Overview: Content Strategy

This edition’s 9 articles span the real meaning of “foreign meddling” and domestic flashpoints, social media platform preparations for Election Night and beyond, and how media has to go beyond factchecking as it tackles “pink slime” (yes, it’s a thing).

pink slime: shadowy, politically backed “local news websites” designed to promote partisan talking points and collect user data... a network of 450 intricately linked sites ID's in Dec 2019 is now 1200 ...largest 2 networks: 90+% are algorithmically generated stories from publicly available data sets or by repurposing legitimate sources - the…

The world’s biggest social network is working out what steps to take should President Trump use its platform to dispute the vote.

Donald Trump literally laughs factchecking off - it's good to have, but insufficient. To establish non-partisan status, factcheckers need to be equally tough on all sides, but all sides don't lie the same. They use euphemisms for 'lie', and check narrow, easy-to-debunk statements while ignoring the larger pattern of "the a…

Facebook's steps to verify election-related content and prevent disinformation or attempts at meddling have largely underwhelmed. Political ads may be banned for the week before the election, but not those created beforehand. In any case, that's after months of damage. And it doesn't stop people posting disinformation which are not …

fake Twitter accounts removed: impersonated black men who left the Dems because of BLM to support Trump ... some had tweets with over 10,000 RTs...bots risk drowning out an authentic black political dialogue... shutting them down risks collateral damage (ie shutting down actual people, not fake accounts)...Great metaphor: "we would have a lot…

The Russian group that interfered in the 2016 presidential election is at it again...

Less than 5% of the 912 posts flagged for misinformation were dealt with by Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Many concerned covid19 and over 10% mentioned Gates.Their election-related disinformation policies are unclear, particularly concerning content to de-legitimise the election, "which is likely to make enforcement difficult and…

Literature note: “How to Lose the Information War,” ... on disinformation as a geopolitical strategy...Mueller report: I.R.A.-created groups and accounts reached tens of millions... the troll factory found “authentic, local voices,” to foment large-scale distrust in government and democracy... and managed to get into the heads of powerful politici…

I'm (re)launching my newsletter to focus on disinformation during the 2020 US election. It's also part of a wider experiment in integrating Zettelkasten idea and knowledge management into my personal content strategy, hosted on MyHub.ai.

Facebook’s Preferential Treatment Of US Conservatives Puts Its Fact-Checking Program In Dangeremployees and fact-checking partners ... left in the dark about how the company decides what content stays up and what comes down... PragerU’s second strike for false content that month ... should have triggered “repeat offender” penalties ... false labe…

labelling delusions as irrational suggests that all ‘normal’ cognition is rational... new theory suggests delusions emerge from specific processes in our ‘coalitional psychology’ ... mechanisms ... understand our social environment...most delusions involve social content... Beliefs serve a significant social purpose... cooperate with each other, …

Facebook is piloting a circuit breaker to stop viral spread of posts... might staunch the flow of dangerous incitement and misinformation ... America’s Frontline Doctors... pushed hydroxychloroquine ... Funded with dark money, promoted by influential accounts, advanced by algorithmic recommendations, and shared in large private Facebook groups... …

Facebook ... fact-checking partners “do review and rate climate misinformation... But opinion articles about climate change don’t receive fact-checking ... Climate change misinformation isn’t a priority

Social media companies are struggling with an onslaught of deceptive and divisive messaging from political parties, foreign governments and hate groups... echo the Russian ... efforts ... U.S. 2016 presidential election... far more insidious and sophisticated ... And ... amplified by mainstream news outlets and major U.S. political figures ...Nat…

At least 800 people may have died around the world because of coronavirus-related misinformation in the first three months of this year... about 5,800 people were admitted to hospital as a result of false information on social media... further threat that anti-vaccine campaigners will use the platform provided by social media to persuade people …

counties that had voted for Donald Trump in 2016 exhibited 14% less physical distancing... higher Covid-19 infection and fatality growth rates ...the hormone oxytocin... promotes bonding... plays a role in trust... When participants trusted and felt trusted, oxytocin levels ... jumped... Trust just feels good... But risky if we give it to the w…

As the internet lit up ... Accounts identified as belonging to Latino social media users voiced outrage about politically correct “mob” bullying ... activists immediately grew suspicious... thousands of posts were coming from ... bots... activists cooked up a counteroffensive... exposed “recipes” for disinformation and distorting facts... educatio…

Books on note-taking... always too vague and boring, full of platitudes ... never an overarching system for turning notes into concrete results ... [but]How To Take Smart Notes ... is by far the most impactful and profound book I’ve ever read on the subject... most books are a few morsels of real insight wrapped in... fluff... I systematically unr…

Zettelkasten—German for “slip box.” Luhmann claimed that his Zettelkasten became a conversational partner, constantly challenging him and prodding him on to greater productivity... original system ... numbered index cards... contained a single and complete idea ... “atomicity”... as short as a simple sentence... had to fit into ... half-sheet of …

foreign pro-Trump troll farm was based in Romania... Facebook... didn’t see “clear evidence of financial motivation” or “clear links to known commercial actors...separate troll operation, tied to pro-Trump media organization Epoch Media Group, featured 303 Facebook accounts, 181 pages, 44 Facebook groups and 31 Instagram accounts... followed by mo…

Facebook employees collected evidence company giving right-wing pages preferential treatment when it comes to misinformation... worried how the company will handle the president’s falsehoods in an election year... Facebook is going to be used to aggressively undermine the legitimacy of the US elections... senior engineer collected internal evidenc…

This is a piece for people who have been part of the Q Anon movement... beginning to get tired ... starting to get skeptical... Q mostly stopped making specific predictions after a series of embarrassing failures... demanding that we all Trust the Plan and stop asking why Q is always wrong... There’s a reason you got scammed... why did you keep be…

The president’s reelection campaign ... multimillion-dollar ad blitz ... shaping Americans’ understanding of ... impeachment ... micro-targeted ads ... portraying Trump as a heroic reformer ... while Democrats plotted a coup... An alternate information ecosystem was taking shape ... I wanted to see it from the inside...I was surprised by the effec…

GPT-3... AI that can produce shockingly human-sounding (if at times surreal) sentences... imagine a future in which the vast majority of the written content ... is produced by machines... adjust, and adapt, to a new level of unreality ...video may turn out to be the easiest to detect ... Politicians will now be able to dismiss real, scandalous vid…

arguing with them or debunking their theories is likely only to generate publicity or money for them... generate a fake air of controversy over climate action ... deniers ... four different categories: the shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool... the fourth type of climate denier... utterly blinded by ... free-market creed. Th…

Covid-19 case numbers are now spiking in many counties across West Texas ... [but] resolve of ... skeptics appears to be stiffening... the denial of facts is often rooted in identity and belonging, not in ignorance ...people who deny science ... trying to uphold membership in ... a political or religious affiliation or some other group ... a commu…

Should you blog on dedicated blogging platforms like Medium, or on your Hub? It's not an either/or.

my last column in this space is not about “cancel culture.” Well, almost... The quality of my work does not appear to be the problem... A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me ... orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in …

echo chambers and epistemic bubbles... systematically exclude sources of information... exaggerate their members’ confidence in their beliefs... work in entirely different ways... epistemic bubble is when you don’t hear people from the other side. An echo chamber is what happens when you don’t trust people from the other side...‘epistemic bubble’ …