This Week in Misinformation: Classified Docs Photograph, QAnon Thrives While Truth Fails, Twitter Edit Function
1 September 2022
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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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.
Donald Trump created new misinformation about a photograph the FBI took of the government documents he kept illegally.
The former president’s lawyers finally filed a motion (CNN, 42.40) in response to the court-ordered release of investigators’ redacted search warrant affidavit last week, asking the judge to appoint a Special Master to sort out which documents should not be in the hands of prosecutors.
In its nearly 40-page filing arguing against a Special Master, the government attached a photo of documents seized, stuff Trump and his lawyers before said he didn’t have (CNN, 42.40). Trump and team protested the release of the picture, which showed clearly classified documents arranged on the carpet in his office and marked as an exhibit of evidence to be used in court filings--go figure!-- with an admission that he had personal knowledge of the documents wrongfully retained. Remarkably, nothing in Trump’s filing talked about “declassification” at all (Insider, 42.94), even as the former president kept using the (legally irrelevant) talking point in media appearances.
Trump and allies soon settled on a narrative of saying the photo was staged (@pbump via Washington Post, 40.04). Which of course it was, in the way all evidentiary photographs are. He then overreached, though, calling that staging a kind of slander against him and saying the FBI was “pretending,” “deceiving,” and otherwise being “dishonest” (@RonFilipkowski via Twitter) about how he normally didn’t keep the documents laid out on his rug.
For the context on Donald Trump’s state of mind in making these arguments, I turn your attention to an unhinged post on Truth Social this week (@NikkiMcR via Twitter), in which he demanded to be declared the 2020 winner or that the election be done over immediately. Separately, he directly encouraged FBI agents dissatisfied with the way the organization was treating him to go “nuts” and not “take it anymore” (Mediaite, 39.99). He’s making arguments about the search and the photograph that make no legal sense because he is banking instead on the salience of the political and raw power approach?
Also on the Truth platform, QAnon is thriving and Trump is more supportive of QAnon than ever.
There are at least 88 accounts with 10,000 or more followers promoting the Internet fairy tale known as QAnon on Truth Social (New York Times, 42.95). You can find links to Q-talk sites prominently in the replies to Donald Trump’s own posts.
Trump has also personally embraced the support of the QAnon community, going all in this week in reposting these accounts’ content dozens of times in recent weeks (VICE, 38.71). He had started to do this before being suspended from Twitter, but never before at this level.
The company behind the platform, meanwhile, is in dire financial straits (Washington Post, 40.04) as it has been delinquent in paying for site hosting services and this week was kicked out of the Google Play store for inadequate content moderation practices (CNBC, 46.19). At its headquarters in Sarasota, Florida, a local reporter documented a real ghost town vibe (@ChrisA0213 via Twitter), raising questions as to how much longer the site will even stay up.
Twitter finally gave users an edit function, but won’t that cause problems?
The day has come. Twitter is rolling out its long-awaited “edit tweet” button (CNN, 42.40).
But there are issues, for example that someone could post a joke and later change it to harmful content that lots of people have already liked. Many experts anticipate these kinds of shenanigans (Grid News, -) and are calling for the platform to be ready (@wiczipedia via Twitter).
Twitter is no stranger to combating misinformation, of course, but episodes like when it recently labeled factual information about covid-19 as misinformation (Washington Post, 40.04) call into question its ability to get this design change right. With the midterms flood of misinformation coming (New York Times, 42.95), and on the heels of new controversy over how social media companies handled election misinformation in the last cycle (BBC, 46.15), this feels like a critical moment for content moderation policy.
Three down, one to go. It’s grab bag time: NAFO is a social media army taking on Putin with memes; Ginni Thomas was up to election overturn-y things in Wisconsin, too, and elections officials there want a new office to combat misinformation; True the Vote-affiliated activists are forming a ‘Team America’ to do 24-hour surveillance of election drop boxes; Mike Lindell blames failure of his election truther event on a conspiracy between Google, Yahoo, Bing, Duck Duck, Facebook, Fox and Newsmax; January 6th sentences make headlines for an aspiring Proud Boy and an NYPD veteran while the Oath Keepers’ lawyer was charged with obstructing Congress; a look at the strange story of QAnon in Japan; Uncle Elon keeps saying population growth rates are leading to collapse, but that's not true; the Metaverse could be headed for deep fakes and other misinformation disaster; the Biden Administration got journals to drop paywalls for publicly funded research articles; in California, a new bill punishes doctors who spread false information; and MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan apologizes for retweeting a fake Dr. Oz picture and another one of Oz kissing a Hollywood star goes viral.
That, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin