“Meta’s Threads is ‘overrun’ with liberal election fraud conspiracies”

Taylor Lorenz:

Over the past several days, Meta’s Threads has become inundated with liberal election fraud conspiracies.

The conspiracies range from skepticism about vote tallies in key swing states, to allegations of a criminal coverup by Biden to force the Democrats to lose in order to (somehow eventually?) take down Trump, to claims of Russian interference with voting technology.

One pervasive conspiracy as of Saturday morning centered around Elon Musk, alleging that the billionaire hacked the election through his Starlink satellite internet company, which conspiracy theorists claim is part of the voting machine supply chain. (This is false, and ironically Musk himself pushed a debunked Dominion voting machine conspiracy theory at a Trump rally last month).

The rampant election fraud conspiracies on Threads show how Meta’s efforts to downrank and minimize journalistic content on the app have helped to create a vacuum in which misinformation thrives unchecked and users are unable to find reliable, accurately reported news. The conspiracies also show how centrist liberals and mainstream Democrats have grown increasingly conspiratorial and unable to distinguish fact from fiction in a chaotic and broken information ecosystem….

Posts pushing false claims about the 2024 election on Threads have collectively reached thousands of people.

In May, Meta rolled out the ability for our third-party fact-checking partners to review and rate false content on Threads. Previously, the company matched similarly false content on Threads based on what was fact-checked on Facebook and Instagram.

Threads users said that the app began recommending election denial content and suggesting that users search the name Stephen Spoonamore on Friday. Spoonamore is a technologist who has claimed that previous elections were hacked and been referred to as the “liberal Q.”

“This is a must-read from Stephen Spoonamore, an expert on identifying election hacking. And we were hacked,” one user posted. ….

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“Iranian Agents Plotted to Kill Trump, U.S. Says in Unsealed Charges”

NYT:

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Friday that Iranian plotters had discussed a plan to assassinate Donald J. Trump before he was re-elected as president this week.

One of the plotters said that he was assigned in September to carry out the plan by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, the prosecutors said in court papers.

An Iranian operative said he was told to put aside other efforts he was undertaking on behalf of the Revolutionary Guards and “focus on surveilling, and ultimately, assassinating” Mr. Trump, according to a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.

The operative told a Revolutionary Guards official that such a plan would cost a “huge” amount of money, the complaint said. In response, the official said, “We have already spent a lot of money,” adding that “money’s not an issue.”

The new allegation about a plan to kill Mr. Trump is the latest alarming development for U.S. security officials, who have been concerned since the summer that Iran appeared to be escalating plans for violence inside the United States, including against the president-elect, who has been Tehran’s nemesis….

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“Trump Holds Up Transition Process Over Ethics Code”

NYT:

President-elect Donald J. Trump has not yet submitted a legally required ethics pledge stating that he will avoid conflicts of interest and other ethical concerns while in office, raising concerns that his refusal to do so will hamper the smooth transition to power.

Mr. Trump’s transition team was required to submit the ethics plan by Oct. 1, according to the Presidential Transition Act.

While the transition team’s leadership has privately drafted an ethics code and a conflict-of-interest statement governing its staff, those documents do not include language, required under the law, that explains how Mr. Trump himself will address conflicts of interest during his presidency.

Since Mr. Trump created his transition team in August, it has refused to participate in the normal handoff process, which typically begins months before the election.

It has missed multiple deadlines for signing required agreements governing the process. That has prevented Mr. Trump’s transition team from participating in national security briefings or gaining access to federal agencies to begin the complicated work of preparing to take control of the government on Jan. 20, 2025….

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“Elon Musk Is Positioning X Behind the New Trump Presidency”

NYT:

Since Donald J. Trump won the presidential election, Elon Musk has gone all in on X to promote the incoming administration.

Mr. Musk, who owns X, posted on the platform about politics more than 400 times between Tuesday and Friday, celebrating Mr. Trump’s victory and talking about the causes that the president-elect should take up in office. Mr. Musk’s posts included a photo of himself and his son X Æ A-Xii Musk surrounded by Mr. Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago, as well as another photo of himself with Mr. Trump that was captioned “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” a Latin phrase that appears on the dollar bill and means “a new order for the ages.”

Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, also chimed in. In reply to a post this week about the platform’s role in driving political conversation, she wrote, “Reporting for duty.”

Their comments show how Mr. Musk is increasingly positioning X as the platform behind the new Trump presidency. Since the election was called on Wednesday, Mr. Musk has used X to talk up how bright the future will be under the president-elect. In addition, he has urged X’s users to replace the news media and report on Mr. Trump’s triumphant return to office, and has promoted the platform as a go-to destination for continuing conservative conversation.

That comes on top of how Mr. Musk has used X as a battering ram for months to support Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Musk, who endorsed Mr. Trump in July, held a wide-ranging audio conversation with him on X in August. That same month, Mr. Trump started using his reinstated account on the platform regularly.

On Tuesday, Mr. Musk held an audio town hall on the site urging his more than 203 million followers to vote for Mr. Trump. The president-elect credited Mr. Musk on Wednesday for helping secure his win. “A star is born — Elon!” Mr. Trump said during his victory speech.

Mr. Musk has “turned X into the church of the conservative movement,” said Steven Livingston, the founding director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University. “It’s gone from that public sphere to a bullhorn.”…

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“Why California is still counting votes and how long it may take”

WaPo:

For most of the country, predictions that Election Day would morph into election week or election month did not come topass.

Then there’s California, where millions of ballots remain uncounted.

The most populous state in the union has one of the longest vote-counting processes. That’s partly because California has so many ballots to count and partly because the state makes it easy for its citizens to vote, which means election officials have to work harder to certify that ballots are valid.

The result is — it may take a while for results. As of midday Saturday, 10 House races in California had yet to be called, with control of the House on the line. Also uncalled were a few closely fought ballot initiatives, including one that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $18 per hour.

As of Saturday, there were nearly 5 million uncounted ballots, including more than 950,000 in Los Angeles County alone. County officials have 30 days to count their ballots and report them to the secretary of state, which then certifies the results.

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“Ohio’s chief of elections eyes top cyber role under Trump”

Politico:

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is seeking the top cybersecurity and elections role in the incoming Trump administration, according to four people who have spoken to those in LaRose’s orbit.

LaRose, a Republican, has told colleagues in the last week or so that he is interested in becoming director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said the people, all of whom were granted anonymity in order to share details of private conversations.

hough early, the former state senator from Ohio appears to be a strong candidate for the role. He is popular among Republicans, stands out as the most high-profile name interested in the job thus far, and could bring the exact credentials the GOP is looking for as they chart a transition atop the federal government’s top civilian cyber defense agency.

President-elect Donald Trump established CISA in 2018 during his first term to help protect federal networks and key U.S. infrastructure from hackers and physical sabotage. But the $3 billion agency came under fire from Republicans after the 2020 vote, amid allegations that its work countering online election hoaxes amounted to censorship of conservative voices online.

The Supreme Court dismissed those claims earlier this year. But Republican policy organizations previously tied to Trump, like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, have argued that CISA should narrow its work to focus on core infrastructure protection issues.

And LaRose, who has served as the top election official in the Buckeye state since 2019, could also be a powerful advocate for the GOP push to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections. He has already served as a leading voice for the SAVE Act, testifying on the Hill this September in support of the voter ID bill, a favorite of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La) and Trump.

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