onfocus

“We have to think about the QAnon networks as the rails upon which misinformation is driven,” said Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

It’s never too late to do the right thing. Like Casey Newton, it does make me wonder why now?

"The staff found, after a 16-month investigation into competitive practices at Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, that the four businesses enjoy monopoly power that needs to be reined in by Congress and enforcers."

Findings! This all sounds promising but I’m skeptical that we’ll see meaningful change. That monopoly power has been very useful to the government.

"Our results are based on analyzing over fifty-five thousand online media stories, five million tweets, and seventy-five thousand posts on public Facebook pages garnering millions of engagements.  They are consistent with our findings about the American political media ecosystem from 2015-2018, published in Network Propaganda, in which we found that Fox News and Donald Trump’s own campaign were far more influential in spreading false beliefs than Russian trolls or Facebook clickbait artists."

People believe the President and he’s a disinformation campaign.

"But there was no sweeping transformation in the way many of the president’s most devoted supporters view the virus — and no sense of urgency to alter their behavior to better protect themselves. The president’s many arguments about the coronavirus...seemed to inoculate many in the Trump camp against rethinking their approach to the virus."

This cult of personality and magical thinking will not change easily and the damage it causes is going to be with us for a long time.

The world doesn’t deserve another mouth sounds but we got one anyway. (On your wedding day.) Yahoooo!

"While Facebook allows politicians to make false claims in their ads — arguing that voters deserve an unfiltered view of what candidates and elected officials say — advertisements by super PACs and other independent groups are subject to the company's policies on misinformation"

"Despite the rules, the super PACs have not faced significant repercussions, said Avaaz, nor have users who engaged with the ads been notified that they have been exposed to misleading content."

10 million micro-targeted views of misinformation. How much damage can one monopoly do before we use our antitrust laws? We're going to see this same story over and over until we do. Facebook is so handy for swaying voters for people in charge of using antitrust laws that I'm not sure we'll see it without public pressure.

"Call it the Interregnum: the interval from Election Day to the next president’s swearing-in. It is a temporal no-man’s-land between the presidency of Donald Trump and an uncertain successor—a second term for Trump or a first for Biden. The transfer of power we usually take for granted has several intermediate steps, and they are fragile."

Oh nothing, just doing some light reading about America's pending existential crisis. We've seen so many unlikely events around the minority party ruling after elections in this country that I think we should take the current minority vote-getting President's frequent threats to democracy seriously.

"I feel like these videos are a very good way for me to get out this thing within me that likes things that feel like a magic trick: You’re not expecting this thing to happen, so when it does, it’s a little rush of dopamine."

One of the best Internet traditions. Thanks for all the dopamine, Demi!

When you hear who Q of the conspiracy theory really is it kind of kills the mystique and makes the whole thing seem silly. PJ Vogt does some nice work here going to the origins of the mass delusion in the darker corners of the Internet.

"Our students in general have been extremely mindful of health issues and I hope that continues, not only for students but for community members throughout the county."

No, the university made the decision to open campus in a pandemic with full knowledge that outbreaks are happening at campuses across the country. They are risking the health of the community and they shouldn’t frame it as up to the students.

Jason connects conspiracy thinking with Hannah Arendt and it is depressing.

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.

I have to hope that some strain of American skepticism still exists somewhere but it definitely feels like it's fading in the face of social media peer groups.

"Scientists think that millions of years ago, Venus actually had oceans of liquid water like Earth. At some point, however, a runaway greenhouse effect turned Venus into the inhospitable world it is today, with a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead."

Hey, no Earth spoilers! AND: I, for one, welcome our phosphine belching neighbors.