On the morning of Nov. 5, Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, asked his Facebook followers to report cases of voter fraud with the hashtag Stop the Steal. His post was shared over 5,000 times.

By late afternoon, conservative media personalities Diamond and Silk had shared the hashtag along with a video claiming voter fraud in Pennsylvania. Their post was shared over 3,800 times.

That night, conservative activist Brandon Straka asked people to protest in Michigan under the banner #StoptheSteal. His post was shared more than 3,700 times.

Over the next week, the phrase “Stop the Steal” was used to promote dozens of rallies that spread false voter fraud claims about the U.S. presidential election.

New research from Avaaz, a global human rights group, the Elections Integrity Partnership and The New York Times shows how a small group of people — mostly right-wing personalities with outsized influence on social media — helped spread the false voter fraud narrative that led to those rallies.

That group, like the guests of a large wedding held during the pandemic, were “superspreaders” of misinformation around voter fraud, seeding falsehoods that include the claims that dead people voted, voting machines had technical glitches, and mail-in ballots were not correctly counted.

“Because of how Facebook’s algorithm functions, these superspreaders are capable of priming a discourse,” said Fadi Quran, a director at Avaaz. “There is often this assumption that misinformation or rumors just catch on. These superspreaders show that there is an intentional effort to redefine the public narrative.”

Across Facebook, there were roughly 3.5 million interactions — including likes, comments and shares — on public posts referencing “Stop the Steal” during the week of Nov. 3, according to the research. Of those, the profiles of Eric Trump, Diamond and Silk and Straka accounted for a disproportionate share — roughly 6%, or 200,000, of those interactions.

While the group’s impact was notable, it did not come close to the spread of misinformation promoted by President Donald Trump since then. Of the 20 most-engaged Facebook posts over the last week containing the word “election,” all were from Trump, according to Crowdtangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool. All of those claims were found to be false or misleading by independent fact checkers.

The baseless election fraud claims have been used by the president and his supporters to challenge the vote in a number of states. Reports that malfunctioning voting machines, intentionally miscounted mail-in votes and other irregularities affected the vote were investigated by election officials and journalists who found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

The voter fraud claims have continued to gather steam in recent weeks, thanks in large part to prominent accounts. A look at a four-week period starting in mid-October shows that Trump and the top 25 superspreaders of voter fraud misinformation accounted for 28.6% of the interactions people had with that content, according to an analysis by Avaaz.

“What we see these people doing is kind of like setting a fire down with fuel, it is designed to quickly create a blaze,” Quran said. “These actors have built enough power they ensure this misinformation reaches millions of Americans.”

In order to find the superspreaders, Avaaz compiled a list of 95,546 Facebook posts that included narratives about voter fraud. Those posts were liked, shared or commented on nearly 60 million times by people on Facebook.

Avaaz found that just 33 of the 95,546 posts were responsible for over 13 million of those interactions. Those 33 posts had created a narrative that would go on to shape what millions of people thought about the legitimacy of the U.S. elections.

A spokesperson for Facebook said the company had added labels to posts that misrepresented the election process and was directing people to a voting information center.

“We’re taking every opportunity to connect people to reliable information about the election and how votes are being counted,” said Kevin McAlister, a Facebook spokesperson. The company has not commented on why accounts that repeatedly share misinformation, such as Straka’s and Diamond and Silk’s, have not been penalized. Facebook has previously said that Trump, along with other elected officials, is granted a special status and is not fact-checked.

Many of the superspreader accounts had millions of interactions on their Facebook posts over the last month, and have enjoyed continued growth. The accounts were active on Twitter as well as Facebook, and increasingly spread the same misinformation on new social media sites like Parler, MeWe and Gab.

Dan Bongino, a right-wing commentator with a following of nearly 4 million people on Facebook, had over 7.7 million interactions on Facebook the week of Nov. 3. Mark Levin, a right-wing radio host, had nearly 4 million interactions, and Diamond and Silk had 2.5 million. A review of their pages by The Times shows that a majority of their posts have focused on the recent elections, and voter fraud narratives around them.

None of the superspreaders identified in this article responded to requests for comment.

One of the most prominent false claims promoted by the superspreaders was that Dominion voting software deleted votes for Trump, or somehow changed vote tallies in several swing states. Election officials have found no evidence that the machines malfunctioned, but posts about the machines have been widely shared by Trump and his supporters.

Over the last week, just seven posts from the top 25 superspreaders of the Dominion voter fraud claim accounted for 13% of the total interactions on Facebook about the claim.

Many of those same accounts were also top superspreaders of the Dominion claim, and other voter fraud theories, on Twitter. The accounts of Trump, his son Eric, Straka and Levin were all among the top 20 accounts that spread misinformation about voter fraud on Twitter, according to Ian Kennedy, a researcher at the University of Washington who works with the Elections Integrity Partnership.

Donald Trump had by far the largest influence on Twitter. A single tweet by the president accusing Dominion voting systems of deleting 2.7 million votes in his favor was shared over 185,000 times, and liked over 600,000 times.

Like the other false claims about voter fraud, Trump’s tweet included a label by Twitter that he was sharing information that was not accurate.

Twitter, like Facebook, has said that those labels help prevent false claims from being shared and direct people toward more authoritative sources of information.

Recently, BuzzFeed News reported that Facebook employees questioned whether the labels were effective. Within the company, employees have sought out their own data on how well national newspapers performed during the elections, according to one Facebook employee.

On the #StoptheSteal hashtag, they found that both The New York Times and The Washington Post were among the top 25 pages with interactions on that hashtag — mainly from readers sharing articles and using the hashtag in those posts. (People sharing the articles could have been intending to debunk the campaign.)

Combined, the two publications had approximately 44,000 interactions on Facebook under that hashtag. By comparison, Straka, the conservative activist who shared the call to action on voter fraud, got three times that number of interactions sharing material under the same hashtag on his own Facebook account.

The New York Times.

WASHINGTON — The nation is entering “a very vulnerable period” that could see the number of coronavirus deaths rise rapidly, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned in conversation with Yahoo News on Monday.

The warning comes at a time when the virus is already causing widespread devastation, averaging close to 1,500 deaths per day, according to the COVID Tracking Project. About 257,000 people have succumbed in the United States to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Asked if that number could double, Fauci expressed concern about the onset of colder weather and the “sequential holiday seasons” of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Year’s Eve.

“You do the math on that,” Fauci said. “Two to three thousand deaths a day times a couple of months, and you’re approaching a really stunning number of deaths.”

Three thousand deaths per day for the next two months would bring the total number of American deaths to above 400,000, with plenty of devastation still ahead. Although coronavirus vaccinations will begin within a matter of weeks, the inoculations will not stem the viral tide in the near future. That means thousands more could die during the winter months, even as the end of the pandemic starts to come into view.

“It isn’t inevitable that that will happen,” said Fauci, a veteran of the HIV/AIDS epidemic whose previous dire predictions about the path of the coronavirus pandemic have come true. He said that people should not panic but ought instead to take basic precautions, such as seeing people outside the household in outdoor settings only and wearing masks.

“We can blunt the curve and blunt that trajectory, which is almost exponential,” he said. “It’s possible.” Fauci has been making that case more or less since the pandemic began, but he has routinely been undermined by President Trump, who has dismissed the coronavirus as a minor threat inflated by Democratic foes. He has turned face masks into an object of the divisive culture wars on which he thrives.

Fauci excoriated governors who have consistently downplayed the dangers of the coronavirus, even as thousands fall seriously ill and die in their states. The virus has proved a political challenge for elected leaders regardless of party, but Republican governors have, for the most part, been more reluctant than their Democratic counterparts to institute mask mandates or other restrictions that could slow the spread of the virus.

“It’s beyond stunning to me, it’s almost incomprehensible, how in places where you have the intensive care beds completely full,” Fauci said, “and intensive care patients needing to be housed in other places, and you have the possibility of pending shortages of staff — that in those same places they’re still saying it’s fake news, it’s a hoax.”

Speaking to Yahoo News on Monday, Fauci marveled at those who insisted on such an approach. “How could you possibly do that when it’s staring you right in the face in the place where you live?” he wondered. “That people are dying in intensive care units. I don’t get that. At all.”

MOGADISHU, Somalia

One of the worst cyclonic storms Monday struck the Horn of Africa nation Somalia, killing eight fishers and destroying roads, houses, fishing boats, communication masts, and power lines.

Cyclone Gati, which brought along heavy rains with above average strong winds, mainly affected Bossaso and Hafun regions in the northeastern Puntland State.

Hafun District Commissioner Mohamed Yusuf Garow confirmed the deaths to local media, noting: “Roads, power lines and houses have been destroyed. The rain has weakened but expected to pick up in the evening.”

Urging fishers not to venture out to sea, he said though the cyclone has weakened, the sea remains rough due to strong winds.

Flash floods and extreme hypothermia have also killed an unknown number of livestock. Bossaso is famous for its ports from where livestock are exported to markets in the Gulf countries. Many farmers herd their animals in the region awaiting export which might take weeks or even months.

The Food and Agriculture Organization said in a Monday statement: “Heavy rains surpassing expected annual total amounts were reported in some areas including Bossaso (128mm), Balidhidin (103mm), Iskushuban (72mm) and Caluula (72mm) in a single day. Several other places continue to experience heavy downpour this morning.”

Experts said the rains which will be experienced in the Horn of Africa region during the cyclone period amount to the full average that meteorologists record in a whole two-year rain period in the same region.

Fishing activities, transportation and other businesses have been paralyzed in Bossaso along the Gulf of Aden and other coastal towns.

Internally displaced people are said to be among the worst affected by the rains./aa

DHAKA, Bangladesh(AA)  

Bangladesh must abandon its plans to relocate Rohingya refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, a top global rights group has said.

The island of Bhashan Char has not yet been declared safe for human habitation by the UN and many of the Rohingya refugees are still reluctant to relocate, Amnesty International said in a statement on Friday.

It accused Bangladeshi authorities of pressuring the Rohingya community, currently confined to crammed camps in the southern district of Cox’s Bazar, to consent to being shifted to the disaster-prone island.

Citing media reports, the group said Bangladesh is aiming to relocate 300 to 400 Rohingya refugees to the island in November.

“Rohingya refugees, interviewed by Amnesty International this month, said that government officials in charge of refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar have coerced them into registering for relocation,” the statement said.

Omar Waraich, South Asia head at Amnesty International, stressed that the island has yet to be “deemed safe for human habitation” and there are still “serious questions over this relocation procedure”.

“Based on the experiences of those that Amnesty International has spoken to, many of the Rohingya who have signed up to relocate to Bhashan Char are doing so out of compulsion rather than choice,” he said.

“Any decisions relating to the relocation of refugees must be transparent and involve the full participation of the Rohingya people. In the meantime, plans for any further relocations must be abandoned.”

He called on Bangladeshi authorities to allow the UN to carry out an assessment of Bhashan Char and “immediately return the hundreds of Rohingya refugees currently on the island to their families in Cox’s Bazar.”

‘Rohingya willing to relocate’

The Bangladesh government, meanwhile, is insisting that the Rohingya refugees are willing to shift to the island.

The country’s foreign minister has put forward this claim on several recent occasions, saying last week that a decision has been taken to relocate around 100,000 Rohingya to Bhasan Char from Cox’s Bazar.

“Most of them [Rohingya] have agreed to go there [Bhashan Char]. The relocation process is being delayed only because of pressure from international agencies and NGOs,” AK Abdul Momen was quoted as saying by state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha news agency.

He said the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar were overcrowded and disaster-prone, claiming that the remote island offers the Rohingya community a shot at a better life.

“Bhasan Char is a beautiful place; I wish to build a resort there. The Rohingya can work and earn on the island too, be it agriculture or rearing livestock,” the minister said.

‘World’s most persecuted people’

The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world's most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.

According to Amnesty International, more than 750,000 Rohingya refugees, mostly women and children, fled Myanmar and crossed into Bangladesh after Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the minority Muslim community in August 2017, pushing the number of persecuted people in Bangladesh above 1.2 million.

Some 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar’s Rakhine State were still the target of a government campaign to eradicate their identity, and were living under “threat of genocide”, according to a UN-mandated Fact-Finding Mission’s report last September as quoted by Human Rights Watch.

Since Aug. 25, 2017, nearly 24,000 Rohingya Muslims have been killed by Myanmar’s state forces, according to a report by the Ontario International Development Agency (OIDA).

More than 34,000 Rohingya were thrown into fires, over 114,000 more beaten, and as many as 18,000 Rohingya women and girls were raped by Myanmar's army and police, said the OIDA report, titled Forced Migration of Rohingya: The Untold Experience.

Over 115,000 Rohingya homes were burned down and some 113,000 others vandalized, it added.