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      How Conservatives and Progressives Reacted to Musk Buying Twitter

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      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

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      Your Tuesday Briefing: Elon Musk Buys Twitter

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      Plus a lockdown looms over Beijing and the U.S. flexes in Ukraine.Good morning. Elon Musk buys Twitter, Beijing vibrates with fears of a lockdown, the U.S. reasserts itself in Ukraine.Elon Musk, owner of Twitter?Pool photo by Patrick PleulElon Musk buys TwitterElon Musk, the renegade billionaire, struck a deal to buy the social media company for roughly $44 billion after submitting an unsolicited bid earlier this month. The company agreed to $54.20 a share, a 38 percent premium over the stock price when it was revealed that Musk had become the company’s biggest shareholder.It would be the largest deal to take a company private — something Musk has said he will do with Twitter — in at least two decades. Follow live updates here.What happens next is anyone’s guess: Musk is an erratic poster who often uses his account to take potshots at perceived enemies. One big question: Would Musk reinstate Donald Trump’s account?Musk has not commented publicly on the Trump ban, but he has frequently expressed his concern that the platform limits free speech and over-moderates comments. In a statement, Musk said “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square.”Reaction: Twitter’s employees say they have been largely in the dark about the takeover. Twitter’s share price rose throughout the day on Monday as a deal appeared increasingly likely: After the acquisition was announced, it closed up 5.7 percent at $51.70 per share.Families in Beijing rushed to stock up on food on yesterday.Stella Qiu/ReutersWill Beijing lock down next?Chinese authorities ordered mass testing amid fears of a coronavirus outbreak. The city government announced that 70 cases had been found since Friday, nearly two-thirds of those in the district of Chaoyang, which ordered all 3.5 million residents to take three P.C.R. tests over the next five days.Fears of a lockdown prompted a rush of panic buying, and supermarkets stayed open late to meet demand. In other Chinese megacities, mass testing in response to initial coronavirus cases has sometimes preceded more stringent lockdowns.The hardships endured by Shanghai residents loom large over the capital city, and China’s economy is already hurting as prolonged lockdowns interrupt global supply chains. In response to these fears, global stocks fell on Monday.Read More on Elon Musk’s Bid to Buy TwitterA Digital Citizen Kane: The mercurial billionaire wants to recast Twitter in his image, in echoes of the 19th-century newspaper barons.Elusive Politics: Mr. Musk is often described as a libertarian, but he has not shrunk from government help when it has been good for business.A Problem for Trump: Mr. Musk’s plan for a Twitter takeover adds to the challenges facing the former president’s nascent Truth Social network.Background: The central government has leaned heavily on lockdowns despite their high social and economic costs, in pursuit of the Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s “zero Covid” strategy.Analysis: With pandemic lockdowns, China’s government has begun meddling with free enterprise in a way it hasn’t in years, our columnist writes. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine’s pressure on Western governments is paying off.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesThe U.S. looks to weaken RussiaPresident Biden nominated Bridget Brink, the current U.S. ambassador to Slovakia, as ambassador to Ukraine on Monday. The U.S. also announced it would reopen its embassy in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, after Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, made a risky, secret visit by train to the city.“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said.The assertion by the top U.S. defense officials that America wants to degrade the Russian war machine reflected an increasingly emboldened approach from the Biden administration.In Ukraine, the war continues to rage, and tens of thousands are without power in the country’s east. Russia renewed its attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure, striking at least five railroad stations in the west with missiles. The country’s railroad director said there were casualties, without elaborating.Loss: A mother found a “new level of happiness” when her daughter was born three months ago. A missile strike in Odesa killed them both.Profile: President Volodymyr Zelensky has managed to unite Ukraine’s fractious politics against Russia.State of the war:Explosions hit Transnistria, a Russian-allied region of Moldova, amid fears of a new front in the war.Russian officials are investigating the cause of fires that tore through oil depots in a strategic city near the Ukrainian border.U.S. defense contractors have been scouring Eastern European weapons factories to find munitions compatible with Ukraine’s arsenal of Soviet-era military equipment.THE LATEST NEWSThe French ElectionPresident Emmanuel Macron celebrates his victory.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesPresident Emmanuel Macron won re-election with a 17-point margin over Marine Le Pen, who conceded her defeat. Turnout was the lowest in two decades.Macron is expected to put in effect several policies to address an issue that spurred over 40 percent of voters to vote for Le Pen: an erosion in purchasing power and living standards.Macron’s victory is a blow to right-wing populism in Europe, like the kind championed by President Viktor Orban of Hungary. Slovenia’s Trump-admiring prime minister, Janez Jansa, appears to have lost his bid for re-election.World NewsDisplaced people in Darfur often live in shelters, like these in El Geneina.Faiz Abubakar Muhamed for The New York TimesHundreds of Arab militia fighters attacked a village in the Darfur region, killing at least 150 people, as Sudan’s security and political crisis deepened.Four people were fatally stabbed in London early Monday morning. The police have arrested a suspect.Osman Kavala, a prominent Turkish critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was sentenced to life in prison without parole.Rights groups have denounced the trial, related to the country’s 2013 protests.U.S. NewsA New York judge held Donald Trump in contempt of court for failing to turn over documents related to an inquiry by the state attorney general. He will be fined $10,000 per day until he does so.A Texas court halted the execution of Melissa Lucio, a Hispanic mother who was convicted of killing her 2-year-old, after new evidence emerged.A climate activist in the U.S. died after lighting himself on fire in front of the country’s Supreme Court on Friday.A Morning Read“I wanted to be fashionable. I just decided to go for it,” said Ayaka Kizu, who got her first tattoo at 19.Haruka Sakaguchi for The New York TimesTattoos have long been taboo in Japan. Since 2014, though, the number of Japanese adults with tattoos has nearly doubled, as social media and celebrity culture prompt more young people to seek out elaborate ink. One catch: They’re choosing discreet places, so they can hide their body art at work.ARTS AND IDEASAn African art collection under threatThe Johannesburg Art Gallery, which houses one of the largest art collections in Africa, has fallen into disrepair. The pandemic only worsened the neglect.Now, the Picasso, Rembrandt and Monets are all packed away in a basement, hidden from the damp. After a particularly wet summer, the gallery’s leaking roof became a hazard to the art. Its bustling but neglected neighborhood creates other vulnerabilities: Thieves long ago stole its copper finishings.“In the same way it’s a failure of the City of Jo’burg to look after the gallery, it’s also a failure of the city of Jo’burg to look after the area around the gallery,” Brian McKechnie, an architect who specializes in heritage buildings, said.Its fate is uncertain: In a recent statement, the city said that it was clear “stopping the leaks alone would not be sufficient to address the future prospects of the institution.” The collection could move, but officials are not sure what to do about the historic building.In the rooms that are still open, curators have assembled exhibitions of Wycliffe Mundopa, who paints large canvasses celebrating the women of Zimbabwe, and the African masters — vibrant reminders of what the Johannesburg Art Gallery could still be. —Lynsey ChutelPLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookBobbi Lin for The New York TimesFeta and olive add brine to this satisfying Greek salad with chicken and cucumbers.What to WatchThe documentary “Navalny” is a glowing profile of the imprisoned Russian opposition leader.World Through a LensTake a long walk in a rural corner of Japan.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Group of sea otters (four letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. The Economist spoke with Sam Ezersky about editing The Times’s digital puzzles and facing down Spelling Bee fanatics.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the dangers of traffic stops in the U.S.Lynsey Chutel wrote today’s Arts & Ideas. You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Barack Obama’s New Role: Fighting Disinformation

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      The former president has embarked on a campaign to warn that the scourge of online falsehoods has eroded the foundations of democracy.SAN FRANCISCO — In 2011, President Barack Obama swept into Silicon Valley and yukked it up with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder. The occasion was a town hall with the social network’s employees that covered the burning issues of the day: taxes, health care, the promise of technology to solve the nation’s problems.More than a decade later, Mr. Obama is making another trip to Silicon Valley, this time with a grimmer message about the threat that the tech giants have created to the nation itself.In private meetings and public appearances over the last year, the former president has waded deeply into the public fray over misinformation and disinformation, warning that the scourge of falsehoods online has eroded the foundations of democracy at home and abroad.In a speech at Stanford University on Thursday, he is expected to add his voice to demands for rules to rein in the flood of lies polluting public discourse.The urgency of the crisis — the internet’s “demand for crazy,” as he put it recently — has already pushed him further than he was ever prepared to go as president to take on social media.“I think it is reasonable for us as a society to have a debate and then put in place a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms that leave intact the opportunity for these platforms to make money but say to them that there’s certain practices you engage in that we don’t think are good for society,” Mr. Obama, now 61, said at a conference on disinformation this month organized by the University of Chicago and The Atlantic.Mr. Obama’s campaign — the timing of which stemmed not from a single cause, people close to him said, but a broad concern about the damage to democracy’s foundations — comes in the middle of a fierce but inconclusive debate over how best to restore trust online.In Washington, lawmakers are so sharply divided that any legislative compromise seems out of reach. Democrats criticize giants like Facebook, which has been renamed Meta, and Twitter for failing to rid their sites of harmful content. President Joseph R. Biden Jr., too, has lashed out at the platforms that allowed falsehoods about coronavirus vaccines to spread, saying last year that “they’re killing people.”Republicans, for their part, accuse the companies of suppressing free speech by censoring conservative voices — above all former President Donald J. Trump, who was barred from Facebook and Twitter after the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 last year. With so little agreement about the problem, there is even less about a solution.Whether Mr. Obama’s advocacy can sway the debate remains to be seen. While he has not sought to endorse a single solution or particular piece of legislation, he nonetheless hopes to appeal across the political spectrum for common ground.“You’ve got to think about how things are going to be consumed through different partisan filtering but still make your true, authentic, best case about how you see the world and what the stakes are and why,” said Jason Goldman, a former Twitter, Blogger and Medium executive who served as the White House’s first chief digital officer under Mr. Obama and continues to advise him.“There’s a potential reason to believe that a good path exists out of some of the messes that we’re in,” he added.As an apostle of the dangers of disinformation, Mr. Obama might be an imperfect messenger. He was the first presidential candidate to ride the power of social media into office in 2008 but then, as president, did little to intervene when its darker side — propagating falsehoods, extremism, racism and violence — became apparent at home and abroad.“I saw it sort of unfold — and that is the degree to which information, disinformation, misinformation was being weaponized,” Mr. Obama said in Chicago, expressing something close to regret. He added, “I think I underestimated the degree to which democracies were as vulnerable to it as they were, including ours.”Mr. Obama, those close to him said, became fixated by disinformation after leaving office. He rehashed, as many others have, whether he had done enough to counter the information campaign ordered by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to tilt the 2016 election against Hillary Rodham Clinton.He began meeting with executives, activists and other experts in earnest last year after Mr. Trump refused to recognize the results of the 2020 election, making unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, those who have consulted with Mr. Obama said.In his musings on the matter, Mr. Obama has not claimed to have discovered a silver bullet that has eluded others who have studied the issue. By coming forward more publicly, however, he hopes to highlight the values for corporate conduct around which consensus could form.“This can be an effective nudge to a lot of the thinking that is already taking place,” Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser, said. “Every day brings more proof of why this matters.”The location of Thursday’s speech, Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, was intentional, bringing Mr. Obama to the heart of the industry that in many ways shaped his presidency.In his 2008 presidential campaign, he went from being an underdog candidate to an online sensation with his embrace of social media as a tool to target voters and to solicit donations. He became an industry favorite; his digital campaign was led by a Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, and several other tech chief executives endorsed him, including Eric Schmidt of Google.During his administration, Mr. Obama extolled the promise of tech companies to strengthen the economy with higher-skilled jobs and to propel democracy movements abroad. He lured tech employees like Mr. Goldman to join his administration and filled his campaign coffers with fund-raisers at the Bay Area homes of supporters like Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Meta, and Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.It was a period of mutual admiration and little government oversight of the tech industry. Though Mr. Obama endorsed privacy regulations, not a single piece of legislation to control the tech companies passed during his tenure, even as they became economic behemoths that touch virtually every aspect of life.Looking back at his administration’s approach, Mr. Obama has said he would not pinpoint any one action or piece of legislation that he might have handled differently. In hindsight, though, he understands now how optimism about online technologies, including social media, outweighed caution, according to Mr. Rhodes.“He’ll certainly acknowledge that there’s things that could have been done differently or ways we were all thinking about the tools and technologies that turned out at times to see the opportunities more than the risks,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Obama’s views began to change with Russia’s flood of propaganda on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stir confusion and chaos in the 2016 presidential election. Days after that election, Mr. Obama took Mr. Zuckerberg aside at a meeting of world leaders in Lima, Peru, to warn that he needed to take the problem more seriously.Once he left office, Mr. Obama was noticeably absent for much of the public conversation around disinformation.“As a general matter, there was an awareness that anything he said about certain issues was just going to ricochet around the fun house mirrors,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Obama’s approach to the issue has been characteristically deliberative. He has consulted the chief executives of Apple, Alphabet and others. Through the Obama Foundation in Chicago, he has also met often with the scholars the foundation has trained; they recounted their own experiences with disinformation in a variety of fields around the world.From those deliberations, potential solutions have begun taking shape, a theme he plans to outline broadly on Thursday. While Mr. Obama maintains that he remains “close to a First Amendment absolutist,” he has focused on the need for greater transparency and regulatory oversight of online discourse — and the ways companies have profited from manipulating audiences through their proprietary algorithms.Mr. Goldman compared a potential approach to consumer protection or food safety practices already in place.“You may not know exactly what’s in a hot dog, but you trust that there is a process for meat inspections that ensures that the food sold and consumed in this country and other countries around the world are safe,” he said.In Congress, lawmakers have already proposed the creation of a regulatory agency dedicated to overseeing internet companies. Others have proposed stripping tech companies of a legal shield that protects them from liability.No proposals have advanced, though, even as the European Union has moved forward, putting into law some of the practices still merely bandied about in Washington. The union is expected to move as soon as Friday on new regulations to impose audits of algorithmic amplification.Kyle Plotkin, a Republican strategist and former chief of staff to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, said Mr. Obama “can be a polarizing figure” and could inflame, not calm, the debate over disinformation.“Adoring fans will be very happy with him weighing in, but others won’t,” he said. “I don’t think he will move the ball forward. If anything, he moves the ball backward.” More

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      New Focus on How a Trump Tweet Incited Far-Right Groups Ahead of Jan. 6

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      Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators are documenting how the former president’s “Be there, will be wild!” post became a catalyst for militants before the Capitol assault.Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators have gathered growing evidence of how a tweet by President Donald J. Trump less than three weeks before Jan. 6, 2021, served as a crucial call to action for extremist groups that played a central role in storming the Capitol.Mr. Trump’s Twitter post in the early hours of Dec. 19, 2020, was the first time he publicly urged supporters to come to Washington on the day Congress was scheduled to certify the Electoral College results showing Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the presidential vote. His message — which concluded with, “Be there, will be wild!” — has long been seen as instrumental in drawing the crowds that attended a pro-Trump rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and then marched to the Capitol.But the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the riot and the parallel inquiry by the House select committee have increasingly shown how Mr. Trump’s post was a powerful catalyst, particularly for far-right militants who believed he was facing his final chance to reverse defeat and whose role in fomenting the violence has come under intense scrutiny.Extremist groups almost immediately celebrated Mr. Trump’s Twitter message, which they widely interpreted as an invitation to descend on the city in force. Responding to the president’s words, the groups sprang into action, court filings and interviews by the House committee show: Extremists began to set up encrypted communications channels, acquire protective gear and, in one case, prepare heavily armed “quick reaction forces” to be staged outside Washington.They also began to whip up their members with a drumbeat of bellicose language, with their private messaging channels increasingly characterized by what one called an “apocalyptic tone.” Directly after Mr. Trump’s tweet was posted, the Capitol Police began to see a spike in right-wing threats against members of Congress.Prosecutors have included examples in at least five criminal cases of extremists reacting within days — often hours — to Mr. Trump’s post.The mob attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesOne of those who responded to the post was Guy Wesley Reffitt, an oil-field worker from Texas who this month became the first Jan. 6 defendant to be convicted at trial. Within a day of Mr. Trump’s Twitter post, Mr. Reffitt was talking about it on a private group chat with other members of the far-right militia organization the Texas Three Percenters.“Our President will need us. ALL OF US…!!! On January 6th,” Mr. Reffitt wrote. “We the People owe him that debt. He Sacrificed for us and we must pay that debt.”The next day, prosecutors say, Mr. Reffitt began to make arrangements to travel to Washington and arrive in time for “Armageddon all day” on Jan. 6, he wrote in the Three Percenters group chat. He told his compatriots that he planned to drive because flying was impossible with “all the battle rattle” he planned to bring — a reference to his weapons and body armor, prosecutors say.Some in the group appeared to share his anger. On Dec. 22, one member wrote in the chat, “The only way you will be able to do anything in DC is if you get the crowd to drag the traitors out.”Mr. Reffitt responded: “I don’t think anyone going to DC has any other agenda.”The House committee has also sharpened its focus on how the tweet set off a chain reaction that galvanized Mr. Trump’s supporters to begin military-style planning for Jan. 6. As part of the congressional inquiry, investigators are trying to establish whether there was any coordination beyond the post that ties Mr. Trump’s inner circle to the militants and whether the groups plotted together.“That tweet could be viewed as a call to action,” said Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California and a member of the committee. “It’s definitely something we’re asking questions about through our discussions with witnesses. We want to know whether the president’s tweets inflamed and mobilized individuals to take action.”On the day of the post, participants in TheDonald.win, a pro-Trump chat board, began sharing tactics and techniques for attacking the Capitol, the committee noted in a report released on Sunday recommending contempt of Congress charges for Dan Scavino Jr., Mr. Trump’s former deputy chief of staff. In one thread on the chat board related to the tweet, the report pointed out, an anonymous poster wrote that Mr. Trump “can’t exactly openly tell you to revolt. This is the closest he’ll ever get.’’Lawyers for the militants have repeatedly said that the groups were simply acting defensively in preparing for Jan. 6. They had genuine concerns, the lawyers said, that leftist counterprotesters might confront them, as they had at earlier pro-Trump rallies.Mr. Trump’s post came as his efforts to hang onto power were shifting from the courts, where he had little success, to the streets and to challenging the certification process that would play out on Jan. 6.A week before his message, thousands of his supporters had arrived in Washington for the second time in two months for a large-scale rally protesting the election results. The event on Dec. 12, 2020, which Mr. Trump flew over in Marine One, showed his ability to draw huge crowds of ordinary people in support of his baseless assertions that the election had been stolen.But it also brought together at the same time and place extremist and paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the 1st Amendment Praetorian, who would be present on Jan. 6.On Dec. 14, the Electoral College met and officially declared Mr. Biden the winner of the election.An event in Washington on Dec. 12, 2020 showed the former president’s ability to draw huge crowds in support of his lies that the election had been stolen.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut behind closed doors, outside advisers to Mr. Trump were scrambling to pitch him on plans to seize control of voting machines across the country. The debate over doing so came to a head in a contentious Oval Office meeting that lasted well into the evening on Dec. 18, 2020, and ended with the idea being put aside.Hours later, the president pushed send on his tweet.“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” he wrote at 1:42 a.m. on Dec. 19. “Be there, will be wild!”Almost at once, shock waves rippled through the right.At 2:26 a.m., the prominent white nationalist Nicholas J. Fuentes wrote on Twitter that he planned to join Mr. Trump in Washington on Jan. 6. By that afternoon, the post had been mentioned or amplified by other right-wing figures like Ali Alexander, a high-profile “Stop the Steal” organizer.But Mr. Trump’s message arguably landed with the greatest impact among members of the same extremist groups that had been in Washington on Dec. 12.On Dec. 15, Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the Oath Keepers, posted an open letter to Mr. Trump urging him to invoke the Insurrection Act. The next day, the national council of the Three Percenters Original group issued a statement, saying their members were “standing by to answer the call from our president.”Once the call came, early on Dec. 19, the extremists were ecstatic.Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the Oath Keepers, declared a few days after Mr. Trump’s tweet that there would be “a massively bloody revolution” if Joseph R. Biden Jr. ever took office.Susan Walsh/Associated Press“Trump said It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!!,” Kelly Meggs, a Florida leader of the Oath Keepers, wrote on Facebook on Dec. 22. “He wants us to make it WILD that’s what he’s saying. He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!! Sir Yes Sir!!! Gentlemen we are heading to DC.”That same day, Mr. Rhodes did an interview with one of his lieutenants and declared that there would be “a massively bloody revolution” if Mr. Biden took office.On Dec. 23, Mr. Rhodes posted another letter saying that “tens of thousands of patriot Americans” would be in Washington on Jan. 6, and that many would have their “mission-critical gear” stowed outside the city.The letter said members of the group — largely composed of former military and law enforcement personnel — might have to “take arms in defense of our God-given liberty.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4Trump’s tweet. More

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      Sandy Hook review: anatomy of an American tragedy – and the obscenity of social media

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      Sandy Hook review: anatomy of an American tragedy – and the obscenity of social media Elizabeth Williamson’s book on the 2012 elementary school shooting is a near-unbearable, necessary indictment of Facebook, YouTube and the conspiracy theories they spreadEven in a country now completely inured to the horrors of mass shootings, the massacre at Sandy Hook remains lodged in the minds of everyone old enough to remember it. Ten years ago, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fired 154 rounds from an AR-15-style rifle in less than five minutes. Twenty extremely young children and six adults were killed.Sandy Hook’s tragic legacy: seven years on, a loving father is the latest victimRead moreIt was the worst elementary school shooting in American history.Elizabeth Williamson’s new book is about that “American Tragedy”, but more importantly it is about “the Battle for Truth” that followed. In excruciating detail, Williamson describes the unimaginable double tragedy every Sandy Hook parent has had to endure: the murder of their child, followed by years and years of an army of online monsters accusing them of inventing this unimaginable horror.Alex Jones of Infowars is the best-known villain of this ghastly narrative. His Facebook pages and YouTube channels convinced millions of fools the massacre was either some kind of government plot to encourage a push for gun control or, even more obscenely, that it was all carried out by actors and no one was killed at all.While a single deranged shooter was responsible for the original tragedy, Williamson makes clear she believes Facebook and Google (the owner of YouTube) deserve most of the blame for the subsequent horror the relatives of victims have endured.As Congressman Ro Khanna reported in his new book, Dignity in a Digital Age, an internal Facebook document estimated that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendations”.Those recommendations are the result of the infernal algorithms which are at the heart of the business models of Facebook and YouTube and are probably more responsible for the breakdown in civil society in the US and the world than anything else invented.“We thought the internet would give us this accelerated society of science and information,” says Lenny Pozner, whose son Noah was one of the Sandy Hook victims. But “really, we’ve gone back to flat earth”.It horrified Pozner “to see the image of his son, smiling in his bomber jacket, passed round by an online mob attacking Noah as a fake, a body double, a boy who never lived”. Relentless algorithms pushed those “human lies to the top” on an internet which has become an “all-powerful booster of outrage and denial”.Noah’s mother, Veronique De la Rosa, was another victim of Jones’s persistent, outrageous lies.“It’s like you’ve entered the ninth circle of hell,” she tells Williamson. “Never even in your wildest, most fear-fueled fantasies would you have guessed you’d find yourself having to fight not only through your grief, which you know is at times paralyzing, but to even prove that your son existed.”Lenny Pozner regularly saw his dead son described as an “alleged victim”, but it took years before Facebook and YouTube and Twitter took substantial action to quiet the insane conspiracies their own algorithms had done so much to reinforce.Facebook allowed a Sandy Hook Hoax group and dozens of others to operate virtually uninterrupted for two years. Hundreds of videos on YouTube, owned by Google, wallowed in the hoax, drawing thousands who made threats against the families.“Facebook and Twitter are monsters,” says Pozner. “Out-of-control beasts run like mom-and-pop shops.”Facebook “focuses on growth, to the exclusion of most everything else”, Williamson writes. The algorithms are designed to keep all of us on the platform as long as possible, and they operate “with relentless, sometimes murderous neutrality, rewarding whatever horrible behavior and false or inflammatory content captures and retains users”.In 2018, an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg by Pozner and De La Rosa, published in the Guardian, accused the Facebook chief of “allowing your platform to continue to be used as an instrument to disseminate hate”.Two days later, Facebook finally suspended Jones’s personal page but “took no action against Infowars’ account, which had 1.7 million followers”. YouTube removed four videos from Infowars’ channel and banned Jones from live-streaming for all of 90 days.An open letter to Mark Zuckerberg from the parents of a Sandy Hook victimRead moreHarry Farid heads the school of Information at the University of California Berkeley. He describes the perfect storm which is threatening democracy and civility everywhere: “You have bad people and trolls and people trying to make money by taking advantage of horrible things … you have social media websites who are not only welcoming and permissive of it but are promoting it, and then you have us, the unsuspecting public.”Williamson makes the important and usually forgotten point that nothing in the first amendment gives anyone the right to use a social media platform. All it says on this subject is that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”As Farid points out, platforms have an absolute right to ban all forms of content “without running afoul of the constitution” – which is why Donald Trump had no judicial recourse when he was banned from Facebook and Twitter after the Capitol riot.But most of the time, Farid says, the platforms just look the other way: “Because they’re making so much goddamned money.”Last fall, the California Democrat Adam Schiff told the Guardian the blockbuster testimony of the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen would finally be enough to spur Congress to regulate the worst excesses of the big platforms. So far, their lobbyists have prevented such action. On Saturday, the Guardian asked Schiff if he still believed Congress might act in this session. “There is still a chance,” he wrote in an e-mail, adding that “the degree of Russian propaganda on social media attempting to justify their bloody invasion of Ukraine” might finally provide the “impetus” needed for change.
      Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for the Truth is published in the US by Dutton Books
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      in US Politics

      Barr book reveals Trump’s secret to a ‘good tweet’: ‘just the right amount of crazy’

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      Barr book reveals Trump’s secret to a ‘good tweet’: ‘just the right amount of crazy’Ex-president made remark to his attorney general, according to William Barr’s forthcoming memoir Donald Trump told William Barr, his attorney general, that the secret to a “good tweet” was “just the right amount of crazy”.William Barr uses new book to outline case against Trump White House runRead moreThe detail from Barr’s forthcoming memoir leaked out on Monday, via Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post.The Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have reported on the contents of One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, which will be published on 8 March.Barr’s title is taken from a description of the job by Ed Levi, appointed by Gerald Ford after the Watergate scandal.Some critics responded to the news that Barr says Trump is unqualified to be president and defends his own handling of the Russia investigation by wondering if the world really needs one book after another by former Trump aides bent on self-justification.Barr, for example, describes a tumultuous Oval Office meeting on 1 December 2020, at which he refused to back Trump’s lie about electoral fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden. On the page, the former attorney general says he tried to resign.But the resignation offer is not described in books by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa (Peril) and Jonathan Karl (Betrayal), which otherwise closely mirror Barr’s description of the meeting.Barr did quit nearly two weeks later, on 14 December.Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, a reporter who had a direct line to Trump during his time in power, has her own Trump book coming out in October.She said the revelations so far from Barr showed that “the cabinet member/person of stature most loved by Maga has become the latest person in a long string who worked for Trump to say he’s unfit”.Dawsey tweeted the tidbit about Trump’s tweets, tweeting: “One bit from Barr book: Trump told his former attorney general the ‘secret of a really good tweet’ was ‘just the right amount of crazy’.”Trump used Twitter as his primary means of communication but he has been suspended from it since the deadly Capitol riot, which happened after he told supporters to “fight like hell” in service of his lie about voter fraud in his election defeat by Biden.The Post reported that Barr and White House lawyers developed a system for dealing with Trump’s more extreme – or “legally problematic” – ideas, such as using an executive order to end citizenship for people born in the US to undocumented parents.The lawyers, Barr writes, “operated like a tag team, so that neither of us would provoke too much of the president’s ire at one time”.“We referred to this as choosing who would ‘eat the grenade’,” Barr says.TopicsBooksPolitics booksWilliam BarrDonald TrumpTrump administrationTwitterUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      ‘I’ll Stand on the Side of Russia’: Pro-Putin Sentiment Spreads Online

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      After marinating in conspiracy theories and Donald J. Trump’s Russia stance, some online discourse about Vladimir Putin has grown more complimentary.The day before Russia invaded Ukraine, former President Donald J. Trump called the wartime strategy of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “pretty smart.” His remarks were posted on YouTube, Twitter and the messaging app Telegram, where they were viewed more than 1.3 million times.Right-wing commentators including Candace Owens, Stew Peters and Joe Oltmann also jumped into the fray online with posts that were favorable to Mr. Putin and that rationalized his actions against Ukraine. “I’ll stand on the side of Russia right now,” Mr. Oltmann, a conservative podcaster, said on his show this week.And in Telegram groups like The Patriot Voice and Facebook groups including Texas for Donald Trump 2020, members criticized President Biden’s handling of the conflict and expressed support for Russia, with some saying they trusted Mr. Putin more than Mr. Biden.The online conversations reflect how pro-Russia sentiment has increasingly penetrated Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, right-wing podcasts, messaging apps like Telegram and some conservative media. As Russia attacked Ukraine this week, those views spread, infusing the online discourse over the war with sympathy — and even approval — for the aggressor.The positive Russia comments are an extension of the culture wars and grievance politics that have animated the right in the United States in the past few years. In some of these circles, Mr. Putin carries a strongman appeal, viewed as someone who gets his way and does not let political correctness stop him.“Putin embodies the strength that Trump pretended to have,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council who studies digital platforms. “For these individuals, Putin’s actions aren’t a tragedy — they’re a fantasy fulfilled.” Support for Mr. Putin and Russia is now being expressed online in a jumble of facts, observations and opinions, sometimes entwined with lies. In recent days, commenters have complimented Mr. Putin and falsely accused NATO of violating nonexistent territorial agreements with Russia, which they said justified the Russian president’s declaration of war on Ukraine, according to a review of posts by The New York Times.Others have spread convoluted conspiracy theories about the war that are tinged with a pro-Russia sheen. In one popular lie circulating online, Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump are working together on the war. Another falsehood involves the idea that the war is about taking down a cabal of global elites over sex trafficking.In all, pro-Russian narratives on English-language social media, cable TV, and print and online outlets soared 2,580 percent in the past week compared to the first week of February, according to an analysis by the media insights company Zignal Labs. Those mentions cropped up 5,740 times in the past week, up from 214 in the first week of February, Zignal said.The narratives have flourished in dozens of Telegram channels, Facebook groups and pages and thousands of tweets, according to The Times’s review. Some of the Telegram channels have more than 160,000 subscribers, while the Facebook groups and pages have up to 1.9 million followers.(It is difficult to be precise on the scope of pro-Russian narratives on social media and online forums because bots and organized campaigns make them difficult to track.)Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, in Kyiv this week. The square was the center of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesThe pro-Russia sentiment is a stark departure from during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was viewed by many Americans as a foe. In recent years, that attitude shifted, partly helped along by interference from Russia. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Kremlin-backed groups used social networks like Facebook to inflame American voters, creating more divisions and resistance to political correctness.After Mr. Trump was elected, he often appeared favorable to — and even admiring of — Mr. Putin. That seeded a more positive view of Mr. Putin among Mr. Trump’s supporters, misinformation researchers said.“Putin has invested heavily in sowing discord” and found an ally in Mr. Trump, said Melissa Ryan, the chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation. “Anyone who studies disinformation or the far right has seen the influence of Putin’s investment take hold.”At the same time, conspiracy theories spread online that deeply polarized Americans. One was the QAnon movement, which falsely posits that Democrats are Satan-worshiping child traffickers who are part of an elite cabal trying to control the world.The Russia-Ukraine war is now being viewed by some Americans through the lens of conspiracy theories, misinformation researchers said. Roughly 41 million Americans believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to a survey released on Thursday from the Public Religion Research Institute. This week, some QAnon followers said online that Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was simply the next phase in a global war against the sex traffickers.Lisa Kaplan, the founder of Alethea Group, a company that helps fight online misinformation, said the pro-Russia statements were potentially harmful because it could “further legitimize false or misleading claims” about the Ukraine conflict “in the eyes of the American people.”Not all online discourse is pro-Russia, and Mr. Putin’s actions have been condemned by conservative social media users, mainstream commentators and Republican politicians, even as some have criticized how Mr. Biden has handled the conflict.“Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is reckless and evil,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, said in a statement on Twitter on Thursday.On Tuesday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois who was censured recently by the Republican Party for participating in the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, criticized House Republicans for attacking Mr. Biden, tweeting that it “feeds into Putin’s narrative.”Understand Russia’s Attack on UkraineCard 1 of 7What is at the root of this invasion? 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      in World Politics

      Getting the Public Behind the Fight on Misinformation

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      Misinformation is false or inaccurate information communicated regardless of intention to deceive. The spread of misinformation undermines trust in politics and the media, exacerbated by social media that encourages emotional responses, with users often only reading the headlines and engaging with false posts while sharing credible sources less. Once hesitant to respond, social media companies are increasingly enacting steps to stop the spread of misinformation. But why have these efforts failed to gain greater public support? 

      A 2021 poll from the Pearson Institute found that 95% of Americans believed that the spread of misinformation was concerning, with over 70% blaming, among others, social media companies. Though Americans overwhelmingly agree that misinformation must be addressed, why is there little public consensus on the appropriate solution? 

      Social Media and the Cold War Around Free Speech

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      To address this, we ran a national web survey with 1,050 respondents via Qualtrics, using gender, age and regional quota sampling. Our research suggests several challenges to combating misinformation. 

      First, there are often misconceptions about what social media companies can do. As private entities, they have the legal right to moderate content on their platform, whereas the First Amendment applies only to government restriction of speech. When asked to evaluate the statement “social media companies have a right to remove posts on their platform,” a clear majority of 58.7% agreed. Yet a divide emerges between Democrats, where 74.3% agreed with the statement compared to only 43.5% of Republicans.  

      Ignorance of the scope of the First Amendment may partially explain these findings, as well as respondents believing that, even if companies have the legal right, they should not engage in removal. Yet a history of tech companies initially couching policies as consistent with free speech principles only to later backtrack only adds to the confusion. For example, Twitter once maintained “a devotion to a fundamental free speech standard” of content neutrality, but by 2017 had shifted to a policy where not only posts could be removed but even accounts without offensive tweets. 

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      Second, while most acknowledge that social media companies should do something, there is little agreement on what that something should be. Overall, 70% of respondents, including a majority of both Democrats (84%) and Republicans (57.6%), agreed with the statement that “social media companies should take steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits freedom of information.”

      We then asked respondents if they would support five different means to combat misinformation. Here, none of the five proposed means mentioned in the survey found majority support, with the most popular option — providing factual information directly under posts labeled as misinformation — supported only by 46.6% of respondents. This was also the only option that a majority of Democrats supported (56.4%).

      Moreover, over a fifth of respondents (20.6%) did not support any of the options. Even focusing just on respondents that stated that social media companies should take steps failed to find broad support for most options. 

      So what might increase public buy-in to these efforts? Transparent policies are necessary so that responses do not appear ad hoc or inconsistent. While many users may not pay attention to terms of services, consistent policies may serve to counter perceptions that efforts selectively enforce or only target certain ideological viewpoints.

      Recent research finds that while almost half of Americans have seen posts labeled as potentially being misinformation on social media, they are wary of trusting fact-checks because they are unsure how information is identified as inaccurate. Greater explanation of the fact-checking process, including using multiple third-party services, may also help address this concern.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Social media companies, rather than relying solely on moderating content, may also wish to include subtle efforts that encourage users to evaluate posting behavior. Twitter and Facebook have already nodded in this direction with prompts to suggest users should read articles before sharing them. 

      Various crowdsourcing efforts may also serve to signal the accuracy of posts or the frequency with which they are being fact-checked. These efforts attempt to address the underlying hesitancy to combat misinformation while providing an alternative to content moderation that users may not see as transparent. While Americans overwhelmingly agree that misinformation is a problem, designing an effective solution requires a multi-faceted approach. 

      *[Funding for this survey was provided by the Institute for Humane Studies.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More