Enlarge / A view of a broken window after the supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro participated in an anti-democratic riot at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil on January 9, 2023. (credit: Anadolu Agency / Contributor | Anadolu )

Claiming “election interference” in Brazil, thousands of rioters on Sunday broke into government buildings in the nation’s capital, Brasília. The rioters relied on social media and messaging apps to coordinate their attacks and evade government detection, The New York Times reported , following a similar “digital playbook” as those involved in the United States Capitol attacks on January 6, 2021. Now, social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube have begun removing content praising the most recent attacks, Reuters reported , earmarking this latest anti-democratic uprising as another sensitive event requiring widespread content removal.

Disinformation researchers told the Times that Twitter and Telegram played a central role for those involved with organizing the attacks, but Meta apps Facebook and WhatsApp were also used. Twitter has not responded to reports, but a Meta spokesperson told Ars and a Telegram spokesperson told Reuters that the companies have been cooperating with Brazilian authorities to stop content from spreading that could incite further violence. Both digital platforms confirmed an uptick in content moderation efforts starting before the election took place—with many popular social media platforms seemingly bracing for the riots after failing to quickly remove calls to violence during the US Capitol attacks.

“In advance of the election, we designated Brazil as a temporary high-risk location and have been removing content calling for people to take up arms or forcibly invade Congress, the Presidential palace, and other federal buildings,” a Meta spokesperson told Ars. “We're also designating this as a violating event, which means we will remove content that supports or praises these actions.“

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket )

Twitter CEO Elon Musk continues to deal with intense scrutiny of how his social media platform will fight disinformation with its reduced staff. Early in 2023, Musk met with Germany's digital minister, Volker Wissing, in California to discuss whether Twitter would “voluntarily comply” with an agreement Twitter previously made with the European Commission to combat disinformation.

A ministry spokesperson described the meeting as “a very open and long talk” that ended with Musk assuring Wissing that Twitter wouldn’t back down from the disinformation fight. Politico reported in December that part of Twitter’s agreement with the commission involves preventing users from profiting from misinformation, labeling political ads, and making data available to researchers.

Ars could not immediately reach Twitter for comment. A ministry spokesperson told Ars that "in his talks with Elon Musk, Federal Minister Wissing made it clear, among other things, that Germany expects the existing voluntary commitments against disinformation and the rules of the Digital Services Act to be observed in the future."

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket )

Online advertising on social platforms is changing. Google and Meta no longer hold majority control over advertising dollars, according to The Wall Street Journal , with Amazon and TikTok cutting in to sway advertisers to other platforms. Twitter is also hungry to redirect ad dollars to its platform, as it announced yesterday that it would be “relaxing” its political ads policy and allowing more “cause-based” ads. The company is also planning to expand to allow other forms of political advertising “in the coming weeks.”

Promising to share more details soon, the @TwitterSafety account tweeted Tuesday that from now on, Twitter’s goal is to align its advertising policy “with that of TV and other media outlets.” It’s unclear what exactly that means on a platform like Twitter, but the Federal Communications Commission specifies that it works to restrict censorship and ensure equal opportunity for political advertisers. This aligns somewhat with Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s stated "free speech absolutist" position. Twitter could also be looking to emulate the FCC to diminish the company's responsibility to review or ensure the accuracy of all political ad content.

Twitter’s recent policy change reverses a decision the platform made in 2019 to ban political ads to limit misinformation spread. That 2019 ban included exceptions for some cause-based advertising, where advertisers were permitted to conduct some microtargeting of Twitter users based on limited geographic location information, keywords, and interests. Notably, advertisers were not allowed to target audiences based on political affiliation like “conservative” or “liberal.” Under these prior rules, Twitter-certified cause-based advertisers approved to promote content created to “educate, raise awareness, and/or call for people to take action in connection with civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship, or social equity.”

Enlarge / Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk presents a vaccine production device during a meeting September 2, 2020, in Berlin, Germany. Musk met with vaccine-maker CureVac, with which Tesla has a cooperation to build devices for producing RNA vaccines. (credit: Getty | Filip Singer )

Under the leadership of billionaire Elon Musk, social media platform Twitter has abandoned its efforts to prevent the spread of dangerous COVID-19 misinformation on its platform, dismaying experts who say false and misleading health information can harm individuals and put lives at risk.

"Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy," the company noted in various places on its website.

From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health responses have been severely stymied by a plague of misinformation, often in digital spaces.

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket )

This weekend, widespread protests erupted in China in what amounted to “the biggest show of opposition to the ruling Communist Party in decades,” AP News reported . Many protesters attempted to document events live to spread awareness and inspire solidarity across Twitter. Demonstrations were so powerful that Chinese authorities actually seemed to cave, appeasing some of the protesters’ demands by easing the severe lockdown restrictions that sparked the protests.

This could have been a moment that showed how Twitter under Elon Musk is still a relevant breaking-news source, still a place where free speech demonstrations reach the masses, and thus, still the only place to track escalating protests like these. Instead, The Washington Post reported that a flood of “useless tweets” effectively buried live footage from protests. This blocked users from easily following protest news, while Twitter seemingly did nothing to stop what researchers described as an apparent Chinese influence operation.

For hours, these tweets dropped Chinese city names where protests occurred into posts that were mostly advertising pornography and adult escort services. And it worked, preventing users attempting to search city names in Chinese from easily seeing updates on the protests. Researchers told The Post that the tweets were posted from a range of Chinese-language accounts that hadn’t been used for months or even years. The tweets began appearing early Sunday, shortly after protesters started calling for Communist Party leaders to resign.

Enlarge / Simone Gold speaking with attendees at the 2020 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. (credit: Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0) )

Scandal has reached a full boil at America's Frontline Doctors—the right-wing pseudo-medical group notorious for peddling bogus COVID-19 treatments and fear mongering over vaccines and other safe, effective health measures.

The scandal has split the group—aka AFLDS—into warring factions, with its prominent founder, Simone Gold, accused of a slew of wrongdoing, including using the charity group's funds to buy a $3.6 million mansion for herself and her boyfriend. She's also accused of staging a hostile coup of the organization in the weeks since her release from federal prison for her role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, which the group has defended .

The coup has left employees locked out of email accounts and other resources, according to a lawsuit filed by AFLDS against Gold on November 4. The lawsuit also claims Gold seized control of the group's bank accounts, which reportedly contain at least $7.3 million. For now, it appears Gold also has control over the AFLDS website, which has been pumping out fawning and indignant press releases on her behalf. It's in an extraordinarily sordid state, even for the ignoble group.

Enlarge / Clevland doctor Sherri Tenpenny gives false testimony on June 8, 2021, saying COVID-19 vaccines magnetize people. (credit: The Ohio Channel )

The State Medical Board of Ohio is threatening to limit, suspend, or even permanently revoke the medical license of Sherri Tenpenny, the infamous anti-vaccine doctor who made headlines last year for falsely testifying to state lawmakers that COVID-19 vaccinations make people magnetic—among espousing other nonsensical anti-vaccine-related conspiracy theories.

"I'm sure you've seen the pictures all over the Internet of people who have had these shots and now they're magnetized," Tenpenny said in her viral testimony. "You can put a key on their forehead—it sticks. You can put spoons and forks all over and they can stick because now we think there is a metal piece to that."

She went on to suggest that there may be an "interface—yet to be defined" between the components of life-saving vaccines and "all of the 5G towers." She added that the connection is "not proven yet" but that "we're trying to figure [it] out."

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg via Getty)

The 2016 US election was a wake-up call about the dangers of political misinformation on social media. With two more election cycles rife with misinformation under their belts, social media companies have experience identifying and countering misinformation. However, the nature of the threat misinformation poses to society continues to shift in form and targets. The big lie about the 2020 presidential election has become a major theme, and immigrant communities are increasingly in the crosshairs of disinformation campaigns—deliberate efforts to spread misinformation.

Social media companies have announced plans to deal with misinformation in the 2022 midterm elections, but the companies vary in their approaches and effectiveness . We asked experts on social media to grade how ready Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube are to handle the task.

2022 is looking like 2020

Dam Hee Kim, assistant professor of communication, University of Arizona

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

Twitter is reviewing its controversial policies around permanently banning users, potentially bringing its content moderation more in line with Elon Musk’s vision for the social media platform regardless of whether the Tesla chief becomes its owner.

The Silicon Valley company has been assessing whether there are other content moderation tools that could replace its harshest penalty for the violation of certain rules, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.

But any change is unlikely to pave the way for a return to the platform for Donald Trump, two of the people said, as removing bans for breaching of its policy against inciting violence is not under consideration. The former US president was issued a lifetime ban soon after a mob of his supporters invaded the US Capitol on January 6 last year.