Tracking Viral Misinformation
March 26, 2021, 8:49 a.m. ETMarch 26, 2021, 8:49 a.m. ET
Every day, Times reporters will chronicle and debunk false and misleading information that is going viral online.
March 4, 2021, 4:38 p.m. ETMarch 4, 2021, 4:38 p.m. ET
QAnon, the right-wing conspiracy theory community, had another bad day on Thursday.
Following the letdown of Jan. 20 when, contrary to QAnon belief, former President Donald J. Trump did not declare martial law, announce mass arrests of satanic pedophiles and stop President Biden from taking office some QAnon believers revised their predictions.
They told themselves that “the storm” the day of reckoning, in QAnon lore, when the global cabal would be brought to justice would take place on March 4. That is the day that U.S. presidents were inaugurated until 1933, when the 20th Amendment was ratified and the date was moved to January. Some QAnon believers thought that it would be the day that Mr. Trump would make a tri
The Movement, the Party, and the President
The Republicans are cracking up. Can Democratic unity hold? And will the Biden administration be an ally of long-term organizing?
In 2020, despite down-ballot losses, the existential need to defeat Donald Trump produced more collaboration and less infighting than the Democratic coalition has seen in a long time. Progressives, notably hostile to Hillary Clinton in 2016, mustered enthusiasm for an ideologically similar Joe Biden. And Biden, having won the nomination with the weakest field operation of any modern candidate, needed to rely on the progressive ground game. His victory was built on a profusion of organizing with a scale, breadth, and diversity unlike any seen since the 1960s.
Nancy Pelosi Will Become President If Trump Adviser s Plan To Delay Inauguration Is Successful, Experts Warn
An adviser to President Donald Trump has raised the possibility of delaying Joe Biden s inauguration to investigate the unfounded claims of voter fraud, but experts have pointed out that this would put House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in line to become the acting president.
In an appearance on Fox News, trade adviser Peter Navarro suggested that Biden s January 20 swearing-in could be delayed as the allegations of massive election fraud are further investigated. I would not be surprised to see a special counsel on this, Navarro told host Jeanine Pirro (via
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David Bozell, the son of MRC founder and president Brent Bozell, called me the other day to bring my attention to a
USA Today“fact check” that blocks a meme on the Facebook page of their group For America. It’s a humorous CNN-mocking meme of only 15 words:
2016 Media: Russia stole the election
2020 Media: Our elections are literally impossible to steal.
For America’s added Facebook message was simple: “The media are a virus.” Any conservative critic of CNN gets the joke. For years, journalists aerobically implied that Donald Trump was involved in a conspiracy with the Russians to get himself elected. And now, journalists have hyped that the government s experts insisted after Joe Biden won that this was the most secure election in American history.
Facebook reverses postelection algorithm changes that boosted news from authoritative sources.
Dec. 16, 2020, 8:17 p.m. ETDec. 16, 2020, 8:17 p.m. ET
Facebook confirmed that it has in the past few days rolled back a change that lifted news from authoritative outlets over hyperpartisan sources after November’s election, signaling a return to normalcy for the social network.
The change involved boosting the weight that Facebook’s news feed algorithm assigned to an internal publisher quality score known as “news ecosystem quality,” or N.E.Q. It was implemented several days after the election as part of Facebook’s emergency “break glass” plan to combat misinformation during the critical postelection period, while votes were still being counted.