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With each news cycle, the false-information system grows more efficient.
Even on an internet bursting at the seams with conspiracy theories and hyperpartisanship, Saturday marked a new chapter in our post-truth, “choose your own reality” crisis story.
It began early Saturday morning, when news broke that the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein had apparently hanged himself in a Manhattan jail. Mr. Epstein’s death, coming just one day after court documents from one of his alleged victims were unsealed, sparked immediate suspicion from journalists, politicians and the usual online fringes.
Within minutes, Trump appointees, Fox Business hosts and Twitter pundits revived a decades old conspiracy theory, linking the Clinton family to supposedly suspicious deaths. #ClintonBodyCount and #ClintonCrimeFamily trended on Twitter. Around the same time, an opposite hashtag — #TrumpBodyCount — emerged, focused on President Trump’s decades-old ties to Mr. Epstein. Each hashtag was accompanied by GIFs and memes picturing Mr. Epstein with the Clintons or with Mr. Trump to serve as a viral accusation of foul play.
The dueling hashtags and their attendant toxicity are a grim testament to our deeply poisoned information ecosystem — one that’s built for speed and designed to reward the most incendiary impulses of its worst actors. It has ushered in a parallel reality unrooted in fact and helped to push conspiratorial thinking into the cultural mainstream. And with each news cycle, the system grows more efficient, entrenching its opposing camps. The poison spreads.
It's time to end "trending" on Twitter
By now you've probably read enough about the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, his death in a Manhattan jail, and the attendant conspiracy theories that consumed social networks over the weekend. President Trump led the charge, retweeting a conspiracy theory that sought to implicate former President Bill Clinton.
While there is much blame to go around, Charlie Warzel finds that Twitter bears a special responsibility for what one researcher termed "the Disinformation World Cup." Warzel writes:
At the heart of the online fiasco is Twitter, which has come to largely program the political conversation and much of the press. Twitter is magnetic during huge breaking stories; news junkies flock to it for up-to-the-second information. But early on, there's often a vast discrepancy between the attention that is directed at the platform and the available information about the developing story. That gap is filled by speculation and, via its worst users, rumormongering and conspiracy theories.
On Saturday, Twitter's trending algorithms hoovered up the worst of this detritus, curating, ranking and then placing it in the trending module on the right side of its website. Despite being a highly arbitrary and mostly "worthless metric," trending topics on Twitter are often interpreted as a vague signal of the importance of a given subject.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 14 2019, @12:48PM (13 children)
From my perspective, I think it's just one of thousands of readily visible datapoints showing how bad the judgement of the current top executive staff is. They're pissing on us and not even having the decency to call it rain. It's bad enough we let this happen once, God help the world if the US goes for the bait again in 2020.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday August 14 2019, @01:46PM (12 children)
I will go out on a limb and predict that, despite my vote, Trump will be re-elected in 2020 and 2024.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 14 2019, @02:28PM (11 children)
I was in Houston, belly of the beast as it were, for 2004 - it was kind of inevitable, unbelievably sad, and the rest of the world collectively breathed a sigh of relief and congratulated US for 2008.
I prefer not to imagine a Carrot topped tweet led U.S. of A. in 2021, if such a thing happens I guess I'll deal with it, but it is a new level of sadness that even W could not aspire to.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday August 14 2019, @02:41PM (10 children)
Look at the upside. You won't have to go to the trouble to vote in 2024.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 14 2019, @02:47PM (9 children)
Hollywood is so good at dystopian future movies, what would a Russian controlled USA even look like in 2024?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @02:56PM (3 children)
This is a hilarious glimpse into the delusional echo chamber. You two republicrats aren't even reading the right book.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @05:42PM (2 children)
Willful ignorance is not an attractive trait.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 14 2019, @05:49PM (1 child)
The willfully ignorant can still believe they are attractive.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:39PM
DRUMPH HAS AN ORANGE MUSHROOM PENIS.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 14 2019, @04:46PM (3 children)
Give me a break. Russia can't even manage Russia, a piddling country of 120 million people.
If you like thinking about foreign states controlling the United States, you really are ignoring the elephant in the room. Look up AIPAC.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 14 2019, @04:58PM (1 child)
Russia managing Russia is recently reported as resulting in 50,000 protesters in the streets... They can't do it well, but they are doing something.
By "Russian controlled US" I would mean: top level power players in Russia getting control of similar US sources of power/money, such as energy companies, possibly internet/information brokerage companies, and doing what they will with them.
How do you feel about full-on fracking exploitation of all available US natural gas resources? Increased internet censorship through keyword trawling, arbitrary binding take-down of content, more pervasive and harder to spot distribution of information targeted at modifying behavior in certain population groups... straight up propaganda office control of the news outlets...
Just because people are inept doesn't mean they're not in power or attempting to control.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:43PM
Go for it. I heat with natural gas at home.
Wait. Make up you mind. Are you ctrl-left or alt-right? I thought it was the right wingers that were complaining about increased internet censorship through keyword trawling and arbitrary take-down of content.
Have you seen CNN and MSNBC anytime in the past three years? Regardless, I fail to see what any of this has to do with Russians though. Did you forget to take your TDS meds this morning?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 14 2019, @05:20PM
Russia may be trying to seize control of the US from the hands of AIPAC.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @05:35PM
A lot more vodka distilleries, comrade. You will need them.
Ty chto mumu yebyosh? ;-)