Maybe giving the U.S. president unfettered and cerpen lucah artisrelatively unregulated access to Twitter was a terrible idea?
A Saturday morning report from the New York Timescomes with the chilling takeaway that savvy social media users outside the U.S. are gaming President Donald Trump's Twitter habits. It's an alarming prospect for anyone who treasures America's continued independence – including the famously controlling president himself.
Trump's habit of retweeting ideas he agrees with has strengthened the platforms, and therefore the influence, of what the report's headline describes as "conspiracy-mongers, racists, and spies." The NYT's deep-dive looks at the president's 11,000-plus tweets, as well as the 47 accounts he follows and the accounts he's retweeted.
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The results paint a stark picture. The #FakeWhistleblower hashtag, which seemingly first sprung from an "obscure" pro-QAnon account in September, rattled around in Twitter's pro-Trump echo chamber for more than a week but gathered little attention beyond that.
Then, on Sept. 30, Trump deployed the hashtag himself. In relatively short order, use of that hashtag peaked at more than 1,200 times per hour, according to data gathered by Dataminr. And although the numbers dropped back down in subsequent days, the hashtag is used exponentially more even now than it was in the days prior to Sept. 30.
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Someone else may have created #FakeWhistleblower, but it didn't become a "thing" until after Trump engaged. And it's continued to rattle around ever since. In a separate example, he helped another QAnon adherent gain "thousands" of new followers after a May 2019 retweet.
The problem with elevating these individuals isn't necessarily restricted to the specific message the president shares. Increased visibility overall is the principal issue. Trump may never retweet the #WhiteGenocide or #IslamIsSatanism hashtags on his own, but his Twitter activity has added to the influence of accounts that do trade in more openly offensive content.
Even if you believe Trump buys into the worldview of every tweet he shares with his 66.5 million followers – and really, there's no reason to think he doesn't – the president's ability to up the influence of lesser-known accounts is still a minefield. Remember: U.S. citizens aren't the only ones with access to Twitter.
As the NYTpoints out, fake accounts with ties to intelligence agencies in China, Iran, and Russia have "directed thousands of tweets" at the president over time. Trump himself has shared content from more than 200 unverified accounts, at least 145 of which "have pushed conspiracy or fringe content." More than two dozen of the accounts from that smaller group have since been suspended.
Trump's activity on Twitter, not to mention his own public utterances, long ago made it clear that he embraces (and even openly cheerleads) a number of conspiracy theories. But even he should feel some alarm at the idea of foreign actors weaponizing his social media behavior for their own purposes.
As Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and cybersecurity expert, told the NYT: "You are very clearly capable of using Twitter to entice and influence this president. You can distort the guy’s views from your house." That prospect should terrify any U.S. resident who cares about their own safety and that of their family.
Maybe giving the U.S. president unfettered access to Twitter was a terrible idea?
The problem isn't justTrump, either. Much of what he sees – or at least, what he shares – comes from the 47 people he follows. It's a list that includes members of the Trump family, Fox News personalities, celebrities, and G.O.P. operatives.
The NYTreport singles out Donald Trump Jr, as one source of QAnon conspiracies in the president's Twitter feed. Trump Jr. has also retweeted at least one Russian intel operative that was subsequently shared by his dad, back in Sept. 2017. Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo and conservative pundit Eric Bolling – both of whom are among Trump's 47 follows – are also shouted out by name.
For all the criticisms the platform has faced, Twitter has often been hailed as a powerful tool for knocking down the barriers that traditionally leave celebrities, politicians, and other public figures living in what is essentially another world compared to the average American citizen. But maybe the lesson of Donald Trump is: that's not necessarily a good thing.
Trump is the most online president the United States has ever known, no question. He's managed to turn social media into one of the most potent tools in his arsenal of political and personal attacks. For all that he rails about "fake news" in the world, the willingness of both Trump and his supporters to bend the truth and even outright lie has turned good faith political discourse into a loaded game of "he said, she said."
The picture of how harmful the influence of social media can be on political discourse has only become clearer in recent days. Just look at all the conversation around political ads on Facebook and Twitter. In September, Facebook went public with the position that politicians aren't held to the same standards as others who use the platform.
The Facebook rationale is that anything uttered or shared by a politician qualifies as "newsworthy content," and is therefore exempt from the rules. That goes hand-in-hand with an existing policy that keeps Facebook from fact-checking politicians' speech. Both policies have already been met with resistance internally at the company.
Facebook's position would be a sensible one in an environment where partisan politics are amiable and debated in good faith. But that's not so much the case when certain key figures – including, it should be said, Trump himself – have shown a demonstrated willingness to lie and cheat to a receptive public.
Even Twitter has tapped out on this particular topic. On Thursday, founder and CEO Jack Dorsey made it official that paid political ads will be banned from the platform. The move won't stop people like Trump from using their influence to knowingly or unknowingly game the ongoing political discourse. But it does eliminate one route by which misinformation has been proven to spread in the modern era, and it's a position that stands in stark contrast to Facebook's controversial policy.
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At this point, it's starting to feel like we'd all be better off if political interests had their power over social media curbed or outright revoked. No platform is going to prevent individual users from voicing their thoughts, political or otherwise, online. As it should be.
But the amount of influence wielded on social by political figures in general and the U.S. president specifically is a tangible, measurable thing in 2019. Trump's behavior has shown how a single tweet can shake world markets, strain international relations, and directly influence abhorrent acts of violence. That's not a good thing.
In U.S. politics, there's a certain level of assumed trust when someone is voted into office. It's a sort of social contract: we're voting for you because we think you can get the job done, and we trust you to keep the bullshit to a minimum. Trump's behavior has torpedoed that public trust, so much so that it cost his Republican party in 2018's elections and will likely cost him again more directly in 2020.
More and more people are coming to recognize the Faustian bargain that's at play in any show of support for Trump and his policies. He appeals to the worst impulses and beliefs of his base, and of U.S. residents in general. But as this Saturday NYTreport lays out in startling detail, he does it by playing in the mud with the worst kinds of people.
I don't know what the answer is. Maybe Congress needs to step in and propose some legislation that would regulate political activity on social media. Maybe companies like Facebook need to cut the flowery "can't we all just get along" shit and take a more active position on doing what they can to reintroduce some order into this divisive moment in U.S. history.
Whatever the answer may be, it's clear that something needs to be done. There are those outside the country who just want to sow chaos in America, and those nefarious interests have found a willing ally in our chaos president.
Topics Facebook Social Media X/Twitter Donald Trump Politics