This Week in Misinformation: Catchup Edition! Plus The Anti-Misinformation Mastodon Crew List
19 January 2023
This Prism newsletter strives to be the paper of record for all that’s happening in misinformation in the United States. For any citizen whose life is impacted by misinformation, it helps you see how storylines evolve from multiple, sourced angles on important stories in one place. For amateur and professional misinformation watchers, it is your go-to resource for updates on peers, platforms, propagandists, and politicians. Learn more about Prism and our other products on our Substack page, follow us on Twitter, or like us on Facebook!
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New Year, new lead! So happy to be back.
Keeping up on misinformation basically the best thing you can do for your brain. But with Twitter a shell of its former self, how can you find good people to follow on alternative sites? Mastodon in particular does not make it easy to find people because accounts live on different servers. Well, fear not! Before we get into anything else today, I want to share my recommendations, a set of 27 to start, for those who are giving Mastodon a go:
@2022_karma@mastodon.social
@alkapdc@mastodon.social
@brooklynmarie@mastodon.social
@cindyotis@mstdn.social
@Cult_archaeo@mastodon.social
@dappergander@journa.host
@Daniel_Loxton@sauropods.win
@davidbloomberg
@donieosullivan@mastodon.ie
@erosalie@infosec.exchange
@ExistentialDreadLocks@home.social
@gidmk@med-mastodon.com
@gord@mastodon.scot
@hiitslissy@mastodon.world
@MattGertz@journa.host
@noturtlesoup17@mastodon.social
@ogreporter@mastodon.social
@oneunderscore__@mastodon.social
@pbump@journa.host
@ProfSuds@masto.nu
@rocco_castoro@mastodon.social
@sethdaire@ioc.exchange
@trapezoidofdiscovery@mastodon.social
@Travis_View@mastodon.lol
@truthfinder@mastodon.social
@wiczipedia
@wfthomas@mastodon.social
Enjoy, and hopefully we’ll see you around! A signup button, in case you aren’t official yet:
Give this newsletter a share, won’t you? Posting a snippet to social can be a good taste for people in your network, or sending this email directly also tends to work well. 🙂
Reliability scores for media outlets cited in the summary are in parentheses for each, courtesy of the terrific folks at Ad Fontes Media.
Now, on to our top stories.
The January 6th Committee finished its work and gifted us all a lot of knowledge about this seminal misinformation event.
The panel held its final televised hearing and released a full report along with supplementary transcripts (NBC News, 45.27) and other documents (CNN, 42.40) turned over by witnesses and the National Archives. Some of the highlights that stood out to me from browsing the transcripts are captured in this thread (didn’t get through everything), and another one here for documents (looked at every one).
Donald Trump was referred to the Department of Justice for four crimes specified by the Committee in its wrap-up, and some for John Eastman as well. Responding to the investigations he is being subjected to, Trump put out a video in which he says ‘the people aren’t going to stand for it’ (@RonFilipkowski via Twitter), which… sounds like a threat? Right?
Meanwhile, President Biden honored Arizona’s Rusty Bowers and police officers who defended the Capitol in an anniversary commemoration (NPR, 43.26). And over in court, January 6th defendants are trying Sovereign Citizen arguments to avoid prison (Daily Beast, 35.90). Federal investigators are up against the clock to bring charges in their January 6th cases (NBC News, 45.27), and at the same time revealed that the Committee has given them a trove of documents that weren’t made public (Politico, 42.92).
COVID vaccines misinformation made a resurgence with new material focused on young athletes.
First, let’s just stipulate right up front that there isn’t evidence showing that more sports youths have been dying “suddenly” since the vaccine became available (Forbes, 41.11). Knowing this is key to understanding that the many thousands of social media posts suggesting the opposite (WIRED, 44.42) are part of a coordinated push to create a feeling, through volume and repetition, that vaccine skeptics were right all along.
The believers in this theory point to a recently released film purporting to be a documentary that was created by a rising MAGA media star (Daily Beast, 35.90) and an easily debunked list of supposed sudden deaths published by an account called Good Sciencing (@jasonwoody via Twitter). Neither demonstrate that deaths or injuries are caused by the vaccine, but they’re apparently persuasive nonetheless.
In the middle of all this, high-profile but not clearly related events like the cardiac arrest of NFL player Damar Hamlin (FactCheck.org, -), a fake CNN headline about Hamlin (Associated Press, 48.80), and the death at age 51 of Lisa Marie Presley (VICE, 38.67) became ammunition in the hands of those who were eager to warn of the supposed dangers of the vaccine. Elon Musk even chimed in at one point to tweet that there is a probably a point where the cure is worse than the disease (okay, then!).
We could be heading into another COVID wave right as this misinformation flares up again (New York Times, 42.68), and not even Trump’s repeated endorsement of the vaccine (Newsweek, 35.95) is persuading anyone who feels sure that pharma has lied about its safety and efficacy.
Twitter took several more turns for the worse on the misinformation front.
Elon Musk saw to it that several journalists who write about misinformation--and him--were suspended from the platform, a decision that earned Twitter a two-week timeout from yours truly. The reporters were later let back on (NPR, 43.26) after backlash from their media organizations and a Twitter poll that told him he should, but they had to agree to delete tweets about Musk (Washington Post, 39.03) to be fully reinstated.
On the other hand, the Chief Twit was enthusiastic about bringing back many of the accounts that had been booted by the old regime for repeatedly posting harmful misinformation, harassing people on the site, planning January 6th (VICE, 38.67), or otherwise violating terms of service. Stop the Steal luminaries Mike Lindell, Patrick Byrne (@Shayan86 via Twitter), Ali Alexander (Rolling Stone, 26.80), and QAnon-adjacent Ron Watkins (Rolling Stone, 26.80) as well as a number of others (CNN, 42.40) are back. You can get a flavor for what these newly returned people are tweeting here (New York Times, 42.68), but one thing that drew attention was how bad these developments have been for climate misinformation (Associated Press, 48.80) in particular.
There were several new “Twitter Files” drops, including one on Pentagon information operations (@lhfang via Twitter) that I found interesting as a matter of national security (New York Times, 42.68) if not quite meriting the histrionics it produced on both the left (The Intercept, 40.64) and the right (Fox News, 35.54). Musk, meanwhile, has loudly complained that the media hasn't covered the revelations to his liking or much at all (Insider, 42.82)--though it isn’t hard to understand why if you read the many (TechCrunch, 46.27) thoughtful (@bostonjoan via Berkman Klein Center) critiques (CNN, 42.40) of how the Twitter Files has been managed badly and reported dishonestly.
Not too shabby a New Year grab bag: Republican from New York George Santos (IF THAT IS YOUR NAME?) is sworn in to Congress and assigned committees despite making up basically his whole life; some Democrats baselessly speculate that the classified Biden garage documents may have been "planted"; Lauren Boebert says the new Special Counsel looking into Biden could be part of a coverup; previously fringe conspiracy theories about Davos are going mainstream this year; Trump announces he will make social media censorship a key 2024 campaign issue; Mike Lindell claims he doesn’t believe Ron DeSantis won last year; Kari Lake responds to losing (again) by calling for Maricopa County officials to be jailed; fellow Arizona election loser Mark Finchem is soliciting supporters to cover nonexistent campaign debt; online, the January 8th Brazil riot looks a lot like the January 6th United States one; Joe Rogan apologizes (again) for (again) falling for a fake thing; and influencer Andrew Tate’s arrest in Romania inspires misinformation about pizza boxes.
All that, and a lot more, below. This is This Week (more like Five Weeks!) in Misinformation.
-- Kevin