Today’s Guardian warns:
Twitter’s mass layoffs, days before US midterms, could be a misinformation disaster
Internal chaos at the company – and the decimation of its staff – has created ideal conditions for falsehoods and hateful content.
The mass layoffs at Twitter, that diminished several teams, including staff on the company’s safety and misinformation teams, could spell disaster during the US midterms elections next week, experts have warned.
What would the woke do without experts – for example Paul Barrett, described as “an expert in disinformation and fake news at New York University”. I’m sure he’s very committed to it, but as to being expert at it – well, judge for yourselves. The Guardian quotes Paul as saying Twitter’s “chaos”, and:
“lack of staff and resources dedicated to counteracting misinformation, has created ideal conditions for election misinformation to thrive … Twitter is in the midst of a category 5 hurricane, and that is not a good environment for fostering vigilance when dealing with inevitable attempts to spread falsehoods and hateful content.”
Yesterday’s Independent shared Paul’s concern. The headline
Man arrested on suspicion of tampering with voting machine
did not prepare me for reading that their concern about this Colorado man was not that he might have affected the June primary but that
it heightened concerns among election officials and security experts that conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election could inspire some voters to meddle with – or even to sabotage – election equipment
Oh, those wicked election deniers! If only they had not raised the idea that such things had already happened, that registered Democrat would never have thought of inserting a thumb drive into a voting machine.
Despite this ingenious framing, I suspect what these ‘experts’ find really hateful is that the ‘information’ they’ve been supplying for two years seems to be missing its target anyway. A recent poll says that 40% agree, and only 36% disagree, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen – and of the 36%, one in three find it “understandable” that others might believe it was, which was not at all the idea meant to be conveyed by always putting ‘baseless’ before ‘claims of election fraud’. (And when the Rasmussen poll a month ago had the don’t-knows choose which side they thought more likely, they did not at all split the way the experts thought they should.) So if that happened despite all those safety and misinformation staffers banning tweets and accounts here, there and everywhere, how safe will the narrative be (I can understand the experts worrying) if Twitter lets reports of vote fraud be seen and assessed by the community, not just the experts?
So much for their fears, now a word about mine. The worst thing about vote fraud is not that it is lied about but that it happens. How much vote fraud will there be in the mid-terms? (Given the conveniently long lead-in times, how much has there already been?) My expectation is: a lot. My hope is: not enough. Hope is not a strategy. This article on the election integrity movement (h/t instapundit) notes some successes but concedes other failures:
Even with the recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court victory, that state remains essentially lawless when it comes to election integrity.
– and IIUC, the counting of post-dated or undated ballots in Pennsylvania only got prevented because a judge recently died, leading to an even-numbers stand-off in a key case.
But I can see it will be inconvenient to the lawless if Twitter hasn’t the censors or the will to bring a halt to users showing poll-watching being prevented. No wonder the Guardian and the Independent are upset.
Two thoughts:
1) Anyone who uses Twitter, Facebook, or memes as the basis for their vote is not the kind of person who should be voting. Once again, Universal Suffrage may not have been the worst idea ever, but it ranks right up there.
2) One of the few times I demand the death penalty is for vote tampering or vote fraud and it should be made as public as possible. Break him on the wheel him up right out front of the county courthouse, show it on the 6 o’clock news, make everyone involved with electoral process, from the old ladies at the polling stations to the counters to the clerks that sign off on it to the candidates themselves, watch it, and repeat as necessary.
2a) And cases involving public corruption just get life at hard labor with no parole. Take or receive a bribe and enjoy turning big rocks into small ones with a sledge hammer until you die.
People who didn’t have a problem with the 2020 election don’t understand that the point of an election process is not simply to count the votes … it is to count the votes in such a way that the voters have confidence in the results.
If you are bringing in boxes of “found” ballots at the 11th hour which were sitting in a back room, if you are excluding observers from one of the political parties during a vote count, and using sheets of newspaper to block up the windows in the counting room, if you support universal mail-in voting (which completely breaks the secret ballot model and commoditizes the vote), if you are against voter ID laws, then you are running an election process which fails miserably to convince the voters that the result is legitimate.
American voting processes makes many third world countries look like bastions of integrity.
I’m not sure if this is what Niall was referring to, regarding the death of a judge, but I read this article by Mollie Hemmingway this morning and my jaw just about hit the floor. Here is the money quote. Did anyone know this? I sure as hell didn’t:
Although I find it jaw droppingly shocking, it also gives me some positive vibes. The 2020 election was such a cluster, there was OBVIOUSLY so many shenanigans, before, during and after the election that only the foolish, the uninformed or the hyperpartisan would deny it. But perhaps what Ms Hemmingway identifies here is at the root of the reason the Republican response was so poor. Read the rest of the article. It is pretty interesting, and it might offer you some comfort if you are hoping for a split government in the USA next year.
Quick note: Hemmingway is a really excellent reporter. Anything she says or writes is definitely worth a read.
Indeed!
As i previously mentioned on this site, North-American (American+Canadian) culture ranks up there with British and Italian culture in my cultural make-up … and i am ashamed of all 3 of them.
Still, within all 3 cultures, there are movements that make me feel warm inside.
The election integrity movement in the US is one of them.
What they are trying to do as far as I can see, is that if I put up an argument with which they disagree ,rather than putting forward a counter argument,they call mine “Disinformation”.
This is often because they do not have a counter argument.
Just to be clear, I never joined Twitter. I am incapable to being so succinct as to express a thought in however many characters as Twitter first limited user to, and my strings of tweets would have gone on into infinity.
Also, I have a temper, and have to watch where I speak up because I have the capacity to be like that character in a cheesy novel I read about Ireland during Elizabeth I who was nicknamed “of the Battles” because there was not a fight he would not pick or join.
That said, there is something to be said of the much disapproved “Wild West” atmosphere people want to avoid on the interwebs. “of the Battle” dies young, lured into an ambush by news of a new fight to go join. And Blocking is, to my my mind the best tool for anyone who wants to keep grossly annoying people off their portion of the interwebs.
The other day I saw a rally by a Democrat running for a local congressional seat. One of the campaign staff tried to hand me a flier talking about “Assault Weapons” I wish my first response had not been that any hammer can be called an “Assault Hammer” and I thought sooner of my cleverest response, that my Pastry Cutter could, allowing for the element of surprise and my own determination, be used as an “Assault Pastry Cutter”, and I could easily add my Meat Thermometer and (of course) Iron Skillet to that list of “Assault Weapons”.
My response, no matter how clever would have fallen on deaf ears, except among people I already was confident would agree with me.
And the fact that the current hot claim, that any Conservative in New York State is going to outlaw abortion is patent nonsense would also have fallen on deaf ears. They will try to. Too much has to change in this state, and too many people, to close down the Planned Parenthood Clinics here.
The Conservative who says this will be booed down by their audience of disappointed Conservatives who feel betrayed. Conservatives want to think they can achieve “one and done” victories. They can only stubbornly and consistently and facing much inconvenience and opposition make their own choices … about how they conduct their own lives.
The greatest threat the Christians posed to the Romans started with the refusal to participate in the public sacrifices to the Deified Emperors, to the point that the butchers who sold the meat left over (I suspect leaving that fresh meat for those butchers to sell was part of the Roman strategy to co-opt the locals) afterwards lost business.
The other threat Christianity posed to Pagan Culture was described by Julian the Apostate. They were too damned generous and neighborly to not draw in new members.
Molly Hemingway is correct. The Republican Party, and Conservatives, however admirable their ideas, have been too weak for too long to not have to live with election fraud and onerous student loans, and in general a less than optimal life for quite some time. What Elon Musk has done is nice, but the follow-up has to be done by people willing to be inconvenienced by, for starters, not looking for Free Stuff.
An Iroquois League member says to the Jesuit Missionary in the film Black Robe (1991): “I have been as greedy as any white man.”
If you ask for a second opinion, you’ll be told you’ve also been as lazy.
I just read Molly Hemingway’s full article.
I thought maybe I was being unduly harsh to the Republican Party.
Then I read this:
Now I would not put it past Republican Party volunteers and staff (volunteers have to understand that they represent the organization as much as anyone else, the organizations needs to treat volunteer like employees when it comes to supervising them because of this) to engage in voter intimidation.
But if the Republican Party staff or volunteers had actually intimidated voters, I trust Mollie Hemingway’s integrity enough to expect her to say they had, not that they were “accused” of doing so.
Who decided to settle, who decided the terms? If the judge decided the terms, did the Republicans have an inkling of what those terms might be?
Did their respect for the Rule of Law, and the Courts color their assessment of what the judge might do?
I don’t think I have been unduly harsh towards the Republican Party, then or now.
On Sunday 30th October 2022 Brazil held its Presidential run-off election. Over 118 million votes were cast, quickly tallied and the result announced early the following morning.
Compare this to the 2020 malarkey which took place in key cities in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
I don’t care much about the count being fast. I care about it being repeatable, reliable, and above all PUBLIC (that is, under the watchful and skeptical eye of the public at all times). I would love it if every single disputed ballot was scanned in and posted to an election website so that everyone who was interested could look at it and see why it was disputed – and how the dispute was eventually resolved. How about live webcams of every single polling place while counting was going on? And of course, get rid of mail-in ballots except in rare circumstances, eliminate early voting except in rare circumstances, and require voter ID for every single voter.
I am sure that North Korea, Russia, and Iran also have very fast election counts. Meh. Take a week, do the count properly and publicly, so that everyone has confidence in it.
Carol for the mid-terms:
Oh little town on ‘Cisco Bay,
How still we see thee lie,
Above thy deep, nightmarish sleep,
Elon Musk’s rockets go by,
And in thy dark streets shineth,
The everlasting lie,
The lies and smears of all the years,
Are met in thee tonight.
When I said I hoped there would not be enough vote fraud, I meant of course not enough in enough states. Sane estimates of fake-votes-per-activist in California, based on incidents, range from a low of high hundreds to a high of low thousands. These, however, must be added to the millions of illegal-but-sanctuaried residents. In the shade of the olive tree, read an anecdote of how CA encourages them to vote. I can believe many illegals only vote once, but even in California they outnumber the activists by orders of magnitude.
As regards the activists, here is another CA anecdote (from the 2016 election).
In that case, I’m guessing an activist knew the 89-year-old lady was reliably slow to collect her mail but did not recon on a helpful neighbour.
I thought it was laughable how the left liberals are saying it’s somehow normal that it will take days and weeks to announce many election results and that’s somehow good and normal.This is liberal gaslighting.
Most poorer democracies and semi-democracies do better than this, and probably have less corrupt and fairer elections. The US used to do better than that.
The article you link to is relevant (indeed, it is the second-last link in my own post), but no, I was not referring to the death of Debevoise in 2015 (that allowed his anti-poll-watcher ruling of 1981 to be finally reconsidered and ended – see Mollie’s article for details). I was talking about the death of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Max Baer at the start of October (he would otherwise have served till he reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 on December 24th). He was elected as justice of the PA SC in 2003 as a Democrat, defeating his Republican rival (Joan Orie Melvin) by 1,284,846 votes to 1,192,952 votes.
I’ll skip the legal complexities (which I’m sure I grasp less well than e.g. bobby b may). From this source’s summary, it appeared as if the court agreed that PA law prohibited counting undated or incorrectly dated ballots but then
which would have reversed things again. The presence of Max Baer could therefore have produced the opposite result (and, I suspect, would have; Baer was reproved in 2011 for his casual attitude towards leaking judicially-privileged information to Dems to assist their electoral efforts, to say nothing of more recent PA events).
The Guardian, the Independent, and-so-on know that what the call “Conspiracy Theories” are the truth.
They know that Mr George Floyd died of the drugs he had willing consumed and that that many people were killed in the Marxist BLM riots in 2020. And the jury would have been killed had they not returned a “guilty” verdict.
They know that Covid 19 was created in the Wuhan Institute, the research being funded by Peter Daszak (Eco-Health Alliance) and Tony Fauci.
They know that the government bodies that are supposed to police the drug corporations are part funded by those very corporations – “public and private partnerships” (Fascism “Stakeholder Capitalism”).
They know that there were (and are) fairly inexpensive and generally effective treatments for Covid 19 – which were systematically smeared.
They know that the “lockdowns” did NOT save lives – and were not intended to save lives.
And, yes, they know that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged – massively rigged.
As for Titter – Elon Musk still seems shocked that many Corporations, the Corporate State, are doing advertising boycott, and a regime “investigation” of him. “Do they want to destroy Freedom of Speech?” says Mr Musk.
Yes, of course they want to destroy Freedom of Speech – in spite of their “Woke” Marxism they are really Corporate State FASCISTS – of course Fascists want to destroy Freedom of Speech (and so do “Woke”, Frankfurt School, Marxists – so there is no conflict on that).
“Democracy is on the ballot” – yes, it is, but the “Woke” Democrats are “Projecting” – THEY are the threat to democracy, with their rigged elections and their desire for systematic censorship and persecution.
When the FBI come in force and stick a rifle in your face it is not because they are being sent by Conservatives – they are being sent by the Corporate State, by the “Woke”.
They are Fascists. For, contrary to the education system and the media, Fascists and Marxists are not opposites – they are much the same.
Fan of Slackwire Clowns – as you know New York State was Big Government Progressive State (both the Democrats and the Republicans) even back when California was still a Conservative State.
As for election rigging – Pennsylvania is indeed an interesting test case.
The Democrats have nominated a man, John Fetterman, who has never had a real job – living off his wealthy parents till he became a, useless, town Mayor – and then a useless Lieutenant Governor. And many months ago, Mr Fetterman had a stroke and is now clearly brain damaged.
Why nominate Mr Fetterman for United States Senate?
Very simple – to show that they can “elect” anyone, anyone at all, via election rigging – vote fraud.
If Mr Fetterman is “elected” everyone will know that the ballot was rigged – what the Dems will be saying is “we can do anything we like – and there is nothing you peasants can do about it”.
The Dems often talk about a “threat to democracy” that “democracy is on the ballot” – and they are correct, there is a threat to democracy, they-are-that-threat-to-democracy.
What was it Stalin said? “Those who vote decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything”.
Not so daft, was he?
The crime deniers and the inflation deniers and education deniers and the corruption deniers along with the dementia deniers and the grooming deniers demand that you stop spreading misinformation, disinformation and outright lies about OUR election and OUR democracy. Thank you for your cooperation.
Personal story – I’m sorry:
I had a “discussion” (read ‘argument’) with “somebody” (married people in the audience can guess who “somebody” is) about disinformation. Subject of discussion was our government declaring that yes, our Bill of Rights and Freedoms guarantees us peons “Free Speech”; notwithstanding, they were tabling a law to combat “disinformation” – and people deemed guilty thereof could expect crippling fines and jail time. For those of you still wondering ( – these laws seem to be springing-up everywhere at the moment, and indeed many tyrannies and Socialist Workers’ Paradises have had them for centuries), I’m talking Canada.
Said disputant asked in a loud “This is obvious to ME – WHY isn’t it obvious to YOU???!” voice: “Well whose job is it to STOP disinformation?!”
And was totally resistant to my reply, “It’s NOBODY’S job!”
You see, said disputant is naive lawful-good; and still believes passionately in GOVERNMENTS making LAWS to stop BAD PEOPLE doing BAD THINGS – completely disinterestedly, of course. Said disputant also believes misinformation and disinformation are cut-and-dried, because “Well EVERYBODY knows THAT…” Example; I can trigger a fight with said disputant anytime, anytime at all, by implying the 2020 U.S. election was unfair – said disputant considered Trump a clown, and therefore it was IOTTMCO (“Intuitively Obvious To The Most Casual Observer”) that everybody would band-together to vote him out; and that having resulted, that is clearly what happened and any suggestion otherwise is a waste of her (oops – I let it slip) time. QED.
Me? – I’m Max Fox (cynic commenter from The Political Platypus) anymore; I was a dreadful closet socialist for half-a-century or so, and I’m slowly morphing into “believe nothing you hear and very little of what you see” – and I have the advantage that I’ve lived the lies and the pabulum, and I often recognise the taste. And my take on the loose confabulation of carnivorous apes that makes-up the Human (?) Race (?) – and especially here in Canada – is that the “Ministry of Disinformation” would inevitably evolve into (if it didn’t openly start-out that way in the first place):
DISINFORMATION: Anything that makes US look BAD, and our OPPONENTS look GOOD; and,
YOUR SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH FOR TODAY: Anything that makes US look GOOD, and our OPPONENTS look BAD.
Tertium Non Datur.
(BTW, sorry for all the high-flown Latin – I’m practising it; it’s very handy for taking wind out of SJW sails, because (A) they don’t understand it, and (B) it’s a reminder of how long this $hit’s been going-on. As Mark Twain put it, “History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot.”)
If we had a Free Press worthy of the name, we wouldn’t need a Ministry of Combatting Disinformation because they would be combatting disinformation and lies and propaganda on a daily basis.
Instead, the Free Press has willingly become TASS or KCNA.
As Mark Twain also put it (quoted from memory),
Sounds like you might want to start ‘somebody’ (a.k.a ‘her’) on something easier – like whether it was disinformation to say the virus was a lab leak when it was said to be disinformation, or was it not disinformation to raise the idea even when it got you banned from Twitter, Facebook et al (i.e. between late March 2020 and late May 2021 IIRC).
I conjecture that might be easier than asking why, if it’s IOTTMCO that ‘everyone’ voted Trump out, they waited till the bookies had him as 8:1 or 9:1 odds-on favourite to win at 08:40 Greenwich the next day before finding wafer-thin numbers of votes in key states to scrape Biden past him. That might be better deferred till you’ve made some progress on cases where the disinformation ruling has reversed itself in recent memory. “Oceania has always been at war with East Asia” is a more challenging belief to hold than the one that lets you hold it from birth to death.
It is of course pathetically easy for me in the UK to advise you in Canada how to broaden the mind of someone you know very well and I don’t. 🙂
“Sounds like you might want to start ‘somebody’ (a.k.a ‘her’) on something easier – like whether it was disinformation to say the virus…”
– AAAAAAAAAAA!!! – screams in TERROR! “NOT the ‘COVID’ thing – ANYTHING but that!!!”
COVID… “SHE” (which is how I usually refer to “HER” in writing – from “SWMBO”, She Who Must Be Obeyed (and I’ve actually read H. Rider Haggard’s “She”) still uses masks religiously, made a bunch (form-fitting two-layer cloth masks in designer fabrics; we both hate throwaways), carefully washes them every week and rotates them just as carefully, SWEARS by masks, has had both shots (Pfizer) and every booster that’s been offered here, and works (as she did throughout the lockdown) in a big store where it’s been quasi-endemic among the staff; she’s never had COVID.
I had both shots (Pfizer – if it broke-out in my office they weren’t gonna’ be able to point the finger at me), did the lockdown thing as ordered, wore masks when I had to (still have one in a pocket of each outfit; med/dent here still require them) and that was it; no boosters and ain’t getting any, don’t wear masks ANYWHERE they don’t demand them; work in a busy public-service job and knock wood, I’ve never had COVID either.
So… which of us is right? – either, or both, or neither – and how could either of us convince the other? To “HER” credit, she has begun wondering why I’ve never had it either – but there’s no point my telling her masks don’t work, because I tried; and no point telling her (or any of my other relatives – my grandkids (mostly preschool) were hauled to the front-of-the-line when kid-shots became available where they live) that the shots don’t work, and risk more harm than good; they’re all still quasi-socialist despite my best efforts and “the Party is the sole embodiment of truth”. And yes, I’ve voluminously catalogued the numerous smoking-guns on the 2020 election (and many, many other leftwing/rightwing topics like oh, say, global warming) but once again, they’re all impervious to evidence that contradicts what they all KNOW, the CBC even said so – or at least, my relatives have proven to be.
How does that saying go? – “The truly wise man smiles and says nothing.” And in my case I figured it out for myself over several years, so I guess there’s hope for them doing the same, eventually…
@Y. Knott
– AAAAAAAAAAA!!! – screams in TERROR! “NOT the ‘COVID’ thing – ANYTHING but that!!!”
Isn’t everyone basically done with the mask thing now? I was at a school concert in a super leftie liberal school and there were just a couple of people wearing masks, much to my incredulity. But no doubt there are some hold outs. Masks aren’t really about masking, they are really more a shibboleth, or a magic talisman. They are more akin to bumper stickers than medical devices. However, my view is the same as my view on religion. I’m an atheist, but not an evangelical one. If you believe all that stuff go for it. For the most part it doesn’t harm any one, so do what makes you happy. At least it’ll keep her face warm this winter.
So… which of us is right? – either, or both, or neither – and how could either of us convince the other?
People are not convinced by logical arguments, statistical studies and all the things that are the foundation of science debate and analysis. From what I see people are really convinced by things like emotional response (fear for example), personal impact (I’ll believe in modern monetary policy until — holy shit eggs cost $6 a carton, or I don’t believe in the death penalty until some dude raped and murdered my wife) and example — people often adopt the views of people they admire, or people who are getting the results they want. FWIW, far and away the thing that people find most convincing about an argument is that the conclusion one that they want. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still — never a truer word has been said.
So, perhaps if you want to move SWMBO more in your direction you might consider these approaches. Or, probably better and certainly a lot easier, learn to live with the difference of opinion, and maintain your own bubble.
How does that saying go? – “The truly wise man smiles and says nothing.” And in my case I figured it out for myself over several years, so I guess there’s hope for them doing the same, eventually…
Sure, but for every cliche there is an opposite cliche: “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. Though I doubt you would characterize her that way. I’m sure she is lovely, if a bit misguided on a few issues.
My point was not to discuss the ChiComCold as such but to raise any and all areas where the party line changes – in real-time, and crudely. (I agree with this assessment of Politico’s latest: it looks like if their vote fraud can’t perform well enough then the new line will be “Dem’s lost because vote fraud”. Alongside the still-running ‘wicked election denier’ line, they have begun warning that (if – and only if – my “not enough” hope is realised) Oceania will soon be at war with East Asia.
You have more chance persuading someone to question a narrative order to contradict what it ordered them to say last week than to keep on saying this week what it said to say last week.
That said, you know these people and I do not.
Excellent comments – by all the people who wrote after me.
I have nothing to add.
“Me? – I’m Max Fox (cynic commenter from The Political Platypus) anymore…”
My all-time favourite political bromide is a Max Fox quote: “Bureaucrats procreate by a system known as parthenogenesis, which means they are essentially self-fertilizing. And to my mind, that’s exactly what they can go and do!”
[…] there was great media hostility to the idea of Elon not controlling voters’ tweeting about any problems they might encounter. There was great DoJ hostility to the idea of checking whether voters were citizens (as there had […]