In 2020 I led a study on gendered abuse and disinfo against women political candidates. We found 336k pieces of abuse & disinfo targeting 13 candidates; 78% of that targeted Kamala Harris. After Biden’s endorsement, here are some narratives and tropes we should look out for: (1/) 1. Sexualized narratives, claiming Harris “slept her way to the top,” or that she is sexually promiscuous. In 2020 we found that users engaging with this narrative were more likely to engage with other abuse and disinfo. They attempted to undermine her fitness for office (2/)

I didn’t want to have to send a letter like this, which is why I wasted hours last week answering Shellenberger’s inane questions in hopes he’d do actual reporting. Instead he shoved my quotes next to allegations for which he has no source but his own overactive imagination. 1/

Not to be outdone, Taibbi also made sweeping & false statements of fact. I guess when you have nearly half a million subscribers frothing at the mouth for your next tall tale you have to keep them paying their subscription fee somehow. Gotta keep that Substack $$ flowing! 2/

Dear lord. There is so much wrong with how this study was conducted. Let us count the ways. (THREAD)

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1638256122942353422

1. As we found in our #MalignCreativity report @TheWilsonCenter, there is an entire movement on Twitter and other sites by abusers to evade detection from AI / content moderators, so a list of "300 commonly used English-language slurs" ain't conna cut it. wilsoncenter.org/publication/ma…

🙄 This is a ridiculous and hilariously unbelievable claim for anyone that has been paying cursory attention to the war.

Short thread 🧵 From the beginning of the full scale invasion, this has been the most digital conflict in history. 1000s of social media posts detailing troop movements and attacks thave been verified by the open source community- including eyesonrussia.org, where we have 8000+ such pins

I got another influx of hateful messages over the weekend. Unsurprisingly, it’s because Tucker Carlson talked about me on his show on Friday.

For those keeping track, it’s been over SIX MONTHS since I resigned my position at DHS. Tucker and his goons are still obsessed with me. Since my resignation, the network has attacked me 20 out of 26 weeks.

Respectfully, what the fuck is wrong with them?

Trying to destroy my life is good business for them, I guess.

(Fair warning, my Jersey roots are going to come out in this thread.)

In a way I lost Twitter six months ago when it became a place where strangers sent me and my then unborn child death threats. I’ve since had to block literally hundreds of thousands of people to make it sort of useable again, but it will never be what it was. (1/) That doesn’t mean it’s not fundamentally worth saving—some of my very best friends and favorite experiences have started on this platform. I’ve been on here since the days I texted my tweets to 40404 on my flip phone. (It took ages.) (2/)

Nearly 6 months after I left government service, I am still a main character in Sen Hawley’s DHS conspiracy fan fiction. I assume he’ll be mentioning me in Congress later this week.

Let’s talk about what he’s doing, how he’s lying, and why. 🧵

hawley.senate.gov/hawley-demands… Dredging up my name today has nothing to do with accountability or oversight. When you’ve made up a pretend crisis, those are just harassment, at best.

Hawley wants you riled up. He needs you to be too angry to actually read the primary sources yourself. So I’ve done it for you.

I’ve written and deleted a bunch of tweets making jokes about this (“fact check: not a fact checker”), but it’s not funny when you get a message like this. Not the first time or the 500th. This isn’t just an internet problem; sure, tech makes it easier to threaten people, and we absolutely need to fix that. But at its core this is a broader democracy problem. Why has it become so acceptable, so commonplace, so normalized to threaten?

$32,627.33.

That’s how much it would have cost me to have my baby—including my anesthesia, midwifery care, and hospital stay—without insurance.

🧵 thread 🧵 That’s not including my prenatal care. Without insurance: $6780.

I resigned my position at DHS 2 months ago today. Despite that, I continue to be defamed & threatened based on lies about the work I was hired to do. I’m calling on @HawleyMo & @ChuckGrassley to stop amplifying these lies by needlessly attacking me. wiczipedia.com/letter-hawley-… (1/5) Here are two threats that came in overnight, from a person who believes I’m still in my role and that it involved law enforcement and censorship. Nope. (2/5)

I never wanted to edit your tweets.
My response to a question in January 2021 about Twitter's then-brand-new Birdwatch program (which exists to add "informative context" to potentially misleading tweets) was decontextualized to make that absurd claim.
apnews.com/article/Fact-C… Disinformation is hardly ever about cut-and-dry fakes. It's false *or misleading* information spread with malign intent.

And this viral claim about me illustrates the way online disinformation often works.

No, I’d just prefer not to read death threats and abuse in response to my tweet about murdered children. (1/) In my work on online abuse, I’ve been ridiculed for advocating for better enforcement of terms against abusers. “Just use the block button!” people say. (2/)

Thinking a lot the past few weeks about the paper I co-authored in the US Army War College Quarterly in 2020: press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewconten…

It lays out a government strategy for dealing with disinformation based on 3 Cs- capability, coordination, and cooperation. (1/) -Capability: ensuring civil servants can recognize and know how to respond to hostile state disinfo.
-Coordination: fostering connections w/in depts and across gov't to mount synced up responses
-Cooperation: working with allies, academia, civil society to address threat (2/)

Thinking back tonight to covering Zelensky’s 2019 presidential campaign for @pulitzercenter, and how shallow so much of the discourse around him was. To the West he was an inexperienced comedian, to some in Ukraine he was a Russian puppet. Both have been proven false (1/) He ran a modern, Western campaign that got people excited and drove up turnout. He and his team knew how to work the media. Despite having little concrete policy, he communicated a vision for his country that appealed to many, winning a landslide victory. (2/)

Biden speaking now- listing all the new restrictions on Russian economy, banks, state-owned enterprises, oligarchs and their families

"We're preparing to do more," says Biden. "The United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of our power," and NATO has never been more united, says Biden. #RussiaUkraineConflict

Putin refers to Ukraine "not only as a neighboring country, but a [part of our culture, history]...our family members..." and describes "shared" Ukrainian history of Kyivan Rus. We've heard this before. (1/) Now we're getting a long (revisionist) history of how Russia is responsible for Ukraine's existence...

@POTUS presser thread:

Biden says the US hasn't verified Russian claims that troops are returning to their home bases, but analysts continue to see a threat in the 150k troops "encircling" #Ukraine. @POTUS Biden reiterating that #NATO is a defensive alliance.

"If Russia attacks Ukraine it would be a war of choice. A war without cause or reason."

"The truth matters. Accountability matters."

New #EyesOnRussia report out today from @Cen4infoRes: info-res.org/post/eyes-on-r…

Key points:

1⃣ Despite the Russian MOD & RT's assurances, we've not yet seen evidence that Russian troops stationed near Ukraine's border are moving away from it. (1/) @Cen4infoRes 2⃣ In fact, new military camps continue to be built at the 🇷🇺 border with 🇺🇦, including the build-up of several military field hospitals in different areas of Belarus and Crimea, as well as stationing large amounts of Russian helicopters 30 kilometres from the border. (2/)

82 years ago this week, my grandfather, aged 10, was deported along with his family from present day Ukraine (then Poland) to a Soviet work camp.

In part because of his deportation, I’m sitting on Twitter tonight, writing about current Russian threats to the same land. (1/) My family was deported because they were Polish (my ethnic Ukrainian blood is on the other side of the family); Poles like them, who had moved East in the interwar period thanks to land grants from the Polish govt, were an impediment to Soviet influence expanding Westward. (2/)

Sullivan: "We continue to see signs of Russian escalation, including more forces arriving at the border...could begin during the Olympics."

Says "we are ready," US will continue "results-oriented diplomacy," and is ready to take decisive sanctions action. Sullivan says US, along with EU, UK, Canada, and others, will implement sanctions; that NATO force postures in CEE region will change.

Honored to share this @PublishersWkly review of HOW TO BE A WOMAN ONLINE. publishersweekly.com/978-1-3502-675…

Preorder your copy—out April 21st—today: bloomsbury.com/us/how-to-be-a… For those who don't know the preorder schpeal: it really helps authors, sending a signal to bookshops, reviewers, and media about which books are worth covering. It'd mean the world if you preordered this book for yourself or someone in your life who might need or enjoy it.