this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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The reposts and expressions of shock from public figures followed quickly after a user on the social platform X who uses a pseudonym claimed that a government website had revealed “skyrocketing” rates of voters registering without a photo ID in three states this year — two of them crucial to the presidential contest.

“Extremely concerning,” X owner Elon Musk replied twice to the post this past week.

“Are migrants registering to vote using SSN?” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of former President Donald Trump, asked on Instagram, using the acronym for Social Security number.

Trump himself posted to his own social platform within hours to ask, “Who are all those voters registering without a Photo ID in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Arizona??? What is going on???”

Yet by the time they tried to correct the record, the false claim had spread widely. In three days, the pseudonymous user’s claim amassed more than 63 million views on X, according to the platform’s metrics. A thorough explanation from Richer attracted a fraction of that, reaching 2.4 million users.

The incident sheds light on how social media accounts that shield the identities of the people or groups behind them through clever slogans and cartoon avatars have come to dominate right-wing political discussion online even as they spread false information.

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[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 41 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

This is a perfect example of truthful mainstream propaganda.

I have no doubt all of the facts in this piece are correct, but they're also aligned in such a way to suggest to the reader that the real root of the problem is that commoners are allowed to have anonymous social media accounts not tied to a real name or some government ID program.

[–] bartolomeo@suppo.fi 19 points 7 months ago

It also doesn't distinguish between anonymous and pseudonemous, which is important.

[–] Kalysta@lemm.ee 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This.

The real way to deal with this issue is immedate fact checking of information.

The article, however, suggests that the way to deal with the issue is forcing people to use their real identities on line, which will only serve to silence speech. How many of these right wing psychopaths will happily threaten to murder you if you argue they’re wrong?

The answer to bad speech is more speech, not suppression.

[–] msage@programming.dev 6 points 7 months ago

Fact checking the firehose of falsehoods? That's never going to work.

We should teach how to be critical of information.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I keep running into people who say moderation is impossible at scale.

It does not make surface level sense to me. But it’s true. Ban evasion is too easy. With no repercussions behavior is not socially enforced.

If you think through it, and do want moderation and bans to work, it always comes back to having to have an authoritative index of all users. And that gets dystopian almost instantly. It always needs some organization or government to tell the platform that a user is who they say they are.

[–] jkrtn@lemmy.ml 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What about networks of trust instead of a single index?

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That sounds interesting. I’d be curious to learn if:

  • It’s been proven to scale to millions of users.
  • If there are usually strong repercussions for lying.
[–] jkrtn@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 months ago

You and I both! Unfortunately I am familiar with the concept but unfamiliar with any specific details.