W Social: Key Allegations & Answers - Alt Text

Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)

🚨 New post alert 📝 A deep dive into #WSocial with some fascinating findings: candid statements about their motives, a Greta Thunberg connection, potential AI plans (!!!) Why write about it again? I still had so many questions after publishing my first article. I spent 3 weeks watching every interview I could find and connecting the dots. I hope you'll enjoy this piece: 🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ #blog #longread #privacy #DataMining #Europe

Seen but not heard: The New York Times failed to quote trans people in over 60% of 2023 stories on anti-trans legislation

A new report from Media Matters and GLAAD finds that The New York Times excluded the perspectives of trans people from two-thirds of its stories about anti-trans legislation in the year following public criticism for its handling of the topic. Media Matters previously reported that the Times helped fuel a right-wing anti-trans panic in 2022 by platforming anti-trans extremists, painting rising transgender identification as a social contagion, and fearmongering about the costs of transgender acceptance. In February 2023, the paper received two separate open letters: one from a coalition of 150+ organizations and leaders, including GLAAD, and a separate letter signed by hundreds of Times contributors that criticized the outlet's contributions to a deadly anti-LGBTQ culture war. The newspaper attempted to conflate both efforts, dismissing all criticisms of its coverage as merely “protests organized by advocacy groups.” Between February 15, 2023, when those letters were separately delivered to the Times, and February 15, 2024, the Times published at least 65 articles that mentioned U.S. anti-trans legislation in either their headline or lead paragraphs. We counted how often the paper quoted openly trans or gender-nonconforming sources, cited anti-trans misinformation or talking points without context or adequate fact-checking, and accurately represented the records of anti-trans figures mentioned in its stories. Our findings: 66% of the articles did not quote even one trans or gender-nonconforming person. 18% of the articles quoted misinformation from anti-trans activists without adequate fact-checking or additional context. 6 articles obscured the anti-trans background of sources, erasing histories of extremist rhetoric or actions.

Objection on Twitter / X

Objection filed.— Objection (@objectionupdate) April 15, 2026

Data Feminism for AI

Attacks on women and trans people are not happening in a vacuum. Communications scholars W. Lance Bennett and Marianne Kneuer recently argued that we are witnessing the intensification of "illiberal public spheres" around the world (Bennett and Kneuer, 2023). These are characterized by a set of anti-democratic communications tactics that include the denigration and exclusion of minoritized people, targeted attacks on the press and political institutions, and transgression of norms of civil discourse. Such tactics are enabled and amplified by the social media platforms owned by Big Tech, whose business model elevates attention above all other metrics, such that they profit richly off extremism, threats, spectacle, and lies. The success of this corporate partnership with right-wing extremism is evident in the proliferation of book bans (Magnusson, 2024), the demonization of DEI and critical race theory (Crenshaw, 2022), and mob tactics to doxx, intimidate, misrepresent, and otherwise silence people that study misinformation, speak out against racial and gender violence, or rule against insurrectionists (Edmonds, 2024). At the same time, we have seen the continued work of feminists, including Latin American, Indigenous, and abolitionist feminists in the US and globally, doing the work of imagining alternate worlds (Cullors, 2021; Davis, 2022; Ricaurte, 2019; Simpson, 2017). This paper represents our own first attempt to imagine a more equitable, sustainable, feminist world for AI research.

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[Epistemic status: fiction] Thanks for letting me put my story on your blog. Mainstream media is crap and no one would have believed me anyway. This starts in September 2017. I was working for a sm…

Archived Fact-Checked Media — MediaVault

“There's a story going around: after the drone strikes on Yandex data centres, comments on AfD and MAGA accounts collapsed. We monitor 17,000+ politicians, media and civil society accounts in 30+ countries. 50,000+ posts a day. So we checked. We don't see it. 🧵 https://t.co/8quSNosqv0”

I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day | Anonymous

Objectification, hate, rape threats: the politicians debating online abuse mean well, but to truly understand, they need to see what I see

'A directive from above': Former NYT editor lays out how the paper pushes anti-trans bigotry

In this in-depth interview, former New York Times editor Billie Jean Sweeney details how the paper shifted towards openly promoting anti-trans hatred, how some staff tried to stop it, how it's directed from the very top and the damage this legitimization of bigotry has done

New York Times Sign On Letter | GLAAD

From LGBTQ and allied leaders and organizations Join 100+ organizations and leaders in calling on the New York Times to improve their coverage of transgender people, click here. 4/22/2026 - Mother of Transgender Teen Confronts New York Times Leadership about Inaccurate, Weaponized Reporting of Transgender People: “What Steps Are You Taking to be Accountable?” 6/5/2025

The New York Times helped fuel an anti-trans panic in 2022. Will 2023 be any better?

Perhaps no mainstream publication did more in 2022 than the New York Times to shift the mainstream conversation around transgender equality away from obstacles to access in housing, employment, and health care and toward the idea that the most pressing issue facing the trans community is actually too much medical care. The paper’s venerable pages featured profile after profile that platformed anti-trans extremists, fearmongered about the price of transgender acceptance, and framed rising trans identification as a social contagion. A recent article that centers the concerns of parents calling for the forced outing of transgender students shows why in 2023, the Times must improve its coverage.

The Final Straw Radio: The Situation with NoBlogs (a midweek special featuring Sabot Media and CrimethInc)

In this mid-week special, you may have noticed a change in our introduction, that we’re listing as our website (a work in progress, currently pointed at our blog, soon to be pointed at our new web host). This is because we’re moving our website from NoBlogs.org following the August 26, 2026 announcements by the US State Department and Department of Treasury that designated the hosts of NoBlogs, the Italian autonomous tech collective Autistici / Inventati as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and placed it on the Specially Designated Nationals list under Executive Order 13224. In this conversation you’ll hear a member of the crimethinc ex-workers collective and Sprout from Sabot Media talk about the designation, the intended impacts on anarchist, antifascist and other movements by the US government, and what can come next if we’re up for the fight. I invite listeners to check out the statement from as well as the still awaiting more signatures and articles available on the subject from sabot.media. There’s also a recent chat by with Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights on the legal elements of this chat, alongside a list of from Riseup that could be helpful for people looking for new web hosting homes for their projects. Sabot Media about NoBlogs: Also, check out Autistici/Inventatiti 's book about their first ten years: . ... . .. Featured Tracks: TFSR by Beatbuster by 

A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

July 7, 2020 The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. We welcome responses at letters@harpers.org Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and […]

Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement

While online harassment is recognized as a significant problem, most scholarship focuses on descriptions of harassment and its effects. We lack explanations of why people engage in online harassment beyond simple bias or dislike. This article puts forth an explanatory model where networked harassment on social media functions as a mechanism to enforce social order. Drawing from examples of networked harassment taken from qualitative interviews with people who have experienced harassment ( n = 28) and Trust & Safety workers at social platforms ( n = 9), the article builds on Brady, Crockett, and Bavel’s model of moral contagion to explore how moral outrage is used to justify networked harassment on social media. In morally motivated networked harassment, a member of a social network or online community accuses a target of violating their network’s norms, triggering moral outrage. Network members send harassing messages to the target, reinforcing their adherence to the norm and signaling network membership. Frequently, harassment results in the accused self-censoring and thus regulates speech on social media. Neither platforms nor legal regulations protect against this form of harassment. This model explains why people participate in networked harassment and suggests possible interventions to decrease its prevalence.