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Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, a collection of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of tech and politics.
MAGA foil warns about misinformation and propaganda
In a rare interview, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has sought to hold Elon Musk and X accountable for spreading disinformation and hate speech, issued dire warnings about the potential impact of internet-based propaganda.
In an interview with The New Yorker, he said:
“The far right noticed, during the Arab Spring, that social media could mobilize people without intermediaries,” he said. “At first, algorithms were refined for economic purposes, to captivate consumers. Then people realized how easy it was to redirect this toward political power.” He cast social media as a defining force of our time. “If Goebbels were alive and had access to X, we would be doomed,” he said. “The Nazis would have conquered the world.”
He went on to say:
“The far right wants to seize power — not by saying they oppose democracy, because that wouldn’t gain public support, but by claiming that democratic institutions are rigged,” de Moraes said. “It’s a highly structured, highly intelligent populism. Unfortunately, in Brazil and in the U.S., we haven’t yet learned how to fight back.”
Read the full feature at The New Yorker.
Musk’s attack on Social Security
Musk-pushed mass firings and budget cuts are wreaking havoc on the Social Security system, causing website outages and occasionally preventing customers from receiving service. According to The Washington Post:
The website has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks, with outages lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to almost a day, according to six current and former officials with knowledge of the issues. Even when the site is back online, many customers have not been able to sign in to their accounts — or have logged in only to find information missing. For others, access to the system has been slow, requiring repeated tries to get in.
MAGA influencers deride Trump tariffs
Some Donald Trump-supporting influencers online are sounding the alarm over the harm being caused by the president’s sweeping and severe tariffs. Two livestreamers, DJ Akademiks and Adin Ross, recently complained about money they say they lost as a result of the tariffs; Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy publicly complained about the millions of dollars he says he has lost as a result of Trump’s tariffs; and podcast host Ben Shapiro mocked an idea, pushed by some Trump allies, that Americans may be eager to take jobs in factories the Trump administration claims will be opening up in the United States as a result of his trade policy.
E.U.’s X punishment looms
Musk’s X reacted with dismay over a report that the European Union may be planning to levy a fine, as well as require changes at the company, in order for it to keep operating in E.U. member states. The report stems from an E.U. probe finding X ran afoul of E.U. rules meant to prevent the spread of hate speech and disinformation online.
Read my take on X’s response here.
Trump admin’s cruel CBP One app announcement
Trump’s administration announced it is revoking legal status for migrants who used the CBP One app to apply for legal residence in the United States. The administration ordered relevant migrants to use the app — launched during Trump’s first administration and expanded under the Biden administration — to self-deport. During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump and JD Vance peddled lies about CBP One primarily being a tool for cartels and other purportedly law-breaking immigrants.
Read more at NBC News.
Is Big Tech having regrets?
Amid Trump’s chaotic tariff war, The New York Times reported Tuesday that some tech CEOs don’t appear to be getting all they expected when many of them threw their support behind Trump during and after last year’s presidential election.
According to the Times:
The sweeping tariffs he imposed last week will squeeze Apple’s iPhone supply chain and make it much more expensive for Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft to build supercomputers to power artificial intelligence. The president has slashed federal funding for research into emerging technologies like A.I. and quantum computing. His immigration clampdown has incited fears that he will cut off pipelines for tech talent. The Trump administration has also signaled that it will continue an aggressive regulatory stance on reining in the power of the biggest tech companies, beginning next week with a landmark antitrust trial to break up Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
This report aligns with comments from technology researcher Dan Ives, who told CNBC on Monday that Trump’s tariff policy could set the U.S. tech sector back a decade. Read the Times report here.
And watch Ives’ interview here:
ProPublica warns about Musk’s freebies
In a recent report from ProPublica, tech experts worry that Musk’s donation of his Starlink internet service as a platform to conduct government operations risks intertwining Musk’s company in ways that could prove difficult — or extremely costly — to decouple down the line. ProPublica’s report specifically examines whether Musk could be getting the government “hooked” on his products by offering “freebies.”
Read more at ProPublica.
Jankowicz goes head-to-head with House Republicans
Nina Jankowicz, the disinformation expert maliciously targeted by right-wingers for her efforts to prevent the spread of disinformation, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week and took Republicans to task for spreading falsehoods portraying her work — and content moderation, more broadly — as “censorship.”
“The premise of this hearing, the so-called censorship industrial complex, is a fiction that has not only had profound impacts on my life and safety, but on our national security,” she said in her opening statement.
“More alarmingly, this fiction is itself suppressing speech and stymieing critical research that protects our country,” she added.
Read more on Jankowicz’s appearance at The Guardian.