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A documentary series from conservative media giant Tucker Carlson amplifying the conspiracy theory that the Jan.6 attack was a “false flag” operation is raising questions about how forcefully social media platforms should police these baseless claims, which continue to populate on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.Carlson and his prime-time show posted videos on social media last week previewing the series, titled “Patriot Purge.” In one clip, a former Army captain who resigned amid uproar over her connection to the riot suggested Jan.6 “may have been” a false flag.Carlson began floating the idea on his show as early as June , but the three-part Fox News series could further the conspiracy theories.
While the video has sparked bipartisan backlash in Washington, it has elicited a more limited response from Silicon Valley, despite companies facing allegations their platforms helped foment violence during the lead-up up to Jan.6.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have all left up posts containing the preview without fact-checking notices, which became common additions to misleading or false posts during the 2020 election as part of a big push to crack down on misinformation tied to the tally.The incident serves as a high-profile test of how social networks enforce their often opaque policies against political misinformation against prominent users, particularly outside of election season.Twitter said last week that Carlson’s tweet promoting the trailer, which has drawn over 3 million views and been shared over 13,000 times as of Tuesday, does not violate its policies, Jeremy Barr reported .(The platform called Carlson’s earlier Jan.6 claim a “baseless suggestion” when it was published in its trending section in June, according to CNN.) A Facebook post of the video from the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” page has drawn over 150,000 views and 11,000 engagements, without any fact-checking labels.That’s despite the fact that PolitiFact, one of Facebook’s fact-checking partners, deemed the claim to be false the day after the riot and reaffirmed the stance in June .Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said the post is eligible for fact-checking.After The Technology 202 inquired about Carlson’s post on Monday, Facebook added a “sensitive content” warning to the video.“There’s no evidence to support baseless claims that what happened at the U.S.
Capitol on Jan.6 was staged, a psychological operation or a ‘false flag,’ ” PolitiFact’s Ciara O’Rourke wrote on Jan.7.Fox News and Fox Nation do not appear to have posted the 84-second clip on YouTube, but other users have posted the video on the platform, with some drawing over 10,000 views.
YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said “Previews for ‘Patriot Purge’ have been age-restricted on YouTube in accordance with our violent or graphic content policies,” including one post flagged by The Technology 202.Choi said YouTube is also continuing to “limit the spread of harmful misinformation in search results and recommendations related to the January 6 insurrection, including those alleging it was a ‘hoax’ or ‘false flag.’”Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have skewered Fox News for carrying the documentary.But they are also turning their fire toward the social media platforms for hosting Carlson’s video containing the “false flag” claims unchecked.“It is disappointing that Twitter has deemed his sharing of a promotional video about the series as not violating their policies intended to keep their users safe from lies and disinformation,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told The Technology 202.Greenblatt urged all social media platforms to “carefully evaluate Carlson’s content as this piece airs this week” to make sure it doesn’t break their rules.
Joan Donovan , research director at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, called the conspiracy theories that minimize the Jan.6 riot or suggest a government “deep state” was involved “corrosive to American democracy.” Social media companies “would do well to draw some lines in the sand here to decide if this violates their terms of service before groups start to spread it to thousands more people,” she said.Fox News spokespeople did not immediately return a request for comment on YouTube and Facebook’s restrictions on Carlson’s clip, or on criticisms of the series.
Another company that’s already drawing those lines is TikTok.Spokesperson Jamie Favazza said that TikTok would remove content claiming Jan.6 was a “false flag” or a “hoax” if it found it under its policies against misinformation .(Fox News and Carlson do not have verified accounts on the site.) A search by The Technology 202 on Monday for the term “false flag” did not yield any results on TikTok.Instead, the platform displayed a notice saying that the “phrase may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines.” If social media platforms cracked down directly on Carlson, it would undoubtedly spark blowback from conservatives, who accuse tech platforms of stifling their viewpoints.The stakes would be even higher for Twitter, which has been on the receiving end of Fox News’s fury over its handling of matters related to Carlson in the past.Several of the network’s Twitter accounts went dark for more than a year in 2018 in an apparent protest of the company after a group of demonstrators posted Carlson’s home address on the site, according to reports .“I think any effort to ‘crack down’ on these clips by the Big Tech platforms is going to be interpreted by conservatives as heavy-handed censorship by an increasingly authoritarian ruling class intent on suppressing any sort of dissent,” said Jon Schweppe, Director of Policy and Government Affairs at American Principles Project, who has appeared on Carlson’s show .
Schweppe argued users should be able to debate the series’ claims out in the open.“If Tucker’s documentary is ‘Loose Change’-level bad, as many seem prepared to think, then the goal should be to debate it and debunk it, not suppress it,” he said, referencing the infamous Sept.11 “truther” film .“This is what free societies do.Free societies do not burn books and ban documentaries.”The far-right news and commentary site leads the “toxic 10” — a group of publishers that the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) says is responsible for 69 percent of interactions on Facebook with content denying climate denial content, Cat Zakrzewski reports .
The report could get the attention of high-profile policymakers.The CCDH was able to capture their attention with a March 2021 report on the “disinformation dozen,” the top spreaders of anti-vaccine content on Facebook.
“The study comes amid increasing political concern about the catastrophic impact of climate change, as global leaders gather in Glasgow for the U.N.brokered COP26,” Cat writes.Facebook spokesman Andy Stone called the study’s methodology “flawed,” noting that the interactions in the report are just 0.3 percent of the “over 200 million interactions on English public climate change content from pages and public groups over the same time period.” Imran Ahmed , the CEO of the CCDH, argued that the more than 700,000 interactions studied is “an incredibly robust sample to derive representative findings of trends.”Zuckerberg should resign so someone who wants to focus on safety can take charge, Haugen said at an event Monday.It’s the furthest Haugen has gone in her criticism against Zuckerberg, CNBC’s Lauren Feiner writes .Haugen, however, tempered her criticism by noting that Zuckerberg can still take meaningful steps to combat the platform’s harms.
“It doesn’t make him a bad person to have made mistakes,” she said.“But it is unacceptable to continue to make the same bad mistakes after you know that those are mistakes.And so I have faith that he can change.”Facebook did not respond to a request for comment from CNBC.Stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency linked to real-world assets, should be more tightly regulated, the high-level regulators said.They included Treasury Secretary Janet L.Yellen , Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H.
Powell and Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler , Tory Newmyer reports .“Stablecoins are a subset of the cryptocurrency industry,” Tory writes.“Unlike bitcoin and other popular digital currencies, which are purely speculative assets, stablecoins’ value is pegged to that of hard currencies like the dollar or metals like gold.”Critics argue that mistakes with stablecoins could prompt a sort of bank run.They criticized the report for throwing the issue to Congress, where they argued cryptocurrency lobbyists would take control of the process.Apple is reportedly planning to follow in Google’s footsteps by adding a crash-detection feature that automatically calls 911.Andrew Jennings, an assistant professor of law at Brooklyn Law School:9to5Mac editor Ben Lovejoy:Wall Street Journal reporter Rolfe Winkler: Amazon plans to launch its first internet satellites in late 2022 (CNBC) Facebook lets Kazakh govt directly flag harmful content, joint statement says (Reuters) Amazon lifts mask mandate for fully vaccinated U.S.
warehouse workers- source (Reuters) TikTok owner ByteDance shortens China work hours, discouraging notorious ‘996’ routine (Lily Kuo) That ’ s all for today — thank you so much for joining us! Make sure to tell others to subscribe to The Technology 202 here .Get in touch with tips, feedback or greetings on Twitter or email ..
