It’s a day of reckoning today for #Infowars#ConspiracyTheorist#AlexJones, & a long-awaited culmination for the #SandyHook families who sued Jones for #defamation. A federal bankruptcy judge in Texas has decided that Jones must sell off his personal assets through a Chpt 7 liquidation in order to pay families nearly $1.5B in #damages for spreading #lies that the 2012 #SchoolShooting never happened.
Just 3 staffers remain at the Observatory, who will either leave or find roles at #Stanford’s #Cyber#Policy Center, which is absorbing what remains of the program, acc/to 8 people familiar w/the developments.
The #ElectionIntegrity Partnership, a prominent consortium run by the Observatory & a University of Washington team to identify #ViralFalsehoods about #election procedures & outcomes in real time, has updated its webpage to say its work has concluded. #law#CyberSecurity#disinformation
It follows Harvard’s dismissal of #misinformation expert #JoanDonovan. A Dec whistleblower complaint alleged she used the university’s close & lucrative ties w/ #Facebook parent #Meta led the university to clamp down on her work, which was highly critical of the #socialmedia giant’s practices.
“The #Stanford#Internet Observatory has played a critical role in understanding a range of #digital harms,” said Kate Starbird, who led the University of Washington’s work on the Partnership & continues to publish on #election#misinformation.
Starbird said that while most #academic studies of #online#manipulation look backward from much later, the Observatory’s “rapid analysis” helped people around the world understand what they were seeing on #platforms as it happened.
Brown University professor Claire Wardle said the #Internet Observatory had created innovative methodology & trained the next generation of #disinformation experts.
“Closing down a lab like this would always be a huge loss, but doing so now, during a year of #global#elections, makes absolutely no sense … We need universities to use their resources & standing in the community to stand up to criticism & headlines,” said Wardle, who led #research at anti- #misinformation nonprofit First Draft.
#Stanford University spox Dee Mostofi said in a statement that much of the Observatory work was continuing under new leadership….
“Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including #lawsuits & #congressional investigations, that chill #freedom of #inquiry & undermine legitimate & much needed #academic#research — both at Stanford & across #academia,” Mostofi added.
#GymJordan has demanded reams of documents from #Stanford, including RECORDS OF STUDENTS discussing #socialmedia posts as they volunteered to help the #Internet Observatory, & Stamos testified before the #House#Judiciary Cmte for 8 hrs. #Trump adviser #StephenMiller’s #law firm filed a #FirstAmendment lawsuit in May 2023 against the Observatory, Stamos, DiResta & others, which is still pending.
In a joint stmnt, Stamos & DiResta said their work involved much more than #elections, & that they had been unfairly maligned.
“The politically motivated attacks against our #research on elections & #vaccines have no merit, & the attempts by #partisan#House cmte chairs to suppress #FirstAmendment protected research are a quintessential example of the #WeaponizationOfGovernment.”
“We are thankful to #Stanford for defending our work, including in front of the US #SupremeCourt, & are confident that the #judicial system will eventually act to protect our speech & the speech of other #academics.”
Stamos told associates he stepped back from leading the Observatory last year in part because the #political pressure had taken a toll. Stamos had raised most of the money for the project, & the remaining faculty have not been able to replicate his success, as many #philanthropic groups shift their focus on #ArtificialIntelligence & other, fresher topics.
The Observatory’s non-election work has included developing #curriculum for #teaching#college students about how to handle #trust & #safety issues on #socialmedia platforms & launching the 1st peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the field. It has also investigated rings publishing #child#SexualExploitation material #online & flaws in the US system for reporting it, helping to prepare #platforms to handle an influx of computer-generated material.
“We hope that #Stanford is willing to support the remainder of the SIO team & serve as a safe home for future #research into how the #internet is used to cause harm against individuals & our #democracy,” Stamos & DiResta said in the stmnt.
"…you can see at the 4 sec mark, 8/10 world leaders, incl Biden are looking towards the man on the right packing the parachute…Biden began saying something to him as the others had their attn shifted in the other direction….Once again, focusing on an edited 30-sec clip doesn't tell a full story. Stop being disingenuous,” Brian Krassenstein wrote.
#RNC’s #SocialMedia regularly churns out misleading clips of President #Biden intended to show that he is too old
NY Post headline <2hrs later:“What is Biden doing?”
NY Post front pg June 14:“Meander in Chief: Biden embarrasses US w/confused wanderings at world conference”
This past week, the #RNC feed has misleadingly called attention to 2 video clips of #Biden. One was so distorted that it resulted in a “community note” on the X platform calling out its dishonesty. But the RNC’s dismal track record has not stopped right-leaning outfits from echoing the RNC’s framing & reinforcing its narrative that Biden has lost a step.
An X community note was added to the video clip, saying: “Biden didn’t ‘wander off’. After viewing a skydiving demo with the other G-7 leaders, #Biden stepped aside to speak with one of the other skydivers who is kneeling on the ground packing away his chute. The video in the above post has been digitally altered to remove the skydiver.”
A few hours later, for undisclosed reasons, the X ‘community note’ was changed to simply say “the video was cropped,” w/a link to a 14-minute clip on the YouTube channel of #SinclairBroadcasting, another #conservative outlet. The new note does little to combat the framing of the post: “President Biden appeared to wander off at the G-7 summit in Italy, with officials needing to pull him back to focus.”
So this is making the rounds on #Shitter, trying to paint democracy as the cause of fascism. Does anyone know the source and origin of this clip or who the speaker is? Dan somebody?
#LocalNews channels across the country used a nearly identical script to push coverage of a controversial @WSJ article questioning President Joe #Biden’s mental fitness.
Here is the supercut by #PopularInformation@juddlegum] in 2 parts. It gets old fast, remarkably it’s a full 6 minutes of #LocalNews anchors across the country saying the same thing.