Renee DiResta

📖 Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality ✍🏼Researches propaganda, pathological information systems, and adversarial abuse at Georgetown (McCourt School of Public Policy) 🦹🏻‍♀️ Recurring Twitter Files supervillain

Book!: http://invisiblerulers.com
Me: http://reneediresta.com
Work: http://io.stanford.edu

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Last Notes

2025-08-06 22:20:44 GMT

Spoiler: there’s no treasonous conspiracy .
I read every word of the Gabbard Files so you don’t have to. The arguments — when compared to the evidence, timelines, 3 prior investigations, and 3 prior meta-investigations — indicate either breathtakingly bad faith or astonishingly low reading comprehension. You decide.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/from-russian-interference-to-revisionist-innuendo--what-the-gabbard-files-actually-say
https://cdn.hosted.spacebear.ee/sb-2393d180df251611821d77e6f02bf209/media_attachments/files/114/984/146/281/820/463/original/60ec219d05490b1d.jpeg

2025-04-05 19:22:17 GMT

#Caturday Behemoth is two months shy of his 2nd birthday. He is a Maine Coon and will grow until he’s 3.
He doesn’t like being picked up.
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2025-02-08 21:05:59 GMT

You can change the title of this chart and - with the exception of Orban - this process has been essentially identical, featuring the same people, for the last five years.
Online rumors as propaganda, advancing the goals of a political machine.
We chronicled how this worked in election 2020…and got investigated by Jim Jordan in retaliation.
https://sb-9g02l2bbpw.b-cdn.net/media_attachments/files/113/970/299/283/054/672/original/a9104ec0d74f6290.jpeg

2025-01-08 14:36:36 GMT

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People unhappy with their social platform experiences look for other places to go. Today, they have more options than than ever before. I’ve called this the “Great Decentralization” in snarky posts for a while now. But it’s real. People are moving to platforms not for *features*, now, but for political vibes and values. We are silo-ing. That has broader social implications, which I talk about in here.

2025-01-08 14:36:36 GMT

New from me, and unexpectedly timely with the Zuck announcement. 🙃 This is an essay about “working the refs” - trying to make the people who make the rules advantage your side - and what happens if that becomes impossible.
Ref-working has influenced content moderation policies for a long time; platforms respond to pressure, as we saw yesterday! Since policies shape norms & influence what goes viral, ppl have strong opinions ab these shifts.
https://www.noemamag.com/the-great-decentralization

2025-01-08 14:36:36 GMT

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The other change, though, is the tech itself. Decentralized platforms (like Mastodon, or eventually Bluesky) mean that ref-working is going to look very different. The whole point of the protocols is to give users more control. But what happens when we actually have that control? The social media world of the future may feel very different.
Hope you enjoy it. Appreciate thoughts!

2024-12-26 17:45:04 GMT

A bit ago I joined Ryan Holiday to talk ab online manipulation & smear campaigns, among other things. He wrote the 📕 “Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator” ab his own work in PR & manipulated narratives. If you’re interested in the Blake Lively story, listen. The tactics are almost identical bt entertainment & politics — it’s easy to smear someone in an age of online rage mobs & vitriolic factions!
https://dailystoic.com/the-new-age-of-media-manipulation-renee-diresta/

2024-12-24 22:14:47 GMT

Chatted with Adam Lowenstein for The Ink about how to fight an epidemic of bad faith.
Not sure I have the answers here, but a lot of good people are trying to figure it out…
https://the.ink/p/how-to-fight-an-epidemic-of-bad-faith-interview-renee-diresta

2024-12-20 01:06:13 GMT

New work out on MIDDLEWARE! What is it? Third party tools that can interact with, in this case, social media platforms, on behalf of users. Maybe they're curating content in your feed in a particular way. Maybe they're serving as moderation agents, labeling and hiding content or users that you personally don't want to see. The goal is to give users more agency over their social media experience. (Mastodon ppl know)
https://www.thefai.org/posts/shaping-the-future-of-social-media-with-middleware

2024-12-09 15:14:19 GMT

“To his supporters, Bhattacharya’s supposed status as a victim of government censorship is the key element of his hero’s journey. And it’s simply not true.”
I very much regret listening to Stanford when it told me I shouldn’t respond publicly to Jay’s lies ab our work. They were wrong, & I knew it then too. But this is the cost of vexatious lawsuits: the person silenced is the target.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/jay-bhattacharya-censored-government-nih-trump-covid-rcna183120

2024-12-03 14:36:23 GMT

This focuses on civil servants, but the need is broad. When we received our nuisance subpoenas and (ongoing) vexatious lawsuits, I was lucky to be at an institution willing to fight the legal fight, even as our center collapsed as a result. Legal, security, & comms support is critical. American researchers are avoiding doing basic work studying American elections because of fear of political retribution.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/funders-should-help-democracy-defenders-from-trump-threats

2024-11-29 16:27:22 GMT

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So much from this essay series informed the book I published in June of this year: “Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality” (invisiblerulers.com)
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2024-11-29 16:25:45 GMT

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I started writing about this in 2015 on this tech blog and community of system thinkers called Ribbonfarm. Venkatesh Rao and the others in the group saw this as “The Great Weirding”. Stuff was going off the rails.
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2024-11-29 16:23:59 GMT

5 years ago yesterday I wrote an essay arguing that institutions were thinking about online media, insurgencies, & manipulation campaigns all wrong. Fighting the last war.
The Digital Maginot line, I called it. It went viral then.
Here it is on its anniversary. It unfortunately holds up incredibly well and describes the moment we are now in:
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line/
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2024-11-13 20:56:17 GMT

kakistocracy, noun
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2024-11-05 02:18:35 GMT

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Read my book to understand why “The Elon Musk of Squirrels” is a headline: invisiblerulers.com
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2024-11-05 02:17:01 GMT

The academic debate ab whether memes *really* shape political discourse can be put to rest with “The Elon Musk of Squirrels.” Every week of this campaign we’ve seen the power of influencers & the role they play in propaganda. Elites are picking this up from the extremely online. Media gets it last.
https://sb-9g02l2bbpw.b-cdn.net/media_attachments/files/113/427/939/496/883/341/original/f132033023703c7a.jpeg

2024-11-02 21:40:49 GMT

#caturday — Behemoth at 1y 3mo.
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2024-11-02 14:27:07 GMT

New work: The post-election period may be volatile, particularly if the outcome is disputed. Social media platforms will be scrutinized for their handling of rumors and disinformation, false claims of victory, and potential incitements to violence. A group of us analyzed potential scenarios and key policies to be aware of: https://www.techpolicy.press/a-guide-to-social-media-moderation-policies-for-the-post-election-period/

2024-10-19 17:11:36 GMT

The 2024 Freedom on the Net report is out. It includes analysis of generative AI in elections globally, and actual attempts at censorship around elections — ie, governments using their power to silence dissidents, or parties manipulating the info space
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2024/struggle-trust-online
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2024-10-12 01:51:06 GMT

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3. Since the rumors are useful, MAGA elites ref-work to ensure they remain prevalent. This has been Jim Jordan’s project for the better part of a year now. Recognize what that committee’s goal was. What the lawsuits were for.
4. Community Notes can’t keep up. A valuable tool, but always intended to be supplemental.
5. People disgusted by this are moving into new platforms as the market provides. So are advertisers. X will continue to spiral if it doesn’t change course…but again, see 3.

2024-10-12 01:48:54 GMT

Here’s my contribution to The Discourse on the insane rumors that have become reality among a subset of X users
1. The platform privileges rumors. This has always been structurally true but “policy shapes propagation” & Elon’s policy changes juices it.
2. This is not accidental. Rumors are useful for political propaganda. MAGA elites now amplify & legitimize them. It’s not just “more visible,” it’s normalized.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/rumors-x-twitter-musk/680219/

2024-10-04 17:14:08 GMT

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I support this conference as an expression of academic freedom even as the dishonest politicians & media that Bhattacharya aligned with attacked SIO’s. I AM, however, disappointed that Stanford chose not to livestream it. It's not often that a prof puts his lawyer on a panel - one who interrogated his colleagues - or has Epoch moderate.
This article in the Stanford Daily gives more context and is an important read: https://stanforddaily.com/2024/10/03/from-the-community-levin-academic-freedom/

2024-10-04 17:13:23 GMT

On this 4th anniversary of the Great Barrington Declaration, Jay Bhattacharya is hosting a commemorative “pandemic policy” conference at Stanford w/both opening comments by Stanford’s new president AND a panel moderated by the Epoch Times. I want to mark the occasion w/a thought: there has yet to be any evidence showing govt sought to censor, or even mentioned, Bhattacharya to a tech co.
Never has a man so desperately wanted to be Galileo while coming up so short.
Here is Justice Barrett:
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2024-09-15 20:04:03 GMT

What Dr. Francis Collins is describing in this excerpt from his new book isn’t just a problem in public health. Institutions don’t understand how influencers, algorithms, and crowds now shape public opinion, and they don’t understand the incentives that power factionalism. Institutions have dropped the ball — *and* they are also under attack.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/covid-political-polarization-public-trust-vaccine/679806/

2024-09-11 05:59:05 GMT

“I saw people on television talking about it”
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2024-09-07 17:16:46 GMT

#caturday big paws
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2024-09-01 02:26:28 GMT

I have a new article up today on The Unpopulist describing what we know ab the Durov affair, the many things that “content moderation” covers, & the difference between “free speech” and “crimes”. Also covers SIO’s experience w/Telegram data.
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/platforms-like-telegram-accused-of
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2024-08-24 17:10:00 GMT

My son, reading this book: “Mom who was Britney Spears? Did she used to be famous or something?”
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2024-08-23 13:17:44 GMT

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Anyone familiar with longstanding antivax tropes will recognize all this immediately. “Package inserts”, in antivax land, supposedly reveal all of the terrible side effects and evil ingredients. Doctors are keeping this from you because they are BOUGHT!!! Except all this info is available online, you can ask the doctor for it, and every medication on the market has disclosures like this. A possible side effect is not a frequent side or even a bad side effect. Just pure paranoid innumeracy.

2024-08-23 13:17:19 GMT

As RFK Jr prepares to “”address the nation”” today, I hope media who cover the pseudoevent note that he put out a 10 min video on Instagram yesterday articulating the long-standing anti-vax talking points that he downplayed for broader appeal: stuff about the “package inserts”, “no safe vaccines”, “the schedule”, & the “right to choose” whether to vaccinate your kids against polio. This is what his run has always been about. He is gunning for a Trump CDC or HHS appointee role to “fix” vaccines.
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2024-08-16 19:35:39 GMT

Shrimp Jesus is now in the pages of Harvard Misinfo Review!
As AI slop continues to proliferate, we published our study on dynamics that spammers and scammers are using to game the platform, grow a following, and trick unsuspecting audiences — not with the crustaceans, which are almost a surrealist form of art - but with others that are less obviously fake.
https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/how-spammers-and-scammers-leverage-ai-generated-images-on-facebook-for-audience-growth/
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2024-08-07 01:37:03 GMT

I wrote a book about how this works! Buy it for your parents…
https://sb-9g02l2bbpw.b-cdn.net/media_attachments/files/112/918/175/151/273/975/original/77b71bcc0c9981d4.jpeg

2024-08-03 16:50:29 GMT

I joined @npub1t4p…5qhu
to talk memes, trolls, smear campaigns, Satanic Panic, and Congressional reactionaries abusing their power. And also my book, Invisible Rulers.
I always appreciate discussing these topics with Matt bc he understands the drives and tactics of right-wing media better than anyone else. He is also someone I originally got to know largely because of Mastodon!
https://plus.flux.community/p/how-republicans-are-making-the-internet

2024-07-21 00:29:59 GMT

Explaining to my children that there used to be one movie for the whole plane.

2024-06-21 14:04:58 GMT

My Wikipedia bio got locked down, so the next front is brigading Amazon. This Twitter Files superfan explicitly called for 1-⭐️ reviews - and his followers delivered. Some left bad reviews, others upvoted them 80+ times. “Dunk on DiResta" — her allies at Langley are controlling the narrative! (Also dunk on Fauci while you're at it.)
This is the asymmetry of passion in action... these groups enthusiastically brigade their enemies while it's v hard to get normal folks to counterspeak or act
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2024-06-15 18:31:30 GMT

“In an alternate universe, I run a sweeping cabal. Its goal, according to the contrarian newsletters, crank blogs, and breathless podcasts where the fantasy plays out—is to silence right-wing populists on behalf of the deep state.…”
Here is my reflection on what happened last year, and how a conspiracy theory about our work upended that work, and a lot more.
#weekendreads
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/cia-renee-censorship-conspiracy-twitter/678688/
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2024-06-08 20:38:33 GMT

“A SPECTER IS HAUNTING right-wing dissident Substackers—the specter of Renée DiResta.”
My book is reviewed in The Bulwark today — and it’s a very entertaining read! 😊
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/influencers-bullshitters-losing-shared-reality

2024-06-08 14:11:41 GMT

Last week was the 1st disclosure from OpenAI confirming that state-linked actors were using their tools for influence operations —something that’s always been a question of when, not if, if it would happen.
But we also got a disclosure from Meta, incl some of the same ops — bc after you create content you have to spread it. Theirs showed that this time, it got no pickup…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/08/1093356/propagandists-are-using-ai-too-and-companies-need-to-be-open-about-it/

2024-05-19 18:27:23 GMT

🧵 I wrote ab the “is Signal secure?” manufactroversy on X. The Guardian wanted an explainer on why Elon & Jack were “concerned” about Signal. The answer, though, has nothing to do w/Signal’s product. It was part of an extended fight over whether woke NPR should be defunded & the CEO fired. Why? Because the CEO of NPR is on the board of Signal; by the Transitive Property of Bad People, Signal is thus compromised.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/18/npr-elon-musk-signal