Twitter purges accounts, and conservatives cry foul
February 22, 2018 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Comments Off
Twitter has pruned more suspected trolls and fake accounts from its platform, prompting several of its most outspoken conservative users to complain Wednesday that they had lost thousands of followers overnight.
Conservatives quickly decried what they called the “#twitterlockout,” adding it to their list of grievances against what they see as an ideologically liberal tech industry. The topic also got heavy promotion among Twitter accounts that some researchers have linked to Russia’s online influence campaigns.
Story Continued Below
Twitter’s move came just days after the federal indictments of 13 Russians connected with a St. Petersburg-based “troll farm” heightened the pressure on social media companies to clamp down on the plague of fake accounts that marred the 2016 presidential election.
Twitter said Wednesday that it was simply cleansing its platform of objectively “spammy behavior,” an effort it had announced late last year. “As part of our ongoing work in safety, we identify suspicious account behaviors that indicate automated activity or violations of our policies around having multiple accounts, or abuse,” a spokesperson told POLITICO.
Users complaining about the move included political provocateur James O’Keefe, who’s best known for exploits like trying and failing to get The Washington Post to publish fake sexual abuse allegations against former Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. His group Project Veritas also released a compilation video last month that it claimed showed Twitter employees, filmed without their awareness, admitting to silencing conservative voices.
“Looks like thousands of Twitter users committed the thought crime of tweeting about ‘God,’ ‘the American flag,’ and ‘guns,’ and were taken off the platform,” O’Keefe tweeted Wednesday.
According to data pulled from the social analytics tool CrowdTangle, O’Keefe lost about 2,400 followers between Tuesday and Wednesday, a drop of just more than half a percent after weeks of constant growth. That still left him with about 385,500 followers — and by early Wednesday evening, he had regained all his losses.
Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who appears as a frequent commentator on Fox News and elsewhere, tweeted a similar complaint: “@Twitter is discriminating against conservative voices banned me, many others,from posting ads while wiping out 1000s of followers.”
Michael Flynn Jr., the son of former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn, likewise questioned Twitter’s motives.
“I’d give them benefit of doubt but they’ve been caught too many times censoring conservative accounts #TwitterLockOut,” tweeted Flynn, whose follower count in the CrowdTangle analysis had dropped a little more than 2 percent overnight.
The Twitter spokesperson said the company’s tools are “apolitical” and the platform’s rules are enforced “without political bias.” The person added that with problematic accounts, the company takes steps to determine whether “a human is behind it,” such as by attempting to verify a valid phone number.
“That’s why some people may be experiencing suspensions or locks. This is part of our ongoing, comprehensive efforts to make Twitter safer and healthier for everyone,” said the spokesperson.
At least one group of experts sees Russian help in making the “#twitterlockout” hashtag go viral.
The “Hamilton 68″ website, created by the organization Alliance for Securing Democracy and affiliated with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, listed “twitterlockout” Wednesday afternoon as the most-used and fastest-spreading hashtag “promoted by Russia-linked influence networks on Twitter” during the past 48 hours.
That network includes Twitter accounts “likely controlled by Russian government influence operation,” those that “amplify themes promoted by Russian government media” and “users who have been influenced by the first two groups,” the alliance says in its explanation of its methodology.
The skirmish is yet another example of the blowback that Twitter and other social media companies have taken since the 2016 election, especially after congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller’s office laid out the details of how they say Russian forces leveraged the companies’ platforms to meddle in American politics.
In December, Twitter announced that it would begin taking steps to more aggressively enforce its rules against “hateful conduct and abusive behavior.” That provoked the first objections from some on the right who called the steps a “#twitterpurge.”
The company conceded at the time that “we may make some mistakes and are working on a robust appeals process.”
Conservatives have escalated their criticisms of Twitter and other social media companies in recent months, accusing them of wielding the power granted by their enormous user bases to silence conservative voices. Liberals, meanwhile, have accused Twitter of allowing fake and abusive accounts to fester in order to maintain a high user count, an important stat for investors.
Twitter does not disclose precisely how many users it has, but analysts looking at company information have estimated the number at around 330 million active users a month.
Share and Enjoy
How the internet’s conspiracy theorists turned Parkland students into ‘crisis actors’
February 22, 2018 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Comments Off
In the fever swamps and extremist fringes of the internet, the outspoken student survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are depicted as mouthpieces of the FBI, pawns of left-wing activist billionaire George Soros, stooges of the Democratic Party — or all of the above.
The students, who have called for stronger gun control measures, are now the subject of conspiracy theories that have spread far and wide, even reaching cable news and spurring the firing of a Florida lawmaker’s aide.
The speed with which these groundless claims spread points to a troubling digital ecosystem in the era of fake news. In this shadow media network, unfounded information shows up on dubious sites, churns through the news aggregation site Reddit, and works its way into Facebook feeds — and to the mainstream media.
autoplay
autoplay
The accusation that the students are paid “crisis actors” has gained the most velocity online, trending on YouTube at one point and racking up tens of thousands of shares on Facebook. The spread of disinformation comes as Silicon Valley faces increasing pressure to crack down on propaganda and fake news.
It’s still early in The Great Fakening* but surely the progression to the next era begins with teenage school shooting survivors being forced to declare they are not crisis actors.
*The Great Fakening is a future in which events we recently lived through will need to be proven
— Hella Tight O. Hilton (@shani_o) February 20, 2018
“In the conspiracist mindset, everything is potentially a deception,” David Carroll, an associate professor of media design at The New School, said in an email. “And a supposed secret cabal that orchestrates the liberal conspiracy against the American right-wing would have to involve paid actors, who allegedly appear at staged school massacres, as an elaborate hoax performance to justify gun confiscation.”
As of 6 p.m. ET Tuesday, more than 111,000 Facebook users had shared a since-deleted post claiming the Parkland students were performers who exploit tragedies. The post, along with others that had tens of thousands of shares, was later taken down.
In the post, the Facebook user included a screenshot of David Hogg, a 17-year-old Parkland survivor, from an August 2017 television news report that aired on CBS Los Angeles. He had been interviewed by a news crew about a confrontation between a lifeguard and a surfer in Redondo Beach, California. The Facebook user wrote that Hogg, who has said he was visiting Los Angeles at the time of the report, was “pretending.”
YouTube also served as a platform for attacks on students, particularly Hogg. As of Wednesday morning, videos alleging he was a crisis actor dominated the YouTube search results for his name. One such video was the top trending clip on the platform early Wednesday morning.
A YouTube spokesperson confirmed the situation and acknowledged that the video had been erroneously added to its Trending section.
“This video should never have appeared in Trending,” a YouTube spokesperson wrote in an email. “Because the video contained footage from an authoritative news source, our system misclassified it. As soon as we became aware of the video, we removed it from Trending and from YouTube for violating our policies. We are working to improve our systems moving forward.”
Facebook also took action to remove the posts.
“Images that attack the victims of last week’s tragedy in Florida are abhorrent,” Mary deBree, head of content policy at Facebook, said in an email. “We are removing this content from Facebook.”
A national issue
Inflammatory claims like these now accompany just about every major American tragedy. Alex Jones, the controversial conspiracy theorist and Infowars host, suggested on his radio show that the Parkland shooting was a so-called “false flag,” or staged, operation. Jones has pushed similar views about the Sandy Hook massacre, including the idea that the people shown in news reports from the scene were actors.
autoplay
autoplay
Once fodder for the darker corners of the internet, absurd claims and wild rumors have been making their way into the mainstream media and the social media accounts of prominent individuals in politics, which lend the theories the appearance of credibility.
Donald Trump Jr., for instance, liked two tweets that suggested Hogg, who has emerged as one of the most vocal survivors, was railing against the Trump administration to cover for his father. Hogg has said his father is a retired FBI agent.
And in an appearance on CNN, former Georgia congressman Jack Kingston asked: “Do we really think — and I say this sincerely — do we really think 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a nationwide rally?”
“I would say to you very plainly that organized groups that are out there, like George Soros, are always ready to the charge, and it’s kind of like instantly rally, instant protest,” Kingston added, before he was challenged by anchor Alisyn Camerota.
A representative for Kingston did not respond to a request for comment, citing Kingston’s role as a contributor to CNN. CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the news value of airing Kingston’s views.
The evolution of a conspiracy theory
By early Monday, far-right websites began to run with the crisis actor theory.
Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump blog that has been criticized for publishing false reports, uploaded a YouTube video Monday morning titled “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines When Interviewed for Florida school shooting.”
In the video, Hogg appears to stumble over his words during an exchange with a reporter. It was not clear if the footage had been edited or altered, and it lacked basic context. YouTube has since removed the video for violating its policy on harassment and bullying.
Gateway Pundit and other sites that appear to traffic in conspiracy theories — True Pundit, NorthCrane.com, Infowars.com — followed up that video with articles that cast aspersions on Hogg and his purported connection to the FBI. Donald Trump Jr. liked tweets that linked to two of those articles.
Meanwhile, on the Reddit channel for ardent supporters of President Trump, users circulated unsubstantiated information, dark jokes, and memes about Hogg and his classmates.
The pushback
In an appearance on CNN on Tuesday morning, a Parkland survivor sharply criticized Kingston for suggesting he and his fellow classmates were coached by left-wing financial backers or handlers.
“I think it’s very despicable that he would even have the audacity to say that,” said Brandon Abzug, the student. “Young people all across this country and over the world should feel that they have the power to make things right.”
Another student, Kali Clougherty, blasted the conspiracy theorists:
WE. ARE. NOT. CRISIS. ACTORS. wow. just because most of the people in the media are a part of the drama program at MSD doesn’t mean we are paid actors. WE LIVED THROUGH THIS. you should be ashamed of yourselves.
— Kali Clougherty (@kali4change) February 21, 2018
And in Florida, the speedy resolution of a small-scale political scandal suggested there are penalties for spreading baseless information.
Benjamin Kelly, a Florida legislator’s aide, was fired on Tuesday after reportedly sending an email to a Tampa Bay Times reporter in which he claimed Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, another Parkland survivor, were “actors that travel to various crisis [sic] when they happen.”
A few hours later, state Rep. Shawn Harrison tweeted that Kelly had been “terminated” from his post. “I am appalled at and strongly denounce his comments about the Parkland students,” Kelly tweeted.
During an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday afternoon, Hogg appeared to dismiss the trolls who have targeted him and his classmates.
“The only time you’re ever doing anything that actually matters is when people trying stopping you,” he said.