This Week in Misinformation: Supreme Court Freezes Censorship Law, Durham Swing and a Miss, Wrongness About Guns
2 June 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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We did a fun thing this week, hosting expert fact-checkers in an audio chat on Twitter to talk about a range of issues in the business of debunking! Check it out.
Now, on to our top stories. (It was kind of a light week!)
Time for an update on the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law from last year: The Supreme Court blocked it from taking effect.
The law, which would make it harder for platforms to take down content that users post, was decided to be a violation of those companies’ First Amendment rights. Four justices, including the three most conservative and, interestingly, Elena Kagan, dissented (NPR, 44.48). Unfortunately, no one really explained why they joined either the majority or the dissent (CNN, 42.40), but a couple have given hints (Protocol, -).
This action undoes a circuit court, which had reversed a lower court. It’s possible that other cases still working their way up could end with the Supreme Court striking the law down entirely, not just keep it on indefinite hold (The Hill, 43.58). Stay tuned.
Zooming out, the Texas law is one part of a drive by conservatives to use stop tech companies from what they perceive to be censoring of political posts, and the ruling represents another setback to them after failing to pass anything in Congress or make alternative platforms that people want to use (Axios, 44.39).
After three years of investigating the Russia-Trump investigators, Justice Department Special Counsel John Durham failed to prosecute its only case to date.
Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s campaign who passed a tip to the FBI about the Trump campaign’s Russia ties, was acquitted by a jury of the charge of lying to agents about who he was working for (New York Times, 43.93). The case is a little convoluted, but the least you need to know is that it was the only one Durham has brought to trial, and now it’s over.
It is almost impossible to overstate the importance that QAnon adherents (@FantasticGvnFox via Twitter) and other conspiracists on the right attach to Durham’s investigation. “TRUST DURHAM.” “DURHAM IS COMING.” Etc. Probably millions of people have pinned all their hopes of locking Hillary up on this investigation into “the Russia hoax.”
Because no failure can ever be understood by QAnon as actual failure, the Sussmann verdict prompted any number of rationalizations, goalpost-shiftings, and--you guessed it--still more complicated conspiracy theories for why Durham didn’t triumph (@PokerPolitics via Twitter). Maybe next time!
After Buffalo and then Uvalde, the guns debate has seen its share of misleading and false claims.
At the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention in Houston, Trump and Ted Cruz painted the aftermath of consecutive mass shootings, including one of fourth graders, as an intense attack on the Second Amendment, while other convention participants darkly insinuated that leftists had timed the tragedies to unfairly put a damper on their celebration of guns (Politico, ). Barf.
Cruz and Trump said some other things that weren’t accurate, too (New York Times, 43.93). Joe Biden has also been getting his facts wrong with respect to Americans’ right to bear arms, for example that a citizen isn’t allowed to own a cannon (Newsweek, 38.31). So we’re all around getting further from a shared reality, which seems like a problem.
Someone faked a tweet by liberal Texas politician Beto O’Rourke that worked because it sounded like something he might say, even though in the real world he didn’t (Reuters).
Some grab bag? Don’t mind if I do: the racist “Replacement Theory” has a music scene; in the post-shooting confusion, a couple viral tweets about Texas Republicans were fake; what to do about climate 'doomism'; debunking monkeypox nonsense; Q world’s Juan O. Savin is getting positioned to control key 2024 elections; the New York Times (43.93) wants to hear from you if you know somebody into conspiracy theories (for that matter, so do I!); GOP election truthers are assembling ’an army’ of poll workers to contest elections; the state of Connecticut is hiring an election memes analyst to watch for misinformation; former White House hanger-on Peter Navarro receives a subpoena from a federal grand jury about Trump and January 6th; and despite calling himself an idiot, this Hitler-cosplaying January 6th rioter was convicted.
That, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin