Thread by @davekarpf

I could assign this screenshot as the final exam assignment in a disinformation class.

The Bad Actor here isn’t the Babylon Bee (they’re just unfunny). And it isn’t Twitter either.

For those who don’t know the Babylon Bee is the latest conservative attempt to do comedy.

It’s what The Onion would be if the Onion wore polo shirts with popped collars and shouted “DO YOU KNOW WHO MY FATHER IS?” at random people on the street.

So the article itself is literally fake news.

It comes from a satire outlet. It’s bad satire, but that’s just because the writers are untalented.

The problem is that the House GOP account quote-retweets the article with a credulous comment. That makes it seem like an actual news story.

Now it is effectively disinfo. Its a story meant to foster distrust of the government, based on a wholesale fabrication.

The House GOP account will wink and insist they were just kidding. (“Can’t you take a JOKE?!?”)

And there’s a reading of this in which, sure, they’re just going along with the bit.

But we also know full well that most readers won’t notice or recognize the sourcing.

So the House GOP gets to increase distrust of Biden, receive applause from conservatives, and anger some liberals.

It’s a triple-win. All rewards, no penalties.

And that promotes the belief among Republican Party operatives that adhering to truth is a sucker’s bet.

So the country becomes a bit-less-governable (you can’t run a two party system with tons of veto points when one of the parties treats outright lying as a good-days-work).

And it isn’t Twitter’s fault. It’s the House GOP’s fault.

BUT! (…)

Twitter, as the platform that shapes the communication incentives, is one of the few actors with the agency to do something about this.

Basically we can wishcast a better-informed public, or pray for more responsible elites, or ask Twitter to change the incentive structure.

Ultimately, we’re gonna need better-behaved elites. The House GOP has plenty of agency, and they should be mocked and shamed for this everyday bullshit.

But the platforms also built this gamified communication system, so they have an ethical responsibility as well.

That’s basically what we’re talking about when we talk about content moderation in 2022.

Initiatives like Twitter’s “healthy conversations” effort are designed to add “friction” into patterns of communication that unintentionally foster and reward trashy behavior.

Trashy people hate this.

Executives at the platforms also don’t like it, because it’s HARD work, everyone will yell at them when they make mistakes, and they’re bound to piss off powerful actors.

And, really, there’s no easy fix.

You don’t ban the satire site for being unfunny.

You don’t flag the satire as disinfo. (It isn’t… at least, not exactly.

Do you penalize the official Republican Party org account for what they will insist was a joke? (That sounds bad.)

So you end up with big, complicated initiatives as the only way to improve things.

Or you throw up your hands, treat the whole thing as somebody else’s problem, and watch everything turn slowly more toxic by design.

The core problem is shitty elites behaving shittily b/c they know they’ll be rewarded for it.

The secondary problem is the reward structure, which is harder to fix but also more immediately fixable.

This stuff is complicated, and it’ll get worse with Elon deciding it’s not.

This is all just a riff on an essay I wrote in 2019 for the SSRC’s MediaWell project, btw.

If you want the more thorough, non-tweetstorm version, you can find it here.

mediawell.ssrc.org/expert-reflect…