Yves here. Rajiv Sethi describes a fascinating, large-scale study of social media behavior. It looked at “toxic content” which is presumably actual or awfully close to what is often called hate speech. It found that when the platform succeeded in reducing the amount of that content, the user that had amplified it the most both reduced their participation overall but also increased their level of boosting of the hateful content.
Now I still reserve doubts about the study’s methodology. It used a Google algo to determine what was abusive content, here hostile speech directed at India’s Muslim population. Google’s algos made a complete botch of identifying offensive text at Naked Capitalism (including trying to censor a post by Sethi himself, cross posted at Naked Capitalism), to the degree that when challenged, they dropped all their complaints. Maybe this algo is better but there is cause to wonder without some evidence.
What I find a bit more distressing is Sethi touting BlueSky as a less noxious social media platform for having rules for limiting content viewing and sharing that align to a fair degree with the findings of the study. Sethi contends that BlueSky represents a better compromise between notions of free speech and curbs on hate speech than found on current big platforms.
I have trouble with the idea that BlueSky is less hateful based on the appalling treatment of Jesse Singal. Singal has attracted the ire of trans activists on BlueSky for merely being even-handed. That included falsely accusing him of publishing private medical records of transgender children. Quillette rose to his defense in The Campaign of Lies Against Journalist Jesse Singal—And Why It Matters. This is what happened to Singal on BlueSky:
This second round was prompted by the fact that I joined Bluesky, a Twitter alternative that has a base of hardened far-left power users who get really mad when folks they dislike show up. I quickly became the single most blocked account on the site and, fearful of second-order contamination, these users also developed tools to allow for the mass-blocking of anyone who follows me. That way they won’t have to face the threat of seeing any content from me or from anyone who follows me. A truly safe space, at last.
But that hasn’t been enough: They’ve also been aggressively lobbying the site’s head of trust and safety, Aaron Rodericks, to boot me off (here’s one example: “you asshole. you asshole. you asshole. you asshole. you want me dead. you want me fucking dead. i bet you’ll block me and I’ll pass right out of existence for you as fast as i entered it with this post. I’ll be buried and you won’t care. you love your buddy singal so much it’s sick.”). Many of these complaints come from people who seem so highly dysregulated they would have trouble successfully patronizing a Waffle House, but because they’re so active online, they can have a real-world impact.
So, not content with merely blocking me and blocking anyone who follows me, and screaming at people who refuse to block me, they’ve also begun recirculating every negative rumor about me that’s been posted online since 2017 or so — and there’s a rich back catalogue, to be sure. They’ve even launched a new one: I’m a pedophile. (Yes, they’re really saying that!)
Mind you, this is only the first section of a long catalogue of vitriolic abuse on BlueSky.
IM Doc did not give much detail, but a group of doctors who were what one might call heterodox on matters Covid went to BlueSky and quickly returned to Twitter. They were apparently met with great hostility. I hope he will elaborate further in comments.
Another reason I am leery of restrictions on opinion, even those that claim to be mainly designed to curb speech, is the way that Zionists have succeeded in getting many governments to treat any criticism of Israel’s genocide or advocacy of BDS to try to check it as anti-Semitism. Strained notions of hate are being weaponized to censor criticism of US policies.
So perhaps Sethi will consider the reason that BlueSky appears more congenial is that some users engage in extremely aggressive, as in often hateful, norms enforcement to crush the expression of views and information in conflict with their ideology. I don’t consider that to be an improvement over the standards elsewhere.
By Rajiv Sethi, Professor of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University &; External Professor, Santa Fe Institute. Originally published at his site
The steady drumbeat of social media posts on new research in economics picks up pace towards the end of the year, as interviews for faculty positions are scheduled and candidates try to draw attention to their work. A couple of years ago I came across a fascinating paper that immediately struck me as having major implications for the way we think about meritocracy. That paper is now under revision at a flagship journal and the lead author is on the faculty at Tufts.
This year I’ve been on the alert for work on polarization, which is the topic of a seminar I’ll be teaching next semester. One especially interesting new paper comes from Aarushi Kalra, a doctoral candidate at Brown who has conducted a large-scale online experiment in collaboration with a social media platform in India. The (unnamed) platform resembles TikTok, which the country banned in 2020. There are now several apps competing in this space, from multinational offshoots like Instagram Reels to homegrown alternatives such as Moj.
The platform in this experiment has about 200 million monthly users and Kalra managed to treat about one million of these and track another four million as a control group.1 The treatment involved replacing algorithmic curation with a randomized feed, with the goal of identifying effects on exposure and engagement involving toxic content. In particular, the author was interested in the viewing and sharing of material that was classified as abusive based on Google’s Perspective API, and was specifically targeted at India’s Muslim minority.
The results are sobering. Those in the treated group who had previously been most exposed to toxic content (based on algorithmic responses to their prior engagement) responded to the reduction in exposure as follows. They lowered overall engagement, spending less time on the platform (and more on competing sites, based on a subsequent survey). But they also increased the rate at which they shared toxic content conditional on encountering it. That is, their sharing of toxic content declined less than their exposure to it. They also increased their active search for such material on the platform, thus ending up somewhat more exposed than treated users who were least exposed at baseline.
Now one might argue that switching to a randomized feed is a very blunt instrument, and not one that platforms would ever implement or regulators favor. Even those who were most exposed to toxic content under algorithmic curation had feeds that were predominantly non-toxic. For instance, the proportion of content classified as toxic was about five percent in the feeds of the quintile most exposed at baseline—the remainder of posts catered to other kinds of interests. It is not surprising, therefore, that the intervention led to sharp declines in engagement.
You can see this very clearly by looking at the quintile of treated users who were leastexposed to toxic content at baseline. For this set of users, the switch to the randomized feed led to a statistically significant increase in exposure to toxic posts:
Source: Figure 1 in Kalra (2024)
These users were refusing to engage with toxic content at baseline, and the algorithm accordingly avoided serving them such material. But the randomized feed did not do this. As a result, even these users ended up with significantly lower engagement:
In principle, one could imagine interventions that degrade the user experience to a lesser degree. The author uses model-based counterfactual simulations to explore the effects of randomizing only a proportion of the feed for selected users (those most exposed to toxic content at baseline). This is interesting, but existing moderation policies usually target content rather than users, and it might be worth exploring the effects of suppressed or reduced exposure only to content classified as toxic, while maintaining algorithmic curation more generally. I think the model and data would allow for this.
There is, however, an elephant in the room—the specter of censorship. From a legal, political, and ethical standpoint, this is more relevant for policy decisions than platform profitability. The idea that people have a right to access material that others may find anti-social or abusive is deeply embedded in many cultures, even if it is not always codified in law. In such environments the suppression of political speech by platforms is understandably viewed with suspicion.
At the same time, there is no doubt that conspiracy theories spread online can have devastating real effects. One way to escape the horns of this dilemma may be through composable content moderation, which allows users a lot of flexibility in labeling content and deciding which labels they want to activate.
This seems to be the approach being taken at Bluesky, as discussed in an earlier post. The platform gives people the ability to conceal an abusive reply from all users, which blunts the strategy of disseminating abusive content by replying to a highly visible post. The platform also allows users to detach their posts when quoted, thus compelling those who want to mock or ridicule to use (less effective) screenshots instead.
Bluesky is currently experiencing some serious growing pains.2 But I’m optimistic about the platform in the long run, because the ability of users to fine-tune content moderation should allow for a diversity of experience and insulation from attack without much need for centralized censorship or expulsion.
It has been interesting to watch entire communities (such as academic economists) migrate to a different platform with content and connections kept largely intact. Such mass transitions are relatively rare because network effects entrench platform use. But once they occur, they are hard to reverse. This gives Bluesky a bit of breathing room as the company tries to figure out how to handle complaints in a consistent manner. I think that the platform will thrive if it avoids banning and blocking in favor of labeling and decentralized moderation. This should allow those who prioritize safety to insulate themselves from harm, without silencing the most controversial voices among us. Such voices occasionally turn out, in retrospect, to have been the most prophetic.
________
The statistical analysis in the paper is based only on Hindi language users who were active in the baseline period, reducing the sample size to about 232 thousand from 5 million. Of these, about 63 thousand were in the treatment group. I find this puzzling—with random assignment to treatment, the share of treated users in the subsample should be about 20 percent, as in the full sample, but it is above 27 percent. Perhaps I’m missing something obvious, and will update this footnote once I figure this out.
See, for example the reaction to Kevin Bryan’s announcement of a new AI assistant designed to enhance student learning. I have been exploring this tool (with mixed results) but it already seems clear to me that rather than putting teaching assistants out of work, such innovations could reduce drudgery and make the job more fulfilling.
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Bluesky sounds so familiar. Where have I heard this refrain before?
Cartman:
Everyone likes me and thinks I’m great in my safe space…
Steven Seagal:
… my safe space.
Cartman:
People don’t judge me and haters don’t hate in my safe space…
PC Principal:
… your safe space.
Cartman and Steven Seagal:
Bully-proof windows, troll-safe doors, nothing but kindness in here.
Randy Marsh:
You might call me a pussy, but I won’t hear you in my safe space…
Steven Seagal:
… my safe space.
Cartman:
Bully-proof windows.
Cartman:
Everyone likes me and thinks I’m great in my safe space…
Steven Seagal:
… my safe space.
Cartman:
People don’t judge me and haters don’t hate in my safe space…
PC Principal:
… your safe space.
Cartman and Steven Seagal:
Bully-proof windows, troll-safe doors, nothing but kindness in here.
Randy Marsh:
You might call me a pussy, but I won’t hear you in my safe space…
Steven Seagal:
… my safe space.
Cartman:
Bully-proof windows.
Intermission
Demi Lovato:
If you do not like me, you are not allowed in my safe space…
Plus-size Models:
… my safe space.
PC Principal:
Look and you’ll see there’s a very select crowd in your safe space…
Everyone:
…my safe space
Cartman:
People that support me…
Everyone:
…mixed in with…
Cartman:
More people that support me…
Everyone:
…and say nice things.
Everyone:
Rainbows all around me, there is no shame in my safe space…
Turley:
Clouds Form Over Bluesky: “Trust and Safety” Head Embraces Canadian-Style Speech Limits
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/12/18/clouds-form-over-bluesky-trust-and-safety-head-embraces-canadian-style-speech-limits-for-liberal-site/
Blue Sky reminds me of the early days of DailyKos which was a prequel to the Democratic Party’s drift into being a authoritarian/totalitarian party. Dissidents were viciously attacked by DK operatives with threats, cursing of the most vile kind was allowed by the moderators when it was directed against those of us to the left of the fake left that DK had become. Early on I realized that tribalism triumphed and that liberalism, in a way, died twenty years ago.
I read a lot of web but the only site where I bother to read the comments is this one. Of course we are all ‘silo-ing’ to an extent since the internet is vast and time is valuable so all those people working out their personal problems in comment sections can count me out as an audience. On the other hand if people at Bluesky want their safe space let them have it. Multipolarity is a good thing.
The problem is when the silo inhabitants start trying to tell other silos what they can and cannot say. Unipolarity is a bad thing.
The real problem with the old Twitter that Taibbi and others investigated was that they weren’t upfront in their censorship and there was a lack of competition from better platforms. You can’t vote with your feet if there’s no place else to go. Myself, I avoid social media altogether. Perhaps NC is a form of social media but some of us like to think of it as a debating club for ideas.
Long may it wave.
And when, David Brock’s CTR trolls all but wiped contradictory, inconvenient or working class input, perspectives & FACT off lefty blog aggregators; they’d forget & use their Energy in Depth, CAP, WEF, Genetic Literacy Project & AIPAC handles as the crank or booze kicked in? When a DNC troll managed to post his experiences (including remuneration) it was up long enough to get us to NEVER feed or engage K, C or J Street trolls & it’s paying evev LESS & intentionally more BLATANT with Israeli hasbara & NED agitprop?
About a decade and a half ago I worked for a Big Name PR/lobby firm as a programmer. I was seated in the of a nest of twenty somethings who spent the day writing on blogs for the company’s clients. I asked them if they really bought into what they were writing–they didn’t they were just working their first post-college jobs at considerably more that their friends who worked elsewhere and needed to pay their college loans. I worked there because I had to pay my one of my daughter’s ballet lessons–fortunately it paid off and she’s now a well-known and prize winning dancer in a major Euro dance company.
I’d declined Grok AI training & cited Tesla’s top fatality-rate/ inability to escape & part in US duopoly’s war on BYD’s imports; so was unceremoniously shadow-banned worse than usual (between Israeli diversions in Lebanon, Syria & DNC’s big heist). So, I’d tried it to follow a few wishy-washy lefty boomers who were suddenly “antisemetic jihadi anarchist Sturmabteilung,” to WBD/ Comcast viewing refugees on BlueSky? I’m wondering, just how much of their dementia & hive-minded denial is from their 12th case of “little sniffles,” self medication & conditioned response/ inbreeding?
Indeed. My first thought after reading the article was why start Bluesky when they could just post on dailykos which has been censoring dissidents to the approved narrative for 20 years now.
When I used to participate there before NC started, one of the worst things you could do was bring up Bernie Sanders in a positive light. Wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. Now half the internet runs on the system those little pissants set up.
I got run off of Kos for supporting Bernie.
About fifteen years ago an aerospace engineer who liked to torment conservative members of a motorcycle forum joined Kos as a columnist and only lasted for maybe three articles before he was kicked off, probably for being agnostic about everything.
At least you lasted longer than I did. I gave up during Obama’s first term.
I got banned from Dkos in 2012 for criticizing Obama.
Carpetbaggers thrive on the results of hate.
Provided they have a source of debt based finance.
Know anyone with access to such?
Anyone?
To borrow a much-used phrase, I think we need to Make Debate Great Again.
I’d like to see big names who are, say, pro- and con- covid vaccines, or hormone blockers given to minors without parental consent, or even free speech / hate speech limits, actually lay out and defend their best arguments against determined opposition. And I’d like to see it done via correspondence, because live debates, as entertaining as they can be, usually end with a he-said-she-said tie which is broken only by which speaker appears more charismatic or dominating. Correspondence debates would allow participants to actually read the studies on which their opponent is basing their argument, and make informed counterarguments from there.
I’ve seen some great debates done this way. The iodine debate in the Townsend Letter comes to mind.
Obviously this works best with more fact-based disagreements than values-based ones, but even with those debates (ie abortion) there are enough fact-based disagreements that such a debate could be edifying.
I know the greatest impediment to this is that it is currently fashionable for defenders of PMC-favored viewpoints to refuse to debate skeptics on the grounds that it gives the skeptics unearned legitimacy (eg global warming and tobacco). Questions of how legitimate the PMC’s authority is aside, the study this article cited seems to indirectly suggest this is not working all that well. Surely a well-sourced debate between the best each side has to offer, won by the “right” side, would do more to sway hearts and minds than any amount of twitter vitriol or blue sky cancellation?
Just finished reading a new bio of J.D. Salinger who never finished college and his editor at the New Yorker, William Shawn, never went to college at all. Neither did Gore Vidal and other leading mid 20th figures. Pauline Kael dropped out of Berkely her final year.
Which is to say that education used to be seen as a means of self improvement and less a merit badge of right thinking legitimacy. As US society has become more doctrinaire our social dynamism–celebrated by people like Kael–has deteriorated. But then success made her a bit doctrinaire too.
But she did get it right the first time.
But this has also been going on for thousands of years, this battlefield of ideas. BlueSky is not really a rare mass migration, just the latest church housing the latest complex of ideas, on its way to the next one.
I know a bunch of people who migrated to BlueSky from Twitter. Best I can tell for two reasons 1) They hate Musk with the heat of 1000 suns. They hated him for a long time, but now that he’s in bed with Hitler it is imperative they move. 2) This is most important, best I can tell. It IS their safe space, and I think that is a good way to put it. They really want NO PART of alternative views contrary to what they believe. They want NO PART of anyone who doesn’t hold their views. They are head in the sand to avoid it, or censorship to fix it. They cannot face the fact they could possibly be wrong about anything.
They think everyone not them are stupid. They are by far the most intelligent and knowledgeable people on planet earth which gives them the right to tell everyone else what to do, what to read, what not to read, who to vote for, what news to watch, and how to live every aspect of their life. Reality is what they decide it is, and anyone who disagrees is an outsider and should be silenced or censored so they are protected from such things.
But the truth is, these are all shallow people who have no ability to self-reflect, admit they might not know something, and therefore search for the truth. The truth is what they want it to be – facts don’t matter. They will never admit they have been wrong about so many things over the years. The mountain of evidence against them doesn’t matter, and never will.
Biden was always sharp as a tack, Russia is paying Trump, Musk, and half the GOP, Rachel Maddow is a to notch journalist, the democrats are the only party that can save democracy, and the list goes on. Their reality is what they make it.
To me they look like a bunch of 2nd graders laying on the ground with their fingers in their ears throwing a hissy fit. That’s pretty much how they act too.
It’s that Sixth Sense observation: they’re (politically) dead, but they don’t know it yet.
Just so happened today, a few were talking about how Elon got Trump elected. I told them Elon didn’t get Trump elected, the democrats did – twice. Maybe they should look in the mirror instead of blaming everyone else.
Nope, can’t do that.
I was told the two losses came to a woman, one was a woman of color. That tells you a lot about the American electorate. It’s never them.
“Just so happened today, a few were talking about how Elon got Trump elected. I told them Elon didn’t get Trump elected, the Democrats did – twice. Maybe they should look in the mirror instead of blaming everyone else…”
Interesting and helpful observation.
I wouldn’t limit my critique to just Bluesky.
As a general rule, when we find “truth”, it (somewhat amazingly) tends to look very much like what we were searching for….
Yves, just to clarify, I’m on multiple Bluesky block lists because I followed Signal back when he followed me. I’ve also written about the mob attacks on Kevin Bryan and others. My comments were really about the approach to content moderation, which I think will take care of this kind of toxicity in the long run. I didn’t mean to suggest the platform is in a good place right now!
“My comments were really about the approach to content moderation, which I think will take care of this kind of toxicity in the long run…”
Forgive me, but this makes no sense to me. The essay is interesting, but what sort of sociological model are you using that suggests BlueSky will produce moderation? I need to understand why I should agree. Will there be a place, say, for Joseph Massad at BlueSky or what about Jeffrey Sachs? These are fellow faculty at Colombia, of course.
Yes I think there will be a space for them, and even for Singal once people start using composable content moderation effectively, provided that those running the platform take a hands off approach and let moderation be decentralized. That was really my point. I don’t think you can extrapolate from the current state of the platform, which I agree is a disaster for many users who could potentially add a lot of value.
“once people start using…” This is interesting from a systems theory pov but many of us believe that there are external forces shaping the cultural hegemony.
I tried to talk about this website to a relative who would only feel comfortable on BlueSky. I made a point of stressing how very good the comments are here. I got grilled about how this was possible and did my best to explain how closely and judiciously conversations here are monitored.
Despite my best efforts, I don’t think my relation even deigned to stop by here even once to see for himself. I can’t be entirely sure of this however because it looks like he never plans to contact me again since Trump got elected.
I have acquaintances who live in BlueSky-land and acquaintances who live in MAGA-land. What they have in common is a lack of the ability to engage in good faith debate or to acknowledge other viewpoints or even other facts. For this I blame the consumption of television and social media, which are the one-way siloes of a two-dimensional world in which self-selected elites cram-down dissent.
Propaganda works and it works best in a democracy. Social media has also amplified something that a relative once shared with me (often attributed to Alexander Hamilton): The masses are asses. I think that we’re all bozos on this bus.
The internet is a curious device. It allows an individual to publish an opinion, no matter how ludicrous or how profound In addition, this act, seemingly empowers the individual to imagine that what has been shared with the world is of ultimate importance (myself included!!!) Politically free speech is also an interesting concept. Protecting it is #1 in the Bill of Rights (backed up by #2 (which could generate another debate). Eventually, this leads into a discussion of what’s allowable and what isn’t and what authority gets to control the discussion. The social media platforms, disguised as ‘public squares, are owned as private concerns by a limited number of indiviuals with AI as their filtering servant. What happens is that statements of unknown origin by unknown authors can be made and censored by unkown entities and no one is the wiser. E.G If I state a generic opinion: “Supporting a genocide is obscene.” This might be worthy of getting purged in a comment section because the language is ‘offensive’ to Mr. or Ms. AI. Without naming any entity, would this also all into the category of ‘hate speech and against whom? And what if, my opinion, added some qualifiers, and I stated: ” It’s offensive (to myself) that Christians, during Christmas, while celebrating the birth of their saviour, support a genocide in Israel”. Is that hate speech and against whom? What’s worse than hate speech if not the suppression of ideas in the public square. Happy solstice.
Well, I’ll speak in defense of the Bluesky userbase, as someone who was an observer but not a participant in the Singal Bsky Affair. I don’t think it’s journalistically great practice to frame a piece like that entirely through the voice of one protagonist, even just in an intro piece.
As for Singal, once you start putting people’s posts up on kiwifarms (the reactionary doxxing and harassment website) I’m no longer obligated to take you seriously when you assure me you’re just here for good faith debate. If you get maliciously hounded off the platform at that stage, well I’m sorry you lost at your own game. Try to win next time.
There’s an implication that what happened to Singal is representative of broader trends on that website, but the only other example proferred is that something, unclear what, might have happened to people IM Doc knows. Singal getting hounded off by a mass base of power users was a very singular event as far as I have seen. And it was not a one sided affair as presented here.
Singal is right about one thing which is that the bsky userbase skews left. Not left in an especially Democrat way, mind you; the Dem Party’s introductory post on the platform suffered a humiliating ratio. Some people retreat from that. It’s also just harder to post controversial opinions on new websites where you don’t have your usual followers around to help, which i think puts people off from getting over that hump. I hope the site continues to grow its userbase. But i don’t think we’re getting back that “town square” feeling of pre Elon twitter any time soon. I’m sad about that fact, imperfect as that platform was; but letting Singal on to sow discord and harassment is neither here nor there regarding this issue.
Thanks for providing another perspective. I am weighing whether or not to join BlueSky and I appreciate hearing pros and cons. So many online forums are either echo chambers or rage fests. Even NC has its share of groupthink – probably inevitable, people being people.
Your opening para is troubling. I provided a link to an extensively documented post on Quillette about the persistent harassment of Singal. Singal himself provides additional long-form debunkings, including of the doxxing accusation. You try to revive it here by crafting a very misleading statement that a less than careful reader could see as amounting to Singal himself posting on kiwifarms and that resulting in actual doxxing. This is utterly dishonest and confirmation of bad faith in the attacks on Singal.
You then sort of walk it back by admitting that Singal was harassed on BlueSky and try to depict that as a unique event. But the (further) harm to Singal is already done. And why should we believe that this sort of thing won’t happen again?
I appreciate the rest of your remarks but after the opener, it’s hard to place much trust in
Twitter never felt like a town square. It felt like an authoritarian centrist circle jerk.
The UK has never believed in journalism as anything other than muck-racking and rabble-rousing, with only the length of the words distinguishing the publications. So we’re not fazed that social media sound like bar talk. Whereas it seems that Pulitzer-heritage USA is having trouble coming to terms with nakedly partisan spaces that don’t pretend to the pious balance like the Grey Lady.
So what if X is full of alt right thought? You know what is, take it or leave it. The Bluesky crowd have done the right thing, the didn’t like the other guy’s talk so they started their own bar. It’s an ironic blow for pluralism by the Savonarolas but that’s what adversarial political systems need, not a monoculture of tepid pabulum.
As for hate speech, reading bad words is no defence to committing bad actions.
One of the creators of composable content moderation is Renee Di Resta.
She has a somewhat checkered background. Briefly, she started her career as a CIA agent who also wrote the Senate Intelligence Report on Russian disinformation. She was the research manager for the Stanford Internet Observatory. This academic center was set up in June of 2019 for the purpose of doing real time social media monitoring of targeted political and social causes.
Seen the writings/speeches of Mike Benz and Matt Taibbi for more detail
Renee is not a creator of composable content moderation, she studies it (link in my post). She is one of the most unfairly maligned people in this whole censorship industrial complex debate. Just watch her on Rogan or Sam Harris (with Shellenberger on one episode) for instance, she is not the villain made out to be. Or read her book, which is excellent. Taibbi and Shellenberger have gone off the rails attacking Renee. And she was an intern at the CIA, never an agent, lots of nonsense written about her.
Also, composable content moderation is a way to avoid centralized censorship. I am pretty close to a free speech absolutist, you can read my posts on this. But I am also a fan of Renee and have learned a lot from her.
Unless Renee has publicly opposed CIA positions or spilled some beans about the extent of CIA meddling, it’s hard to see her as neutral or independent given her CIA history. There are plenty of CIA assets across the world in journalistic and even academic positions who have never had been formally under the direction of the CIA as she was. One case is the “journalist” at the Washington Post who ran the PropOrNot hit piece against many small sites, including NC. And why did the Washington Post never issue a retraction nor correct the piece? Larry Johnson, who is a former CIA agent, has described how extensive those operations were even decades ago, when he was with the agency and he make clear they are much more extensive now.
That WaPo journalist who published that PropOrNot junk is Craig Timberg..
Search shows him currently as “Deputy Managing Editor” at WaPo,
Some background on ProporNot
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/
The Washington Post may simply be in a death spiral
“Washington Post announces new subscription plans in bid to boost revenue
The company has lost $77 million over the past year, publisher Will Lewis told employees”
“May 22, 2024 at 3:57 p.m. EDT”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/05/22/washington-post-will-lewis-subscriptions/
The CIA will not be interested in the WaPo if nobody reads it.