I am glad there is all this attention to disinformation and welcome @BarackObama to the debate over platforms. I've spent much of the past five years doing work on this with colleagues.

Three take aways... 1. Public debate and policy-making on platforms and democracy is incoherent because few agree on what we should be solving for and why (see with @BridgetOBarrett @KateDommett): "The capricious relationship between technology and democracy"
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…

This article is just impossible to ignore. So why is it facile? A thread.

https://twitter.com/JimVandeHei/status/1516733672564658176

First, it is deeply ahistorical. Haidt's argument generally rests on the twin assumptions that a) in the past there was unity in knowledge and b) there was unity in community. These are two different claims, and both are wrong.

I can't with my timeline. The GOP has spent the last year orchestrating a disinformation *campaign* against CRT. It's a concerted *campaign,* as @alicetiara and I wrote in *June* about the attacks on @nhannahjones and 1619 slate.com/technology/202… @alicetiara @nhannahjones In other words, it's not simply a 'culture war,' not about epistemology or voters being confused about what is being taught in public schools, and not some simply made up thing. It is a coherent, concerted, and strategic attempt to delegitimate teaching America's racial history.

I'm super proud of this piece with @alicetiara about the denial of tenure for @nhannahjones. A quick thread about why we should see it as part of a disinformation campaign.

https://twitter.com/alicetiara/status/1400122015256911876

@alicetiara @nhannahjones First, conservatives link the work of @nhannahjones to critical race theory more broadly. Second, they claim that America's racial history is untrue, it's racist, and divisive.

So, given that @nick_clegg's post got a ton of attention, some thoughts. I spent the last three months reading everything I could find on 'polarization' and related literatures on things like 'democratic backsliding' for a book on platforms with @shannimcg. Thread. 1/?

https://twitter.com/daphnehk/status/1377665960622977027

First, there are many varieties of and debates about polarization. I am not going to wade into them all here - but I think what is relevant in the platform debate are two key dimensions: why should we be concerned with polarization, and what causes it?

RE: @Facebook/Australia. Some years ago @ananny and I wrote a paper developing a framework for how governments can support 'public domain journalism' and even determine quality journalism! danielkreiss.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/ananny… Thread. @ananny It was developed in the US context, but not limited to it, in essence reversing the mechanism of copyright to subsidize the creation of journalism voluntarily released to the public domain.

Here is where I think the focus is exceptionally too narrow on Facebook. Basically, amid a call for researching FB's role in January 6th, the authors' here are eliding Trump's, the Republican Party's, and the right-wing media ecosystem's role. Thread nytimes.com/2021/02/17/opi… Here is the core argument, Trump's speech was made dangerous b/c many users were "shunted into echo chambers by Facebook’s algorithms, and insulated from counterarguments by Facebook’s architecture."

Honored to be a part of this statement.

Our conclusion: While Facebook’s enforcement
actions are flawed, the grounds for removing Trump from the platform are clearly justified in the context of Facebook’s Community Standards.

Thread.

https://twitter.com/unc_citap/status/1359931288879251457

First, much public discourse focused on incitement, but we focus on 'voice' - a @Facebook value. Trump used his singularly powerful expression on Facebook systematically to deny the expressive rights of the American public at the ballot box.

I am teaching our core graduate communication theory course this fall @UNCHussman. I have taught it once before, and it is clear that our field is long overdue for a reckoning with race and ethnicity. THREAD As a field not only are we overwhelmingly white and from the global north, but questions of race, ethnicity, and power have been far from our analysis. Not in every corner of the field, but at the center of it; especially in political communication and journalism.

Don't let Zuckerberg peddle a 'free speech' line unchallenged. @Facebook DOES NOT have substantively different policies from @Twitter. It just doesn't enforce them. If Facebook was such a defender of free speech, why not let people speak anonymously or use pseudonyms? THREAD @Facebook @Twitter If Facebook was such a defender of speech, why have community standards at all? Why state that "We remove content that glorifies violence or celebrates the suffering or humiliation of others because it may create an environment that discourages participation."

Once again, @Facebook refuses to enforce its own, clearly spelled out policies - this time about election misinformation. Thread.

https://twitter.com/dseetharaman/status/1265788370413748224

@Facebook How any person could interpret Trump’s tweets as anything but a violation of FB's policy against “Misrepresentation of who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information and/or materials must be provided in order to vote” is beyond me.

We need a bipartisan discussion about a clear code of ethics for digital campaign staffers, political tech consultancies, and the broader parties, especially in the wake of this story (thread): nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/… First, these tactics - deception, depressing turnout, deliberate polarization - are not new.

There are a number of troubling points in this article. It's not about us 'losing innocence' - it's about @facebook's massive failure of leadership and organization from day one. Thread.

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First, it's about FB's deep-rooted failure to think through which commercial advertising is different from political advertising. It's about them standing up commercial revenues in the political space without any forethought.