Forget Russia’s Twitter TrollsAmerica’s Censorious Officials Are a Bigger Threat

Published

2 years ago

January 12, 2023

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After years of hyperventilating over the alleged perils to American democracy posed by foreign shitposts, it looks like Moscow’s social media campaign to influence U.S. elections accomplished little, say researchers.

That is, Russian tweets had little effect, unless you count the boost it gave to the careers of pundits bloviating about the supposed vulnerability of our political system. In fact, with this study dropping in the midst of competing revelations about political shenanigans, it appears the government that meddled the most in American politics is the one based in Washington, D.C.

As reported by Reason’s Robby Soave, New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics looked into the impact of Russia’s social media campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election. The results, published in Nature Communications, suggest Vladimir Putin didn’t get much bang for his rubles.

“Taking our analyses together, it would appear unlikely that the Russian foreign influence campaign on Twitter could have had much more than a relatively minor influence on individual-level attitudes and voting behavior,” wrote authors Gregory Eady (University of Copenhagen), Tom Paskhalis (Trinity College, Dublin), Jan Zilinsky (Technical University of Munich), Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua A. Tucker (all of New York University). “We did not detect any meaningful relationships between exposure to posts from Russian foreign influence accounts and changes in respondents’ attitudes on the issues, political polarization, or voting behavior.”

Or maybe Putin was happy with the results. There’s always been a hint that the social media campaign was mostly an inexpensive means for Russia’s strongman to demonstrate his country could still tweak America’s tail decades after the collapse of the Soviet empire. The frenzy of high-profile finger-pointing into which it sent U.S. politicians and talking heads certainly met that standard.

“Foreign influence campaigns may also succeed through second-order effects: those effects that are achieved by provoking a domestic reaction to the intervention itself,” the authors note of this point. “Russia’s foreign influence campaign on social media may have had its largest effects by convincing Americans that its campaign was successful.”

Interestingly, this study appears amidst revelations that the U.S. government itself has been doing a lot of meddling in domestic politics. The Twitter Files published by journalists given access to internal documents by new owner Elon Musk, and a lawsuit against the federal government by Louisiana and Missouri, show officials pressuring private firms to suppress disfavored stories, ideas, and voices.

“We present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published,” Michael Shellenberger reported last month of the story suppressed in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

“The federal government colluded with Big tech social media companies to violate Americans’ right to free speech under the First Amendment,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey charged January 9. “Today’s documents display White House Digital Director Robert Flaherty and his team’s efforts to censor opposing viewpoints on major social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.”

That’s not to say that Russia’s government doesn’t want to interfere in American elections. It’s eager to see friendly faces installed by voters here and elsewhere around the world. So is the United States government, for that matter. Meddling in other people’s elections is an old and nasty game.

“Great powers frequently deploy partisan electoral interventions as a major foreign policy tool,” Dov Levin, then of UCLA and now at the University of Hong Kong, wrote in 2016 for the International Studies Quarterly. “For example, the U.S. and the USSR/Russia have intervened in one of every nine competitive national level executive elections between 1946 and 2000.” Levin expanded on the topic in 2020’s Meddling in the Ballot Box.

“I was alarmed in 2016 by how policymakers and commentators frequently described Russian interference in our election as unprecedented,” agreed the Wilson Center’s David Shimer, who wrote Rigged, published in 2020. “Many former CIA officers told me in interviews that they viewed the ’48 operation in Italy as the agency at its best. And in the aftermath of that operation, as the CIA’s chief internal historian put it to me, the agency and the KGB went toe to toe in elections all over the world.”

“Methods ranged from providing funding for their preferred side’s campaign (a tactic employed by the Soviet Union in the 1958 Venezuelan elections) to public threats to cut off foreign aid in the event of victory by the disfavored side (as the United States did during the 2009 Lebanese elections),” noted Levin in his 2016 study.

So now the list of foreign election meddling tactics can be amended with the addition of bogus social media accounts and shitposts. It’s not nice, but it’s nothing new. And, frankly, it would take an especially fragile political system to fall to an onslaught of trolls. Especially when posts supposedly intended to shift opinion are executed with the not-so-deft hand Moscow brings to so many of its dealings.

“The Russian efforts were sometimes crude or off-key, with a trial-and-error feel, and many of the suspect posts were not widely shared,” Scott Shane observed in 2017 for The New York Times.

It’s not so surprising, then, that researchers find Russian tweets had little impact on the 2016 election.

On the other hand, U.S. government officials pressuring private companies to act as end-runs around First Amendment protections for free speech is a bigger deal than such clumsy intervention. They abuse the threat inherent in their official positions to bypass restraints on state power, muzzling challenges to their policies and discussions of news stories that might influence election outcomes in ways they don’t like. Vladimir Putin and his cronies can only dream of so effectively subverting the principles of individual freedom and an open society.

There are certainly malicious actors on the world stage who intend harm to Americans and their institutions. But it’s impressive how often the domestic government officials pointing to alleged perils overseas turn out to be the real threats to our liberty.

US

Virginia Giuffre, who accused Prince Andrew of sexual assault, has died, her family says

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2 hours ago

April 26, 2025

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Virginia Giuffre, who accused Prince Andrew of sexual assault, has died, her family says

Virginia Giuffre, who accused Prince Andrew of sexual assault, has died aged 41.

In a statement to Sky’s US partner network NBC News on Friday, her family said she took her own life in the Perth suburb of Neergabby, Australia, where she had been living for several years.

“It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia,” her family said.

“She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.

“Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors.

“In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight.”

Police said emergency services received reports of an unresponsive woman at a property in Neergabby on Friday night.

“Police and St John Western Australia attended and provided emergency first aid. Sadly, the 41-year-old woman was declared deceased at the scene,” a police spokeswoman said.

“The death is being investigated by Major Crime detectives; early indication is the death is not suspicious.”

Sexual assault claims

Ms Giuffre sued the Duke of York for sexual abuse in August 2021, saying Andrew had sex with her when she was 17 and had been trafficked by his friend, the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The duke has repeatedly denied the claims, and he has not been charged with any criminal offences.

In March 2022, it was announced Ms Giuffre and Andrew had reached an out-of-court settlement – believed to include a “substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights”.

She stuck by her version of events until the end

Of the many dozens of victims of Jeffrey Epstein, it was Virginia Giuffre who became the most high-profile.

She was among the loudest and most compelling voices, urging criminal charges to be brought against Epstein, waving her right to anonymity in 2015.

She told how he and Ghislaine Maxwell groomed her and “passed around like a platter of fruit” to be used by rich and powerful men.

But her name and face became known around the world after she accused Prince Andrew of sexually abusing her when she was 17 years old.

The picture of her together with the prince and Maxwell at the top of a staircase, his hand around her waist, is the defining image of the whole scandal.

Prince Andrew said he had no memory of the occasion. But Giuffre stuck by her version of events until the end.

‘An incredible champion’

Sigrid McCawley, Ms Giuffre’s attorney, said in a statement that she “was much more than a client to me; she was a dear friend and an incredible champion for other victims”.

“Her courage pushed me to fight harder, and her strength was awe-inspiring,” she said. “The world has lost an amazing human being today.”

“Rest in peace, my sweet angel,” she added.

Dini von Mueffling, Ms Giuffre’s representative, also said that “Virginia was one of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever had the honour to know”.

“Deeply loving, wise, and funny, she was a beacon to other survivors and victims,” she added. “She adored her children and many animals.

“She was always more concerned with me than with herself. I will miss her beyond words.

“It was the privilege of a lifetime to represent her.”

Ms Giuffre said at the end of March she had four days to live after a car accident, posting on social media that “I’ve gone into kidney renal failure”. She was discharged from hospital eight days later.

Raised mainly in Florida, she said she was abused by a family friend early in life, which led to her living on the streets at times as a teenager.

She said that in 2000, she met Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was convicted in 2021 on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Ms Giuffre said Maxwell then introduced her to Epstein and hired her as his masseuse, and said she was sex trafficked and sexually abused by him and associates around the world.

‘A survivor’

After meeting her husband in 2002, while taking massage training in Thailand at what she said was Epstein’s behest, she moved to Australia and had a family.

She founded the sex trafficking victims’ advocacy charity SOAR in 2015, and is quoted on its website as saying: “I do this for victims everywhere.

“I am no longer the young and vulnerable girl who could be bullied. I am now a survivor, and nobody can ever take that away from me.”

:: Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.

Politics

Crypto banking rule withdrawal by Fed ‘not real progress’ — Senator Lummis

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2 hours ago

April 26, 2025

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Crypto banking rule withdrawal by Fed ‘not real progress’ — Senator Lummis

United States Senator Cynthia Lummis suggests the crypto industry may be celebrating too soon over the US Federal Reserve softening its crypto guidance for banks.

“The Fed withdrawing crypto guidance is just noise, not real progress,” Lummis said in an April 25 X post. Lummis called the Fed’s April 24 announcement — withdrawing its 2022 supervisory letter that had discouraged banks from engaging with crypto and stablecoin activities — “just lip service.”

Lummis’ tone was different from the rest of the crypto industry

Lummis, a pro-crypto advocate known for introducing the Bitcoin (BTC) Strategic Reserve Bill in July 2024, pointed out several flaws in the Fed’s announcement, even as Strategy founder Michael Saylor and crypto entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano suggested it was a step forward for banks and crypto.

Cryptocurrencies, United States — *Source:* *Anthony Pompliano*

She argued that the Fed continues to “illegally flout the law on master accounts” and still relies on reputational risk in its bank supervision practices. It comes as the Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation (FDIC) is working on a rule to stop examiners from considering reputational risk when reviewing a bank’s operations, according to a recent Bloomberg report.

Lummis also highlighted the Fed’s policy statement in Section 9(13), which hasn’t been withdrawn, stating that Bitcoin and digital assets are considered “unsafe and unsound.”

She also reiterated many of the same staff behind Operation Chokepoint 2.0 are still involved in crypto policy today.

“We are NOT fooled. The Fed assassinated companies within the industry and hurt American interests by stifling innovation and shuttering businesses. This fight is far from over.”

“I will continue to hold the Fed accountable until the digital asset industry gets more than a life jacket, Chair Powell — they need a fair shake,” Lummis said.

Custodia Bank founder and CEO Caitlin Long seemed to share a similar view to Lummis.

“THANK YOU for seeing this for what it is,” Long said.

However, many crypto executives praised the Fed’s announcement as a positive development for the industry. Saylor said in an April 25 X post that the Fed’s move means that “banks are now free to begin supporting Bitcoin.”

Anastasija Plotnikova, co-founder and CEO of blockchain regulatory firm Fideum, said the Fed’s decision “is a significant development, as it will simplify the path to institutional adoption.”

Magazine: Ethereum is destroying the competition in the $16.1T TradFi tokenization race

Science

Water on Ancient Mars? New Study Challenges the Cold Planet Theory

Published

2 hours ago

April 26, 2025

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Water on Ancient Mars? New Study Challenges the Cold Planet Theory

Despite being a vast and inhospitable planet today, scientists believe Mars, the Red Planet, used to look much like Earth, the Blue Planet. Over the last four years, NASA’s Perseverance rover has wandered across an area of Mars where researchers believe a powerful river once poured into a crater, forming a sizable delta. According to computer models, ancient Mars most likely had frequent snowfall and rain, which shaped the enormous networks of lakes and river basins. In the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a recent study found that the distribution of these land characteristics is more consistent with precipitation models than with only the consequences of melting ice caps.

Investigating Early Martian Climate Through Modeling

The researchers published their findings April 21 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. According to the research by geologists at the University of Colorado in Boulder, our planetary neighbour, on average 140 million miles away in space, was warm and wet billions of years ago. This challenges a long-held belief that early Mars was mostly cold and icy. However, there’s a vital mystery buried in the story: It’s unclear where Mars’ water could have come from, and most climate models predict the world exhibits surface temperatures that are far too cold to sustain liquid water, raising questions about how those visible geological features could have formed.

“It’s very hard to make any kind of conclusive statement,” Amanda Steckel, a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology’s Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, said in a statement. “But we see these valleys beginning at a large range of elevations. It’s hard to explain that with just ice,” she further added in the official blog posted by University of Colorado.

Through computer simulations, Steckel and her team explored what Mars might have looked like during the Noachian epoch, when water may have drastically shaped the planet’s surface, some 4 billion years ago. Initially created for Earth, their model was modified to simulate how Mars’ landscape changed near the equator, where expansive channel networks extend from the highlands and drain into ancient lakes, possibly even an ocean. NASA’s Perseverance rover is currently exploring one of these sites, Jezero Crater, where a once-powerful river poured into the basin.

Comparing Climate Models and Implications for Planetary History

The group explored two major simulation models, the ice-melt model and the wet and warm model for how precipitation might have created the valleys on Mars: one in which the planet was warm and humid, and another in which ice briefly melted at the edge of a huge ice cap, signifying a cold, arid climate. With valley roots showing up in radically diverse places, each scenario produced a very different Mars.

Their goal was to determine whether ancient Mars may have had a more Earth-like climate, at least for a while. While more evidence is needed and answers to questions, such as how the planet stayed warm enough for rain or snow, are part of an ongoing investigation. Still, Hynek said the study offers valuable clues, not just about Mars, but about the early history of Earth as well.