Hot Type: It's Komprocated —Trump, Witkoff and Putin on The New Frontline
Heidi Siegmund Cuda reports on how autocrats are now in lock step to erode our ability to parse reality
In war, the frontline is a boundary between opposing forces, where the battle is particularly hot. In Ukraine, there are actual military fronts — multiple theaters of operation. Those who choose not to ignore Putin’s war crimes, are aware of this hot war.
At a global level, however, the frontline remains largely invisible, but it’s there — autocrats have bought up most of our communication spaces and the lies and misinformation campaigns they run are shared across global networks in lock step to erode our ability to parse reality.
In this war, it’s autocrats vs the rest of us, and the autocrats are winning. The battlefields are populated with networks of actors paid to simp for the autocrats. A ‘Texas Christian MAGA’ account on Twitter is run from Macedonia; a big ‘US fan account’ of Elon Musk, which might tweet 100 times a day, will operate from Nigeria.
Last week’s location tweak on Musk’s platform revealed what most of us doing this work have known for a decade: platforms are infested with false amplification. This is not surprising news when one considers how hard-working Russians out of St. Petersburg lobbied for Trump, while pretending to be patriotic Americans back in 2016.
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