DON'T BLAME ELON MUSK WHEN HE RETWEETS DISINFORMATION! HE'S FAMOUS!

Sometimes bad journalists make it too easy to spot what's wrong with their journalism. Here's an example, from AP. You won't find it hard to identify the problem with this one:

Anonymous users are dominating right-wing discussions online. They also spread false information

The reposts and expressions of shock from public figures followed quickly after a user on the social platform X who uses a pseudonym claimed that a government website had revealed “skyrocketing” rates of voters registering without a photo ID in three states this year — two of them crucial to the presidential contest.

“Extremely concerning,” X owner Elon Musk replied twice to the post this past week.

“Are migrants registering to vote using SSN?” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of former President Donald Trump, asked on Instagram, using the acronym for Social Security number.

Trump himself posted to his own social platform within hours to ask, “Who are all those voters registering without a Photo ID in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Arizona??? What is going on???”

State election officials soon found themselves forced to respond. They said the user, who pledges to fight, expose and mock “wokeness,” was wrong and had distorted Social Security Administration data. Actual voter registrations during the time period cited were much lower than the numbers being shared online.

Stephen Richer, the recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, refuted the claim in multiple X posts while Jane Nelson, the secretary of state in Texas, issued a statement calling it “totally inaccurate.”

Yet by the time they tried to correct the record, the false claim had spread widely. In three days, the pseudonymous user’s claim amassed more than 63 million views on X, according to the platform’s metrics. A thorough explanation from Richer attracted a fraction of that, reaching 2.4 million users.

The incident sheds light on how social media accounts that shield the identities of the people or groups behind them through clever slogans and cartoon avatars have come to dominate right-wing political discussion online even as they spread false information.

No, it doesn't. The incident doesn't shed light on the evils of online anonymity. It sheds light on what happens when extremely famous people who identify themselves by name share false information with their millions of followers. This fake news didn't spread because the original tweeter was anonymous. It spread because Elon Musk, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Donald Trump chose to spread it.

Those of us who go back to the early days of blogging remember that the wannabe gatekeepers have blamed anonymity for the spread of dangerous material for a couple of decades now. But if that's the case, why does the problem seem worse now? Because large corporations run by people whose names we know either tolerate bad content or, in Elon Musk's case, eagerly draw attention to it.

But we've known for years that disinformation spreads most rapidly when high-profile people spread it. Thirty years ago, false rumors about Bill Clinton were spread widely in a video called The Clinton Chronicles, which featured an appearance by Reverend Jerry Falwell, who was a hosehold name at the time; Falwell also promoted the video. In 2004, the false attacks on John Kerry's service record in Vietnam were made openly by named right-wing operatives. And the most famous promoter of many right-wing lies -- that Barack Obama wasn't born in America, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged -- was Trump, who is very much not an anonymous figure.

One of worst stochastic terrorists on the American right anonymously ran a Twitter account called Libs of TikTok for a year, starting in April 2021. Her identity was revealed in April 2022. Now that it's widely known that Chaya Raichik is Libs of TikTok, what's changed? Absolutely nothing, because Musk and others encourage her stochastic terrorism and cheers her on.

The AP story makes clear that Musk is a huge problem:

Since his takeover of Twitter in 2022, Musk has nurtured the rise of these accounts, frequently commenting on their posts and sharing their content. He also has protected their anonymity. In March, X updated its privacy policy to ban people from exposing the identity of an anonymous user.

Musk also rewards high engagement with financial payouts. The X user who spread the false information about new voter registrants has racked up more than 2.4 million followers since joining the platform in 2022. The user, in a post last July, reported earning more than $10,000 from X’s new creator ad revenue program.

But the story still focuses on anonymity, even when an experts quoted in the story appropriately directs her attention elsewhere:

Tech watchdogs said that while it’s critical to maintain spaces for anonymous voices online, they shouldn’t be allowed to spread lies without accountability.

“Companies must vigorously enforce terms of service and content policies that promote election integrity and information integrity generally,” said Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

That's right -- social media companies should fight disinformation generally, working to remove maliciously misleading content whether or not the person posting it is anonymous.

But the press doesn't like to accuse prominent people of being figures of pure evil, even though some, like Musk, clearly are. Much easier to say that we have a problem becaue of grubby basement-dwellers who post under pseudonyms.