Kate Starbird

Two years ago, my colleagues and I were sued by Stephen Miller's America First Legal. The Hines v Stamos case — built atop a number of false allegations — was a central element of the "censorship industrial complex" myth. Today, that case was dismissed (by a Trump judge in LA). We won.

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

Fact-checking wasn’t “biased” against conservatives. Conservatives just shared more false content. If there’s a sportsball game and one team fouls four times as much, it’s not “biased” for the ref to call four times as many fouls against that team.

David Rand @dgrand.bsky.social

🚨In Nature🚨 Meta is dropping fact-checking to avoid anti-conservative bias- but is there actually evidence of bias? We this test empirically & find that conservatives * ARE suspended more * BUT share more misinfo So suspension isn't necessarily evidence of bias www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions - Nature

We find that conservatives tend to share more low-quality news through social media than liberals, and so even if technology companies enact politically neutral anti-misinformation policies, political...

My wife has been HIV+ for 34 years. She’s alive today b/c work of activists who destigmatized the virus, pushed medical science to adapt & find ways to treat it, & advocated for gov health programs that helped fund her care. The current U.S. regime may want to go back in time, but we won’t let them.

OFFS. When Iran tried to interefere in 2020, researchers caught them and called them out. Then the Benz-Weiss-Taibbi-Musk-Jordan-Trump axis labeled those researchers "censors" ... and set about defunding them and dismantling their organizations.

Mike Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social

I am going to need every single person who said that misinformation was a moral panic to feel enough shame and regret that they leave public intellectual life.

Scientists and journalists need to figure out right quick how to explain to the average person how a massive change in research indirects will impact the medical care they and their children get (eg at the local children’s hospital), the education their children will get, the price of tuition, etc.

If anyone is curious about the current list of search terms being used by right wing activist organizations to harass university professors, here's a public records request I received today from Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation. Not intimidating or meant to curtail by my speech at all, right?

The Right built a powerful, partisan, & participatory media environment to support its messaging, which offers a compelling "deep story" for its participants. The Left relied upon rigid, self-preserving institutional media and its "story" is little more than a defense of imperfect institutions.

I’ve been having a few too many conversations like this. Them: Hi Kate, how are things with your work, with the world? Me: the university is under attack, democratic norms being broken in half, so, pretty bad. Them: But everything is going to come back and be okay after the midterms. Me: Uhh, no.

Hi, I'm Kate, a researcher at the University of Washington studying rumors and disinformation. I post a lot about my research and about my dog, Ruby. :)

We are witnessing a swift and sweeping consolidation of media (traditional and social) into the hands of a small number of billionaires who are actively aligned/aligning (both via free will and coercion) with Trump and his right wing political party. This is (I’ll say it) a fascist project.

I'm baffled at how effectively the right falsely painted Twitter, FB, and other big social media platforms as politically biased and pressured them to stop moderating to address harmful BS, and now the owner of X is literally jumping up and down on the campaign stage for their candidate, and what?

Message with an intended audience of one. Very similar message/strategy to a video that TikTok served me, from their official account, featuring their CEO, last night. Isn’t this what Harris explained on the debate stage? Flattery as foreign policy.

Pritzker out here giving a master class in countering the right wing propaganda machine’s efforts to justify further federal invasions and occupations of American cities: he’s effectively reframing the discussion (beyond debates re: crime rates) to one of rising authoritarianism & federal overreach.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com

Pritzker: "We don't want troops on the streets of American cities. That's un-American and frankly the president ought to know better. This one doesn't seem to. He hasn't read any books. He doesn't seem to understand the Constitution or the laws."

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The real story is that foreign govts try to "interfere" all the time. In 2020 and 2024 we had mechanisms to catch them, call them out, & mitigate damage. Now, those mechanims are gone & the Trump admin would prefer to exploit "foreign interference" to justify a federal take-over of elections.

Here's a graphic explaining how the Big Lie was seeded and mobilized into the events of January 6, 2021 through a kind of "participatory disinformation" process. Trump's "war on drugs" refrain could catalyze a similar kind of participatory propaganda and mobilization cycle.

As everyone should know by now, the anti-trans rhetoric isn’t about “protecting women” in bathrooms or sports … but about removing trans people from public life. And it’s working. This is a big company, making a big change that isn’t about protecting anyone (except men from having to see tampons).

Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social

"at Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley, Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads" www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/t...

Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Sprint to Remake Meta for the Trump Era

After visiting President-elect Donald J. Trump in November, Mr. Zuckerberg decided to relax Meta’s speech policies. He asked a small team to carry out his goals within weeks. The repercussions are jus...

Reply to @katestarbird.bsky.social

The story of Jan 6 is like this now. Trump supporters throw out several different and sometimes contradictory explanations: that it was a just cause, that it wasn’t a big deal, that the FBI did it. The point isn’t to convince but to sow doubt in the truth… of an insurrection attempt incited by lies.

This billionaire’s fortune is built atop research funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, and yet he seeks to destroy that agency and its investments in the scientific engine that has fueled our tech industry since the 1950s. And why? Because it tried to include more diverse scholars?

Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social

"The investor described a 'counterattack' against universities in his messages and called for the National Science Foundation, a federal research funding agency, to receive 'the bureaucratic death penalty.'" www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreesen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI

Tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen in a private group chat attacked colleges for promoting diversity, saying they had discriminated against “native born kids.”

More evidence-framing dynamics: "They’re running the ‘Twitter Files’ playbook against the entire U.S. gov't. The claims are a bunch of half-baked conspiracy theories built around idiotic misinterpretations and intentional mischaracterizations of bits of data and out-of-context communications."

Will Oremus @willoremus.com

We wrote about how Musk is using X as a propaganda tool to demonize each of the agencies and programs that DOGE targets for cuts, providing air cover for his engineers' incursions — with the truth as collateral damage. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2... w/ @drewharwell.com

Analysis | Musk accused Reuters of ‘social deception.’ The deception was his.

Trump’s DOGE chief sees government corruption everywhere but in the mirror.

Tulsi Gabbard confirmed as Director of National Intelligence. My team 1st encountered her while studying conspiracy theories denying chemical weapons attacks and other war crimes in Syria (~2017). She repeatly spread those false claims, echoing Russian disinfo. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Senate votes to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence | CNN Politics

The Senate voted Wednesday, to confirm former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence.

Seattle protests.

ICE at the polls! Bannon is basically yelling “fire” in a crowded theater here. His objective is to cause chaos (and suppress votes on the left). And it’s already working.

This threat works on multiple levels and doesn’t have to be “real” to serve its purpose.

Let me explain & offer some advice.

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social

Steve Bannon says the federal government is planning to send ICE officers to patrol polling stations during the midterms. "We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November." "We're not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again." www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Steve Bannon says ICE will ‘surround the polls’ as Trump doubles down on taking over elections

Trump doubled down on his comments to nationalize voting Tuesday during an Oval Office press conference. “If you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections,” Trump sai...

This is the rhetoric of dictators — across time & geography — that freedom (for some) must be sacrificed for security, reinforcing the power of the regime. Instead of engaging in fights about crime rates, the opposition to this madness needs to hammer on this authoritarian frame over & over again.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com

Stephen Miller on DC residents: "For the first time in their lives, they can use the parks, they can walk on the streets. You have people who can walk freely at night without having to worry about being robbed or mugged. They are wearing their watches again."

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