This week…
It is the 52nd week of The Starting Block, which means that we will turn one next week! I started this newsletter to overcome my writer’s block as I wrote my book manuscript, and I have not stopped writing since – even if it’s just 52 words a day. Leading up to our first anniversary:
I have submitted my final report for the Democracy Discourse Series;
I am finishing up my manuscript for that project;
I have updated my CV to start job hunting; and,
I am working on the interview series (text and audio) for this newsletter, which will debut next week, as we enter the second year of The Starting Block!
Thank you to everyone who has stuck around, for writing to me with your feedback and for telling others about the newsletter. If you think someone you know will enjoy weekly interviews with OSINT specialists, political satirists, academics and documentary filmmakers about misinformation and the media, share this newsletter with them:
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Twitter takes down tweets criticising India’s handling of pandemic
Aroon Deep for MediaNama:
Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised India’s handling of the second surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. These tweets, which are now inaccessible to Indian users of the social media website, include posts by Revanth Reddy, a sitting Member of Parliament; Moloy Ghatak, a West Bengal state minister; actor Vineet Kumar Singh; and two filmmakers, Vinod Kapri and Avinash Das.
MediaNama has seen public disclosures of the orders made available by Twitter to the Lumen Database. Lumen Database receives and publishes disclosures from private entities, including social media companies, of legal takedown notices they get from governments and private entities all over the world.
In a statement to Reuters, Twitter says that if the content “is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of the Twitter Rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only.”
“Newsworthiness,” Trump, and the Facebook Oversight Board
Renee DiResta and Matt DeButts for CJR:
The “newsworthiness” exception provided Facebook with cover to allow content that would otherwise violate its community standards. In this scenario, to be newsworthy meant that people wanted to see something; if people wanted to see it, then the content was newsworthy—the logic was circular. Virality proved its own justification, even as Facebook’s algorithms determined what people saw in the first place.
Because bigly accounts create yuge engagement, and thus, profit for Facebook.
Recommended Reading: Amazon’s algorithms, conspiracy theories and extremist literature
Elise Thomas, an OSINT analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, reports on Amazon’s recommendation algorithms that actively drive users towards conspiracy theories, disinformation and extremist books. She adds:
Whether or not these books should be on Amazon’s platform at all is a complex and challenging question. Banning books is a contentious issue, and innately and reasonably stirs fears of censorship. Authoritarian regimes throughout history have themselves relied on the banning of books to protect their causes and power structures.
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading about what NFT is on Tumblr, and somehow it makes sense.
I’m watching a lawyer and a doctor react to medical malpractice portrayed on Grey's Anatomy. One of my favourite series to work on when I was the producer of a health programme was the medico-legal segments, so this brought back some sweet memories:
I’m listening to how AI finds its voice on In Machine We Trust:
Chart of the week
Debunking flowchart from The Debunking Handbook 2020 by Stephan Lewandowsky et al. at the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication: