Renee DiResta
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta
@noupside.bsky.social
🌐Studies influence, propaganda, platform design@Georgetown

✍🏼Lawfare,The Atlantic

📕Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality (invisiblerulers.com) —how influencers, algorithms, &online crowds shape public opinion

🦹🏻‍♀️Twitter Files supervillain
Pinned
New from me: an essay on the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and its remarkable 30 year history of witch hunts & blacklists.

It chronicles the progression of how industries & academia went from capitulation to defiance,& what we can take from that today

www.lawfaremedia.org/article/proc...
Reposted by Renee DiResta
New story up on the Homeland Security Department’s new tactic: flood social media companies with subpoenas to unmask anonymous accounts that criticize ICE or monitor the movements of ICE agents.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...
Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts
www.nytimes.com
February 13, 2026 at 11:23 PM
All of that cEnSorsHip regiMe nonsense was projection. Elon better be fighting these requests real hard.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...
Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts
www.nytimes.com
February 13, 2026 at 11:25 PM
They think they have a right to impose their delusions on your kids. They are banking on the fact that liberal parents will be too nice to be as aggressive as MAHA.

Prove them wrong. This should infuriate you and you must make sure your legislators hear that.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/h...
Kennedy Allies Target States to Overturn Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren
www.nytimes.com
February 13, 2026 at 10:33 PM
Scott Gottlieb calling for funding for vaccines. Many figures on the right fully aware that Vinay Prasad is an incompetent puppet slavishly kowtowing to a loon. More of them should say it directly.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
Opinion | A viral infection can have devastating effects. I experienced this firsthand.
The consequences of the anti-vaccine movement reach beyond today’s controversies.
www.washingtonpost.com
February 13, 2026 at 5:22 PM
Jay Bhattacharya wearing the face tats of a convicted rapist for his “eat more veggies” campaign. V normal.
February 13, 2026 at 3:17 PM
They will release glasses to help creeps identify teenagers while people are too busy fighting other crises.
Facebook plans to put facial recognition in its glasses and they think we’re too stupid to fight back.

Their internal memo: “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”
Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses
www.nytimes.com
February 13, 2026 at 1:53 PM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
Name names. Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, Jay Bhattacharya, Tracy Beth Hoeg, Martin Kulldorff, Russell Vought, RFK Jr., Donald Trump. All of them contributed to this by their relentless attacks on vaccines and biomedical R&D.
In terms of what cures are being lost:

- Epstein-Barr virus is perhaps the major trigger for multiple sclerosis
- herpes simplex virus causes cold sores, genital herpes, infections in babies, deadly meningitis
- shingles virus causes an intensely painful disease
February 13, 2026 at 10:13 AM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
This is a vivid, horribly relevant read. “She does not sleep well. And as you lift up her pajama top to check her rash one morning, you see that her breathing is labored, shadows pooling between her ribs when she sucks in air. You suffer an icy moment of realization: This is a medical crisis.”
This Is How a Child Dies of Measles
When your family becomes a data point in an outbreak
www.theatlantic.com
February 13, 2026 at 12:35 PM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
WSJ editorial board hits FDA: It’s hard to recall a regulator who has done as much damage to medical innovation in as little time as Vinay Prasad who rejected Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine without even a cursory review.
www.wsj.com/opinion/vina...
Opinion | Vinay Prasad’s Vaccine Kill Shot
Does the White House know the harm he’s doing to public health?
www.wsj.com
February 12, 2026 at 4:49 AM
Not promoting the Gateway Pundit is censorship.

I’m not kidding. That’s where they’ve taken this bullshit argument. 😂 The FTC is mad that Apple News seemingly editorially curates more from AP, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, & WaPo. (1A etc etc)
The FTC has sent a letter to Tim Cook because Apple News is too woke and needs to include more right wing content.

This would sound silly even for The Onion but it’s our current reality.
Apple faces new tensions with Trump administration
US regulator issues warning to iPhone maker about its News platform following controversy over Super Bowl half-time show
www.ft.com
February 12, 2026 at 7:20 PM
The king of the hypocrites, really.

Just an utterly shameless person who also, if I recall correctly, covered up sexual abuse crimes.
Jim Jordan: "You have a right to protest in the street, but that doesn't give you a right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress"
February 11, 2026 at 7:40 PM
Stick to avocado toast ffs
February 11, 2026 at 3:40 AM
it’s interesting to see how they frame these things because they still get so much engagement on Facebook and places like that.

Several paragraphs in, far past that headline, you get to this:

nypost.com/2026/02/07/h...
February 10, 2026 at 9:10 PM
Spoiler: it didn’t
February 10, 2026 at 9:03 PM
This seems unlikely to work but should be interesting?
Dinking around in the St. Clair v. xAI docket, I found that xAI is indeed raising Section 230 as a defense to liability for Grok's bikini pics, as previewed in its opposition to a PI. ("Does 230 apply to gen AI outputs?" is a Q courts haven't answered yet.) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Memorandum of Law in Opposition – #17 in St. Clair v. X.AI Holdings Corp. (S.D.N.Y., 1:26-cv-00386) – CourtListener.com
MEMORANDUM OF LAW in Opposition re: 7 Proposed Order to Show Cause With Emergency Relief, . Document filed by X.AI Holdings Corp...(Shuster, Michael) (Entered: 01/21/2026)
storage.courtlistener.com
February 10, 2026 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
New @scalinglaws.bsky.social episode: @noupside.bsky.social and I talk to @dgrand.bsky.social about his research showing AI chatbots can shift people's political beliefs. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/scal...
Scaling Laws: The Persuasion Machine: David Rand on How LLMs Can Reshape Political Beliefs
www.lawfaremedia.org
February 10, 2026 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
existential cookie message from the olympics website
February 10, 2026 at 4:09 PM
Maybe she can sort out the 30,000 decline in that subscriber number.
February 10, 2026 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
Matt Taibbi announces his site is rebooting under the eye of new editor Emily Kopp, most recently an investigative reporter at the Daily Caller
February 9, 2026 at 9:30 PM
If you make it trend, you make it true
February 10, 2026 at 2:43 PM
Some of the original (with one of my fav dancers) for contrast youtube.com/shorts/a04Qx...
Capjay to Yukon was a masterclass in improvisation! 🔥🔥🔥
YouTube video by stance
youtube.com
February 10, 2026 at 5:09 AM
I just caught the Justin Bieber Grammys 2026 performance of Yukon and it’s really something. The original is lovely but so pitched it didn’t sound like him. This semi-unplugged version with a looper made me think about a return to unambiguously human talent in an AI era.

youtu.be/Y_aan-2Gqjs?...
Justin Bieber Live at the Grammy 2026 #Yukon🥰🎶
YouTube video by Its Savagery
youtu.be
February 10, 2026 at 5:03 AM
He’s so great. The show was so much fun. :)
February 10, 2026 at 4:56 AM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
Reached out to Ed Martin to ask if he'd comprehended that this was satire, and asked him whether he's even seen Arrested Development before. Will report back if he responds.
February 9, 2026 at 6:30 PM
21 hours, no community note, on mail-in ballot conspiracy theories debunked in 2020. Now boosted by Elon. They are arguing hard for eliminating them and laying the groundwork to delegitimize losses by way of them.

www.usatoday.com/story/news/f...
February 9, 2026 at 4:49 PM