Today, some fraudulent and/or hacked political documents were laundered through a mainstream tabloid. We have heard this story before. This time it went a bit differently: many news organizations, as well as FB and Twitter, have declined to amplify it.

1/

When Russian intelligence obtained the DNC emails in 2016 and laundered them through wikileaks, these same organizations were happy to play along. It became the election-defining news story. They have apparently recognized this institutional failure and want to do better.

2/

It’s great that they’re doing a critical examination of their own roles in the information ecosystem. Fake/hacked dumps like this are just going to get more common, as are deepfakes, etc. We need to start thinking about it yesterday and trying strategies today. (And we are!)

3/

It’s a complicated issue, and there is no shortage of opinions on today’s actions. My hot take is that I’m glad people had policies in place, and I’m extra glad that the first live test was over a complete nothingburger. (Even if the documents are real there’s nothing there.)

4/

The story’s pushers were going to call for investigations of FB and Twitter regardless, so I’m glad the platforms stuck to their guns. I’m also glad there are other platforms that didn’t do anything. It’s a site’s choice what sort of site to be. Totally grok the alternative.

5/

I could write so much about this topic. Unfortunately I’d have to address questions like “what’s the role of hacked information in society?” and “what responsibilities do private information services have?” That’s before we get into how these documents might not, like, exist.

6/

I don’t really have a conclusion except that I’m sick of seeing the word ‘censorship’, which means so many things now that it’s an active impediment to understanding.

/end

Here’s a very good thread about how to think about the different kinds of moderation strategies, using a different example: COVID-19 disinformation https://twitter.com/noupside/status/1316422817936666625