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      in Elections

      Twitter suspends accounts for posing as Black Trump supporters

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      Twitter has suspended a network of accounts claiming to be owned by Black supporters of Donald Trump and his re-election campaign due to spam and platform manipulation, it said Tuesday.The company is investigating the activity and may suspend additional similar accounts if they are found to be violating its policies, a spokesperson said.The Washington Post first reported on the investigation, citing more than a dozen accounts using identical, inauthentic language including the phrase: “YES IM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP!!!”A review of some of the suspended accounts shows they often used stolen images to appear real. The accounts sometimes claimed to be owned by military veterans or members of law enforcement.This is not the first time Twitter has had to address a spam operation claiming to be led by Black voters. NBC News also reported spam operations from fake accounts posing as Black Trump supporters in August.Some accounts were able to attract thousands of followers before they were suspended. One tweet, for example, amassed more than 10,000 retweets before it was removed, NBC News found. Another account allegedly used a photo of a veteran who died last month to pose as a Trump supporter.Polls show about 10% of Black voters in the US support Trump. These accounts raised suspicion for their identical language and stock image avatars.Meanwhile, research shows Black Americans have been negatively impacted by misinformation campaigns online in recent months, particularly those focused on spreading misinformation about Covid-19.“Black lives are consistently put in danger, and it is incumbent upon community actors, media, government, and tech companies alike to do their part to ensure that timely, local, relevant and redundant public health messages are served to all communities,” a study from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center found.Twitter rules prohibit using the platform “in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter”, a Twitter spokesman told the Guardian.The company reports campaigns discovered to be state-backed in its public archive. This month it revealed it had suspended more than 1,500 accounts affiliated with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Thailand and Russia that had sought to spread misinformation. It did not say where it believed the network of people posing as Black Trump supporters originated or whether it was state-backed.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      in Elections

      Activist Ady Barkan tells top Republican to apologise over doctored video

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      The progressive activist Ady Barkan, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or motor neurone disease), said a top Republican in Congress owes “the entire disability community an apology” for spreading a digitally altered video of Barkan, who speaks through a computer, interviewing the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.Steve Scalise, from Louisiana and the second-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, tweeted a doctored video in which Biden appeared to tell Barkan he wanted to “defund” the police – a lie Donald Trump and his supporters have used in the presidential campaign.In fact, Biden told Barkan he supports policing reform such as sending social services counselors on some calls, instead of police officers.“And by the way, the idea, though,” Biden told Barkan, “that’s not the same as getting rid of or defunding all the police.”The video tweeted by Scalise puts words into Barkan’s mouth, making him say, as he never did: “Do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding for police?”Biden answers “Yes, absolutely.”“These are not my words,” Barkan tweeted at Scalise. “I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts. You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology.”Twitter flagged the video, alerting users it is a fake. Scalise deleted it from his Twitter timeline on Sunday night.“While Joe Biden clearly said ‘yes,’ twice, to the question of his support to redirect money away from police, we will honor the request of [Barkan] and remove the portion of his interview from our video,” the congressman tweeted.Scalise’s office said it was fine to manipulate the video, which spokeswoman Lauren Fine told the Washington Post had been “condensed … to the essence of what he was asking, as is common practice for clips run on TV and social media, no matter the speaker”.But splicing words into speech – not to speak of splicing computer-generated words into the digitized speech of a disabled person – is not “common practice” in any medium, on the part of any agent or outlet not seeking to deliberately mislead.The few instances in which media organizations have broadcast video later revealed to be edited in a way that leaves out important context have caused outrage on both sides of the aisle.Republicans led by Trump have been especially aggressive, branding the media “fake news” and the “enemy of the people” for accurately reporting information that does not reflect well on the administration.In May, Trump called for the NBC host Chuck Todd to be fired after his show broadcast a truncated clip of the attorney general, William Barr, answering a question about the former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The clip left off the end of Barr’s answer. NBC apologized and issued a correction.Barkan endorsed Biden at the Democratic convention, calling Trump an “existential threat” and demanding access to quality healthcare for all.“We live in the richest country in history and yet we do not guarantee this most basic human right,” he said. “Everyone living in America should get the healthcare they need regardless of their employment status or ability to pay.” More

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      in Elections

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accuses NBC of spreading misinformation after DNC speech

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

      Congresswoman says NBC tweet about her endorsement of Bernie Sanders ‘sparked an enormous amount of hatred’

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      1:43

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praises Bernie Sanders in DNC speech – video

      Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused NBC News of spreading an “incredible amount of damage and misinformation” overnight on Tuesday after the network construed a routine procedural speech by her as a snub of the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.
      Speaking on the second night of the Democratic national convention (DNC), Ocasio-Cortez was assigned to second the nomination of Senator Bernie Sanders as president. Sanders ended his presidential bid and endorsed Biden last spring, but he was in line for a formal nomination as part of the process of transferring his delegates to Biden.
      Ocasio-Cortez had originally endorsed Sanders for president during the primary season before switching her support to Biden.
      “In a time when millions of people in the United States are looking for deep systemic solutions to our crises of mass evictions, unemployment and lack of healthcare,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a short speech on Tuesday, “en ​espíritu del pueblo​ and out of a love for all people, I hereby second the nomination of Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont for president of the United States of America.”
      Soon after, NBC News sent a tweet that seemed to impute some intrigue to the fact that Ocasio-Cortez had not endorsed Biden for president. Such endorsements are not typically conferred in the convention setting and there was no reason or expectation for Ocasio-Cortez to do so.
      But an NBC News account tweeted: “In one of the shortest speeches of the DNC, Rep Ocasio-Cortez did not endorse Joe Biden: ‘I hereby second the nomination of Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont for president of the United States of America.’”
      Hours later, the tweet was deleted and an editor’s note was appended reading, “This tweet should have included more detail on the nominating process.”
      But Ocasio-Cortez and others were dissatisfied, accusing the news outlet of stoking false controversy at a time when the Democratic party faces a generational divide between leaders like Ocasio-Cortez, a 30-year-old progressive, and Biden, a 77-year-old who won his first Senate race 17 years before she was born.
      Ocasio-Cortez tweeted three times at NBC, starting after midnight:

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
      (@AOC)
      You waited several hours to correct your obvious and blatantly misleading tweet.It sparked an enormous amount of hatred and vitriol, & now the misinfo you created is circulating on other networks.All to generate hate-clicks from a pre-recorded, routine procedural motion. https://t.co/crDlEymgMD

      August 19, 2020

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
      (@AOC)
      This is completely unacceptable, disappointing, and appalling.The DNC shared the procedural purpose of my remarks to media WELL in advance. @NBC knew what was going to happen & that it was routine.How does a headline that malicious & misleading happen w/ that prior knowledge?

      August 19, 2020

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
      (@AOC)
      So @NBCNews how are you going to fix the incredible amount of damage and misinformation that you are now responsible for?Because a 1:15am tweet to slip under the radar after blowing up a totally false and divisive narrative across networks isn’t it. https://t.co/zf6Wqiotvv

      August 19, 2020

      As of this writing NBC News had not released further comment.
      Sanders was also nominated for president at the 2016 Democratic national convention, before his delegates were passed to Hillary Clinton. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard nominated Sanders, and the nomination was seconded by a state campaign director and a spokeswoman for an election watchdog group.

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

      Democratic national convention 2020

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      in US Politics

      What is Elite TikTok and what has it got to do with Donald Trump?

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      Matilda, help! I have come across something called Elite/Alt TikTok. Have Elon Musk and Grimes renamed their baby? Ha, no. So, to understand Alt and Elite TikTok you first need to understand how TikTok started. In the beginning, the platform was essentially a bunch of genetically blessed teenagers lip-syncing to popular songs and repeating the […] More