The 88th Block: How many turning points to expect?
All the twists and turns in the disinformation economy... disinfonomy?
This week…
I am still in the process of moving, and with that process, I am also making. Making small little things, like a customized closet or a wall-mounted shelving system. As an Arduino hobbyist, sometimes, as I am looking at all those parts, I think about how I would tech up these installations if only I have the patience to run some wires and codes. All the Arduino projects I managed to complete have been thanks to hours of trawling the Internet to copy, paste, and modify sketches from Github. I guess it’s kind of how I format this weekly newsletter, too, huh?
I hope one day to clean up a code I combined from three separate ones I found on the Internet and upload that to Github so someone like me somewhere else in the world at a different time in the future would benefit from it.
But for now, here’s a selection of top stories on my radar (this week, I focus on some of the more off-beat ones, although, are we even surprised by the bizarre anymore?) a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
Turning Point quietly building the next generation of conservative influencers
Makena Kelly for The Verge:
For nearly a decade, Turning Point USA has served as a new kind of College Republican club, setting up a network of campus organizations through its chapter program. But in recent years, the organization has moved beyond on-campus organizing to something more ambitious, launching podcasts and online shows with an eye towards fostering young Republican influencers online.
Increasingly, those influencers are Turning Point’s focus — finding ways to promote them, popularize them, and integrate them into the broader world of conservative media and politics. Instead of the campus, Turning Point is now focused on the politics of Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube and using them to reach a new generation of voters. With platforms increasingly willing to ban conservative voices who violate platform rules, it’s a difficult task and an urgent one for conservatives who fear they’re losing their sway with younger voters.
How anime became a weapon for rival terror groups on Facebook
Moustafa Ayad for Daily Beast:
The Soldiers of the Righteous Caliphate group was a microcosm of vigilante digital detractors at play. It was the digital equivalent of a wrestling cage match between cyberarmies of extremist group supporters targeting the Islamic State, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the Taliban.
The battlefields of these cyberarmies and the conflict they spurred in weaponized group posts and comment sections represents one of the lesser known moderation challenges for Facebook.
Their weapons of choice: anime porn and numbered kama sutra positions. Put simply, when terrorist supporters go violent on Facebook, their enemies tend to go pornographic.
Tek Fog: An app with BJP footprints for cyber troops to automate hate, manipulate trends
Ayushman Kaul and Devesh Kumar for The Wire:
The screencasts and screenshots of Tek Fog provided by the source highlighted the various features of the app and helped the team gain further insight into the operational structure of the network of cyber troops using it on a daily basis to manipulate public discourse, harass and intimidate independent voices, and perpetuate a partisan information environment in India.
One of the primary functions of the app is to hijack the ‘trending’ section of Twitter and ‘trend’ on Facebook. This process uses the app’s in-built automation features to ‘auto-retweet’ or ‘auto-share’ the tweets and posts of individuals or groups and spam existing hashtags by accounts controlled by the app operatives.
What an absolute ride this story is. If you only have time for one long-read this week, make it this.
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading a paper by Michael Hameleers et al. on the effects of different types of COVID-19 misinformation and the effectiveness of corrective information in crisis times.
I’m watching Mina Le’s video essay on teeth as a fashion statement.
I’m moving.
Chart of the week
From Pew Research Center’s survey of what people around the world like and dislike about the US: