I have some wild updates on yesterday's thread about @mattgaetz's floor speech about "antifa agitators" that may end up with the facial recognition company suing the Washington Times, which would be funny... https://twitter.com/RespectableLaw/status/1347055062284120064

This morning, Buzzfeed interviewed XRVision, the facial recognition company mentioned in the Washington Times article who supposedly identified antifa at the capitol. They’re mad, because as I discussed yesterday, they actually identified neo-nazis. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facial-recognition-antifa-washington-times-false

And now there are attorneys issuing a demand for correction and apology, which is the first step in a defamation lawsuit.

But the Washington Times didn’t issue a correction or apology. Instead, this morning it first tried to change the headline from “antifa” to “extremists.” https://twitter.com/JessReports/status/1347243461313904641

By noon, the Washington Times just deleted the article.

But remember @RoScarborough, the author of that embarrassing article? Well now he is retweeting a NY Post story repeating the same lies about “two antifa infiltrators.” https://twitter.com/RoScarborough/status/1347238389624557574

These people are shameless. This is worm behavior.

And as these shameless worms keep the misinformation churning, we now have the biggest clods in Congress talking about sleeping on the floor of their office and citing the rumors they tell each other as “evidence.” https://twitter.com/RepMoBrooks/status/1347171349182238721

Keep your fingers crossed that a lawsuit comes out of this, because at least that would be entertaining. But when it comes to misinformation and its pernicious use by people like Matt Gaetz, things are going to get worse before they get better.

Because there is still no institutional penalty in media and politics for this kind of behavior. And in desperation, somebody is going to try to create a top-down system of regulation that ultimately neutralizes the only positive and democratizing aspects of online information.