NBC News: Online far-right movements fracture in wake of Capitol riot. “Online far-right movements are splintering in the wake of last week’s Capitol riot, as some radical anti-government movements show signs of disillusionment with the relatively hands-off approach of some QAnon conspiracy theorists amid warnings of future violence.”
CNET: Conspiracy theories about Capitol riot are still popping up on social media. “Ashli Babbitt, a President Donald Trump supporter, was identified by US Capitol Police as one of the five people who died after a mob stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday. It didn’t take long, though, for conspiracy theorists to falsely claim the […]
Wired: Platforms Must Pay for Their Role in the Insurrection. “In their relentless pursuit of engagement and profits, these platforms created algorithms that amplify hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. This harmful content is particularly engaging and serves as the lubricant for businesses as profitable as they are influential. These platforms also enforce their terms […]
Washington Post: The Capitol mob desecrated a historical workplace — and left behind some disturbing artifacts. “Because of the historic nature of the Capitol riot, the mob not only destroyed historically important artifacts but created them. As cleanup crews tended to the Capitol’s exterior on Thursday, another type of worker was sifting through the mess […]
Wired: Open-source sleuths are already unmasking the Capitol Hill mob. “While the mob was still in the Capitol building multiple groups, including Bellingcat, started to scrape everything being posted – a vast digital archive of the riots. Reddit users created a 12GB tranche of videos, Bellingcat’s spreadsheet has more than 100 examples of streams or […]
CNN: State Department orders social media silence after mayhem at US Capitol as leaders tweet. “US diplomats overseas were told Wednesday to suspend all social media posts given the mob assault on Capitol Hill in Washington, three diplomatic sources tell CNN, a step normally only taken during a terrorist attack or major natural disaster.”
New York Times: Twitter and Facebook Lock Trump’s Accounts After Violence on Capitol Hill. “Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday locked the accounts of President Trump, which prevents him from posting messages to his more than 88 million followers on Twitter and 35 million followers on Facebook, after he published a string of inaccurate and inflammatory […]
New York Times: The storming of Capitol Hill was organized on social media.. “Just after 1 p.m., when President Trump ended his speech to protesters in Washington by calling for them to march on Congress, hundreds of echoing calls to storm the building were made by his supporters online. On social media sites used by […]
Yahoo News: Exclusive: FBI warned over summer that pandemic was reenergizing militia movement. “Almost four months before the FBI arrested six men for plotting to kidnap Michigan’s governor, the bureau warned local and state law enforcement about a surge in militia extremists seeking to target government officials, particularly those they blamed for pandemic restrictions, according […]
BuzzFeed News: Facebook Said It Removed A Militia Event Page Threatening Violence In Kenosha. It Didn’t.. “[Sandra] Fiehrer’s complaint was one of the 455 sent to Facebook warning of a militia event violating the company’s policies. Together, they inspired four manual and numerous automated reviews of the event page by Facebook’s content moderators, which all […]
The Verge: Facebook chose not to act on militia complaints before Kenosha shooting. “In the wake of an apparent double murder Tuesday night in Kenosha, Facebook has faced a wave of scrutiny over posts by a self-proclaimed militia group called Kenosha Guard, which issued a ‘call to arms’ to in advance of the protest. Facebook […]
Vice: The Boogaloo Bois Are All Over Facebook. “The anti-government Boogaloo movement is thriving on Facebook under an array of code names, where followers are circulating links to Google Drives containing manuals on bomb making, how to be a getaway driver, and how to murder people with your bare hands, an investigation by the Tech […]
Washington Post: Covid-19 pandemic is stoking extremist flames worldwide, analysts warn. “Across the globe, violence has emerged a major and persistent side effect of the pandemic that has stricken 12 million people and killed more than 550,000. Even as it overwhelms hospitals, covid-19 is also straining security forces in scores of countries, exacerbating long-standing conflicts […]
NBC News: White nationalist group posing as antifa called for violence on Twitter. “A Twitter account claiming to belong to a national ‘antifa’ organization and pushing violent rhetoric related to ongoing protests has been linked to the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, according to a Twitter spokesperson. The spokesperson said the account violated the company’s […]