QAnon

For a brand-new app, Threads launched in a highly functional form. Many of the things we’re complaining about took a long time to come to Twitter, and perhaps it’s unfair to judge something just a few weeks old with a mature (if deteriorating) app that first launched in 2006.Mr. Tweet Fumbles Super Bowl TweetStill, the initial version of Threads is missing several features that we would find extremely useful, and as it evolves, there’s no doubt many of these will be coming in the near future.Threads Needs These Five…

It’s been just over a year since lone gunman Peyton Gendron travelled over 200 miles and open fired in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York last May. Now, the families of those wounded and murdered in the attack want to hold social media companies accountable with a wrongful death lawsuit because the gunman encountered racistGreat Replacement conspiracy theories online.Russian Court Says Meta Is "Extremist Organization"The lawsuit was filed yesterday in the New York Supreme Court in Buffalo, and names Meta, Instagram,…

Meta’s Twitter clone, called Threads, is a hair away from release, and already the discussion rages on whether Mark Zuckerberg’s latest attempt to copy what already exists will do what few bird app imitators have yet to accomplish. From what we know so far, Threads will be a relatively pared-down version of Twitter to start and will require an Instagram account. And users in the EU are apparently out of luck, for now. NPR Is Going Dark on Twitter | Future TechAccording to teaser posts on Instagram and early listings on…

Stranger things have happened, but this one conspiracy theory might actually be true. Alex Goldman, the former host of the once-heralded, now-defunct podcast Reply All, may have just cracked the code on whether Disney replaced the skin of a Hillary Clinton robot with that of Donald Trump.Goldman explored the conspiracy theory on his Substack after his tweet on the matter went proper viral just a few weeks ago. The story goes that as Disney prepared The Hall of Presidents in Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World just before…

Following unconfirmed claims from a former intelligence officer—who says the U.S. government captured a crashed spaceship of non-human origin—the House Oversight Committee is now planning a hearing to investigate the issue further. Apple's Vision Pro Seems Powerful, But Who Is It For? | Future TechAccording to ABC News, the committee is in the early stages of planning this meeting after the Pentagon called the whistleblower’s claims unsubstantiated. Republican Representatives Tim Burchett from Tennessee and Anna Paulina…

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures In 2020, Zack Snyder fans had every right to be smug. Many who claim to be “insiders” in the industry had spent the last few years confidently assuring their audiences that the Snyder Cut of Justice League didn’t exist, that there was no alternative version of the movie, and that even if there was, Warner Bros. would never, ever put up the money to complete it. Said insiders then had to eat a heaping helping of humble pie when Snyder announced that Zack Snyder’s Justice League…

In response, dozens of people arrived in Bodegraven in spring 2021 to express their sympathy for the children they believed, without evidence, had been murdered, leaving flowers along the long path leading from the road to the local graveyard. “I lay these flowers in honor of Joost Knevel (hero of heroes!) and the other victims of satanic abuse,” read one message left at the children's graves, which has since been removed. They signed off their message with the hashtag #StopVanDissel. “I was really angry,” says Ida…

This week, the New York Times reported that a tranche of classified material had leaked to the web. The documents, which were purported to involve the Pentagon and NATO’s military stratagems to assist the Ukrainians in their war with the Russians, were found on Twitter and the chat app Telegram. Lower Drought Conditions In California | Extreme EarthOn Thursday, the Defense Department told the Gray Lady that it’s in the process of investigating how the apparently secret plans had ended up splashed across newsfeeds.Before…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain QAnon's journey from a fringe phenomenon in 2017 to a mainstream presence on Twitter represents an evolution that arrived by tapping into an interconnected media system, according to a recently published paper by a University at Buffalo communication researcher. The QAnon presence, which began as…

Last fall, just blocks from my apartment in Cambridge, Mass., a gang of neo-Nazis gathered in Harvard Square on a Sunday afternoon. Videos showed a group of masked white men shouting, spitting, cursing homophobic slurs and chest-thumping at students. They were part of the Nationalist Social Club, a local neo-Nazi outfit, nicknamed the “131 Crew,” as if it were a sneaker collective and not a gang.In researching the rise of the fascist movement in the United States, I have found troubling parallels to 1930s Italy and…