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...
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
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
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
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
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
Reposted by Renee DiResta
This is absolutely untrue. For more than a decade, Kennedy campaigned against vaccines, as @vermontgmg.bsky.social reported in @longlead.com’s LONG SHADOW podcast.

Listen to this episode, featuring @noupside.bsky.social’s fight against his antivax efforts as far back as 2013, for the full context:
Long Shadow podcast: Breaking the Internet
Journalist Garrett Graff hosts season 4 of Long Shadow, a podcast produced by Long Lead. The series chronicles the evolution of the internet.
longshadowpodcast.com
February 8, 2026 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
In 2023 @enirenberg.bsky.social & I wrote about RFK Jr's role in the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa (time.com/6289037/robe...)

Turns out, Samoa was a trial run for the horrific, deadly anti-vaxx activism he's now inflicting worlwide 😔

Thx to @bymichellersmith.com & colleagues for their reporting
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that his trip to Samoa in 2019 ahead of a deadly measles outbreak had “nothing to do with vaccines.”

But records obtained by @theguardian.com + @apnews.com — stemming from a FOIA lawsuit filed by @rcfp.org attorneys on the outlets' behalf — tell a different story.
Newly revealed emails undermine RFK Jr testimony about 2019 Samoa trip ahead of measles outbreak
Kennedy later said the purpose of his trip had nothing to do with vaccines. US embassy and UN staff at the time said otherwise, emails show
www.theguardian.com
February 8, 2026 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
BASH: Is this measles outbreak a consequence of the administration undermining support for vaccines?

DR OZ: I don't believe so. Secretary Kennedy has been advocating for measles vaccines

BASH: Oh, come on
February 8, 2026 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
“Epstein class” is good framing
Ossoff: We were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It’s the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class. They are the elites they pretend to hate.
February 8, 2026 at 3:08 AM
Tulsi Gabbard out here losing the “Who was President in 2020?” game tonight

They don’t even try to lie well.
February 8, 2026 at 2:47 AM
When the cEnSorShiP indusTriaL cOmplEx hearings were happening I offered to testify in public only—if there was a mass cabal why didn’t Rs want accountability?! Why keep only calling liars like Shellenberger and Taibbi as witnesses w/backroom interrogations for perps?

The answer will shock you…
February 8, 2026 at 12:05 AM
FIRE is representing NewsGuard as it sues the FTC:

“At stake is whether the govt can punish private companies and nonprofits that it sees as part of a “censorship-industrial complex” suppressing conservative viewpoints — or whether the 1A protects those orgs”

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
A company that rates news sites says the Trump administration is strangling it
NewsGuard sues Trump’s FTC alleging censorship after Chairman Andrew Ferguson barred a major ad agency from using its ratings
www.washingtonpost.com
February 7, 2026 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
The X account that created the video Donald Trump shared depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes was previously behind the clip the US president shared that portrayed him as a pilot dumping excrement on "No Kings" protesters. Note the matching watermark.
February 6, 2026 at 2:51 PM
I always read Stephen Richer, a former R election official from Maricopa County (incl in 2020 — who remembers Sharpiegate?). He’s an excellent and clear communicator about the stakes of election fraud lies. Highly recommend:

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/o...
Opinion | What’s Really Driving These Bogus Claims of Voter Fraud
www.nytimes.com
February 6, 2026 at 5:51 PM
Reposted by Renee DiResta
Let's just say that @joho.bsky.social's YouTube channel provides a far more reliable history of the pandemic than the @nytimes.com, particularly given its platforming of "Podcast Jay" Bhattacharya's historical revisionism and justification for promoting MAHA. sciencebasedmedicine.org/podcastjaybh...
Pandemic Revisionism Is a Pretext for MAHA Vandalism
My YouTube channel is a reliable history of the pandemic. The NY Times is not.
sciencebasedmedicine.org
February 6, 2026 at 3:07 PM