Roll up your sleeves, another fresh batch of ‘misinformation’ crusaders have popped a study meant to silence free speech on Twitter. The Indiana University Observatory on Social Media (OSM) has added another card to the deck, claiming that a mere 10 Twitter accounts are generating most of the “low-credibility content” that is apparently running rampant.
In a stunt that could only be seen as a veiled attempt to kick up a storm – OSM evaluated over 2 million tweets from 400,000 users, branding them as misinformation agents. Their results scream defiance against logic. They assert that nearly a third of this ‘unauthorized content’ sprung from just 10 users, with a further thousand users producing about three-quarters. Conveniently, they haven’t published a full list of these reputed ‘misinformation merchants’.
The study has unabashedly raised an alarm for these accounts to be removed, making it another notch in an ever-growing tally of attempts at silencing free speech. The arbiters of truth, a few leftist behemoths like eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, fund these initiatives that seem to constantly fly in the face of public discourse.
As per OSM’s researchers, the tweets were categorized into high and low-credibility segments. Users who repeatedly tweeted this so branded ‘low-credibility content’ were flagged. Paradox beneath this classification? Their definition of low-credibility is content from supposedly untrustworthy sources. The labeling of ‘superspreaders’ employed a lopsided evaluation process, singling out individuals as purveyors of ‘untrustworthy content-sharing behavior’, with a dash of ‘toxic language’ citations.
However, they have not laid the cards on the table by revealing the full list of so-called ‘superspreaders’. A few big names were dropped, including Fox News host Sean Hannity and Children’s Health Defense’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Stories have been spun around the data regarding Twitter activities from January 2020 to October 2020, prior to the election drama of 2020 and the Capitol protests of January 6, 2021. Some of the accounts marked were deemed ‘inactive’, casting a doubtful shadow over their study.
The prime agenda of the study is glaringly apparent – it advocates for the censorship of these ‘superspreader’ accounts, asserting that their removal will decrease misinformation, using flimsy reasoning based on popularity and retweet frequency.
Free speech concerns are barely addressed in this 17-page report, with only a passing mention that the potential suspensions may conflict with free speech values. They further suggest a platform redesign to incentivize sharing trustworthy content, overlooking that platforms already aim for this.
This pattern of ‘superspreader’ lists and credibility ratings is a worn-out tactic of the likes of NewsGuard, Ad Fontes and others. Conservatives are continually under fire.
Take action if you’ve suffered censorship at the hands of the tech giants. Contact us via MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help ensure all voices are heard, no matter their political leaning. Let’s hold Big Tech accountable.
