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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta
@noupside.bsky.social
170K followers 1.2K following 4.8K posts
🌐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
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · Apr 15
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...
Process as Punishment: An American History of Political Spectacle Renee DiResta Monday, April 14, 2025, 12:00 PM American political theater isn't new. The House Un-American Activities Committee operated for decades— until targets learned to fight back.
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 6h
Jan 6 was 2021 obviously - but before the inauguration, when the govt was still run by…Trump appointees. “They” rigged the 2020 election. Uh huh. Then “they” got the guys who came with the zip ties to break windows. Uh huh.

“The Biden XYZ” is a thought-terminating cliché.
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 6h
“Who was president in 2020?” is the question of our time.

I wrote a substack about this on Friday!This isn’t an accident.

open.substack.com/pub/agentsof...
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 10h
20 min to showtime per the stadium countdown clock…though for some reason the livestream says it’s starting at 9pm PT: www.redbull.com/us-en/live/r.... Maybe they have some kind of pre-entertainment…anyway, if you’re on the West Coast or a night 🦉you should check it out!
Red Bull DYS @ Intuit Dome
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 11h
I wonder if someone in the WH saw this and rushed to overturn another bad RFKrank Jr call.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/h...
Trump Administration Is Bringing Back Scores of C.D.C. Experts Fired in Error
www.nytimes.com
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Reposted by Renee DiResta
quantian.bsky.social
Quantian @quantian.bsky.social · 12h
If it wasn’t incredibly obvious before that X revenue sharing is treated as a slush fund for Elon to funnel cash to his future baby mommies and favorite right wing influencers, it is explicit now.
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Reposted by Renee DiResta
walterolson.bsky.social
Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 1d
New from me at Cato: I go through the numerous and massive First Amendment and academic-freedom violations of Trump's proffered "compact" with universities and then talk about the mechanism by which it would be enforced, by way of what I describe as a "retroactive push-button guillotine."
Universities Must Defend Their Independence by Rejecting Trump's "Compact"
The Trump administration has proffered a “compact” to universities that would require them to surrender their independence and academic freedom. How many First Amendment violations can we identify in ...
www.cato.org
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 14h
I support interoperability and want to see a proliferation of platforms. But tbc Berenson did exactly that — he went to Substack and grew a massive monetized audience there.

His most recent court case suing the administration was dismissed on Sept 29. The Trump DOJ opted not to settle it.
noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 14h
Major media outlet falling down on the job of explaining that political influencers are the new propagandists in a take that could illustrate a class on Manufacturing Consent.
kenwhite.bsky.social
Popehat Agitates And Irritates @kenwhite.bsky.social · 17h
Should the New York Times be sold to Pennysaver and its editors sent to work in Amazon warehouses? It depends on who you ask.
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 14h
I generally agree in principle, and he eventually fired Owens, but there isn’t any indication of a real shift away from what happened. Just a comment that the conspiracists (out there!) are bad. Others in the right wing and heterodox media exosystems have been pointing this out more boldly.
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 15h
🌭 mmm…say more? 🌭
Ben Shapiro Warns the 'Conspiratorial Right' Is Taking Over Social Media Ben shapiro and Candace Owens
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 16h
I just wrote the epilogue! Sometime early next year. It’s insane how long publishing takes.
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 16h
The book has only gotten more relevant since it came out…unfortunately! Amazon here: invisiblerulers.com but also sold
at Bookshop and other independent booksellers — links at reneediresta.com
Book cover of Invisible Rulers
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 16h
It covers the university, unfortunately, rolling over & not having the comms fight out of concern for govt threats etc…something that was very frustrating to us at the time!

I think many people now recognize the playbook as the Administration goes after universities, Big Tech pendulum-swings, etc.
After Joe Biden's victory, the Election Integrity Partnership's efforts to counter viral manipulation became an obsession of the MAGA right. As DiResta recounts in Invisible Rulers, the attacks against her started with an election denier named Michael Benz, who had worked in Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson's speechwriting office before serving for three months in a low-level position in Donald Trump's State Department. Styling himself a cybersecurity expert and free speech advocate, Benz alleged that the Election Integrity Partnership was a "social media censorship bureau" targeting the right and said that DiResta was wielding an "AI censorship death star superweapon." (Online, Benz also had an alt-right identity, "Frame Game," which he hid behind to raise the alarm about "white genocide" and to discuss Hitler's good points.) According to Benz's conspiracy theory, the Biden administration was utilizing the Election Integrity Partnership to prevent conservatives from using Twitter and other platforms to warn of fraud in the upcoming 2024 election. It was, as Benz put it with his usual understatement, "a scale of censorship the world has never experienced before." DiResta and her colleagues first tried ignoring these ludicrous claims, then refuted them point by point, neither of which helped. She did not immediately recognize that she was being made into what she calls a "main character" in an upside-down viral narrative. Podcasts hosted by Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and John Solomon echoed Benz's charges. Right-wing Web publications amplified them; a story that appeared on multiple sketchy sites called the Stanford Internet Observatory a "digital reboot of the CIA's psychedelic mind-control experiments." Jack Posobiec, of Pizzagate fame, tweeted to his 1.8 million followers the false allegation that DiResta and a colleague were "behind censoring the Hunter Biden laptop." It is challenging to unpick this Orwellian skein, which may be why the episode has been underreported. But seen from the perspective of 2025, DiResta, the Election Integrity Project, and the Stanford Internet Observatory were canaries in the coal mine for the many-pronged assaults on universities and other institutions that have become hallmarks of the second Trump administration. Attempts to expose Russian disinformation were themselves denounced as disinformation —part of the "Russia hoax." Viral propaganda tools were deployed against those attempting to limit the reach of viral propaganda tools. Cries of censorship were used to silence opponents, curtail research, and stop fact-checking. Investigating the weaponization of the government meant weaponizing the government. A crucial lesson that might have been learned sooner was that institutions must forcefully fight back against this kind of bullying. What ultimately doomed the observatory was not that right-wing conspiracists attacked it but that its parent institution, Stanford, failed to defend it, responding to media inquiries with "no comment." The university, it seems, was largely concerned with limiting its legal costs and not inflaming the situation further. Its strategy was to keep a low profile and mollify the attackers. DiResta's contract was not renewed, and others were told to look for work elsewhere. Last year Stanford shuttered the observatory, continuing only its work on child safety, and under a different banner. According to its no-longer-extant website, the Election Integrity Partnership "finished its work after the 2022 election and will not be working on the 2024 or future elections." But Miller's lawsuit against DiResta and her defunct project is ongoing. In MAGA world, social media is judged by a simple standard: Cui bono? When he thought that TikTok was a tool the Chinese government might use against him, Trump supported banning it on national security grounds. After coming to believe that the platform helped him more than it helped the Democrats, he simply ignored the law Congress passed requiring TikTok to cease operating in the United States under Chinese ownership. If algorithmic rules help the left, they're censorship. If they advance the right, they're upholding free speech. Twitter's biggest problem in the era before Musk bought it was harassment and abuse, which inhibited user growth and limite the platform's appeal for advertisers. But judging by his compulsive output of tweets and retweets, Musk was absorbing a different perspective inside his own filter bubble. His left-libertarian views were shifting to the right in apparent response to the adulation he was receiving from a variety of fringe figures who shared his love of juvenile jokes and memes. All of them were obsessed with the inconsistency of Twitter's moderation policies. The complaint that led Musk to spend $44 billion to acquire the company was that it was suppressing antiwoke speech. Musk's almost accidental acquisition of Twitter and his concurrent shift to the right are colorfully recounted in Character Limit by the New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. It is a well-reported if at times overly detailed account that, like DiResta's book, gives us a retrospective preview of what was in store after Trump's 2024 victory. Just as he later did to the US government at DOGE, Musk treated Twitter as a reverse start-up. Proclaiming his contempt for the waste and incompetence that preceded him, he moved quickly to change the platform's name to X, eliminate content moderation, fire more than half of the company's staft, and demand oaths of loyalty and proof of productivity from those who remained.
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 16h
Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality just got reviewed in New York Review of Books!

It’s a great review that connects the dots between a few 📚 - incl @rmac.bsky.social’s - as cautionary tales ab what’s now happening in free speech & social media.

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
Algorithm Nation | Jacob Weisberg
Fights about digital filtering tools have turned more and more bitter. That's because of their extraordinary power to shape both political opinion and mass culture.
www.nybooks.com
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 21h
Red Bull seems to do a great job finding talent - like this 18yo Capjay from LA that won US regional. Some of the kids that hit become Red Bull dancers —teach workshops, perform, do crew battles, etc. Supporting a growing scene.

I’ll share a livestream link tonight.

youtu.be/NhY9kBzQhu8?...
Best of Capjjay, 18-year-old dancer from Long Beach // stance x RED BULL DANCE YOUR STYLE SOUTH USA
YouTube video by stance
youtu.be
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 21h
For the last few months there have been world & 🇺🇸 regional qualifiers. Tonight is the final 16 — 8 who came up via qualifiers, 8 wild cards Red Bull picked, who are famous and/or amazing dancers.

Some of my favs, like the 🇰🇷winner Mett, got eliminated in pre-finals.

youtu.be/-VdNor1XrIA?...
LEEK vs POPPIN METT｜TOP-16 @ RED BULL DANCE YOUR STYLE 2025 KOREA｜LB-PIX
YouTube video by LB-PIX
youtu.be
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 21h
Out in LA for the Red Bull Dance Your Style (DYS) World Final!! I’m excited. Brought my 8yo —she’s 🩰, not a street dancer (my 5yo is that kid) but I thought it’d be fun & good for her to see talented young people at the top of their game.

They’ve been doing pre-finals…

youtu.be/hBEkKouWsbM?...
Ian Hot Ko from Slovenia 🇸🇮 16 years old is a killa at Red Bull Dance Your Style Pre Final! 🔥🤯
YouTube video by stance
youtu.be
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Reposted by Renee DiResta
thefarce.org
LOLGOP ❌👑❌ @thefarce.org · 1d
I forgot that the BS around the Twitter Files and the idea that the (Trump) government was censoring social media was such BS that even Amy Comey Barrett debunked it.
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Reposted by Renee DiResta
noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 1d
Who was president in 2020?

Senate Rs spent hours Wed insisting a Biden Censorship Regime was in power.

It’s ridiculous on its face—but dangerous in its purpose.

If you can convince people of that lie, you can justify what Trump is doing now. It’s “just payback”.

open.substack.com/pub/agentsof...
Who was president in 2020?
On pressure, coercion, and confrontations with reality
open.substack.com
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 1d
Who was president in 2020?

Senate Rs spent hours Wed insisting a Biden Censorship Regime was in power.

It’s ridiculous on its face—but dangerous in its purpose.

If you can convince people of that lie, you can justify what Trump is doing now. It’s “just payback”.

open.substack.com/pub/agentsof...
Who was president in 2020?
On pressure, coercion, and confrontations with reality
open.substack.com
2 57 200
Reposted by Renee DiResta
weatherwest.bsky.social
Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 2d
I want to highlight this excellent piece by @noupside.bsky.social and @rachelkleinfeld.bsky.social on the rapidly shifting information & media landscape. Domain experts and the institutions that support them must rapidly change tactics to meet the moment.
For Expertise to Matter, Nonpartisan Institutions Need New Communications Strategies
To avoid irrelevance when they are needed most, experts and nonpartisan analysts must rethink not just their channels of communication but also their theory of influence.
carnegieendowment.org
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 2d
Thanks :)
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Reposted by Renee DiResta
jayshams.bsky.social
Jacob Shamsian @jayshams.bsky.social · 2d
I've been wondering why Dominion Voting Systems suddenly reached settlements with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and One America News.

Turns out, it's been purchased by a Republican-owned election tech firm that insisted on it, per Axios.

www.axios.com/2025/10/09/d...
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Reposted by Renee DiResta
mantzarlis.com
Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 2d
"A group of suspected scammers in Brazil using Instagram ads featuring deepfakes of supermodel Gisele Bundchen and other celebrities appears to have made millions of dollars through online fraud, according to police investigators."
Brazilian scammers, raking in millions, used Gisele Bundchen deepfakes on Instagram ads
A group of suspected scammers in Brazil using Instagram ads featuring deepfakes of supermodel Gisele Bundchen and other celebrities appears to have made millions of dollars through online fraud, according to police investigators.
www.reuters.com
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noupside.bsky.social
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 2d
Good for him. More of this.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/u...
Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Criticizes National Guard Deployment in Chicago
www.nytimes.com
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