The Disinformation Campaign That Has Effectively Destroyed The Ability To Combat Disinformation
from the disinfo-about-disinfo dept
We already covered the oral arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri case earlier this week, showing that the Supreme Court appears to be quite skeptical of the arguments by the states regarding the federal government “jawboning” to convince social media to take down certain content. For months now, we’ve been pointing out that the factual record in that case is a mess, driven by conspiracy theorists pushing nonsense. Unfortunately, a few Judges both believed the nonsense and then when they couldn’t rely on it to make their point had to misquote people, quote things out of context, or entirely fabricate parts of quotes in their rulings.
What became abundantly clear in the oral arguments Monday was that multiple justices, including Trump-appointed ones, found the factual record to be suspect and problematic. The crux of the case was effectively (1) the White House made a few public statements in which they were angry about how social media moderated, (2) the companies regularly met with government agencies about a variety of things (cybersecurity, COVID misinformation, election integrity), and (3) therefore we can assume that any content moderation that occurred on the platforms was at the government’s command.
It was a weak argument, and multiple justices pointed out how tenuous the connection was between the government and the actions of the companies.
Over the last few months, we’ve pointed out a few times how this and some related campaigns have been weaponized by proxies to try to stifle any effort to respond to (not block!) disinformation campaigns and election interference, including the misleading publication of “The Twitter Files,” by pretend journalists who didn’t understand what they were looking at (nor bother to speak to any experts who might have explained it to them).
The media is slowly, but surely, putting the underlying story together of how a bunch of nonsense peddlers concocted a full blown conspiracy theory full of disinformation, all targeted at destroying the ability of disinformation researchers to counter disinformation by attacking them as censors. Last September, the Washington Post had a big story on this:
Academics, universities and government agencies are overhauling or ending research programs designed to counter the spread of online misinformation amid a legal campaign from conservative politicians and activists who accuse them of colluding with tech companies to censor right-wing views.
The escalating campaign — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government — has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoodsbut also the quality of medical information online.
In November, NBC had a big story that went a bit further in highlighting how this effort had basically killed off perfectly reasonable information sharing (of the nature that Justices Kagan and Kavanaugh noted happen all the time in government).
The most recent setback camewhen the FBI put an indefinite hold on most briefings to social media companies about Russian, Iranian and Chinese influence campaigns. Employees at two U.S. tech companies who used to receive regular briefings from the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force told NBC News that it has been months since the bureau reached out.
And, just before the Murthy hearing, the NY Times put out a big piece tying together some of the loose ends about all this, and detailing the nature of the campaign. The whole effort was, in short, a made up conspiracy theory by a group of operatives seeking to kneecap any research into disinformation or how to counter it, perhaps recognizing how such efforts would harm Donald Trump. As the article notes, much of it seems to have been orchestrated by Trump advisor Stephen Miller:
The counteroffensive was led by former Trump aides and allies who had also pushed to overturn the 2020 election. They include Stephen Miller, the White House policy adviser; the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, both Republicans; and lawmakers in Congress like Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who since last year has led a House subcommittee to investigate what it calls “the weaponization of government.”
Those involved draw financial support from conservative donors who have backed groups that promoted lies about voting in 2020. They have worked alongside an eclectic cast of characters, including Elon Musk, the billionaire who bought Twitter and vowed to make it a bastion of free speech, and Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official who previously produced content for a social media account that trafficked in posts about “white ethnic displacement.” (More recently, Mr. Benz originated the false assertion that Taylor Swift was a “psychological operation” asset for the Pentagon.)
Benz is a bizarre character. As an anonymous troll online, he pushed blatantly bigoted nonsense about the “great replacement theory” and “white genocide.” Now he presents himself as a former State Department official and a cybersecurity expert. His name shows up repeatedly in all of this, including in efforts by Jim Jordan to attack disinformation research. The reality was that he was a low-level speechwriter in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who then helped Stephen Miller as a speechwriter, and only joined the State Department in November of 2020 after Trump lost the election.
It was only then that he suddenly remade himself as a “cyber expert,” despite having no real qualifications or experience in the space. And he continued to leverage that brief couple of months in the State Department to suggest he has some sort of deep knowledge or expertise of government censorship. The NY Times notes how Benz’s conspiracy theory nonsense (in which he’s either never actually understood, or deliberately misunderstands, the nature of disinformation research) became the fuel that powered both the Missouri case and Jim Jordan’s weaponization committee:
In late November 2020, Mr. Benz was abruptly moved to the State Department as a deputy assistant secretary for international communications and information policy. It is unclear precisely what he did in the role. Mr. Benz has since claimed that the job, which he held for less than two months, gave him his expertise in cyberpolicy.
Mr. Benz’s report gained national attention when a conservative website, Just the News, wrote about it in September 2022. Four days later, Mr. Schmitt’s office sent requests for records to the University of Washington and others demanding information about their contacts with the government.
Mr. Schmitt soon amended his lawsuit to include nearly five pages detailing Mr. Benz’s work and asserting a new, broader claim: Not only was the government exerting pressure on the platforms, but it was also effectively deputizing the private researchers “to evade First Amendment and other legal restrictions.”
Benz was also one of the originators of the bogus “22 million tweets” claims that completely tripped up Matt Taibbi (the number was how many tweets the Election Integrity Partnership reviewed as discussing the mis- and disinfo topics they covered after the election, and had nothing to do with how many tweets the EIP reported to Twitter: just a few thousand). As the NY Times details, Taibbi’s partner in the Twitter Files, Mike Shellenberger, credits Benz with helping him understand what he had “uncovered” with the Twitter Files:
In March 2023, Mr. Benz joined the fray. Both Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Benz participated in a live discussion on Twitter, which was co-hosted by Jennifer Lynn Lawrence, an organizer of the Trump rally that preceded the riot on Jan. 6.
As Mr. Taibbi described his work, Mr. Benz jumped in: “I believe I have all of the missing pieces of the puzzle.”
There was a far broader “scale of censorship the world has never experienced before,” he told Mr. Taibbi, who made plans to follow up.
Later, Mr. Shellenberger said that connecting with Mr. Benz had led to “a big aha moment.”
“The clouds parted, and the sunlight burst through the sky,” he said on a podcast. “It’s like, oh, my gosh, this guy is way, way farther down the rabbit hole than we even knew the rabbit hole went.”
As we’ve detailed, Taibbi and Shellenberger never seemed to understand what they were looking at and flailed around embarrassingly for months. They needed help from someone who actually understood stuff to pull together the pieces (which would have shown the mostly boring, ho-hum nature of what Twitter’s trust & safety team was actually doing). Instead, they got suckered in by a nonsense-peddling conspiracy theorist who told a story that played right into the confirmation bias they needed to convince themselves that they had been gifted a huge story of government censorship (which is just not supported by any of the evidence).
The Times report also suggests that Jim Jordan’s “Weaponization” subcommittee appears to have leaked private deposition information to Stephen Miller to help him file even more sketchy lawsuits.
Mr. Miller followed with his own federal lawsuit on behalf of private plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden, filing with D. John Sauer, the former solicitor general of Missouri who had led that case. (More recently, Mr. Sauer has represented Mr. Trump at the Supreme Court.)
Democrats in the House and legal experts questioned the collaboration as potentially unethical. Lawyers involved in the case have claimed that the subcommittee leaked selective parts of interviews conducted behind closed doors to America First Legal for use in its private lawsuits.
An amicus brief filed by the committee misrepresented facts and omitted evidence in ways that may have violated the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York wrote in a 46-page letter to Mr. Jordan.
However, all of this adds up to a pretty straightforward path: a bunch of Trumpist operatives in the form of Stephen Miller, Jim Jordan, Mike Benz and some others have plotted out a nonsense conspiracy theory — either deliberately or by simply misunderstanding what they were looking at — to present an entirely fictional story of a “censorship industrial complex,” and the only real purpose of this effort is to kneecap researchers and experts in disinformation from studying how disinformation flows and how to best counter it.
The organizations involved in the Election Integrity Partnership faced an avalanche of requests and, if they balked, subpoenas for any emails, text messages or other information involving the government or social media companies dating to 2015.
Complying consumed time and money. The threat of legal action dried up funding from donors — which had included philanthropies, corporations and the government — and struck fear in researchers worried about facing legal action and political threats online for the work.
“You had a lot of organizations doing this research,” a senior analyst at one of them said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of fear of legal retribution. “Now, there are none.”
Having watched all of this play out over the past two years, and feeling like I was yelling into the wind about it (especially as someone who has actually spent years calling out actual attempts by the government to censor content), it was at least comforting to see multiple Justices (mainly Kavanaugh, Barrett, Sotomayor and Kagan) see through all of this and recognize the emptiness at the heart of the Murthy lawsuit, which almost entirely consists of sand being deliberately thrown around by a bunch of bullshit peddlers.
Filed Under: cisa, disinformation, disinformation research, eip, jim jordan, mike benz, murthy v. missouri, research, stephen miller
Comments on “The Disinformation Campaign That Has Effectively Destroyed The Ability To Combat Disinformation”
"The Great Replacement Theory..."
Yet another point of cognitive dissonance among White Supremacist religious conservatives. If you’re worried about low-income people of color “replacing” middle-class white people, you should be promoting free abortions. Pro-life laws disproportionately impact the poor who don’t have the resources to travel for services.
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Forced-birth laws hurt women. Republicans will never go along with not hurting women.
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Actually, they mainly hurt underprivileged/minority women, and they give the upper class a pool of babies that can be adopted.
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FTFY. Our prison-industrial complex and the conditions to feed it were intentionally created in order to retain slavery while complying with the 13th Amendment.
Re: USA birth death rate
Its very interesting that the USA Is ranked Higher in Mother and Baby Birth death rates then 15-19 Other countries.
And those ABOVE THE USA, is a very interesting list to consider when this is debated.
So they’ll get overturned at the Supreme Court, but, in the meantime, the damage has been done.
How do we put Humpty Dumpty together again?
Much like bacterial infections liars do not like a healthy immune system
Balderdash, I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence that the political party that makes use of copious amounts of lies and disinformation(because the truth doesn’t support their claims/beliefs) in their campaigns and daily life were deeply involved in pushing the idea that those that study how best to spot and counter disinformation are enemies and must be stopped and/or silenced.
I mean really, what could they possibly have to gain?
Re: Dont know if you have seen this
That Corps love to create Agencies and companies, that MAKE DATA, CREATE Falsehoods, Even make something BAD happen, so they can Quote it. REALLY.
And the political parties have done the same BS. Look at the adverts, and WHO created them. If they are Anti demo/rep. Those companies Disappear as fast as the advert is posted. So they DONT have to answer questions.
THEY DO KNOW THE TRICKS. They have been practicing for a Long time.
There WERE laws/regulations PAST, and then SMASHED that would cover these practices.
But, even NOW Adverts arnt Looked at real hard. The Corps that broadcast these on TV/Radio/Internet, DONT CARE. And dont look up and verify people, companies or BUSINESS LICENSE’S.
It dont take much to pay off the restaurant inspector.
Well the “conservatives” have managed to have their cake & eat it to.
If anyone calls out a lie, they are attacking only because they are a conservative. The discussion then is focused on the “attacks” silencing conservatives. (If only)
These poor members of Congress totally unable to speak online or in the media after they have been silenced, and they go on at great length how these attacks mean that we can’t hear anything they have to say.
Today another man who protested books claiming it was akin to handing children to predators was arrested for long term child sex abuses. But they only ever threaten librarians & keep talking about how even seeing a book might trans the kid and make them demand a litterbox at school.
When we can no longer call out a bald faced lie, for fear of being physically attacked society has lost.
But hey as long as the “conservatives” think they are winning, they don’t care about the costs.
Women nearly dying from doomed pregnancies, NBD
Children raped & denied termination, lets sue the dr & remind people that becoming a mom could be gods plan and good for the child
Immigration!! Its all about replacing us and it is all their fault, because we ignore when our side was in charge they didn’t do anything to address the problem & all immigrants are bad because of the actions of a few (but never ever apply this to white folk).
Children will go hungry this summer b/c of a belief that no children are actually hungry in this nation it is just bad budgeting and if they cared about their kids they would find a way!
Alternative Facts were not called out for a very long time, created a bodycount that shouldn’t have gotten that high, and people believe insane things because the pushback came much to late & can just be dismissed.
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Whenever anyone else makes such a claim, you demand evidence, which makes you a hypocrite for not providing any.
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I guess you missed the news about Ryan Utterback then, perhaps you should get your news from more varied sources?
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Yeah, you’re right. I have 72 hours in my day, only four of which are required for sleeping, eating, and going to the toilet. There really is no excuse on my part. Educate yourself, shithead.
Remember that “forensicator” fraud who similarly pretended to be a security expert, who fooled Republicans (naturally) into falling for Russian disinformation that their hack of the DNC’s emails was an inside job?
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Bloggers like the site owner are no longer trusted by sophisticated information consumers because their partisanship and lies in support of regime narratives have been exposed.
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ok clown troll
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And here we can see the unmitigated delusion required to maintain a right-wing point of view.
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Bratty Matty isn’t exactly sophisticated, but okay.
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He’s more the asshole who keeps committing crimes even after the police explicitly have arrested him for doing so and have told him repeatedly not to repeat those actions.
Re: Son people can see you
You look like you are doing the verbal equivalent of throwing yourself in front of stopped cars in a pathetic bid for an insurance scam.
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FTFY. YW.
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No, YOU'RE disinformation!! (lol, seriously)
Congrats, you pointed out why the term is meaningless, and *the government is in no way supposed to be determining what is “misformation” anyway. If they want to argue their case about what is true? (Arguably propaganda) Sure, have at it. But they absolutely cannot be telling others to censor content. (No, not even as a “suggestion”)
It was always true and accurate, you’ve just been lying about it for a year and a half, MM.
They are real journalists, MM, always have been. With a HELL of a lot more qualifications than you have ever had.
This is reminding me of the quote by Justice Jackson, yesterday, that frankly has everyone laughing at her:
Yes, that is exactly the point, actually
I always wonder if you’re just an idiot or lying on purpose, and articles like this keeps on making me think the latter.
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shhhhh bratty matty the adults are talking
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Can you point to where in the article anyone said the government should be “determining what is misinformation”? However, there are times when they have useful information, such as about foreign campaigns, that are worth sharing. Yet as it is now, they cannot do so. How does that make sense?
Can you point to where Mike suggested that the government should be telling others to censor? Because I’ve seen him say the opposite, so you seem to be lying.
That’s the same quote Mike made fun of yesterday.
Even when you agree with him you act like you’re disagreeing with him, because you’re nothing but a troll.
>
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this is matt that always loses a argument got trolled by others 3 times and when loses a argument he deflects or trys to strawman or resort to low grade insults that’s matt in a nutshell
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Everyone’s opinion of you.
i have been extrajudicially censored multiple times by hackers, so there is a censorship indusyrial complex. Twitter had also censoed me on a few occasions for tweets that did not violate any policy at all. If a reader doesn’t like what someone is tweeting they can report it, even if what the tweet says is true and does not viokate twitter community standards.
The Republicans know that they look ridiculous claiming to be social conservatives and Christian conservatives that have elected Donald Trump who does not act like a Christian or social conservative in the slightest way. Donald Trump is the furthest thing away from a Christian conservative or social consrvative as anyone could possibly be. On wife number 3 with a history of marital infidelity and sexual assault. Trump is a flashy mob style type that has no principles at all, and no humility at all, now wanting to sue Stephanopolous for calling him a rapist. It is outrageous that any Christian or consrvative would vote for Trump. Trump violates every Christian and conservative principle as a lifestyle without any remorse, and even brags about it like he did with his grab em by the pussy claim and saying that he could stand on fifth avenue and shoot someone and still get elected.
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The headlines should read
Christian Conservatives Elect the Anti-Crist to Lead America.
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Anti-Christ a hacker stole my h
The US is so screwed. Biden is utterly bad but Trump? At the very least Biden doesn’t want to give up US influence so eagerly. It’ll be a rough landing. Conservatives will, as always are, be responsible for fucking up the world. Again. Because it’s not a movement in the US alone.
I’m astonished how democrats are Hell bent on going with Biden, effectively giving the victory to the orange moron.
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“At the very least Biden doesn’t want to give up US influence so eagerly”
Are you being serious?
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So you don’t understand the concept of soft power then?
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Sure. Make US drive battery operated cars while leaving China in control of battery production.
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Ohhh, the US is so technologically backwards they have to buy all their batteries from their more technologically advanced rival China…
In other news, an analysis by Environmental Defense Fund finds that enough U.S. battery production capacity has already been announced to supply all the electric vehicles – both cars and trucks – expected to be sold in 2030.
If you actually bothered to keep up with what is happening instead of relying on out of date talking points from special interest groups that don’t like EV’s or Biden, you would know that in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 there’s a clause called Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit which grants 10 years worth of tax credits to companies manufacturing batteries in the US. There are other incentives in it too, but instead of me telling you – why not go read it for yourself?
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Much like for batteries, too cold for me to work today.
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Not to mention, that won’t be a hard order to fill if sales continue as they are.
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About “having to go with Biden” in 2024…
Biden is the Best, most experienced politician we have had in the US in DECADES, if not a century! I don’t care that he doesn’t always run up stairways well. I don’t care that he gets tongue-tied now and then or stutters like I did as a kid, and comes off sometimes sounding like a fool for a moment. When I hire a President, it’s for his judgment and political savvy, and thats where Joe Biden is among the best of the best. He doesn’t get suckered by flattery, either, like the orange fake does. He has been tested and tested in many responsible positions in our government. He always seeks for consensus, but will go it alone when those around him are lacking in courage. AND in the middle chaotic Washington politics he still finds time to show compassion for people he finds hurting. Don’t fall for Trump’s self-serving lies and horseshit! I saw Biden out riding a BICYCLE when he was 77 years old! For all I know he may be still riding today. You’re being CONNED by RepubliCONS. Be smarter than that.