The Q factor
For
people who thought QAnon existed mostly on the fringe of society, it might
have come as a surprise this week when one of the conspiracy theory’s
adherents essentially
locked down a seat in Congress.
Marjorie
Taylor Greene, now the GOP’s nominee for the 14th congressional district in
Georgia, is all but assured to win the seat in November, given that the
district is solidly Republican.
The
conspiracy theory posits that there is a deep-state element within the
federal government that is working against President Donald Trump, that
this element is running pedophilia and sex trafficking rings, among other
things, and that Trump is fighting those forces of evil.
QAnon
started in 2017 on the website 4chan but has since found a home on social
media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where its adherents use hashtags
and cryptic messages to communicate and bond with one another.
Now
those platforms are — belatedly — trying to get their arms around this
hydra-headed creature.
A
few weeks ago, Twitter removed thousands of accounts associated with QAnon,
saying their posts could “lead
to offline harm.”
Facebook
this week removed a group called Official Q/Qanon, which had nearly 200,000
members. The platform told
Reuters it took the action “after multiple individual postings were
removed for crossing the lines on bullying and harassment, hate speech, and
false information that could lead to harm.”
A
YouTube representative told Insider’s Rachel E. Greenspan recently that it
has taken
down “tens of thousands of videos and hundreds of channels” associated
with QAnon since June 2019. TikTok last month also blocked
some hashtags, according to the BBC.
We
can expect more of these actions. But even so, it’s still easy enough to
find QAnon content. NBC News reported this week that a Facebook internal
investigation found millions
of QAnon followers on the platform. And when their hashtags are
blocked, they find new ones, like #savethechildren, as BBC reporter Shayan
Sardarizadeh tweeted
on Monday.
In
fact, the followers of conspiracy theories use takedowns on social media
platforms as a tool to win new recruits and get even more attention by
claiming “censorship,” as we’ve noted
before, playing on the notion that some nefarious powers are trying to
hide “the truth.”
While
QAnon followers’ beliefs may be disconnected from reality, they have deeply
established themselves on some of the most popular social media platforms
in the world. And, now, it appears, at least one of them will be
establishing herself in the U.S. Capitol as well.
–
Susan Benkelman, API
. .
. technology
- Facebook removed
the “news exemption” for U.S. news publishers with “direct, meaningful
ties” to political organizations, Axios
reported.
- Brazilian
fact-checking organization Aos Fatos unveiled the public-facing
dashboard of its real-time
misinformation monitor Radar.
- Radar scans
various publications and uses an algorithm to detect language
patterns commonly used in misinformation. It then rates the quality
of that information based on Aos Fatos’ methodology.
. . . politics
- In
a press release Tuesday, Facebook
clarified that op-eds and editorials are eligible for
fact-checking by members of its Third-Party Fact-Checking
Program.
- The
company also announced two new fact-checking labels: ‘altered’ and
‘missing context.’
- Full disclosure: Facebook requires that its
fact-checking partners are verified signatories to the International
Fact-Checking Network’s Code
of Principles.
- A hoax about
Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon, burning a stack of
Bibles was created and disseminated by a “Kremlin-backed video news
agency,” The
New York Times reported
- The viral video
shared by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Donald Trump Jr. appears to be
part of a Russian disinformation campaign ahead of the 2020 election,
the Times said.
. . . science and
health
- Facebook this
week said it removed 7 million posts that contained misinformation
about COVID-19 between April and June from both the social networking
site and from Instagram. The removed content included fake cures and
other falsehoods about the virus, the company said.
- The data about
the takedowns were released in Facebook’s Community Standards Enforcement
Report, Reuters
reported, which it started in 2018 after criticism of its lack of
aggressive moderation of such content.
- Public health
officials in North Carolina had to contend with COVID-19
misinformation in a briefing with state lawmakers Tuesday, reported
WRAL.
- The state’s
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen
assured lawmakers that hospitals are not getting bonuses for
reporting increased numbers of cases.
- Officials also
corrected misinformation that most hospitalized COVID-19 patients
were primarily being treated for other diseases.
This
week Reuters’ fact-checking team confronted a claim
from Serbia that massive protests broke out in the capital of Belgrade
after the government supposedly mandated COVID-19 vaccinations for children
returning to school. The claim alleged millions protested the move, which
according to the claim was instituted by the government on Aug 3.
Neither
the protest nor the supposed government mandate ever took place. Reuters’
fact-checking team used a reverse image search to find that the photo
supporting the claim was taken from protests in early July against the
government’s response to the pandemic.
Reuters
did not find any announced COVID-19 vaccination requirement. However, a
Serbian official did recommend children get the flu vaccine to protect
against the seasonal outbreak.
What we liked: This fact-check confronts the real
threat of vaccine misinformation that will inevitably become more rampant
as the world gets closer to a widely distributed and tested vaccine. It
also shows us how easy it is for genuine public discontent about the
Serbian government’s handling of the pandemic can be tweaked to promote a
false narrative about vaccines.
–
Harrison Mantas, IFCN
- The network analysis firm
Graphika found that a number of fake Chinese accounts have posted
videos critical of President Trump, how he’s handled the coronavirus
and other issues involving China, The
Washington Post reported Wednesday.
- FactCheck.org offered a one-stop-shop
of all their fact-checks of California Sen. Kamala Harris during the
2020 campaign.
- The Associated
Press reported women’s groups are gearing up to fight both dis-
and misinformation about Harris, the presumptive Democratic vice
presidential nominee.
- Tommy
Shane wrote for FirstDraft about ways social media companies can
fight misinformation by adding public-facing analytics similar to Google
Trends to their platforms.
- WBUR’s
Robin Young on Here & Now spoke to MediaWise Teen
Fact-Checking Network editor Alexa Volland and teen fact-checker Thea
Barrett about their work helping young people fight
misinformation.
via
Susan
and Harrison
|
