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Robby Soave Profile picture
Robby Soave
@robbysoave
@reason senior editor. @RisingTheHill host of Rising. "Sought-after player in Beltway's D&D circles" "noted scooter anthropologist" "baby Ryan Seacrest"
27 subscribers
Jun 9, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Scoop: I found some extremely curious counting in the Southern Poverty Law Center's latest report on hate groups, which now includes the conservative org Moms for Liberty. But the issues go way beyond that one group. THREAD 1/x For the SPLC, Moms for Liberty doesn't count as one hate group. It counts as dozens and dozens of hate groups. Each chapter is listed separately. By itself, this is leading to massive hate group inflation. reason.com/2023/06/09/sou…
Feb 28, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
SCOOP: The Global Disinformation Index's own website hosted disinformation about its advisory board. Anne Applebaum tells me she never advised GDI in any official capacity and did not consent to be included on its website. reason.com/2023/02/28/glo… via @reason Yesterday, I called out Applebaum, an Atlantic journalist, for smearing lab leak proponents. I was also curious whether she influence GDI's efforts to blacklist news sites that engaged in lab leak talk.
Jan 19, 2023 • 23 tweets • 7 min read
1. THREAD: THE FACEBOOK FILES
Twitter is not the only social media site to face pressure to censor content. I obtained emails showing that the CDC had significant influence over covid moderation at Facebook and Instagram. Here’s what I found. 2. The CDC had significant input on pandemic-era policies at Meta. The CDC was consulted frequently, at times daily, receiving constant updates about which topics were trending, and giving recommendations on what content to flag as false or misleading. reason.com/2023/01/19/how…
Sep 27, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Exclusive: The lawsuit that could stop Biden's student loan forgiveness plan has arrived. @PacificLegal believes it has found a solution to the standing problem. Thead: "Only Congress has the power to pass laws and spend money under the Constitution," PLF tells Reason. "The administration's actions here are flagrantly illegal."
reason.com/2022/09/27/bid…
Jul 2, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Scoop: I obtained an email from the equity manager of Oregon's state health agency—she delayed a community meeting and then justified this on grounds that "urgency is a white supremacy value." This is a teaching of Tema Okun, a (white) activist educator who claims that preferring quantity over quality, wanting things to be written down, perfectionism, becoming defensive, and yes, possessing a sense of urgency, are all white supremacist.
May 18, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Nina Jankowicz was a partisan operative with a bad record of spotting disinformation, and DHS is right to "pause" the new governance board. reason.com/2022/05/18/dis… via @reason The WaPo article about her resignation is very curiously framed. It focuses entirely on the so-called "coordinated" "rightwing" campaign of "harassment" against her. It does not mention any legitimate criticism of her whatsoever.
May 16, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This just makes me furious. Law enforcement WAS ALERTED! Everybody was like, hey this kid is disturbed, please help, and the state police let him go. More broadly, social media sites ROUTINELY report violence and criminal behavior.
reason.com/2022/05/16/buf… Image The problem is not that we are inattentive to frightening speech. People saw something, and said something! The problem is law enforcement didn't act (or couldn't act, given practical limitations).
Mar 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
YouTube suspended The Hill—which produces Rising, the show I co-host with @ryangrim and @KimIversenShow—for election misinfo. It's a crazy story that shows how this policy goes much, much, much further than anyone knows, and actually imperils journalism.
reason.com/2022/03/03/you… On the show, we played a clip of Trump in which he referred to the "rigged election." We did not immediately, directly correct it—though we criticized Trump in general, and have dismissed his election claims often—and thus YouTube says we spread misinfo.
Feb 17, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
EXCLUSIVE: I obtained leaked audio of a private House subcommittee briefing in which CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said she has no plans to revise the agency's masking guidance for schools. reason.com/2022/02/16/cdc… Walensky was grilled about keeping masks in schools given deficiencies of the Arizona study and others. She acknowledged "limitations" of data but said "the masks should still stay on."
Jan 7, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Justice Sotomayor badly exaggerated child hospitalization numbers today. "We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators." This claim is false.
reason.com/2022/01/07/sot… There are not 100,000 children in hospitals from covid. *Since August 2020*, there has been a total of 82,000 hospitalized covid patients under age 18.
Dec 29, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Facebook labelled one of my articles "false information" and threatened to punish @reason because of it. So I contacted the third-party fact checker, Science Feedback. They admitted they screwed up (!) and changed their evaluation. Bizarre.
reason.com/2021/12/29/fac… I will freely admit that going full Karen was a more viable option for me than most people: I have contacts at Facebook, I've interviewed people who work there for a book, etc. What worked in my case might not work more generally.
Dec 21, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Now that it's DC/NYC media and political circles catching covid, Team Blue is finally admitting that there's not really anything we can do (about cases). (Of course, when perception was it was all red state deplorables catching it, that was due to lack of caution.) You should take whatever precautions you want, and you should get vaccinated and (probably, eventually) boosted so that when you get sick it's mild. But you should not labor under any delusion that through your actions—your righteousness—you can stop yourself from catching covid.
Sep 27, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Immediately firing Emma Sarley was a big mistake for two reasons, 1) Video footage is unclear and often misleading, 2) Frederick Joseph is actually a known fabulist, previously involved in an Airbnb hoax involving Satanism. Yes. Let me explain. reason.com/2021/09/27/fre… Kudos to my colleague @lizzywol for pointing this out.
Sep 15, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Okay, this is kind of important. The problem with AOC and the met gala wasn't the eat-the-rich dress, it's that the ruling class does not have to obey the pandemic restrictions they've forced on everyone else! reason.com/2021/09/15/met… I understand that AOC can party with the wealthy while simultaneously advocating for higher taxes. Fine. But why does she get to do it maskless? No one else is allowed this privilege.
Sep 6, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I'm writing about that whole ivermectin-overdoses-crowding-hospitals thing, and boy oh boy did the media screw up with this one. My report: reason.com/2021/09/06/ive…
Aug 18, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This has to be one of the most irresponsible New York Times articles in the paper's history. It casts doubt on booster shots, quoting an epidemiologist who says wearing masks forever is a better health intervention. reason.com/2021/08/18/cov… Apoorva Mandavilli's pandemic articles have been among the most fear-driven and pro-restriction coverage anywhere in the media. Here she quotes an epidemiologist saying that there's not a huge need for booster shots, because why not just wear masks and avoid social gatherings?
Aug 1, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
An update to this story! Not only did Muriel Bowser party maskless mere hours before the mask mandate went into effect....
She officiated a maskless wedding after it went into effect! My friend @TianaTheFirst has the story washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/dc-may…
Jul 20, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Biden wants to get rid of Section 230 in order to force Facebook to censor more covid "misinformation." I hope this FINALLY disabuses Republicans of the notion that scrapping Section 230 would be good for conservative speech online.
reason.com/2021/07/20/fac… I have been saying this forever. Conservatives are basically like

Step 1) Abolish Section 230
Step 2) ????
Step 3) Profit

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Jul 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The Capitol Police are opening up offices in the states, and will become an intelligence gathering agency like the FBI and NSA. This is a nightmare scenario, one that civil libertarians of all stripes should oppose.
reason.com/2021/07/08/the… Sadly, several members of the squad—including AOC—dodged the opportunity to kill House funding for this, reports @ggreenwald greenwald.substack.com/p/the-capitol-…
Jul 7, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Trump's class action lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are absurd. His attorneys will be laughed out of court at the first opportunity.
reason.com/2021/07/07/tru… The First Amendment protects private companies from the government, not the other way around.
Jun 15, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Daniel Elder is an acclaimed choral composer. On June 1, 2020, he sent the tweet that ended his professional career: He criticized the "well-intentioned, blind" activists who had burned the Nashville courthouse following a BLM rally. (1) reason.com/2021/06/15/dan… Elder was a center-left liberal, and supporter of BLM. He had no idea that objecting to arson would be controversial, but he was soon inundated with harassing comments and emails calling him a hateful racist. (2)