Poor Marianna Spring. Since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the BBC’s ludicrously titled ‘Disinformation Correspondent‘ has seen abuse targeted at her triple, according to research commissioned for her Panorama programme about Twitter that aired on BBC One last night.
She writes:
Abuse on Twitter is nothing new for me – I’m a reporter who shares my coverage of disinformation, conspiracies and hate there. But throughout most of last year I noticed it steadily lessening across all of the social media sites. And then in November I realised it had got worse on Twitter again.
It turns out, I was right. A team from the International Center for Journalists and the University of Sheffield have been tracking the hate I receive, and their data revealed the abuse targeted at me on Twitter had more than tripled since Mr. Musk took over, compared with the same period in the year before.
Right, so in this sample of one average ‘disinformation correspondent’, might anything else have influenced the amount of abuse she received on Twitter? Such as her output, perhaps. Let’s see.
Here’s the chart the researchers produced showing Twitter abuse against her.
The researchers report that “while the abuse towards Spring was dramatically reduced by the end of 2021 after Twitter’s improved efforts to curb attacks, a comparable data sample from November 2022-January 2023 shows a tripling of abuse following Musk’s takeover”.
In fact though what we see is that Spring typically experiences no abuse each day. However, a large spike occurred in spring 2021, a small ripple occurred in late 2021, and then a modest spike in late 2022 (though typically still only one or zero tweets each day). Plus there’s a short sharp spike in early 2023.
What was Ms. Spring working on over this period? Working from a list on Wikipedia:
- March 20th 2021: The Anti-Vax Files – World Service report countering vaccine ‘disinformation’
- November 13th 2021: The Denial Files – World Service episode coinciding with COP26 countering climate ‘disinformation’
- March 2022: Death by Conspiracy? – Radio 4 series blaming a Covid sceptic’s death from Covid on ‘misinformation’
- March-April 2022: War on Truth – Radio 4 series on ‘misinformation’ about Ukraine war
- October 31st 2022: Disaster Trolls – Radio 4 series on those who troll survivors of tragedies, including Alex Jones
So the spring 2021 spike appears to coincide with her Anti-Vax Files programme and the late 2021 ripple possibly with the Denial Files episode. There is notably nothing coinciding with her first two Radio 4 series (perhaps none of the trolls bothered to listen to them?) but the Disaster Trolls series, (including ‘I helped bring down Alex Jones’) seems to coincide with the modest spike in late 2022.
The big spike in January 2023 clearly coincides with Ms. Spring’s Twitter poll asking for an interview with Elon Musk for her Panorama programme, which was viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
I imagine a search of her Twitter history would give other clues as to why she might have been attracting some additional unpleasant attention in the periods shown in the chart (feel free to post any you find in the comments).
I’m not looking to ‘victim blame’ of course or excuse any abusive behaviour. But this research does not seem a very sophisticated way of finding out why Twitter trolls might have been messaging Ms. Spring more often on those occasions, and the jump to blame Musk would seem rather hasty.
As to the rest of the documentary, in her write-up of it Spring admits that “Twitter was a hotbed for trolling long before Mr Musk took over”. But she quotes Lisa Jennings Young, Twitter’s disaffected former Head of Content Design, who has claimed there is “no-one there to work on” safety features like the ‘harmful reply nudge’ since her team was laid off and she quit. So Spring and Young tested it to see if it would still work:
She suggested a tweet that she would have expected to trigger a nudge. “Twitter employees are lazy losers, jump off the Golden Gate bridge and die.” I shared it on a private profile in response to one of her tweets, but to Ms. Jennings Young’s surprise, no nudge was sent. Another tweet with offensive language we shared was picked up – but Lisa says the nudge should have picked up a message wishing death on a user, not just swear words.
It’s clearly still operational, then, even if not doing exactly what Young claims it should be.
Spring also cites the unhappy experience of rape victim Ellie Wilson.
Ellie Wilson, who lives in Glasgow, was raped while at university and began posting about that experience on social media last summer. At the time, she received a supportive response on Twitter.
But when she tweeted about her attacker in January after he was sentenced, she was subject to a wave of hateful messages. She received abusive and misogynistic replies – with some even telling her she deserved to be raped…
Her Twitter following was smaller before the takeover, but when I looked into accounts targeting her with hate this time around, I noticed the trolls’ profiles had become more active since the takeover, suggesting they’d been suspended previously and recently reinstated.
Abuse of a rape victim is of course deplorable. But there are other explanations as to why abuse may have been worse at that point, besides the malign influence of Mr. Musk. Ms. Wilson may have noticed it more. She had more followers, as Spring notes. After the trial the story would presumably have attracted more attention with more details made public. Again, I’m in no way excusing abuse. But if we’re looking at causes of changes in online behaviour we need to look at all the potential factors, not just blame it on Musk.
Spring notes that Musk has “lobbied against” Child Sexual Abuse and networks of bot accounts designed to mislead, but says insiders have told her it “isn’t being tackled as it was before”. She accepts that Twitter is removing hundreds of thousands of accounts each month, but quotes an insider ‘Rory’ saying the problem is they’re not being reported to the police.
It’s pretty weak stuff and seems like yet another hit job on Musk. But should we expect any better from the BBC ‘disinformation correspondent’ whose job is hardly designed to support free speech?
Concerns have been raised about 27 year-old Marianna Spring’s reporting before. Fred Skulthorp in the Critic noted in December her bizarre attempt to connect the German far-Right Heinrich XIII plot with COVID-19 ‘disinformation’. Spring told the News at Ten:
Whilst this group predates the pandemic, its audacious plot and its commitment to it perhaps goes hand in hand with the rise of disinformation about COVID-19 and the violent rhetoric that has accompanied that … The legacy [of the pandemic] and the conspiracy legacy that it leaves remains, and it can embolden these fringe groups in a way that just didn’t happen before and that’s really quite frightening.
Skulthorp writes:
The COVID-19 disinformation angle was a curious one in a story that has since emerged to be far more complex. Indeed, in deploying Marianna as the lead correspondent on the story, the BBC appeared to be the only ones especially keen to push it.
The group, unsurprisingly, believed some barmy things about not just the pandemic but pretty much everything else currently on the news agenda. Membership of the Reichsbürger, the dissident movement from which the coup emerged, had also risen by 4,500 to 21,000 since 2017.
The rest of her take was just bizarre — not least her implication that prior to the pandemic, mad people have never believed mad things and acted them out. At best, it was the sort of half-baked journalism hardly befitting the News at Ten. At worst, it was a tabloidy attempt to invoke a wider sense of paranoia about further violence in the wake of the “conspiracy legacy of the pandemic”.
I wasn’t surprised by the whole affair. I’ve followed Marianna Spring’s career at the BBC with acute frustration. I don’t doubt she has some talent as a reporter, but I have increasing concern about the way she has been managed at the corporation over the pandemic — and I am not alone.
The ‘Disinformation Unit’ she pioneered now has a deserved reputation both inside and outside the organisation for being a de facto mouthpiece for the Government during those years. Watching Spring assert on the evening news that the events in Germany were more or less a consequence of “pandemic disinformation” made for uncomfortable viewing. Not least because Marianna and her team’s definition of ‘disinformation’ has in the past appeared to implicate everyone from Peter Hitchens to an NHS doctor. What did she mean by it this time?
In light of the leak that revealed Peter Hitchens had been targeted by the 77th Brigade, perhaps questions should be asked about Spring’s connection with that covert U.K. military propaganda operation.
The media establishment and others opposed to free speech and the right to criticise mainstream narratives are determined that Musk’s Twitter should fail. Spring’s Panorama documentary is just the latest volley in that ongoing war.
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The BBC has no business running a “Disinformation Unit”.
The BBC is a Disinformation Unit.
If not THE disinformation unit.
Talking of which I was discussing media bias with a normie acquaintance of mine, expressing the view that MSM TV news is not balanced and if you want to be an informed voter you need to expose yourself to a wider variety of views. Yes, she said, a friend of mine is C4 environment correspondent and she keeps getting forced by her editors to have opposing views on for balance – but they are not scientists and they are spreading disinformation and preventing us from getting the message out regarding “what needs to be done to save the planet”. Hopeless. Normies don’t seem to understand what balance means, or misinformation or disinformation, of freedom of speech, or science. We’re lost!
Sadly I think we are. The BBC, and MSM in general, seem able to maintain their narratives so consistently, with so few hiccups (like when they invited Aseem Malhotra onto their 24hr news channel recently).
I have to confess that I generally went along with the narrative regarding ‘climate change’ until Covid came along (though still clear that any change in our lifestyles would be impossible,even if it were true).
One of the silver linings of the Covid hoax/insanity has been to reveal the ‘climate emergency ‘ hoax for what it is.
Yes, me too.
Arrr, poor little girl, didums do it !
“‘Disinformation Correspondent‘ has seen abuse targeted at her triple, according to research commissioned for her Panorama programme”
Can’t she count? Or does she prefer to waste public money?
Wednesday 8th March 11am to 12pm
Yellow Freedom Boards
Junction A327 Arborfield Rd &
Eastern Relief Rd, Shinfield,
Wokingham RG2 9EA
Decades ago, I used to watch “Panorama”, but I grew out of it. In those days, there were only 3 channels, and the WWW had not been invented.
Meanwhile back in the real world, ‘trolling’ and ‘abuse’ simply mean harsh grown up criticism of her and the British Bullshit Corporation’s 24/7 propaganda factory.
Another comforting reminder why I cancelled my licence.
Never had one.
What is “hate”?
If it’s stuff that annoys me and offends me, then the BBC produces a virtually ceaseless stream of hate.
Exactly. Actually have free speech and diversity of opinion you are going to get buns thrown across the divides. Restrict posting to those with a leftie liberal bent such that everyone agrees with each other and, oddly, the volume of abuse will go down.
It’s worth pointing out to crybullies that hate is a useful and important emotion when it comes with self-awareness: it tells us the limits of what we’re prepared to tolerate. Without this advisory voice, we’re prone to becoming complicit in all manner of evil.
I really hate the BBC.
This so-called Far right Heinrich XIII plot consisted of a group of OAPs, among then a descendent of one of the Bundesfürsten of the German empire – it’s extremely unlikely that anybody except the party which profited from the 1918 coup, ie, the SPD, still cares or even knows about this – who used to meet in order to discuss politics (!) and who had – according to German interior secret service statements – within more than seven months almost managed to agree on how a future Germany should be ruled according to their opinions on that.
For a somewhat comical angle: One of these OAPs happened to be an amateur pistol shooter. Because of this, the Verfassungschutz had planned to storm the building he lived in in the early hours of morning and to get into his flat by blowing up the door. Unfortunately, they ended up blowing up door of the flat of a family of Syrian refugees instead. But thankfully, the targetted OAP was such an extremely dangerous armed terrorist that his subsequent arrest was nevertheless possible without further complications, eg, he trying to defend himself.
Huh?
Häh?
[colloquial German for Pardon?]
If that was supposed to be a question, I don’t understand it (if it was supposed to be something else, I don’t understand that, either).
My wife wanted to watch the program. I warned her it would be grossly biased. She turned off 5 minutes in.
The short piece I saw criticised Musk for having 2 bodyguards with him all the time,
It just goes to show how vicious, nasty and intolerant the wokerati are.
Another of the ‘needy’, who can criticise, but who can’t do. If she was a journalist, a proper journalist she wouldn’t be satisfied with a non-job at the BBC raking over imaginary peoples imaginary feelings.
Marianna Spring’s journalism here, as elsewhere, is surprisingly long on correlation, pretty hopeless on nailing cause. How ironic!
Maybe she should try to hone these woeful skills by closely examining and treating us to her conclusions about global excess deaths and the mRNA jabs fiasco. Could this be the elusive causative agent she struggles to identify in the rest of her pitiful Orwellian output?
Well talking about Twitter, here’s Moderna’s CEO saying that he’d produced 100,000 doses of the good stuff prior to the plandemic. And we’re meant to believe none of this baloney was planned?? I had to listen a few times as his voice is hard to understand..
https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1632709396693172225
The poster maintains that the 100K doses were “COVID-19 vaccines” although that’s quite a leap from what Bancel actually said. Bancel said he told his employees after Davos [Jan 2020] that there would be a pandemic and they would have to scale up their manufacturing capacity to 1bn doses.
I was told in Summer 2020, June I think, by somebody with impeccable credentials that Astra Zeneca had the injections ready and stock-piled.
Yet another fearless investigative journalist.
On a more serious note. When, why and where to have they disappeared.
I saw a video clip of this taxpayer funded charlatan today with her claims about Elon Musk. What struck me most was that she felt the need to fly to San Francisco to carry out her ‘research’. It sounds like a taxpayer funded jolly to me. What’s her stance on net zero and the role of plant food in global warming? She works for the BBC so I imagine she has signed up for ‘the science is settled’ fairy story.
Flying to San Francisco eh? Very Net Zero.
I’d like to see evidence of every single word of the ‘abuse’ Spring claims has been directed at her. These perma-hyped fantasists are locked by their detachment from reality into a cycle of defensiveness. Like all narcissists, they see anyone who disagrees with them as abusive, and every statement that departs from their fatuous dogma as dangerous misinformation.
Trolling a rape victim is of course a pretty unpleasant way to spend one’s time, but here’s a sure-fire way to avoid being hurt by the nasty people out there: have some dignity and don’t rush to tell everyone online how sad and mistreated you feel. It’s an old-fashioned concept but an effective one. I hope you recover fully from your experience, but my advice is to try to do so with the help of your genuine friends and family – rather than thinking that appeals to the great swirling mass of weirdos out there are likely to help in any way.
Yeah baby. Just shut up and hide in the basement! A brilliant piece of advice. Many people are doing a lot of stuff they absolutely shouldn’t be able to get away by relying on them being able to sail below the radar. And the only conceivable for someone who’s otherwise powerless is Talk about it in the hope that some the great, swirling mass of Couldn’t care less about what’s happening to others! people may eventually learn about such situations.
Eg, a man publically caressing another man’s nipples. Is it always sure that this must have happened because both of them wanted it?[*] Or could this be more something similar to a man doing the same to a female stranger who happened to be in a convenient position for that, ie, physcially available and alone. Not that the great swirling mass of … would care much more about this happening to woman they don’t know.
[*] Please spare me the usual suggestion of violent remedies. In the Bouncers everywhere! age, you’ll be in deep shit as soon as you do as much as raise a finger towards someone if you’re alone.
Only got a vague idea of what you’re saying I’m afraid. Are you suggesting that for some people the only way to get attention is to post on the internet? If you are (and it’s hard to tell), well, that’s my point – it’s not the best to seek help! And what’s this about “violent remedies”? And nipple caressing? What on earth are you talking about?
If you write it or say it then it isn’t ‘abuse’…
Had a grovelling letter from the BBC tryitng to entrap me into buying a licence with trick questions. I haven’t watched their biaised garbage for 3 years. They are getting very desperate.
Abuse (noun) meaning: to disagree with someone; challenge their conceit; reply robustly to their nonsense, woke claims; think differently and refuse to support the latest thing; call someone out for their lies and deceit.
Maybe the BBC is disinformation?