New Twitter assignment. A claim is made here. Who is the source of it? What are their qualifications? Link to tweet is here. Bonus question: Can you find a better source for this comparison? Comments closed. To answer, tweet me @holden on Twitter. Continue reading

I’ve been looking at political culture on Pinterest. I pulled these images from my feed today. Apologies that there are so many from the right and none from the left — that’s just what came up today. Political culture on Pinterest tends towards the Republican side of things (I’m training another Pinterest account to feed Continue reading

There is currently unrest in Kenya over the Kenyan Supreme Court’s certification of results of a disputed election. A number of people have been killed in protests. There is some dispute around how many have died, but estimates range from five to eighteen. The police maintain that mobs in support of the opposition candidate have Continue reading

Originally sent on Nov 21, 2017 via Tinyletter. Your Autocracy Will Be Laundered Pizzagate: Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal. I’ve talked before about how most discussion of free speech and disinformation is stuck in a centralized model that ignores the current multi-agent process by which the fake is laundered into the real. This article Continue reading

For some reason Tiny Letter’s archive is not showing the latest newsletter, so I am putting it here for safe-keeping. You can read other previous newsletters here, and also sign up to receive them by email. Global Potemkin Village A new NATO Stratcom report on social media-based disinformation is out. I haven’t finished it, but Continue reading

The speed with which Pinterest radicalizes your feed with conspiracy-based disinfo is shocking. I speed up this video by 400% but the entire process takes less than 13 minutes I think. Here’s the final frame. I got here without taking a single explicit antivax action (e.g. I didn’t follow any antivax boards): Please watch the Continue reading

First published Nov. 10, 2017 at TinyLetter Free Speech Is Like Free Markets. Broken. A New York courtroom gave every detained immigrant a lawyer. The results were staggering. This piece from Vox is about the sixth amendment of the U.S. constitution (the right to a lawyer) but is a good lens for the first amendment as Continue reading