A Saudi journalist tweeted against the government – and was executed for ‘high treason’; The Guardian, June 16, 2025

Stephanie Kirchgaessner , The Guardian; A Saudi journalist tweeted against the government – and was executed for ‘high treason’

"The Saudi government gained access to the real identities and IP addresses behind thousands of anonymous Twitter accounts following Saudi agents’ infiltration of the company in 2014-2015. The Department of Justice charged two former Twitter employees and a Saudi national in the plot. Ahmad Abouammo was found guilty by a federal jury of fraud, conspiracy, acting as a foreign agent for bribes, and conveying user information to the kingdom on behalf of the royal family. At the time, assistant attorney general Matthew Olsen of the justice department’s national security division, said the guilty verdict showed the justice department would hold accountable anyone who aids “hostile regimes in extending their reach to our shores”. Two other indicted men fled to Saudi before they could be arrested.

A Twitter spokesperson said in 2021 that it acted swiftly at the time of the incident when it learned there were malicious actors accessing Twitter user data. That view has been challenged by the family of another man who was arrested after the Twitter breach, who believe the social media platform is at least partly responsible for dissidents’ arrests.

Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, a former aide worker, was arrested in 2018 and sentenced three years later to 20 years in prison and a 20-year travel ban. He is alleged to have maintained an anonymous account that mocked the kingdom’s leaders.

“They broke his hand, smashed his fingers, saying this is the hand you tweet with,” Areej al-Sadhan told CBS News in a 2023 interview. “They tortured him with electric shocks, beating and sleep deprivation.”

Reporters without Borders said al-Jasser was the first journalist to be sentenced to death and executed in Saudi under the rule of Mohammed bin Salman, and the second in the world since 2020, when Amadnews director Ruhollah Zam was put to death in Iran."

Sen. Mike Lee deletes tweets about Minnesota shooting after conversation with senator; Deseret News, June 17, 2025

Cami Mondeaux , Deseret News; Sen. Mike Lee deletes tweets about Minnesota shooting after conversation with senator

"Utah Sen. Mike Lee appeared to take down a series of social media posts about a double homicide in Minnesota over the weekend, that were condemned by two of his Senate colleagues who confronted him over what they said were “cruel” and insensitive posts. 

Lee deleted the posts on X around midday Tuesday from his @BasedMikeLee account, which is separate from his official Senate account. The exact time he removed them wasn’t clear."

How the right spread ‘brutal and cruel’ misinformation after Minnesota lawmaker killings; The Guardian, June 17, 2025

Rachel Leingang and Joseph Gedeon, The Guardian; How the right spread ‘brutal and cruel’ misinformation after Minnesota lawmaker killings

[Kip Currier: The money quote from this Guardian article: 

"Lee didn’t say much, according to Smith, and seemed surprised to be confronted."

 Bullies often are surprised when people stand up to them and call them out.]

[Excerpt]

"Tina Smith, a Minnesota senator confronted Mike Lee, a Utah senator, on Monday to tell him directly that his social media posts fueled ongoing misinformation about a shooting that killed her friend.

Lee’s posts, which advanced conspiracies that a Minnesota assassin was a “Marxist” and blamed the state’s governor for Melissa Hortman’s death, were among many threads of false or speculative claims swirling online after the killings.

Smith told Lee his posts were “brutal and cruel,” according to CNN. “He should think about the implications of what he’s saying and doing. It just further fuels this hatred and misinformation,” she said. She wanted him to hear from her directly how painful it was to see his words after the brutality her state endured. Lee didn’t say much, according to Smith, and seemed surprised to be confronted...

Elon Musk, a frequent poster of unverified rightwing claims, amplified the narrative to his 200 million followers, quote-tweeting claims that “the left” killed Hortman and saying “the far left is murderously violent”...

Boelter’s own recorded sermons expose his extremist views. Preaching in Congo in 2023, he is recorded as saying: “The churches are so messed up, they don’t know abortion is wrong.” He ranted against LGBTQ people as “confused,” claiming “the enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul”. His alleged hit list included abortion providers and pro-choice advocates."

Suspected Minnesota Shooter Is Not a Left-Wing Democrat; NewsGuard's Reality Check, June 17, 2025

Chiara Vercellone , NewsGuard's Reality Check; Suspected Minnesota Shooter Is Not a Left-Wing Democrat

"What happened: Conservatives are baselessly claiming that Vance Boelter, the man who allegedly shot two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in Minnesota, is a registered Democrat. Others have inaccurately described him as a “leftist.”

Context: In the early hours of June 14, Boelter, posing as a law enforcement officer, allegedly fatally shot Democratic Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and seriously wounded Democratic State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their respective homes, authorities said.

A closer look: Within hours, conservative social media accounts began claiming that Boelter, who was taken into custody on June 15, was a member of the Democratic Party and a leftist, in an apparent attempt to cast Democrats and liberals as violent and to deflect any claims that he was a conservative.

• Conservative commentator Ann Vandersteel, a self-described “citizen journalist” who has more than 360,000 followers on X, posted: “The man who just assassinated Democrat Rep. Melissa Hortman is also HIMSELF A DEMOCRAT.” The post garnered 45,500 views and 1,100 likes in two days.

• Anonymous conservative X account @amuse posted on June 16: “His Democrat roommate insists (without evidence) that Boelter, a registered Democrat, is a huge Trump supporter.” The post received 44,800 views and 1,000 likes in less than one day.

Others, including X owner Elon Musk and Republican Sen. Mike Lee, claimed that Boelter is “far left” and a “Marxis[t].”

Actually: Friends of Boelter, voting records, government officials, and an alleged manifesto that authorities said was found in Boelter’s vehicle show that he was not a Democrat or liberal and may have voted for Donald Trump."

Mike Lee Draws Outrage for Posts Blaming Assassination on the Far Left; The New York Times, June 16, 2025

Annie Karni and Megan Mineiro , The New York Times; Mike Lee Draws Outrage for Posts Blaming Assassination on the Far Left

[Kip Currier: Sen. Mike Lee's social media posts, in the wake of the recent political assassinations and killings in Minnesota, show and tell us everything we need to know about his character and core values.]

[Excerpt]

"Scarcely 24 hours after a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota was assassinated in her home, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, posted a pair of politically charged messages mocking the attack.

“This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way,” Mr. Lee wrote on Sunday on his personal X account, a message accompanied by photographs of the suspect released by law enforcement officials.

An hour later, in a second post showing the suspect, Mr. Lee wrote: “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” in an apparent reference the Democratic governor of the state, Tim Walz.

By the afternoon, amid outraged responses to his postings, Mr. Lee issued a very different message on his official Senate account in which he hit all of the sober notes one would expect from an elected official reacting to a political assassination."

‘I’m an American, Bro!’: Latinos Report Raids in Which U.S. Citizenship Is Questioned; The New York Times, June 15, 2025

Jennifer Medina , The New York Times; ‘I’m an American, Bro!’: Latinos Report Raids in Which U.S. Citizenship Is Questioned

"Viral videos on social media of the Montebello incident and other instances of agents questioning Latino residents in Los Angeles have heightened anxiety that the federal immigration crackdown has entered a new phase. The fear is that agents, including those who are themselves Hispanic, are now racially profiling Hispanic residents and questioning citizenship on the street. Mr. Ramirez recently started carrying his passport with him because he feared being stopped, Mr. Gavidia said."

The Bureaucrat and the Billionaire: Inside DOGE’s Chaotic Takeover of Social Security; The New York Times, June 16, 2025

Alexandra Berzon, Nicholas Nehamas and Tara Siegel Bernard , The New York Times; The Bureaucrat and the Billionaire: Inside DOGE’s Chaotic Takeover of Social Security

"Throughout the early months of this Trump presidency, Mr. Musk and his allies systematically built a false narrative of widespread fraud at the Social Security Administration based on misinterpreted data, using their claims to justify an aggressive effort to gain access to personal information on millions of Americans, a New York Times investigation has found.

Their work has led to the departures of thousands of employees, thinning an already overstretched work force and setting off a wave of public anxiety over the state of an agency administering politically sacrosanct retirement benefits that Mr. Trump has vowed to protect.

Mr. Musk has left Washington amid a blowup with Mr. Trump, and some of his top aides at DOGE have also departed, leaving federal workers and the public to assess what Mr. Musk’s tornadolike path through Washington yielded. At Social Security, Mr. Musk’s efforts amount to a case study in what happened when his team of government novices ran a critical government agency through misinformation and social media blasts."

“He Will Bring All The Power He Can”: Terry Moran on Trump’s Attacks On The Free Press and His Firing From ABC; The Bulwark, June 16, 2025

TIM MILLER AND 

TERRY MORAN

, The Bulwark ; “He Will Bring All The Power He Can”: Terry Moran on Trump’s Attacks On The Free Press and His Firing From ABC

"Journalist Terry Moran was fired from ABC after a tweet criticizing Stephen Miller sparked an overblown backlash from the Trump administration. But Moran isn’t done. He joins Tim Miller to talk about Trump’s attacks on the free press, his Trump interview and what comes next."

If Trump cuts funding to NPR and PBS, rural America will pay a devastating price; The Guardian, June 6, 2024

Margaret Sullivan , The Guardian; If Trump cuts funding to NPR and PBS, rural America will pay a devastating price

"With the sharp decline of the local newspaper business over the past 20 years, many parts of America have turned into what experts refer to as “news deserts”. These are places that have almost no sources of credible local reporting.

As local newspapers have shuttered or withered – at a rate of more than two every week – news deserts have grown. The effects are sobering. People who live in news deserts become more polarized in their political views and less engaged in their communities.

One of the foundations of democracy itself – truth – begins to disappear. People turn to social media for information and lies flow freely with nothing to serve as a reality check.

Right now, many small and rural communities that are on the brink of becoming news deserts do still have access to public media – particularly to National Public Radio’s network of member radio stations, which employ dedicated local reporters.

But the Trump administration’s new effort targeting public radio and television is a serious threat...

Voters – especially those in rural areas, small towns and red states – should let their elected representatives know that they need public radio and television to continue. That public media may even be their lifeline."

Trump and Musk’s Unlikely Alliance Breaks Down in Rapid and Public Fashion; The New York Times, June 5, 2025

Tyler Pager and Theodore Schleifer , The New York Times; Trump and Musk’s Unlikely Alliance Breaks Down in Rapid and Public Fashion

[Kip Currier: In the words of fictional billionaire Logan Roy from TV's Succession, these "are not serious people." As George Dillard wrote in a 2024 "We Are Not Serious People" piece for Medium:

"There were a lot of memorable lines in Succession, but Logan’s line is the one I often find myself repeating in my head, because there are not a lot of serious people left in America anymore." 

https://worldhistory.medium.com/we-are-not-serious-people-00ca768240e3

These are not individuals of good character or emotional intelligence whom reasonable, thinking, morally-grounded people with sound judgment would want leading them, working for them, or in a relationship with any family member they care about.

Even more, Trump and Musk et al are not people you want with access to the nuclear codes or in charge of spacecraft and satellites your country depends upon. They care nothing about the well-being of anyone other than themselves and perhaps a tiny handful of people in their immediate oligarchic circles. They are rich in assets and bankrupt in any semblance of decency or dignity.

And yet...here we are. Remember this at election time in 2026 and 2028.]

[Excerpt]

"The sparring swiftly devolved into threats on their respective social media platforms, as Mr. Trump threatened to cut the billions in dollars in federal government contracts with Mr. Musk’s companies. For his part, Mr. Musk unleashed a tirade of attacks on the man he had once lavishly praised. He suggested it might be time to create a new political party, claimed there were references to Mr. Trump in government documents about the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and indicated his support for a post calling for the president’s impeachment."

Mike Kelley vs. Trump: The Photo That Could Spark a Presidential Copyright War; Fstoppers, June 1, 2025

 Patrick Hall, Fstoppers; Mike Kelley vs. Trump: The Photo That Could Spark a Presidential Copyright War

"Your Thoughts?

What do you think will happen to this case when it is filed? Obviously something like this will take years to make its way through the courts, and perhaps Trump will not even be president by the time it makes it to the Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where it will most likely reside. Do you think Mike has a strong enough case for Willful Infringement under statutory infringement or because this is a meme that perhaps originated somewhere else on the internet, could it be viewed as unwilling? Do you think Trump would ever succeed at claiming his posts on Truth Social fall under official acts of a sitting president?"

Ernst posts snarky reply after telling town hall ‘we all are going to die’; The Washington Post, June 1, 2025

Mariana Alfaro , The Washington Post; Ernst posts snarky reply after telling town hall ‘we all are going to die’

"While outrage at Ernst’s glib comment was immediate, on Saturday, the senator doubled down with a sarcastic response shared on Instagram.

“I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth,” she said in a video filmed in what appeared to be a cemetery. “So I apologize, and I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.”"

More than half of top 100 mental health TikToks contain misinformation, study finds; The Guardian, May 31, 2025

 Rachel Hall and Rachel Keenan, The Guardian; More than half of top 100 mental health TikToks contain misinformation, study finds

[Kip Currier: The response by the TikTok spokesperson in this article (see excerpt below) is predictable, deplorable, and misleading regarding the Guardian study's methodology. This study isn't saying people can't freely express themselves. What it does do is raise serious and legitimate concerns -- by licensed experts -- about mental health-related misinformation espoused by TikTok influencers that can potentially harm people if they rely on it.

Let's remember that there are medically sound and scientifically-based rationales, as well as legal, ethical, and policy reasons, why societies require mental health professionals -- clinical social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc. -- to be licensed and maintain their competency through continuing education requirements.

TikTok has a biased self-interest in promoting its own platform and the unlicensed pseudo-mental health influencers who hang their shingles there. TikTok elevates "amateurs" and delegitimizes licensed experts and professionals. Andrew Keen's 2008 "The Cult of the Amateur" and Tom Nichol's 2017 "The Death of Expertise" readily come to mind.

Check someone's degree(s), license(s), and documented experience and expertise when evaluating whether or not they are competent to dispense mental health services.]

[Excerpt]

"More than half of all the top trending videos offering mental health advice on TikTok contain misinformation, a Guardian investigation has found.

People are increasingly turning to social media for mental health support, yet research has revealed that many influencers are peddling misinformation, including misused therapeutic language, “quick fix” solutions and false claims...

The Guardian took the top 100 videos posted under the #mentalhealthtips hashtag on TikTok and shared them with psychologists, psychiatrists and academic experts, who took a view on whether the posts contained misinformation.

The experts established that 52 out of 100 videos offering advice on dealing with trauma, neurodivergence, anxiety, depression and severe mental illness contained some misinformation, and that many others were vague or unhelpful...

A TikTok spokesperson said: “TikTok is a place where millions of people express themselves, come to share their authentic mental health journeys, and find a supportive community. There are clear limitations to the methodology of this study, which opposes this free expression and suggests that people should not be allowed to share their own stories."

‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’; The Atlantic, May 2, 2025

Tom Bartlett, The Atlantic; ‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’

[Kip Currier: The indifference and nonchalance of the University of Zurich researchers in this AI study -- who blatantly manipulated the Reddit human subjects without informed consent -- is deeply unsettling.

In the wake of outcries about this research study, the responses of the University of Zurich ethics board are perhaps even more troubling. That board's stated purpose:

"is to “support members of the University in their perception of ethical responsibility in research and teaching“, to “promote ethical awareness within the University” and to “represent ethical issues to the public at large"." 

https://www.ethik.uzh.ch/en/ethikkommission.html

The words "perception [italics added] of ethical responsibility" should give every researcher and Internet user pause in light of the Zurich ethics commission's providing a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card to virtually any of Zurich's researchers with its lack of substantive guardrails and accountability.]

[Excerpt]

"The researchers had a tougher time convincing Redditors that their covert study was justified. After they had finished the experiment, they contacted the subreddit’s moderators, revealed their identity, and requested to “debrief” the subreddit—that is, to announce to members that for months, they had been unwitting subjects in a scientific experiment. “They were rather surprised that we had such a negative reaction to the experiment,” says one moderator, who asked to be identified by his username, LucidLeviathan, to protect his privacy. According to LucidLeviathan, the moderators requested that the researchers not publish such tainted work, and that they issue an apology. The researchers refused. After more than a month of back-and-forth, the moderators revealed what they had learned about the experiment (minus the researchers’ names) to the rest of the subreddit, making clear their disapproval.

When the moderators sent a complaint to the University of Zurich, the university noted in its response that the “project yields important insights, and the risks (e.g. trauma etc.) are minimal,” according to an excerpt posted by moderators. In a statement to me, a university spokesperson said that the ethics board had received notice of the study last month, advised the researchers to comply with the subreddit’s rules, and “intends to adopt a stricter review process in the future.” Meanwhile, the researchers defended their approach in a Reddit comment, arguing that “none of the comments advocate for harmful positions” and that each AI-generated comment was reviewed by a human team member before being posted. (I sent an email to an anonymized address for the researchers, posted by Reddit moderators, and received a reply that directed my inquiries to the university.)

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the Zurich researchers’ defense was that, as they saw it, deception was integral to the study. The University of Zurich’s ethics board—which can offer researchers advice but, according to the university, lacks the power to reject studies that fall short of its standards—told the researchers before they began posting that “the participants should be informed as much as possible,” according to the university statement I received. But the researchers seem to believe that doing so would have ruined the experiment. “To ethically test LLMs’ persuasive power in realistic scenarios, an unaware setting was necessary,” because it more realistically mimics how people would respond to unidentified bad actors in real-world settings, the researchers wrote in one of their Reddit comments."

Trump posts AI-generated photo of himself as pope, drawing internet outrage; Reuters, May 3, 2025

Andrea Shalal , Reuters; Trump posts AI-generated photo of himself as pope, drawing internet outrage

"President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated photo showing himself as the pope ahead of this week's gathering of cardinals to choose a new leader of the 1.4-billion-strong Catholic Church, and just days after he joked he would "like to be pope".

Trump, who is not a Catholic and does not attend church regularly, posted the image on his Truth Social platform late on Friday, less than a week after attending the funeral of Pope Francis, who died at 88 last month. The White House then reposted it on its official X account."

Trump says he will strip Harvard’s tax-exempt status; Reuters, May 2, 2025

Susan Heavey, Reuters ; Trump says he will strip Harvard’s tax-exempt status

"President Donald Trump said on Friday he planned to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status, setting up another potential legal fight with the Ivy League school amid his wider crackdown on elite universities and the U.S. education system.

"We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!" Trump said in a post on his social media platform, without specifying when he might take action."

Meta faces Ghana lawsuits over impact of extreme content on moderators; The Guardian, April 27, 2025

Rachel Hall and Claire Wilmot, The Guardian; Meta faces Ghana lawsuits over impact of extreme content on moderators

"Meta is facing a second set of lawsuits in Africa over the psychological distress experienced by content moderators employed to take down disturbing social media content including depictions of murders, extreme violence and child sexual abuse.

Lawyers are gearing up for court action against a company contracted by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, after meeting moderators at a facility in Ghana that is understood to employ about 150 people.

Moderators working for Majorel in Accra claim they have suffered from depression, anxiety, insomnia and substance abuse as a direct consequence of the work they do checking extreme content.

The allegedly gruelling conditions endured by workers in Ghana are revealed in a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism."

ESPN’s Pat McAfee and others amplified a false rumor. A teenager’s life was ‘destroyed’; The New York Times, April 1, 2025

Katie Strang, The New York Times ; ESPN’s Pat McAfee and others amplified a false rumor. A teenager’s life was ‘destroyed’

"Cornett engaged legal representation and said she intends to take action against McAfee and ESPN, which airs his show, and potentially others involved in spreading the rumor. “I would like people to be held accountable for what they’ve done,” she said."

Foreign Spies to Team Trump: 👊🇺🇸🔥; The New York Times, March 26, 2025

Noah Shachtman , The New York Times; Foreign Spies to Team Trump: 👊🇺🇸🔥

"The people at the center of Signalgate — the national security adviser, Michael Waltz; the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth; the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard; to name a few — all know this. They all served in the military. They no doubt heard innumerable lectures from counterintelligence experts about all the different ways an adversary can make off with sensitive data. But this is an administration that actively, proudly rejects expertise. It casts those who have it as the corrupt old guard, the real enemy, the “deep state,” and it touts its own refusal to heed them as proof of its legitimacy and righteousness. By that view, the security establishment must be bent to the White House’s will, and if the people at the top don’t have the traditional qualifications for their positions, all the better. This is an administration that makes a weekend Fox News host the leader of the world’s largest military, puts a conspiracy-minded podcaster in charge of the F.B.I., and has at its pinnacle a reality star turned president. Blunders like this are an inevitable consequence."

Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal; The Atlantic, March 26, 2025

Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris , The Atlantic; Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

"On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”

These statements presented us with a dilemma. In The Atlantic’s initial story about the Signal chat—the “Houthi PC small group,” as it was named by Waltz—we withheld specific information related to weapons and to the timing of attacks that we found in certain texts. As a general rule, we do not publish information about military operations if that information could possibly jeopardize the lives of U.S. personnel. That is why we chose to characterize the nature of the information being shared, not specific details about the attacks.

The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared."