![]() ![]() ![]() So I started examining them without waiting many months. And this time, the accounts in question were still live. What was different in the responses to Page was the volume, which was immense. The specific phrase “ Ok, homewrecker” showed up with a frequency that could not be due to chance. The word “ homewrecker” and “ slut” appeared with odd regularity. As with the earlier responses to me, a huge number of responses to Page were saying the exact same thing. The reactions to Page’s tweets were astonishingly vile: misogynistic, hateful, demeaning. Indeed, looking back using Twitter’s search functions, I have been unable to find anything like the volume of material that used to be there. ![]() Many of the tweets were no longer around, and many of the accounts were gone too. She examined the matter and reported back to me later that too much time had passed to make any determinations. Where was this coming from?Ī while back, I asked a friend who specializes in disinformation to look into the question. So a barrage of reminders was not exactly an effort to spread false information about me rather, a large number of accounts were simply responding to whatever I said with a simple and crude effort to caricature me based on endless repetition of the same simplistic themes. After all, it was true-if wildly simplistic-that I had vouched for Kavanaugh and Barr. Why was it always “buddy” with Kavanaugh? And why the specific phrase “vouched for” with respect to both Barr and Kavanaugh? I relatively quickly began wondering why the language was always so similar. Another tweeter told me my expression of dismay at Ken Starr’s recent behavior was what he would expect from someone who “ vouched for William Barr.” I “ vouched for Bill Barr,” I was told recently in response to a tweet about a possible legal humor podcast. Yet again, my Twitter mentions were full of reminders-in remarkably consistent verbiage. I ate a hot steaming plate of crow a few weeks later. And I argued that we should wait to condemn Barr’s handling of the Mueller report until we saw what he did with it. I certainly preferred him to the acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker. While warning about the dangers he posed, I-like a lot of commentators-regarded him as an institutionalist, and I was complimentary about his intellect and past service. ![]() I regarded his nomination as a calculated risk, and I wrote about the pros and cons of his nomination with relatively open eyes-though not open enough, as it turned out. My support was far less energetic than my initial support for Kavanaugh it was always tepid. Around the same time, I noticed as well that I was Jim Comey’s “BFF.” Always BFF. I had “ vouched for Kavanaugh,” people told me-over and over again. I was Kavanaugh’s “ buddy,” I was reminded. Very large numbers of people.Īnd strangely, they seemed all too frequently to be using the exact same lingo. But though I publicly changed my position after Christine Blasey Ford came forward and testified, and I wrote a lengthy article opposing the nomination, a strange thing happened: Almost whenever I tweeted, and almost no matter on what subject, large numbers of people would remind me that I had supported Kavanaugh. I had supported Kavanaugh’s nomination early on, said nice things about him and defended him against allegations I thought were spurious. My interest in the Twitter reaction to me began shortly after Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2018. It also draws significantly on work done by Christopher Bouzy, creator of the Bot Sentinel tool.) (This story, for reasons that will become clear, needs to be told in my voice-that of Benjamin Wittes-but much of the analysis below was conducted by Jacob Schulz hence the joint byline combined, somewhat awkwardly, with an article written in the first person singular. I’m putting the following out in public as a preliminary indication that something weird is going on that warrants examination-examination I am not qualified to do. I am not making any allegations against anyone. I don’t know how much of the pattern I describe below is automated. I don’t pretend to know what this data really suggests. I did not do this because I am self-involved but because for the past year and a half, the reaction to me on Twitter has been ringing alarm bells about disinformation, and the more recent reaction to others has heightened concerns. Over the past few weeks, I have developed-in cooperation with several other people-a collection of interesting data about the way people react to me on Twitter. ![]()
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