The New York Times has been mocked online for an opinion piece claiming President Trump’s Twitter typos are deliberate, suggesting that he is sending “strategic” messages to his “network of right-wing operatives and activists.”
In the editorial penned by Harvard alumna Emily Dreyfuss, the author alleges that the president is deliberately misspelling words and hashtags to circumvent attempted censorship by Twitter.
“One of Trump’s tweets looked like it had a typo. In fact, it was probably code to his most extreme supporters,” the article reads.
Dreyfuss singles out Trump’s cryptic deployment of the hashtag ‘#BidenCrimeFamiily’ before describing the now-popular tactic of #typosquatting, “often used by trolls and media manipulators to get around the rules of social media platforms,” apparently unravelling the very thesis upon which the article, or at least its headline, was based.
She then goes on to describe the de-indexing of the #BidenCrimeFamily hashtag by Twitter between October 14 and 16, claiming it stopped short of censorship and was merely a “powerful tool” to stop the spread of disinformation online.
Not everyone was buying the theory about Trump’s weaponized wayward thumbs, however.
Journalist Zaid Jilani roasted the paper, accusing it of attempting to deepen tensions in the US. “The NYT and others spent months hyping up some civil war style violence and when it didn't arrive they gotta move the goal posts to keep the clicks going to the quickly-inflating TDS audience,” he said.
“The Q York Times,” the Daily Caller's Greg Price joked, in reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory which was recently excised from social media, for inciting violence.
Some took issue with the New York Times’ history of perpetuating its own favored ‘conspiracy theories’.
Many just took the opportunity to highlight how far the one-time ‘paper of record’ was reaching with this latest piece.
Meanwhile, the social media giants have been keeping a tight leash on communications from both sides as counting continues in the tightly-contested election.
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