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1. How is The Daily Wire, the toxic right-wing site founded by pundit Ben Shapiro, more successful on Facebook than any other major publication?

It breaks the rules.

And Facebook is going to continue to let them do it.

popular.info/p/facebook-all…
2. A popular.info investigation found a clandestine network of 14 large Facebook pages that exclusively promote content from The Daily Wire

They promote same content, at the same time, w/the same text

Collectively they have 8 million+ fans

popular.info/p/facebook-all…
3. Facebook's rules explicitly prohibit "coordinated inauthentic behavior" which it defines as "groups of accounts and Pages working together to mislead people about who they are and what they’re doing."

That's exactly what's happening here

popular.info/p/facebook-all…
4. Facebook says when it finds "coordinated inauthentic behavior" it will "remove all inauthentic and authentic accounts, Pages and groups directly involved"

Facebook admitted that these pages are acting deceptively, but it will not take them down

popular.info/p/facebook-all…
5. In October 2018, Facebook identified a much smaller network of pages working together to promote content of interest to progressives.

Facebook made a big show about permanently banning all of these pages

popular.info/p/facebook-all…
6. I can't make Facebook enforce its own rules, but I can make sure people know how this $500 billion company operates.

At the moment, it's bending over backwards to appease the far right

If you value this work, please sign up for my newsletter ➡️ popular.info
7. Why is Facebook not enforcing an obvious violation of its rules?

Recall that Zuckerberg recently invited Shapiro to his house for dinner. Also check out my reporting about how the DC office makes sure that right-wing publication get special treatment

popular.info/p/the-republic…
8. It's hard to overstate how good The Daily Wire is at gaming Facebook. While a average NYT article received 1871 engagements in September, the average The Daily Wire article received 15283 engagements

popular.info/p/facebook-all…
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Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
UPDATE: Last week, I asked the Trump campaign for the winners of the 15 contests for meals w/Trump.

No response.

Yesterday, after I published my investigation, the campaign responded, claiming "people win the contests each time."

But offered no proof.

popular.info/p/the-trump-ca…
An important point is that the Trump campaign is LEGALLY OBLIGATED TO RELEASE THE NAMES OF THE WINNERS and a description of the specific prizes they won.

But they are still refusing.

If these meals occurred, the campaign's behavior is inexplicable.

popular.info/p/the-trump-ca…
I am continuing to seek this information from the Trump campaign, through legal channels mandated by state law, and the public.

If you believe this kind of accountability journalism is important, please sign up for my newsletter ➡️ popular.info
Read 5 tweets
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Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
1. The Trump campaign has held 15 contests since 2018 offering the chance to win breakfast, lunch, or dinner with President Trump.

An investigation by Popular Information did not uncover evidence that anyone has ever actually won

popular.info/p/the-trump-ca…
2. The last contest winner was supposed to have lunch a week ago in Chicago. The pool reporter with Trump that day, Washington Post reporter Anne Gearan, asked the campaign for any information about the winner. She didn't receive a response.

popular.info/p/the-trump-ca…
3. These kind of contests are a staple of a modern presidential campaign. Most campaigns are eager to show their candidate interacting with real people. Obama's dinners generated extensive coverage.

The Trump campaign has never released a name or a pic

popular.info/p/the-trump-ca…
Read 9 tweets
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Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
1. Axios announced this morning that it's #1 topic for the 2020 campaign will now be the manipulation of platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

That's been my focus on popular.info for the last year
2. I think Axios will have some conflicts covering this beat.

Axios is a Facebook "News Tab launch partner"

Axios content is sponsored by many large political advertisers on Facebook

This topic, in my view, requires complete independence
3. You don't need to get your news about Facebook from outlets with direct financial relationships with Facebook

If you want independent accountability journalism about Facebook and other tech giants in the lead up to 2020, sign up for my newsletter

➡️ popular.info
Read 3 tweets

Related threads

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Marilia Coutinho, Ph.D. , the #BaffledImmigrant
@mariliacout
1/ About the digital right-wing troll attack on liberal accounts today/tonight through the "Lib Slayer Operation" (I am purposefully avoiding their hashtag):

=> I have done the basic homework, blocked the list passed on to me but I investigated further
2/ All accounts are fairly small and troll-type. The content is shallow, ignorant, typical uneducated white nationalist anger. What does that mean?
=> horizontal, anarchic action
=> organizational fringe (folks that satelize extremist organizations but ...
3/ ... don't actually have hard ties to them. It's the American white nationalist MO: it's inefficient, but works by critical mass volume)
Read 13 tweets
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Alexander
@purplechrain
The @GOP still hasn’t even commented on @RepMoBrooks quoting Mein Kampf in Congress to attack Democrats using one of Hitler’s antisemitic conspiracies & *then* accusing a Holocaust Memorial Commission of being involved in said plot to undermine America because it criticized him.
The @GOP still hasn’t given us apologies from @GOPLeader and @tomemmer for literally claiming that Soros, Bloomberg & Steyer “bought” elections.
The @GOP still hasn’t apologized for members, including Trump, campaigning on Great Replacement conspiracies that Soros is funding an “invasion” of refugees to replace white Americans - the explicit motivation of the Tree of Life & Powys shul shootings.
Read 15 tweets
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A.R. Moxon (read pinned tweet)
@JuliusGoat
At this point every right-wing accusation functions mostly as a confession.
These shooters are terrorists whose manifestos mirror right-wing talking points exactly, and Ben Shapiro usually begs us to ignore their manifestos because they list him as a specific influence, but he’s quite willing to inspire the next mosque shooter by pointing at Omar.
Ben Shapiro behaves as though he thinks it’s possible to foment white supremacist violence against Muslims without also endangering Jews, which I would say impeaches his intelligence if I didn’t suspect he knows exactly what he’s doing and simply ldoesn’t care.
Read 5 tweets
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Henry Farrell
@henryfarrell
1. @ANewman_forward and I have a piece in the @FT, on #Facebook and privacy, building on our brand new book, Of Privacy and Power amzn.to/2TWwVWi. Short version - the reason why Facebook is pushing for privacy law goes back to @Snowden revelations. ft.com/stream/ec33ce8…
2. There's a new narrative about Facebook's embrace of #GDPR (@alexstamos gives one recent version of it) - that GDPR is good for companies like Facebook, because it is complex and easier for big companies to comply with than small upstart competitors. Not altogether wrong,
3. but not really right either. Facebook's ginger embrace of European style legislation is making lemonade out of lemons. Zuckerberg would surely have preferred a world with no privacy legislation, where companies were left to self regulate, and market mechanisms predominated.
Read 22 tweets
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Sarah Donaldson
@sarah_donaldson
#Facebook thread:
Ahead of Zuckerberg's Congress testimony, a quick revision guide.
All you need to know about Facebook (and why you should be concerned), brought to you by the Observer/Guardian's investigation into data and democracy...
Hard to believe it was less than a month ago that @carolecadwalla broke the story about GSR harvesting 50m+ Facebook profiles for @CamAnalytica to use in political campaigning:
Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica.. theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/…
Via the first major interview with @CamAnalytica whistleblower @chrisinsilico which explained Facebook had known about the leak for at least 18months and detailed Robert Mercer / Steve Bannon's central roles ‘I made Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/…
Read 26 tweets

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