Some PhD student should write a dissertation comparing relative rates of resilience to online falsehoods within each platform population...

The USAID funding cuts also absolutely wrecked the journalism NGO sector. Even an organisation didn't take USAID funding it still represented a massive percentage of the global funding for journalism NGOs, so now there's a much smaller pool of funding to apply for.

Reminder that Musk literally shared Russian disinformation to justify his USAID cuts

New filing by SPLC suggests FBI opened its investigation based on a letter sent to Stephen Miller in Aug 2026 from Liberty Counsel, Moms for Liberty, TPUSA and other rw groups—complaining about their inclusion in the Hate Map. The incident report cribs from the rw activists letter repeatedly.

The "humor is legal again" crowd not dealing well with people making funny signs.

Thoughts on how democracies can win the war on truth, from last week’s gathering of fact-checkers and disinformation researchers at GlobalFact in Vilnius, Lithuania: www.thewayfinder.net/p/what-it-ta...

Thoughts on how democracies can win the war on truth, from last week’s gathering of fact-checkers and disinformation researchers at GlobalFact in Vilnius, Lithuania: www.thewayfinder.net/p/what-it-ta...

Jak być dziennikarzem w warunkach opresji ze strony własnego kraju i totalnej dominacji Big Techów? Trwa #GlobalFact2026 czyli coroczny sabat dziennikarzy i fact-checkerów. Za nami inspirujące wystąpienie Niny Jankowicz @ninajankowicz.com ... 1/z wielu

Quoting from Václav Havel's revered essay "The Power of the Powerless" (1978), @ninajankowicz.com says politicians' and oligarchs' aggressive pushback against fact-checkers worldwide demonstrates that what they're doing is effective. "They are threatening us because we are a threat to them."

"The process is the punishment", says @ninajankowicz.com of @americansunlight.org. If you become the subject of a politicized investigation, don't simply comply and hope it goes away. "Make them subpoena you, release your own correspondence with them, demand a public hearing." #GlobalFact #Vilnius

Tulsi's doing her worst to promote Russian disinformation about Ukrainian biolabs on her way out as DNI. But the implications go farther than Kyiv. New from me: www.thewayfinder.net/p/why-is-the...

Matt Taibbi's defamation case against Rep Kamager-Dove has been tossed. He sued her because she asked why the Republicans, in yet another hearing about the CeNsoRshIp iNDusTriAl cOmPlex (which doesn't exist) kept inviting a "serial sexual harasser". Here, relive and savor the moment:

“By divesting from content moderation, platforms are amplifying abusive content, saving on the ‘expense’ of keeping their platform safe, and falling into political lockstep with an administration that claims content moderation is censorship,” I told WIRED about CCDH’s new findings.

Some pics and thoughts from this weekend’s premiere of Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s new film on online misogyny, MISS REPRESENTATION: RISE UP ✨ 💪 missrepresentstionriseup.org

I’m proud to share that my story is part of Miss Representation: Rise Up, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival today, June 7th. This documentary is about the reality and dangers of being a woman online, including the tech systems that look the other way. #MissRepresentation #RiseUp #Tribeca2026

“I’m Kid Rock.” “I’m Naomi Wolf.” “I’m Kanye West.” “I’m Matt Taibbi.” “I’m Catturd. Those stories, plus Rob Schneider, tonight on 60 Minutes.”

Friend in St Petersburg reports an information blackout after Ukraine hit the city with drones overnight; news is only “on telegram with a VPN” www.npr.org/2026/06/03/n...

Update: he didn't.

Predictably, so dies my quest to get a slice of the weaponization fund

Update on hacking of ObamaWhiteHouse IG account from @craigsilverman.bsky.social: hackers gained access by convincing Meta's chatbot they owned the account. (I've deleted my older posts on this to surface reality rather than the possibilities I was discussing)

What in the Fourth of July fuck is this (Seen at Union Station, DC)

“When it comes to aggression, we are raising men; when it comes to accountability, we are raising little boys.” Excellent as always from @lyz.bsky.social www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

Can someone please tell me why I’ve received: -two phone calls -a text -two LinkedIn messages -several emails …from three different firms in the past 2.5 hours, all asking me to do a “paid phone consultation” on women and AI because I was “requested by name” What sort of weird scam is this?

As much as the administration tries, it can't delete what happened on J6. The archive lives in court records, in the J6 Committee Report, in guerrilla archiving efforts www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Lately I’ve been thinking about how we tried to build big structures to fight disinformation, but maybe they should be much smaller: open.substack.com/pub/wicziped...

Is Trump’s $1.8B slush fund as nonpartisan as the administration claims? Probably not. But I intend to find out.

Yes, I'm suing Matt Taibbi.

🚨S1 E8 “Mutually Assured Destruction” The Illegals: ‘The Americans’ Rewatch Podcast is out now! Only on @themaydaynetwork.com WATCH: youtu.be/J__druC9OFM LISTEN: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

"We find a sharp rise in non-existent references following widespread LLM adoption, with a conservative estimate of 146,932 hallucinated citations in 2025 alone....hallucinated references disproportionately assign credit to already prominent and male scholars." arxiv.org/abs/2605.07723

Until recently, Trump was strongly against AI regulation and guardrails. Now he's discussing "working together for guardrails" with one of the most censorial regimes in the world. Got it. 🤔

A lot of worrisome trends in this analysis from @caseynewton.bsky.social, but the saddest one is that X users are now 75% men. When I wrote my last book, only Reddit had that user ratio and Twitter had decent safety policies. How far we've come. www.platformer.news/threads-blue...

🚨Next Episode of The Illegals: The Americans Rewatch Podcast will drop tomorrow (Friday) at 12:30 PM ET — immediately following Breaking the News with Julie, Michelle, and Jeff which airs LIVE at Noon. www.youtube.com/@TheMaydayNetwork Season 1 Ep 8 “Mutually Assured Destruction”

I think we should now refer to him as "Kash-went-snorkeling-at-the-watery-grave-of-900-Americans-Patel"

Preeeeeeetty much nothing better than getting in a great writing groove

America’s cyber defense agency, CISA, has not had a Senate-confirmed director in 16 months.

Federal records requests have nearly doubled in the past 5 years, with no increase in the staff or budgets of those responding. The deluge is powered by MAGA, which is engaging in robo-requests & brigading. I became the target of one of these campaigns: www.thewayfinder.net/p/foia-in-th...

I wrote about this weird experience what it means for transparency and democracy www.thewayfinder.net/p/foia-in-th...

About to join @bbcnews to talk Ukraine 🇺🇦 and Putin’s BS Victory Day truce

Since March, I’ve been re-watching the incredible TV series THE AMERICANS with @themaydaynetwork.com’s podcast THE ILLEGALS. In episode 7, one character is based on a real-life Polish dissident—something I knew a little bit about 🤓  Check out the full episode here youtu.be/Ltzdzcp9C1U

Afternoon productivity spike sponsored by Cheez-Its

New from 404 Media: we've obtained a copy of the Chinese-language realtime deepfake software powering scams around the world. For weeks I spoke to these scammers, sent them photos of my face to build a deepfake. We reveal how it works. Impacts WhatsApp, Teams, Zoom www.404media.co/hello-boss-i...

Doing research, looking at State Department FOIA logs, and happened upon dozens and dozens of requests in 2024 for communications between me and the State Department about the arrest of Pavel Durov. I have a vague memory of cranks on X deciding I was responsible, but this is insane. Jesus.

Reminder: Sarah Rogers literally revoked the visas of five researchers (and tried to deport one green card holder!) because she DID NOT LIKE THEIR SPEECH She's a type of speech warrior... just not the free kind More here: bsky.app/profile/nina...

He is such a deeply unserious person. You could deduce that from his Government Gangsters list (which I’m on)—from the mere existence of it to its errant tabs and odd formatting. And now J Edgar Boozer is giving out branded liquor. Cool. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Our convo is now live! I learn something from Emily every time I talk to her- have a listen! (Added bonus: you'll learn what musical theater roles I'm sad I never got to play) www.thewayfinder.net/p/ai-threats...

Going live at noon ET with my good friend Emily Horne of Spin Class to discuss: -NYT reporting that the WH is considering "vetting AI models before they are released;" -the intel leak that suggests Putin is worried about assassination or a coup; -Tony nominatons!! Join us: thewayfinder.net

Put more simply: Michael Shellenberger, the author of the 4th bestselling Substack in "news," with over 210k subscribers, thinks you should only trust *him* to tell you which conspiracies are real, and pay him the low low price of $12/month to do it

Ah yes, let's definitely take advice on which conspiracies are real from the guy who (checks notes) is a self-appointed expert on UFOs despite having no scientific training, and has spent the past 4 yrs claiming evidence of a massive censorship conspiracy, while ignoring all facts to the contrary 🙃

"Consent decrees settle cases. They can impose binding obligations, but only because they are contracts between the parties. They do not indicate that the plaintiffs established their factual claims and legal theories in court" ...despite what cranks like Eric Schmidt, Jim Jordan et al may say!