Reflections from my UW colleague @mikecaulfield.bsky.social: “Anecdotal evidence that X is failing this stress test is plentiful. Go on the platform, do a search on Israel or Gaza — you don’t have to scroll very far to find dubious or debunked information.” www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
A year ago, we’d be tracking and reporting on rumors and disinformation campaigns in real-time, using Twitter data to map the broader information space. But Twitter is gone, has been replaced by X, and X means “no more data”. So as the problem gets worse, we also have much less insight into it.
We’re building out new techniques to get signal from X (@mikecaulfield.bsky.social is leading that team) and we’re assembling new infrastructure to collect data from and study other platforms. Sadly having to evolve quickly to do rapid research into rumors and disinformation under new constraints.
I am not a researcher but I am a technologist. Bluesky’s third party feeds depend on third parties being able to read the post firehose, and it’s in theory a federated system, so Bluesky ranks as pretty darned open right now.
We’re considering the trade-offs of investing in BlueSky collection. I think the nodejs entry point has been a deterrent for our tech team. And we have some other projects in front of it… e.g. TikTok and Rumble.
Sadly, we’re not able to show that empirically since we have such limited access to the data now. The new lack of transparency is a key dimension of the enshittification of Twitter/X.
Same here. Most large social online networks closed down their APIs after they discovered what Cambridge Analytica was doing. During the pandemic Twitter was key to understand distribution patterns of conspiracy theories as well as other mis- and disinformation.
That’s all gone now.
And unfortunately Community Notes has become RAMPANT with people spreading the same disinformation, and it appears a coordinated effort to get those rated “helpful” while actual corrections are struggling to be seen :(
X is no longer a place where you can engage with citizen journalism, as it once was. Disinformation means that there is little point in trying to follow a breaking news story that way there now. So we are back to trusted news sources.
In a sense it is the final nail in the coffin of X, because its only remaining asset post-diaspora was its ability to provide an insight into breaking news in that way. Now it is just untrustworthy memes, often monetized.
I’ve been wondering how much Elon’s blue check $$$-for-impressions program is incentivizing more inflammatory content, super-boosting disinfo even beyond what we’d expect for the usual reasons?
This became very, very apparent to me during Hurricane Hilary when it became difficult to impossible to find accurate local info - in deep contrast to Hurricane Ian just one year previously.
The site formerly known for tweets failed just that quickly.
