TikTok: false posts about US election reach hundreds of thousands
Conspiracy theories and misinformation have circulated widely before removal, watchdog finds
Kari Paul
Fri 6 Nov 2020 00.30 GMT

TikTok has emerged as an unexpected source of misinformation about the US election, with numerous inaccurate or misleading posts circulating as tech companies battle to contain falsehoods from Donald Trump and others.

“TikTok has in the past been a breeding ground for false reports that spread peer to peer,” said Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters and an expert on rightwing extremism and misinformation.

The report identified 11 examples of election misinformation on Wednesday that racked up more than 200,000 combined views before TikTok removed them. On Thursday, it found that videos pushing a Qanon-related conspiracy theory about ballots went viral, amassing more than 200,000 views in just a few hours before TikTok removed them for violating its misinformation policy.

Misinformation in these videos included false narratives that claimed ballots being counted for Joe Biden were fraudulent, and that poll workers were handing out markers to Trump voters so their votes would go uncounted.

Some of the content originated from young Republican influencers on TikTok: two pro-Trump pages called Republican Hype House and The Republican Boys echoed Trump’s rhetoric in claiming the election was being stolen. TikTok cracked down on the accounts, flagging some of the videos and leading one of the accounts to post an apology on Wednesday, promising to post less frequently to ensure it does not get deplatformed by TikTok.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... nformation

https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=9JXda_1604190965

Various TDS groups plot post election chaos.

Liveleak is a partner of Ruptly.

Ruptly GmbH is a Russian state-backed video news agency specializing in video on demand, based in Berlin, Germany. It is a subsidiary of the RT (formerly Russia Today) news network.[1][2]

Ruptly says that it is editorially and commercially independent, but its sole shareholder is ANO "TV-Novosti", a Russian government-funded non-profit organisation which also controls RT.[3][4] During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, included ANO "TV-Novosti" on its list of core organizations of strategic importance of Russia.[5][6][7] Ruptly has stated it was founded by ANO "TV-Novosti" "to act as an independent, commercially-funded organisation under German law", that its editorial and operational decisions are "completely independent" and the claim it is run by the Russian government is "factually false".[8]

Nice citation.

Steve Bannon banned by Twitter for calling for Fauci beheading
Former Trump adviser falls foul of Twitter rules with ‘heads on pikes’ comments
Fri 6 Nov 2020 11.30 GMT
Twitter has banned the account of the former Donald Trump adviser and surrogate Steve Bannon after he called for the beheading of Dr Anthony Fauci and the FBI director, Christopher Wray, and the posting of their heads outside the White House as a “warning”.

Speaking on his podcast, the War Room, which was distributed in video form on a number of social media outlets, the far-right provocateur appeared to endorse violence against Wray and the US’s most senior infectious diseases expert.

“Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci … no I actually want to go a step farther but the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man,” Bannon said.

“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put their heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the programme or you’re gone.”

Twitter banned Bannon’s War Room account permanently, saying it had suspended the podcast account for violating its policy on the glorification of violence.

The same video was on Facebook for about 10 hours before it was also removed.

There has been mounting concern over the risk of violence following this week’s US elections, amid highly inflammatory rhetoric from Trump and his allies, who have falsely said Democrats are trying to “steal the election”.

Philadelphia police arrested two men who were allegedly involved in a plot to attack the Pennsylvania Convention Center on Thursday night. Police were tipped off, possibly from a concerned family member of one of the men, who had driven 300 miles (480km) from Virginia.

The moves against Bannon came hours after Facebook banned “Stop the Steal”, a group involved in organising protests this weekend throughout the US against the presidential vote count.

One post, shared by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, declared: “Neither side is going to concede. Time to clean the guns, time to hit the streets.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -beheading