The reposts and expressions of shock from public figures followed quickly after a user on the social platform X who uses a pseudonym claimed that a government website had revealed “skyrocketing” rates of voters registering without a photo ID in three states this year — two of them crucial to the presidential contest.
“Extremely concerning,” X owner Elon Musk replied twice to the post this past week.
“Are migrants registering to vote using SSN?” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of former President Donald Trump, asked on Instagram, using the acronym for Social Security number.
Trump himself posted to his own social platform within hours to ask, “Who are all those voters registering without a Photo ID in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Arizona??? What is going on???”
…
Yet by the time they tried to correct the record, the false claim had spread widely. In three days, the pseudonymous user’s claim amassed more than 63 million views on X, according to the platform’s metrics. A thorough explanation from Richer attracted a fraction of that, reaching 2.4 million users.
The incident sheds light on how social media accounts that shield the identities of the people or groups behind them through clever slogans and cartoon avatars have come to dominate right-wing political discussion online even as they spread false information.
Oh, cool, a well researched article on right-wing disinformation campaigns. Can’t wait to watch the Lemmy liberals accuse leftists of being a part of this without any evidence.
Can’t wait for the liberals in power to try and expand the surveillance state using this as a pretext.
Can’t wait for these supposed “leftists” who-are-totally-not-righties-hiding-behind-anonymity to take for granted literally all the historical and modern day progress that came through none other than — you guessed it — the liberal legislature and liberal Justices.
From child labor laws to the civil rights act to same sex marriage — thank a liberal.
(Disclaimer: I’m further left than liberal on the political spectrum)
Lmao, yeah, thank the well known liberals and liberals only, like MLK and Malcolm X, for civil rights they were forced to acknowledge or face race riots.
Definitely wasn’t the liberal establishment that assassinated them either. And liberal is the opposite of conservative btw 🤣
Well, the types of misinformation will vary but anywhere people gather and have discussions is bound to have some bullshit floating around that gets spread around. It’s a fault of humanity, not of any particular persuasion. But there is a far cry from rumors about how to find the Triforce in Ocarina of Time to shit like “vaccines cause autism” and such.
Yeah, but there’s a tendency online in liberal circles to think that any criticism from the left is right-wing or foreign interference. I’ve seen a lot of people in the political groups here claim that the leftists they’re arguing with are part of hostile disinformation campaigns, which is just silly; online propagandists make Facebook Groups and Pages to create memes and articles, and hundreds of sock-puppet accounts to disseminate them. They don’t waste hours writing dozens of replies to a single account on a small, niche website.
Part of the problem is there’s lots of gullible people who repeat whatever nonsense makes them feel righteous. It’s usually not clear if you’re talking to a dumbass who fell for right-wing or Russian imperialist talking points, or an actual neonazi pretending to be a misguided leftist for trolling purposes, or an actual Russian imperialist pretending to be a misguided leftist for trolling purposes. I think you’re right though that Lemmy is not a likely target for any kind of organized propaganda campaign because it’s relatively tiny and would be a waste of time for those sorts of groups.
In the brave new world of LLMs, it no longer takes hours to write comments and replies all day in favour of some political or commercial view. The whole process can be automated! Cool, right?
