To understand what happens next with QAnon, it helps to look back at past cults
What’s the difference between a cult and a religion? Scale. Every religion begins somewhere in a basement or a backyard or a barn with a small group of people and some scrap of received wisdom. Most of...
View ArticleParler Lives Again
Parler is back online now by routing 100% of its user traffic through servers located within the Russian Federation. Raise your hand if you understand the very significant impact this has on the...
View ArticleUNFOUNDED “FACTS” GIVE BIRTHS TO DANGEROUS CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND MODERN MYTHS
Everybody knows that conspiracies have always existed since time immemorial.It is a salient part of the darker side of human history.Everybody also knows that whenever two or more gather together to...
View ArticleRehabilitation of Jack Ma ( Billionaire of the Alibaba fame)
Jack Ma, the famous founder of Alibaba ( a Chinese IT company specailizing in online payments, financial services, messaging and other activities) has briefly emerged from from his “self imposed” low...
View ArticleFacebook execs shrug off culpability for role in providing organizing...
Facebook’s role in providing a venue for the insurrectionists who invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 is now clear: A recent study documents how the social media giant became a place for far-right...
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The Epistemology of a Terrorist Attack on the Capitol. Advancing our Thinking...
WARNING: This Diary is unusually long. It also contains ideas that differ from the mainstream thinking on Daily Kos. It is my attempt to expose readers to additional ways of thinking about the...
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'Faces of the Riot' site posts pictures of every person seen in videos from...
One of the more singular aspects of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was the role photography, and even moreso, video. It’s difficult to fathom such a defining moment in American history so...
View ArticleFriday Night Owls: The left must vie to control the algorithms that shape our...
Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week.These Machines Won’t Kill Fascism, by Nantina Vgontzas and Meredith Whittaker. Toward a Militant Progressive Vision for Tech...
View ArticleNew Draft Paper Confirms Feeding Trolls Keeps Them Coming Back For More
As the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet,” the (anti)social media website reddit has largely flown under the radar when it comes to the high-profile disinformation failings of Facebook,...
View ArticleWHOA! Congress Skeds Hearings On Why Cable Companies Carry Disinformation By...
The deliberate mission of right-wing "news" operations to deceive the public has been an ongoing threat to American democracy. Their aim has been to spread disinformation in order to advance the...
View ArticleStarlink is it as big as I think it is?
My first Modem was 300 Baud. I could read that green on black text as fast as it formed. But still my world had changed. I just didn’t really know it yet.Spacex’s Starlink is a constellation of...
View ArticleEliot Higgins’ Bellingcat: Digital Detectives Pioneer Open Source Sleuthing
Welcome to the world of 21stcentury digital detectives! Citizen journalism is a thing: It is being used to identify perpetrators of human rights crimes and hate crimes, and to identify participants in...
View ArticlePragerU, the pretend university, makes money on YouTube by attacking trans youth
If you aren’t a university but you want to pretend to be one, YouTube is certainly a place to make it happen. That has been the standard for PragerU, the fictional creation of right-wing crank Dennis...
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Biden announces sanctions imposed on Russia because of hacks and 2020...
The Biden administration has disclosed for the first time that a Russian agent who received internal polling data from the Trump campaign in 2016 passed it along to Russia's intelligence services. This...
View ArticleTreasury Department Establishes Trump Campaign Collusion With Russian...
Today the Treasury Department announced sweeping sanctions against the Russian government and individuals “who attempted to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election at the direction of the...
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Fake "News," AI, Deep Fake Video are here to stay and Information Terrorists...
“Trained and untrained operators alike are beta-testing tools and tactics on human minds, deliberately or intuitively. Information weapons are intangible. But people aim them, and people are the...
View Article‘Stop the Steal’ spread on Facebook enabled Jan. 6 insurrection, company’s...
Facebook executives have been dismissive from the start about attempts to hold them accountable for their social media platform’s role in inciting and organizing the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S....
View Article‘Stop the Steal’ spread on Facebook enabled Jan. 6 insurrection, company’s...
Facebook executives have been dismissive from the start about attempts to hold them accountable for their social media platform’s role in inciting and organizing the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S....
View ArticleRepublicans try to ban deplatforming and have no idea what it means
If you started using the internet before Facebook and Twitter existed, you probably know a few things about social media platforms. When local bulletin boards, listservs, and local BBS carriers were a...
View ArticleWhat are the odds of Facebook Oversight Board letting previous guy back on...
Likely Trump will continue to be banned from Facebook, but just in case, it is worth speculating what would happen if he returns. His general laying-low these days is probably in hopes of getting a...
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