-Trump, Christian, military and election conspiracy theory leanings, said Kyle Weiss, a researcher at Graphika.Voting by mail has taken place for more than 150 years, and fraud is extremely rare, according to the Brennan Center, a nonprofit voter rights organization. In rural areas and for low-income and disabled voters, voting by mail is often the only option. Rules for mail-in voting and the use of drop boxes vary by stateDelays in counting votes are not irregularities.Official results for many races on Tuesday won’t be announced that night and may not be for days because the counting of votes could take longer. Some social media users are focusing on potential counting delays to raise suspicions of election irregularities, state officials and voting experts said.Last Thursday, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, responded to a news report that Pennsylvania’s top elections official expected official vote counting to take days. “Why is it only Democrat blue cities that take ‘days’ to count their votes?” he tweeted. “The rest of the country manages to get it done on election night.” The tweet was shared more than 5,500 times and liked 19,200 times.Tallying a final count typically takes days in some states because of the many mail-in votes. In Pennsylvania, officials can begin counting mail-in ballots only on Tuesday morning. In Arizona, election officials said the count could take more than a week because a bipartisan processing board had to certify mail-in ballot signatures. If any ballots are questioned, the law allows five days for the ballot to be reviewed and tallied. More
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Russia’s Unsupported ‘Dirty Bomb’ Claims Spread Through Right-Wing U.S. Media
by Aurelia Butler 25 October 2022, 19:12
After Russia claimed that Ukraine would use a “dirty bomb” — a conventional explosive that can spread radioactive material — on its own territory, Western countries reacted with skepticism, noting that Russia often accused others of doing what Moscow was considering doing itself. Russia provided no evidence to support its claim.But on right-wing media and in many right-wing communities online, Russia’s claim was portrayed as believable, and as a dire warning that could serve to escalate Russia’s war on Ukraine for Ukraine’s benefit, or even trigger a new world war.Alex Jones, the American conspiracy theorist who often spreads lies on his Infowars platform, during his online show on Monday suggested that Ukraine would detonate a dirty bomb within its borders and then blame Russia as “a pretext to bring NATO fully into the conflict” and start World War III. “My analysis is, about 90 percent at this point, that there’s going to be full-on public war with Russia, and at least a tactical nuclear war in Europe,” he added.The Gateway Pundit, another right-wing American news site, repeated Russia’s claims in an article on Sunday and asked: “Would this surprise anyone?”And on YouTube, Gonzalo Lira, an American commentator who lives in Ukraine, said that “all the evidence” pointed to a “deliberate provocation that is being staged by the Americans.” The video received more than 59,000 views and circulated through right-wing social media.America’s far right has repeatedly sided with Russia in the conflict, echoing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia’s baseless claims that the war was about routing corruption in Ukraine or ending neo-Nazism.As the conflict has continued, online communities have interpreted developments through their own conspiratorial lens, picking up Russian narratives that Ukraine would bomb its own citizens to curry international sympathy.Those discussions continued this week regarding claims about the possible use of a dirty bomb in the conflict.In one video — circulated widely on the messaging app Telegram and seen more than 36,000 times on the video-streaming service Brighteon — a streamer suggested that a “cabal” of Democrats and leftists was plotting to use the dirty bomb to set off a nuclear war, which would prevent Republicans from winning the midterm elections.“The cabal is so desperate, obviously, that they can’t allow that to happen,” the host said. “And even if it does happen, they’ll probably try to push for war before the next Congress gets in.” More
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La desinformación es más difícil de combatir en EE. UU.
by Aurelia Butler 23 October 2022, 09:00
La proliferación de redes sociales alternativas ha ayudado a afianzar la información falsa y engañosa como elemento clave de la política estadounidense.La mañana del 8 de julio, el expresidente Donald Trump recurrió a Truth Social, la plataforma de redes sociales que fundó con gente cercana a él, para afirmar que había ganado las elecciones presidenciales del 2020 en el estado de Wisconsin, a pesar de todas las pruebas que evidenciaban lo contrario.Alrededor de 8000 personas compartieron esa misiva en Truth Social, cifra que distó mucho de los cientos de miles de respuestas que sus publicaciones en Facebook y Twitter solían generar antes de que esas plataformas le apagaran el micrófono tras los mortíferos disturbios en el Capitolio el 6 de enero de 2021.A pesar de ello, la afirmación infundada de Trump pululó en la conciencia pública. Saltó de su aplicación a otras plataformas de redes sociales, por no hablar de pódcast, la radio y la televisión.Al cabo de 48 horas de publicado su mensaje, más de un millón de personas lo habían visto en al menos una decena de otros lugares. Apareció en Facebook y Twitter, de donde fue eliminado, pero también en YouTube, Gab, Parler y Telegram, según un análisis de The New York Times.La difusión de la afirmación de Trump ilustra cómo la desinformación ha hecho metástasis desde que los expertos comenzaron a sonar la alarma sobre la amenaza que supone y todo esto ocurre justo antes de las elecciones de mitad de mandato de este año. A pesar de los años de esfuerzos de los medios de comunicación, de los académicos e incluso de las propias empresas de redes sociales para hacer frente al problema, se puede decir que hoy en día está más generalizado y extendido.“Para ser honesta, me parece que el problema está peor que nunca”, comentó Nina Jankowicz, experta en desinformación que condujo durante un periodo breve un consejo consultivo dentro del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional dedicado a combatir la desinformación. La creación del panel desató furor y provocó su renuncia y la disolución del consejo consultivo.No hace mucho, la lucha contra la desinformación se centraba en las principales plataformas de redes sociales, como Facebook y Twitter. Cuando se les presionaba, solían eliminar los contenidos problemáticos, incluida la información errónea y la desinformación intencionada sobre la pandemia de COVID-19.Sin embargo, ahora hay decenas de plataformas nuevas, incluidas algunas que se enorgullecen de no moderar —censurar, como lo denominan— las declaraciones falsas en nombre de la libertad de expresión.Otras personalidades siguieron los pasos de Trump y se cambiaron a estas nuevas plataformas tras ser “censuradas” por Facebook, YouTube o Twitter. Entre ellos, Michael Flynn, el general retirado que sirvió brevemente como principal asesor de Seguridad Nacional de Trump; L. Lin Wood, una abogada pro-Trump; Naomi Wolf, una autora feminista y escéptica de las vacunas, así como diversos seguidores de QAnon y los Oath Keepers, un grupo de militantes de extrema derecha.Al menos 69 millones de personas se han unido a plataformas como Parler, Gab, Truth Social, Gettr y Rumble, que se promueven como alternativas conservadoras a las grandes empresas tecnológicas, según declaraciones de las empresas mismas. Aunque muchos de esos usuarios ya no tienen cabida en las plataformas más grandes, siguen difundiendo sus opiniones, que a menudo aparecen en capturas de pantalla publicadas en los sitios que les prohibieron la entrada.“Nada en internet existe de manera aislada”, afirmó Jared Holt, gestor principal en la investigación sobre odio y extremismo del Instituto para el Diálogo Estratégico. “Lo que ocurre en plataformas alternas como Gab o Telegram o Truth tarde o temprano llega a Facebook, Twitter y otras”, agregó.Los usuarios han migrado a aplicaciones como Truth Social luego de haber sido “censuradas” por Facebook, YouTube o Twitter.Leon Neal/Getty ImagesEl discurso político se ha radicalizado por la difusión de las personas que propagan desinformación, indicó Nora Benavidez, abogada sénior en Free Press, un grupo de defensa de los derechos digitales y la transparencia.“Nuestro lenguaje y nuestros ecosistemas en línea se están volviendo cada vez más corrosivos”, dijo.Los cambios en el paisaje de la desinformación se están haciendo más evidentes con el ciclo electoral en Estados Unidos. En 2016, la campaña encubierta de Rusia para difundir mensajes falsos y divisorios parecía una aberración en el sistema político estadounidense. Hoy la desinformación, procedente de enemigos extranjeros y nacionales, se ha convertido en una característica del mismo.La idea infundada de que el presidente Joe Biden no fue electo de manera legítima se generalizó entre los miembros del Partido Republicano, e hizo que funcionarios de los estados y los condados impusieran nuevas restricciones para votar, a menudo solo con base en teorías de la conspiración que se cuelan en los medios de comunicación de derecha.Los votantes no solo deben filtrar un torrente cada vez mayor de mentiras y falsedades sobre los candidatos y sus políticas, sino también información sobre cuándo y dónde votar. Los funcionarios nombrados o elegidos en nombre de la lucha contra el fraude electoral han adoptado una postura que implica que se negarán a certificar los resultados que no sean de su agrado.Los proveedores de desinformación también se han vuelto cada vez más sofisticados a la hora de eludir las normas de las principales plataformas, mientras que el uso del video para difundir afirmaciones falsas en YouTube, TikTok e Instagram ha hecho que los sistemas automatizados tengan más dificultades para identificarlos que los mensajes de texto.TikTok, propiedad del gigante chino de la tecnología ByteDance, se ha vuelto uno de los principales campos de batalla en la lucha actual contra la desinformación. Un informe del mes pasado de NewsGuard, una organización que da seguimiento al problema en línea, mostró que casi el 20 por ciento de los videos que aparecían como resultados de búsqueda en TikTok contenían información falsa o tendenciosa sobre temas como los tiroteos en las escuelas y la guerra de Rusia en Ucrania.Katie Harbath en el “sala de operaciones” de Facebook, donde se monitoreaba el contenido relacionado con las elecciones en la plataforma, en 2018Jeff Chiu/Associated Press“La gente que hace esto sabe cómo aprovechar los vacíos”, explicó Katie Harbath, exdirectora de políticas públicas de Facebook que ahora dirige Anchor Change, una consultora estratégica.A pocas semanas de las elecciones de mitad de mandato, las principales plataformas se han comprometido a bloquear, etiquetar o marginar todo lo que infrinja las políticas de la empresa, incluida la desinformación, la incitación al odio o los llamados a la violencia.Sin embargo, la industria artesanal de expertos dedicados a contrarrestar la desinformación —los grupos de expertos, las universidades y las organizaciones no gubernamentales— mencionan que la industria no está haciendo suficiente. El mes pasado, por ejemplo, el Centro Stern para los Negocios y los Derechos Humanos de la Universidad de Nueva York advirtió que las principales plataformas seguían amplificando el “negacionismo electoral” de maneras que debilitaban la confianza en el sistema democrático.Otro desafío es la proliferación de plataformas alternativas para esas falsedades y opiniones aún más extremas.Muchas de esas nuevas plataformas florecieron tras la derrota de Trump en 2020, aunque todavía no han alcanzado el tamaño o el alcance de Facebook y Twitter. Estas plataformas afirman que las grandes empresas tecnológicas están en deuda con el gobierno, el Estado profundo o la élite liberal.Parler, una red social fundada en 2018, era uno de los sitios que más crecía, hasta que las tiendas de aplicaciones de Apple y Google lo expulsaron tras los disturbios mortales del 6 de enero, alimentados por la desinformación y los llamados a la violencia en línea. Desde entonces ha vuelto a ambas tiendas y ha empezado a reconstruir su audiencia apelando a quienes sienten que sus voces han sido silenciadas.“En Parler creemos que el individuo es quien debe decidir lo que cree que es la verdad”, dijo en una entrevista, Amy Peikoff, la directora de políticas de la plataforma.Argumentó que el problema con la desinformación o las teorías de la conspiración se derivaba de los algoritmos que las plataformas usan para mantener a la gente pegada a internet y no del debate sin moderar que fomentan sitios como Parler.El lunes, Parler anunció que Kanye West había, en principio, accedido a comprar la plataforma en un acuerdo que el rapero y el diseñador de moda, ahora conocido como Ye, formuló en términos políticos.“En un mundo en que las opiniones conservadoras se consideran controversiales, debemos de asegurarnos de tener el derecho a expresarnos libremente”, dijo, según el comunicado de la compañía.Los competidores de Parler son ahora BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Telegram y Truth Social, y cada uno de ellos se presenta como un santuario frente a las políticas de moderación de las principales plataformas en todo tipo de temas, desde la política hasta la salud.Una nueva encuesta del Centro de Investigaciones Pew descubrió que el 15 por ciento de las cuentas destacadas en esas siete plataformas habían sido desterradas previamente de otras como Twitter y Facebook.Las aplicaciones como Gettr se publicitan como alternativas a los gigantes tecnológicosElijah Nouvelage/Getty ImagesSegún la encuesta, casi dos terceras partes de los usuarios de esas plataformas dijeron que habían encontrado una comunidad de personas que compartían sus opiniones. La mayoría son republicanos o se inclinan por ese partido.Una consecuencia de esta atomización de las fuentes de las redes sociales es que se refuerzan las burbujas de información partidista en las que viven millones de estadounidenses.Según el Centro Pew, al menos el seis por ciento de los estadounidenses se informa de manera habitual en al menos uno de estos sitios relativamente nuevos, que a menudo “ponen de relieve puntos de vista del mundo que no pertenecen a la corriente dominante y, a veces, utilizan un lenguaje ofensivo”. La encuesta encontró que una de cada 10 publicaciones en estas plataformas que mencionaban cuestiones relacionadas con la comunidad LGBTQ incluían alegatos peyorativos.Estos nuevos sitios siguen siendo marginales comparados con las plataformas más grandes; por ejemplo, Trump tiene 4 millones de seguidores en Truth Social, en comparación con los 88 millones que tenía cuando Twitter cerró su cuenta en 2021.Aun así, Trump ha retomado cada vez más sus publicaciones con el ímpetu que antes mostraba en Twitter. El allanamiento del FBI en Mar-a-Lago volvió a poner sus últimos pronunciamientos en el ojo del huracán político.Para las principales plataformas, el incentivo financiero para atraer usuarios, y sus clics, sigue siendo poderoso y podría hacer que den marcha atrás a las medidas que tomaron en 2021. También hay un componente ideológico. El llamado a la libertad individual, con tintes emocionales, impulsó en parte la oferta de Elon Musk para comprar Twitter, que parece haberse reactivado tras meses de maniobras legales.Nick Clegg, el presidente de asuntos globales de Meta, la empresa matriz de Facebook, incluso sugirió hace poco que la plataforma podría restablecer la cuenta de Trump en 2023, antes de la que podría ser otra carrera presidencial. Facebook había dicho previamente que solo lo haría “si el riesgo para la seguridad pública ha disminuido”.Nick Clegga, el presidente de asuntos globales de MetaPatrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesUn estudio de Truth Social realizado por Media Matters for America, un grupo de monitoreo de medios con tendencia de izquierda, examinó la forma en que la plataforma se ha convertido en hogar de algunas de las teorías de conspiración más marginales. Trump, que empezó a publicar en la plataforma en el mes de abril, ha amplificado cada vez más el contenido de QAnon, la teoría de conspiración en línea.Ha compartido publicaciones de QAnon más de 130 veces. Los seguidores de QAnon promueven una falsedad amplia y compleja centrada en Trump como líder que se enfrenta a una conspiración de una camarilla de pedófilos del Partido Demócrata. Dichas opiniones han hallado cabida durante las primarias de este año en las campañas electorales de los republicanos.Jankowicz, la experta en desinformación, mencionó que las divisiones sociales y políticas habían agitado las olas de la desinformación.Las controversias sobre la mejor manera de responder a la pandemia de COVID-19 profundizaron la desconfianza en el gobierno y los expertos médicos, sobre todo entre los conservadores. La negativa de Trump a aceptar el resultado de las elecciones de 2020 condujo a la violencia en el Capitolio, pero no terminó con ella.“Deberían habernos unido”, dijo Jankowicz, refiriéndose a la pandemia y a los disturbios. “Pensé que quizás podrían servir como una especie de poder de convocatoria, pero no lo fueron”Steven Lee Myers cubre desinformación para el Times. Ha trabajado en Washington, Moscú, Bagdad y Pekín, donde contribuyó a los artículos que ganaron el Premio Pulitzer al servicio público en 2021. También es el autor de The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin. @stevenleemyers • FacebookSheera Frenkel es una reportera de tecnología premiada que tiene su sede en San Francisco. En 2021, ella y Cecilia Kang publicaron Manipulados. La batalla de Facebook por la dominación mundial. @sheeraf More
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Ahead of Midterms, Disinformation Is Even More Intractable
by Aurelia Butler 20 October 2022, 19:35
On the morning of July 8, former President Donald J. Trump took to Truth Social, a social media platform he founded with people close to him, to claim that he had in fact won the 2020 presidential vote in Wisconsin, despite all evidence to the contrary.Barely 8,000 people shared that missive on Truth Social, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of responses his posts on Facebook and Twitter had regularly generated before those services suspended his megaphones after the deadly riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.And yet Mr. Trump’s baseless claim pulsed through the public consciousness anyway. It jumped from his app to other social media platforms — not to mention podcasts, talk radio or television.Within 48 hours of Mr. Trump’s post, more than one million people saw his claim on at least dozen other sites. It appeared on Facebook and Twitter, from which he has been banished, but also YouTube, Gab, Parler and Telegram, according to an analysis by The New York Times.The spread of Mr. Trump’s claim illustrates how, ahead of this year’s midterm elections, disinformation has metastasized since experts began raising alarms about the threat. Despite years of efforts by the media, by academics and even by social media companies themselves to address the problem, it is arguably more pervasive and widespread today.“I think the problem is worse than it’s ever been, frankly,” said Nina Jankowicz, an expert on disinformation who briefly led an advisory board within the Department of Homeland Security dedicated to combating misinformation. The creation of the panel set off a furor, prompting her to resign and the group to be dismantled.Not long ago, the fight against disinformation focused on the major social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. When pressed, they often removed troubling content, including misinformation and intentional disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic.Today, however, there are dozens of new platforms, including some that pride themselves on not moderating — censoring, as they put it — untrue statements in the name of free speech.Other figures followed Mr. Trump in migrating to these new platforms after being “censored” by Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. They included Michael Flynn, the retired general who served briefly as Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser; L. Lin Wood, a pro-Trump lawyer; Naomi Wolf, a feminist author and vaccine skeptic; and assorted adherents of QAnon and the Oath Keepers, the far-right militia.At least 69 million people have joined platforms, like Parler, Gab, Truth Social, Gettr and Rumble, that advertise themselves as conservative alternatives to Big Tech, according to statements by the companies. Though many of those users are ostracized from larger platforms, they continue to spread their views, which often appear in screen shots posted on the sites that barred them.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.Debates Dwindle: Direct political engagement with voters is waning as candidates surround themselves with their supporters. Nowhere is the trend clearer than on the shrinking debate stage.“Nothing on the internet exists in a silo,” said Jared Holt, a senior manager on hate and extremism research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “Whatever happens in alt platforms like Gab or Telegram or Truth makes its way back to Facebook and Twitter and others.”Users have migrated to apps like Truth Social after being “censored” by Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.Leon Neal/Getty ImagesThe diffusion of the people who spread disinformation has radicalized political discourse, said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, an advocacy group for digital rights and accountability.“Our language and our ecosystems are becoming more caustic online,” she said. The shifts in the disinformation landscape are becoming clear with the new cycle of American elections. In 2016, Russia’s covert campaign to spread false and divisive posts seemed like an aberration in the American political system. Today disinformation, from enemies, foreign and domestic, has become a feature of it.The baseless idea that President Biden was not legitimately elected has gone mainstream among Republican Party members, driving state and county officials to impose new restrictions on casting ballots, often based on mere conspiracy theories percolating in right-wing media.Voters must now sift through not only an ever-growing torrent of lies and falsehoods about candidates and their policies, but also information on when and where to vote. Officials appointed or elected in the name of fighting voter fraud have put themselves in the position to refuse to certify outcomes that are not to their liking.The purveyors of disinformation have also become increasingly sophisticated at sidestepping the major platforms’ rules, while the use of video to spread false claims on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram has made them harder for automated systems to track than text.TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, has become a primary battleground in today’s fight against disinformation. A report last month by NewsGuard, an organization that tracks the problem online, showed that nearly 20 percent of videos presented as search results on TikTok contained false or misleading information on topics such as school shootings and Russia’s war in Ukraine.Katie Harbath in Facebook’s “war room,” where election-related content was monitored on the platform, in 2018.Jeff Chiu/Associated Press“People who do this know how to exploit the loopholes,” said Katie Harbath, a former director of public policy at Facebook who now leads Anchor Change, a strategic consultancy.With the midterm elections only weeks away, the major platforms have all pledged to block, label or marginalize anything that violates company policies, including disinformation, hate speech or calls to violence.Still, the cottage industry of experts dedicated to countering disinformation — think tanks, universities and nongovernment organizations — say the industry is not doing enough. The Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University warned last month, for example, that the major platforms continued to amplify “election denialism” in ways that undermined trust in the democratic system.Another challenge is the proliferation of alternative platforms for those falsehoods and even more extreme views.Many of those new platforms have flourished in the wake of Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020, though they have not yet reached the size or reach of Facebook and Twitter. They portray Big Tech as beholden to the government, the deep state or the liberal elite.Parler, a social network founded in 2018, was one of the fastest-growing sites — until Apple’s and Google’s app stores kicked it off after the deadly riot on Jan. 6, which was fueled by disinformation and calls for violence online. It has since returned to both stores and begun to rebuild its audience by appealing to those who feel their voices have been silenced.“We believe at Parler that it is up to the individual to decide what he or she thinks is the truth,” Amy Peikoff, the platform’s chief policy officer, said in an interview.She argued that the problem with disinformation or conspiracy theories stemmed from the algorithms that platforms use to keep people glued online — not from the unfettered debate that sites like Parler foster.On Monday, Parler announced that Kanye West had agreed in principle to purchase the platform, a deal that the rapper and fashion designer, now known as Ye, cast in political terms.“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” he said, according to the company’s statement.Parler’s competitors now are BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social, with each offering itself as sanctuary from the moderating policies of the major platforms on everything from politics to health policy.A new survey by the Pew Research Center found that 15 percent of prominent accounts on those seven platforms had previously been banished from others like Twitter and Facebook.Apps like Gettr market themselves as alternatives to Big Tech.Elijah Nouvelage/Getty ImagesNearly two-thirds of the users of those platforms said they had found a community of people who share their views, according to the survey. A majority are Republicans or lean Republican.A result of this atomization of social media sources is to reinforce the partisan information bubbles within which millions of Americans live.At least 6 percent of Americans now regularly get news from at least one of these relatively new sites, which often “highlight non-mainstream world views and sometimes offensive language,” according to Pew. One in 10 posts on these platforms that mentioned L.G.B.T.Q. issues involved derisive allegations, the survey found.These new sites are still marginal compared with the bigger platforms; Mr. Trump, for example, has four million followers on Truth Social, compared with 88 million when Twitter kicked him off in 2021.Even so, Mr. Trump has increasingly resumed posting with the vigor he once showed on Twitter. The F.B.I. raid on Mar-a-Lago thrust his latest pronouncements into the eye of the political storm once again.For the major platforms, the financial incentive to attract users — and their clicks — remains powerful and could undo the steps they took in 2021. There is also an ideological component. The emotionally laced appeal to individual liberty in part drove Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter, which appears to have been revived after months of legal maneuvering.Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, even suggested recently that the platform might reinstate Mr. Trump’s account in 2023 — ahead of what could be another presidential run. Facebook had previously said it would do so only “if the risk to public safety has receded.”Nick Clegg, Meta’s president for global affairs.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA study of Truth Social by Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media monitoring group, examined how the platform had become a home for some of the most fringe conspiracy theories. Mr. Trump, who began posting on the platform in April, has increasingly amplified content from QAnon, the online conspiracy theory.He has shared posts from QAnon accounts more than 130 times. QAnon believers promote a vast and complex falsehood that centers on Mr. Trump as a leader battling a cabal of Democratic Party pedophiles. Echoes of such views reverberated through Republican election campaigns across the country during this year’s primaries.Ms. Jankowicz, the disinformation expert, said the nation’s social and political divisions had churned the waves of disinformation.The controversies over how best to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic deepened distrust of government and medical experts, especially among conservatives. Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election led to, but did not end with, the Capitol Hill violence.“They should have brought us together,” Ms. Jankowicz said, referring to the pandemic and the riots. “I thought perhaps they could be kind of this convening power, but they were not.” More
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The Midterm Election’s Most Dominant Toxic Narratives
by Aurelia Butler 23 September 2022, 13:54
Ballot mules. Poll watch parties. Groomers.These topics are now among the most dominant divisive and misleading narratives online about November’s midterm elections, according to researchers and data analytics companies. On Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Truth Social and other social media sites, some of these narratives have surged in recent months, often accompanied by angry and threatening rhetoric.The effects of these inflammatory online discussions are being felt in the real world, election officials and voting rights groups said. Voters have flooded some local election offices with misinformed questions about supposedly rigged voting machines, while some people appear befuddled about what pens to use on ballots and whether mail-in ballots are still legal, they said.“Our voters are angry and confused,” Lisa Marra, elections director in Cochise County, Ariz., told a House committee last month. “They simply don’t know what to believe.”The most prevalent of these narratives fall into three main categories: continued falsehoods about rampant election fraud; threats of violence and citizen policing of elections; and divisive posts on health and social policies that have become central to political campaigns. Here’s what to know about them.Misinformation about the 2020 election, left, has fueled the “Stop the Steal” movement, center, and continues to be raised at campaign events for the midterms, right.From left, Amir Hamja for The New York Times, Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times, Ash Ponders for The New York Times Election FraudFalse claims of election fraud are commanding conversation online, with former President Donald J. Trump continuing to protest that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.Voter fraud is rare, but that falsehood about the 2020 election has become a central campaign issue for dozens of candidates around the country, causing misinformation and toxic content about the issue to spread widely online.“Stolen election” was mentioned 325,589 times on Twitter from June 19 to July 19, a number that has been fairly steady throughout the year and that was up nearly 900 percent from the same period in 2020, according to Zignal Labs, a media research firm.On the video-sharing site Rumble, videos with the term “stop the steal” or “stolen election” and other claims of election fraud have been among the most popular. In May, such posts attracted 2.5 million viewers, more than triple the total from a year earlier, according to Similarweb, a digital analytics firm.More recently, misinformation around the integrity of voting has metastasized. More conspiracy theories are circulating online about individuals submitting fraudulent ballots, about voting machines being rigged to favor Democrats and about election officials switching the kinds of pens that voters must use to mark ballots in order to confuse them.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.These conspiracy theories have in turn spawned new terms, such as “ballot trafficking” and “ballot mules,” which is used to describe people who are paid to cast fake ballots. The terms were popularized by the May release of the film “2000 Mules,” a discredited movie claiming widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. From June 19 to July 19, “ballot mules” was mentioned 17,592 times on Twitter; it was not used before the 2020 election, according to Zignal.In April, the conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk interviewed the stars of the film, including Catherine Engelbrecht of the nonprofit voting group True the Vote. Mr. Kirk’s interview has garnered more than two million views online.“A sense of grievance is already in place,” said Kyle Weiss, a senior analyst at Graphika, a research firm that studies misinformation and fake social media accounts. The 2020 election “primed the public on a set of core narratives, which are reconstituting and evolving in 2022.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.The security of ballot drop boxes, left; the search for documents at Mar-a-Lago, center; and the role of the F.B.I., right, are being widely discussed online in the context of the midterm elections. From left, Marco Garcia for The New York Times, Saul Martinez for The New York Times, Kenny Holston for The New York TimesCalls to ActionOnline conversations about the midterm elections have also been dominated by calls for voters to act against apparent election fraud. In response, some people have organized citizen policing of voting, with stakeouts of polling stations and demands for information about voter rolls in their counties. Civil rights groups widely criticize poll watching, which they say can intimidate voters, particularly immigrants and at sites in communities of color.From July 27 to Aug. 3, the second-most-shared tweet about the midterms was a photo of people staking out a ballot box, with the message that “residents are determined to safeguard the drop boxes,” according to Zignal. Among those who shared it was Dinesh D’Souza, the creator of “2000 Mules,” who has 2.4 million followers on Twitter.In July, Seth Keshel, a retired Army captain who has challenged the result of the 2020 presidential election, shared a message on Telegram calling for “all-night patriot tailgate parties for EVERY DROP BOX IN AMERICA.” The post was viewed more than 70,000 times.Anger toward the F.B.I. is also reflected in midterm-related conversations, with a rise in calls to shut down or defund the agency after last month’s raid of Mr. Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.“Abolish FBI” became a trending hashtag across social media, mentioned 122,915 times on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and news sites from July 1 to Aug. 30, up 1,990 percent from about 5,882 mentions in the two months before the 2020 election, according to Zignal.In a video posted on Twitter on Sept. 20, Representative Andrew Clyde, Republican of Georgia, implied that he and others would take action against the F.B.I. if Republicans won control of Congress in November.“You wait till we take the House back. You watch what happens to the F.B.I.,” he said in a video captured by a left-leaning online show, “The Undercurrent,” and shared more than 1,000 times on Twitter within a few hours. Mr. Clyde did not respond to a request for comment.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, center, is among the politicians who have spread misinformation about gay and transgender people, a report said.From left: Todd Heisler/The New York Times, Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times, Todd Heisler/The New York TimesHot-Button IssuesSome online conversations about the midterms are not directly related to voting. Instead, the discussions are centered on highly partisan issues — such as transgender rights — that candidates are campaigning on and that are widely regarded as motivating voters, leading to a surge of falsehoods.A month after Florida passed legislation that prohibits classroom discussion or instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity, which the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law in March, the volume of tweets falsely linking gay and transgender individuals to pedophilia soared, for example.Language claiming that gay people and transgender people were “grooming” children for abuse increased 406 percent on Twitter in April, according to a study by the Human Rights Campaign and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.The narrative was spread most widely by 10 far-right figures, including midterm candidates such as Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, according to the report. Their tweets on “grooming” misinformation were viewed an estimated 48 million times, the report said.In May, Ms. Boebert tweeted: “A North Carolina preschool is using LGBT flag flashcards with a pregnant man to teach kids colors. We went from Reading Rainbow to Randy Rainbow in a few decades, but don’t dare say the Left is grooming our kids!” The tweet was shared nearly 2,000 times and liked nearly 10,000 times.Ms. Boebert and Ms. Taylor Greene did not respond to requests for comment.On Facebook and Instagram, 59 ads also promoted the narrative that the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community and allies were “grooming” children, the report found. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, accepted up to $24,987 for the ads, which were served to users over 2.1 million times, according to the report.Meta said it had removed several of the ads mentioned in the report.“The repeated pushing of ‘groomer’ narratives has resulted in a wider anti-L.G.B.T. moral panic that has been influencing state and federal legislation and is likely to be a significant midterm issue,” said David Thiel, the chief technical officer at the Stanford Internet Observatory, which studies online extremism and disinformation. More

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