The Dictatorship
No, Democrats don’t need their ‘own Joe Rogan.’ No one does.
Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, my collection of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Content creator crisis
A new Pew Research study finds that 21% of American adults regularly get their news from “news influencers” on social media — content creators who, according to Pew, skew more conservative. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, the number jumped to 37%.
Yikes. I imagine this report will only hasten the calls for Democrats to invest in “their own Joe Rogan” — a desperate quest to mirror the conservative media ecosystem that I don’t think is actually feasible, given that social platforms tend to favor Rogan-esque cynicism and conspiracism (not facts or messages of unity, which Democrats often try to rally around).
No, this turn toward social media influencers for news is a crisis. A crisis of doubt in traditional media platforms — justifiable, at times — that has caused many Americans to turn to content creators on social media platforms that, frankly, are widely used to deceive and radicalize their users.
In this pieceI propose some ways to stem the crisis I’m talking about. Spoiler alert: None of them require a tremendous financial investment in liberal content creators (as much as that might benefit me personally).
I don’t think Democrats need their own Joe Rogan. I don’t think anyone needs their own Rogan, which is to say: The number of Americans getting their news from social media platforms is a problem. And doubling down on it isn’t a solution.
Read more at the Pew Research Center.
X’s new CFO
Elon Musk’s X has hired a new chief financial officer: media executive Mahmoud Reza Banki, who received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump in 2021 after making false statements to federal officials.
Read more at Business Insider.
Farrow talks phone surveillance
Journalist Ronan Farrow’s new HBO documentary, “Surveilled,” explores the frighteningly pervasive world of high-tech surveillance — and the ways that technology has been weaponized by repressive governments.
Watch his interview with BLN’s Jake Tapper below, in which he explains how easily phones can be hacked and used as surveillance tools.
AI’s big impact on the election
For The Atlantic, writer Matteo Wong highlighted how images generated by artificial intelligence — including ones shared by Trump and Musk — appear to have had a bigger impact on the 2024 election than previously realized. One reason? Many of these images — no matter how fake they looked — were used to affirm propaganda their promoters had already been spreading.
Read more at The Atlantic.
DOJ wants Google to sell Chrome
Bloomberg reports that the Justice Department is expected to ask a judge to require that Google sell off its Chrome browser after the company lost an antitrust lawsuit back in August.
Read more at Bloomberg.
The mad men of the ‘manosphere’
Over at Jezebel, writer Kylie Chung has a detailed explainer on the “manosphere,” the toxic online sector known for its misogynistic bile. Chung explains how chronically online men are steered toward this content.
“Now, thanks to social media algorithms, content about weightlifting, video games, MMA fighting, and dating has become a pipeline to the right,” Chung writes.
Read more at Jezebel.
Conservatives’ FOIA-driven purity tests
As they seek to purge civil servants from the federal government, conservatives are using records requests under the Freedom of Information Act to sift through emails and text messages of government employees, looking for things like references to diversity, equity and inclusion programs and climate change.
Read more at CNN.
The Verge’s EIC issues a grim warning
“To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience.”
That’s a quote from The Verge’s editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, who sounds just as concerned as I am about the Big Tech oligarchy that has formed around Trump and the risks it poses to the free press.
Read more from Patel’s interview with media journalist Oliver Darcy here.
Ja’han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer. He’s a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices rose, and stock markets dropped in shaky trading worldwide Wednesday after President Donald Trump raised doubts about the temporary truce in the war with Iran.
The S&P 500 fell as much as 1.1% after Trump said the ceasefire agreement was “over,” but the index then trimmed its loss to 0.3% after Trump said recent fighting did not mean a return to full-scale war. They’re his latest mixed messages on what will happen with the war, which threatens to worsen inflation for the world.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 576 points, or 1.1%, while the Nasdaq composite rose 0.2% after erasing an early loss.
The action was stronger in the oil market, where the price for a barrel of Brent crude climbed 5.2% to $78.02 and briefly topped $80.
That’s still below its peak from earlier in the war, when the price for the most actively traded contract reached nearly $120. But the jump is unsettling because oil prices had just dropped back to where they were before the war.
The worry is that a continuation of the war will block the Strait of Hormuz and prevent the delivery of crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. That could worsen inflationwhich economists expected would ease with oil prices, and in turn force the Federal Reserve and other central banks to raise interest rates.
Higher rates can keep a lid on inflation, but they also slow the economy and hurt prices for all kinds of investments.
On Wall Street, stocks of companies in the housing industry helped lead the way lower. They were hurt by worries that rising Treasury yields in the bond market will mean higher rates for mortgages and chill the industry.
Builders FirstSource, which sells countertops, windows and other building supplies, fell 5.4%. Homebuilders PulteGroup fell 5.4%, and D.R. Horton sank 4.6%.
Companies with big fuel bills also sank. American Airlines lost 4%, and cruise operator Carnival fell 3.9%.
Helping to offset those losses was a steadying for some influential stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry. They’ve been under pressure in recent weeks on worries that their prices shot too high and that AI may not produce enough productivity and profits to make all the investments in chips and data centers worth it.
Their swings carry a lot of weight on Wall Street because AI stocks have grown into some of the U.S. market’s biggest, giving their movements more effect on the S&P 500 than other stocks.
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Nvidia rose 3.7%, for example, and was the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500 because it’s the largest stock on Wall Street.
Close behind was Broadcom, which climbed 4.8% after Apple announced a multiyear commitment where Broadcom will design and produce custom components for its products. Apple said the agreement’s value could top $30 billion.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 21.14 points to 7,482.71. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 576.76 to 52,348.39, and the Nasdaq composite rose 51.96 to 25,870.65.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose with the price of oil. The yield on the 10-year Treasury briefly got near 4.60% before pulling back to 4.57%. That’s up from 4.55% late Tuesday and from just 3.97% before the war with Iran began.
In stock markets abroad, European markets turned sharply lower after Trump said, “For me, I think it’s over” about the status of the ceasefire. He added that U.S. representatives can continue negotiations, “but I think they’re wasting their time.” Germany’s DAX lost 2.2%, and France’s CAC 40 sank 2.2%.
In Asia, South Korea’s Kospi dropped 5.3% and continued its sharp swings amid seesawing worries and euphoria about the AI stocks that dominate its market.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was an outlier and rose 3%. Shares that trade there of Chinese AI startup Zhipu, known also as Z.ai and traded as Knowledge Atlas Technology, jumped 13.4%.
A six-month lock-up period for “cornerstone” investors following its January trading debut in Hong Kong expires this week. China National Radio reported late Tuesday that nearly 70% of Zhipu’s cornerstone investors are committed to stay on, despite previous worries that the lock-up period expiration could trigger a sell-off.
Zhipu’s share price has risen more than 1,300% since its debut.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott, Chan Ho-him and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.
In the three weeks since Donald Trump declared that a “deal” between the United States and Iran was “complete,” the president and his team have been dogged by a series of difficult questions. Why does Iran have to make so few concessions under the memorandum of understanding? Why have prominent members of both parties slammed the agreement as inadequate? Why is Trump’s deal so much worse than the Obama-era Iran deal?
Now, however, the world is confronting a qualitatively different kind of question: Does Trump’s deal still exist?
On Tuesday, U.S. Central Command announced a new round of strikes against Iran, following reports of attacks on merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The Trump administration simultaneously said it was reinstating sanctions on Tehran, which had been eased as part of last month’s MOU.
Soon after, Iran’s military said it had fired missiles and drones targeting U.S. military installations in Bahrain and Kuwait in retaliation for the strikes confirmed by CENTCOM hours earlier.
As for the tenuous ceasefire and peace process, it’s increasingly difficult to be optimistic. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday from the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump called Iranians “scum” and “evil people.” He added, “Frankly, we’ve wasted a lot of time with them. I think we should just do our business.”
The Republican didn’t elaborate as to what that “business” entails, but in context, he appeared to be referring to additional military strikes.
And then he kept going.
Asked specifically whether the ceasefire is over and the peace framework is dead, the American president told reporters, “To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. … They’re led by sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people. … As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. … As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. … They’re liars. … There’s something wrong with them. They’re cuckoo.”
Right on cue, oil prices jumped and stock market indexes started falling. There’s no great mystery as to why: If the ceasefire is over and the peace framework is dead, then we’re right back to where we were when the hot war was still underway.
The trouble, however, is that Trump is erratic and easily confused. It’s effectively impossible to know whether he’ll take the opposite position at any given moment, opening the door to new diplomatic talks or making matters vastly worse.
Either way, the truce appears to be unraveling.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Graham Platner’s Senate candidacy isn’t officially over yet, but as the Maine Democrat hemorrhages supporthis campaign has canceled fundraising events and scheduled ad buys. What’s more, Platner’s team acknowledged Tuesday that it had reached out to the Maine Democratic Party to discuss the process for possibly replacing him on the ballot.
That process, should it proceed, will apparently not be smooth: State party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson accused members of Platner’s team late Tuesday of “trying to put their thumb on the scale” of the process to find his replacement, even though the scandal-plagued candidate has yet to withdraw.
The Maine Democratic Party chief added that Platner would have “no role” in the selection process.
In the meantime, as the candidate faces new allegations of sexual misconduct, Platner’s would-be Democratic successors are taking unsubtle steps to make clear they’re interested in getting the nod for the general election race against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
As for what to expect if Platner exits, Axios reported that Republicans “are preparing to welcome a potential Graham Platner replacement in Maine’s Senate race with $8 million in negative ads, aiming to introduce a new Democratic nominee to voters on their own terms before Democrats can.”
* It’s too late for Maryland to redraw its district map ahead of the midterms, but the Democratic-led legislature is moving forward with plans for a special legislative session next month to overhaul its congressional districts ahead of the 2028 election cycle.
* In Colorado’s Republican gubernatorial primaryVictor Marx, a controversial religious nonprofit leader, is ahead of state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer by roughly 2,000 votes in the latest tallies, but it might be a while before the race is officially called.
* Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida has faced a great many scandals of late, but last week, one of his primary rivals filed a formal legal complaint alleging that Mills improperly notarized his candidate documents, making him ineligible for the ballot. (Mills did not respond to MS NOW’s request for comment about the allegations.)
* As if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton didn’t have enough troublesthe Republican Senate candidate is now facing mockery after spending July Fourth in Europe with a woman who is not his estranged wife.
* And a year after congressional Republicans passed their domestic policy megabill to significant partisan fanfare, it’s Democrats who are eager to tell voters about the regressive package ahead of November’s elections.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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