One thing that keeps me up at night right now is the possibility that Twitter’s potential death spiral will coincide with a major regional/national/global crisis. For better or worse, Twitter is a crucial disaster comms tool, and we don’t have a replacement for it. 1/
Twitter has been a vital source of information, networking, guidance, real-time updates, community mutual aid, & more during hurricanes, wildfires, wars, outbreaks, terrorist attacks, mass shootings...etc. It's not something that can be replaced by any existing platforms. 2/
If Twitter suddenly stops working or if huge swaths of the population can't access it during a crisis, the result will almost certainly be preventable suffering & death. Elon Musk needs to stop treating this like a playground, and start protecting it as vital infrastructure. 3/
This isn't just my opinion. There is an entire line of research exploring the use of Twitter for crisis- and disaster communication. For example, here's a great study about the significance of Twitter as a communications tool during Hurricane Harvey. 4/ sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
As this study notes, Twitter has been identified by some researchers as the "most useful social media tool" for communicating during disasters. Other platforms play a role, but Twitter is the central hub for journalists, govt, citizens, witnesses/survivors, & first responders. 5/
One of the reasons Twitter is such an important comms tool during disasters is that the nature of crises often makes it hard for traditional media to reach the public and the disaster scene. Twitter is often the first and only source of info about unfolding crises. 6/
The design of Twitter is also uniquely conducive for use during crises. Hashtags, for example, become crucial navigational tools to find relevant, up-to-date information and advisories in one central place without having to lose valuable time searching multiple websites. 7/
Effective use of Twitter by government agencies can also engender trust in those agencies during crises, which is critical when you need people to follow evacuation orders or other safety protocols. It helps keep people informed, engaged, and alive. 8/
Twitter can also play a crucial role in the healing process after crises. It gives people a space to build community resilience, which also helps us better prepare for future disasters. These are, quite literally, life-saving implications. 9/
My colleagues and I recently wrote/presented a paper on this very topic (I will share it when it's published), and one of our findings was that Twitter actually shapes the course and outcome of crises. It can literally mean the difference between life and death. 10/
I truly hope Elon Musk will see that he holds people's lives in his hands, and will start acting accordingly — because if he continues playing around with Twitter like a new toy, he *will* be responsible for deaths at some point. 11/
In the meantime, I hope you'll use this opportunity to plan ahead. Make an emergency communication plan for your family, your workplace, your neighbors, etc. Don't wait until it's too late.
Something that you have to understand about Russian interference is that it’s highly unlikely that they would actually try to manipulate votes or vote tallies. Why? Because they know they can achieve the same or even better outcomes by manipulating voters instead. 🧵
I wrote about this 5 years ago.
As I said then, changing the vote count in one election would yield limited returns. But convincing voters to doubt the legitimacy of election outcomes for the foreseeable future? That’s a return on investment.
There is a strange tendency to talk about Russian interference as if the impact must either be direct — i.e. changing vote totals — or nonexistent. But that’s not the reality of how influence and information operations work, which is through subtle & indirect effects.
If you’re genuinely surprised that Trump won, may I gently suggest that you reevaluate where you are getting your information from, and be honest with yourself about whether you are willing to listen to people who tell you things you don’t necessarily want to hear.
The information environment on the left is broken, too, just in different ways than on the right. Too many people choose who to follow and who to listen to based on who makes them feel good, not who tells them the truth. In fact, those who told the truth were often ostracized.
I know this because it happened to me. Over & over & over again. I could’ve just chosen to tell you comfortable lies, like many influencers do. It’s scandalously easy to go viral doing that. But unlike them, I wasn’t willing to light our country on fire for clicks & ad revenue.
A viral claim emerged from pro-Trump Twitter on Friday, alleging that locals in NC had assaulted a FEMA director. By Saturday, it was a top Google trend. But it never actually happened.
There were a lot of striking aspects of this story, but more than anything, this was among the clearest examples I’ve seen of how online storytelling can be used to motivate and guide offline violence through the reframing of political violence as a necessary act of survival.
The rumor first emerged on Friday, but really picked up steam later on Friday and into the early hours of Saturday AM, when it ranked among the top 10 Google searches. The initial tweet was retweeted 20,000+ times & got 100,000+ “likes” & 6.4 million views in the first 19 hours.
He did. Trump & his allies spent years weaponizing the narrative around antifa in order to preemptively justify using violence and force to crack down on anyone who opposed Trump — thus paving the way for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act on 1/6.
👉🏼
This went on for YEARS; I was one of very few people talking about it for a long, long time. It was in the works since at least 2017 (likely earlier) and it involved politicians, media, think tanks, govt officials, & more.
Trump and his allies were so determined to get antifascists to come out and fight on 1/6 (to cause enough chaos to justify a militarized crackdown) that there was even a plan to have right-wing extremists impersonate antifascists, infiltrate 1/6 protests, and incite violence.
I wrote about cognitive warfare and how the contrived panic over Haitian immigrants hijacked our algorithms, our brains, and our national discourse. weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/how-the-cont…
During the 2-hr-long presidential debate this week, abortion was the top political topic searched in 49 states. The only exception was Ohio, where immigration was the top-searched issue — a trend driven by searches for topics related to the false claims about Haitian immigrants.
But despite being the top search topic in 49 states, abortion wasn’t the top search topic overall. Immigration — specifically, a false story about Haitian immigrants in Ohio — displaced abortion as the top search topic overall for nearly the entire 2-hour time window.
This was always the inevitable endpoint of the wildly false claims about Haitian immigrants eating dogs & cats. As this person literally admits, it doesn’t matter to them if it’s factually true or not — it only matters that (to them) it *feels* like it *could* be true.
It’s REALLY easy to get people to spread absurd lies about immigrants (or anyone else) if those people already believe terrible things about immigrants *and* are politically/ideologically motivated to persuade others to believe terrible things about immigrants.
We see this all the time; it’s one of the main reasons that fact-checking, at least on its own, so often fails — because people don’t believe lies & rumors simply based on the facts presented, but rather based on their own prior beliefs, motives, identity, emotions, and more. P