This Week in Misinformation: Midterms (and a Meetup!), Twitter Dumpster Fire, Q-vert Action
10 November 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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Now, on to our top stories.
We must, of course, with the midterms.
You saw your expected kinds of misinformation in competitive races, for example Maricopa County in Arizona (Axios, 44.26) where tabulators malfunctioned and some including gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (CNN, 42.34) made hay out of it implying election officials had orchestrated the technical problems. Lots of other Republicans around the country have also seized on the Maricopa episode (NBC News, 45.48), despite it having been straightforwardly explained (@jeremyduda via Twitter) and resolved such that no votes were adversely affected. There were other minor, less splashy issues in Detroit (Axios, 44.26) Pennsylvania (Associated Press, 48.79), and other places (Bloomberg, 45.13).
Good reporting in advance of the election on the increasing prevalence and importance of Spanish-language disinformation (Brookings Institution, -) over social media (Washington Post, 39.76), which has targeted audiences with culture war content like abortion (NPR, 43.15) and trans identity (NBC News, 45.48) in addition to the regular misinformation focused on elections (Texas Tribune, 45.53).
Oh, and do let’s be on the lookout because The New York Times (42.67) reports that Russia reactivated its state-sponsored troll and bot operations ahead of Election Day.
There’s also--of course--the precipitous decline of Twitter in Elon Musk’s second week as owner.
It started when Musk mishandled (@karaswisher via Twitter) and then threatened (@thetomzone via Twitter) the advertisers who provide the lion’s share of the company’s revenue. His moves to lay off like, so many employees including those that assure brand safety for companies that choose to advertise on the platform (New York Times, 42.67) did not impress Musk’s business partners, and though he pleaded with them to stay (CNN, 42.34) it seems clear that many are backing away.
This exodus accelerated when with the chaos surrounding the rollout of the new pay-in model of “verification,” policies to rein in a rash of new blue checks parodying him (BBC, 46.15), LeBron James (NBC News, 45.48), and various corporate handles dictated by Musk himself via tweet, and the utter debacle of the gray-check “official” label to appear--then not, then yes again--in a genuine account’s bio (@oneunderscore__ via Twitter). It was actually messier than I am even making it sound here, if you can believe it.
And to cap it off, as of today the remaining senior employee on trust and safety, Yoel Roth, whose update thread Musk elevated multiple times during the week (via Twitter), resigned (Washington Post, 39.76). With Mr. Roth went the chief information security officer and the chief privacy officer, apparently in protest of Musk’s intention to make compromises on their equities to squeeze revenue out of the user base. Uncle Elon tweeted last Thursday that Twitter’s commitment to content moderation remained ’absolutely unchanged,’ but between Roth’s departure and the moves taken to scale back investment in anti-misinformation work (Associated Press, 48.79), it seems a long shot that anyone believes him at this point.
Q is back around, kind of, but it’s the legacy of the original Q that is still animating the MAGA movement.
The poster who uses Q’s tripcode on 8kun--very likely the site’s owner Jim Watkins--took a few months off but returned with not one (@_MAArgentino va Twitter), but two (@Shayan86 via Twitter) midterms-focused drops this week. They were both pretty low-effort (@rothschildmd via Twitter) as far as Q drops go, and the chans weren’t impressed. May still end up as canon, but clearly no one is staying up all night baking this stuff.
The strain of fervent devotion that Q’s earlier body of work has inspired among anons, on the other hand, is on ready display at things like the ReAwaken America Tour that is fusing Christian belief systems with conspiracy theories as it tours around the country (NPR, 43.15). High-profile Republican candidates, for example Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano (Huffington Post, 39.61), have attached their names to these popular, profitable events.
The elections were a bellwether we were watching to ascertain if the Q crowd would be able to score ballot box wins and seize the levers of power in several states the way influencer Juan O. Savin and others planned to do, and I’m pleased to report that nearly all of the Secretary of State candidates involved in this scheme have been defeated. (One or two are too close to call.) For more on this, please join (might be our last) Misinfo Meetup #12: “Misinformationism and the Midterms” (Twitter mobile only) where we’ll get the full breakdown on this and more from the experts.
We’ll keep the grab bag short: Time (43.08) looked at political violence in the U.S.; manipulated photos and videos are all over TikTok; President Biden went on a fact-challenged tear before the election, including some repeats of pretty egregious claims; Trump’s DHS kind of made up some terrorists in Portland back in the Summer of ‘20; and Alex Jones was told be a judge he owes an additional $473 million to Sandy Hook families.
All that, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin