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ClearingTheFog Profile picture
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21 Oct, 7 tweets, 3 min read
“Twitter shared its own research today that showed its algorithms amplify right-leaning political content more than left-leaning.”

They claim they don’t know why it is happening, and promise to conduct an RCA.

protocol.com/twitter-algori…
I bet I know why.

Their algorithms promote people and content that are emotionally engaging, which means that this platform, by design, rewards those who excel at intentionally using language/content to emotionally manipulate others.
And they don’t really want to change that.

ICYMI, Jack Dorsey is friends with Ali Alexander.
Last year, “activist investor” Paul Singer’s company, Elliot Management, bought a $1 billion stake in Twitter.

Singer is a Republican mega donor.

He shook up the board, but made a deal to keep Jack Dorsey on as CEO.

theguardian.com/business/2020/…
The Paradise Papers revealed that, "in 2011, [Russian state-owned bank] VTB funded a $191m investment in Twitter. About the same time, Gazprom Investholding financed an [offshore corp that] funded a vehicle that held $1bn-worth of Facebook shares."

The following year (Feb, 2012):

"Yandex, the biggest search engine in Russia, has partnered with Twitter to add tweets to search results."

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey shared at least 17 tweets from a confirmed Russian troll account - linked to the Kremlin’s Internet Research Agency - between late-2016 and mid-2017, according to an analysis from The Wall Street Journal.

businessinsider.com/twitter-ceo-ja…

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More from @clearing_fog

ClearingTheFog Profile picture
20 Oct
Remember, all 6 Republican Justices ruled this summer that we aren’t allowed to ask who the donors are for Koch’s Americans For Prosperity Foundation.

The ACLU and NAACP actively supported that decision as well.
SCOTUS ruled that requiring these groups to regularly disclose their donors violates the donors’ “freedom of association.”

This is an evolution of the ‘money equals free speech’ dogma.

Read the full opinion here:
In an effort to investigate fraud, CA passed a law, requiring charitable nonprofits that solicit donations in the state to confidentially submit their IRS Schedule B forms to regulators, identifying donors who gave $5,000 or more.

Same thing the IRS mandates.
Read 6 tweets
ClearingTheFog Profile picture
19 Oct
Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska has been indicted.

Charged with concealing information and making false statements to federal authorities investigating 👉 illegal contributions made by a foreign national to his 2016 re-election campaign.👈

cnn.com/2021/10/19/pol…
The indictment alleges that Fortenberry repeatedly lied to and misled authorities during a federal investigation into illegal contributions to Fortenberry’s re-election campaign made by a foreign billionaire (Nigerian Gilbert Chagoury) in early 2016.

justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/u…
@braisincapital @arapaho415
Read 4 tweets
ClearingTheFog Profile picture
18 Oct
The whole point of the child tax credit is to decrease child poverty - which it can cut in half.

Including a work requirement is basically making sure that some kids always stay on an unlevel playing field. It isn’t the kids’ fault that their parents are out of work.
And a $60K income cap is so low that it would basically leave out middle class people all across the country.

Even in WV it would leave out a lot of people who could seriously benefit from it.
The point of this program isn’t to give away handouts.

The point is to make kids’ lives better - because kids who grow up in poverty rarely get an opportunity to meet their potential.

This will make the entire next generation - and thus our country - stronger and smarter.
Read 5 tweets
ClearingTheFog Profile picture
14 Oct
Metric Media runs a sprawling network of over 1200 websites that pass themselves off as “local news.”

This investigation confirms that they are connected to multiple right wing donors and dark money groups, including Donors Trust and the Tea Party.

cjr.org/tow_center_rep…
The Times also ran a story about this network in Oct, 2020.

This, along with Facebook, and in some cases app-based communication systems, is what fills the void when local newspapers die or are killed when after being bought out.

Rampant disinformation.

nytimes.com/2020/10/18/tec…
Another disinformation network that passes itself off as local “news” is the Star News Network.

Star News is explicitly MAGA, and is driven by none other than Steve Bannon.
Read 7 tweets
ClearingTheFog Profile picture
7 Oct
Remember when Ken Paxton and 17 RAGA AGs asked SCOTUS to try to throw out the results of state elections?

They worked with the CEO of ADF, an extremist anti-gay, anti-abortion religious group, to draft the lawsuit.

Michael P. Farris

h/t @rhonda_harbison
nytimes.com/2021/10/07/us/…
ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom), created decades ago, is a collection of attorneys organized to work cases that roll back civil rights. It is fundamentalists’ ‘answer’ to the ACLU.

Here is a sampling of extremist efforts that ADF supports or advocates.

cc @gal_suburban
The Texas vigilante abortion website was also routed through servers that host ADF traffic, along with traffic for Three Percenters.
Read 9 tweets
ClearingTheFog Profile picture
6 Oct
AT&T (who owns CNN) asked Robert Herring to create OAN, and funded it through contracts.

From a 2019 deposition:

“If Herring Networks, for instance, was to lose or not be renewed on DirecTV, the company would go out of business tomorrow.”

reuters.com/investigates/s…
OAN:

Funding from AT&T; content from the Moonie cult.
Not only has AT&T been propping up OAN, it appears they have been overpaying them as well.

And, despite everything that has happened and OAN’s clear contributions to the insurrection and pandemic disinfo, AT&T also appears to have renewed their contract again earlier this year.
Read 4 tweets

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