X's trending topics surfaced conspiracy theories around the assassination attempt on Donald Trump; YouTube and Facebook primarily directed users to news outlets
Conspiracy theories about the shooting at a Trump rally began surfacing on X shortly after the news broke this afternoon …
The VergeJacob Kastrenakes
Context & Ripple Effects
The contrast between X and the other major platforms matters because political misinformation had already driven safety concerns across Facebook and Twitter, including baseless coup claims circulating before the 2020 election. Facebook and YouTube had also previously removed a Trump video over concerns it could contribute to violence or violate election rules.
This episode shows that platform choices at the discovery layer—not only later content removals—can shape the information people encounter in the first hours of a fast-moving political crisis.
First-order effects
People using X's trending topics were immediately exposed to conspiracy narratives alongside news of the attack, while users on Facebook and YouTube were more likely to be routed toward established news outlets.
X faces sharper scrutiny of how its trend-ranking and recommendation surfaces handle breaking political events; Facebook and YouTube gain evidence for their more news-forward approach in this instance.
Second-order effects
News organizations and fact-checkers may face a more fragmented response task when a platform's discovery feature boosts unverified narratives before reliable reporting is widely available.
The divergence raises competitive pressure on social platforms to make their breaking-news routing and ranking choices more legible, especially after earlier platforms removed Trump-related content over violence and election-rule concerns in the post-election video crackdown.
Third-order effects
If these differences persist, trust in social platforms may increasingly depend on the design of high-reach discovery systems—trends, search, and recommendations—rather than on moderation decisions alone.
The trend: Breaking-news distribution is becoming a defining test of whether social platforms act primarily as open amplification systems or as guided gateways to verified reporting.
30 minutes since Trump got shot, and my Threads' front page doesn't have a single mention of the event. In stark contrast to Twitter's real-time updates, this reveals a major weakness in Threads' ability to share breaking news. …
yesterday put to bed the idea that Twitter is still where you go for news. the amount of bullshit, propaganda and hatred outweighs real information by such a large extent that it's become useless. you would be better informed honestly by staying offline or going somewhere else.
Disagree. In the vast majority of cases, realtime ‘news’ is a bug, not a feature. Unless you're escaping a fast-moving hurricane or are in a war-zone, why not wait until actual, vetted news gets published in the next days or a week? In nearly every situation, there's nothing y…
Twitter/X has been in ultra-cringe mode for the past two weeks, particularly the last 24 hours. Despite the influx of trolls and bots, Threads has been much easier as a platform to navigate, share information and engage. The difference is unbelievable.
Within minutes I was seeing the name of a shooter who was clearly the wrong person. And then a bunch of wrong info about the shooter in the stands. Oh and then a bunch of info about being hit with a BB gun. And then it was an Antifa operation. Then the face of the dead shoote…
Someone please send me Linda Yaccarino's slides explaining how being the most vibrant site for real-time assassination conspiracy theories is great for advertisers
The Trump assassination attempt was a good test of the reporting on X vs traditional media. I followed the event through both, and I can say that I was way better informed by the media than X. Elon and co attacked the media for their cautious headlines, but that's what it was: [i…
People (justifiably) get mad at “the media” if they get facts wrong. But the also get mad at “the media” if they write cautiously in the early minutes of a developing story to avoid factual errors. Covering breaking news quickly but accurately is hard.
In any other instance Silicon Valley would tell people to build a better version rather than endlessly complaining. Create something better but this armchair media criticism when a photographer literally ran toward the president to get photos is infuriating
I think @x did a better job covering the assassination attempt than the media did. Didn't we just hear from the EU lamenting the demise of the Twitter 1.0 blue check? How well did those legacy media blue-check organizations do with breaking news?
Beyond the fact that most of the news on X is provided directly by “the legacy media,” the idea that any of this reporting on the shooting is propaganda is total nonsense https://www.mediaite.com/...
“Online platforms ... have long been accelerants for baseless information and conspiracy theories, but these things aren't just the product of an information crisis that can be resolved with education and by reining in social media.” @alibreland https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
X relies on the best photos from the media, key facts from the media, video from the media and then turns around and blames the media for the poor coverage while providing mostly distribution rather than fresh information
Dozens of Steam accounts have now changed their name or image to the suspected Trump gunman's, I found. Not a new trend—the same thing happened after the Christchurch attack
If he was actually upset about the proliferation of incorrect information, he'd be concerned that his site has been flooded with conspiracy theories and legitimately fake news over the past few days, some of which has been pushed by people he explicitly let back on...
This is very dumb on many levels. The media is trying to report as accurate as possible, as quickly as possible—largely to feed the incentives of websites like this one. Meanwhile, the only decent live-ish tweeting of the event I am aware of came from working journalists. [image]
Conspiracy theories about the apparent Trump rally shooting already nearing millions of views. Minutes after it occurred people began calling the event staged. [image]
My feed here was full of six hour old posts when the news was breaking and x kept mixing in old tweets for many hours, and part of why people are mad about these early headlines is x doesn't have any sense of breaking news anymore and shows way too much old stuff
NEW: Videos and social media accounts purporting to be the suspect in the attempted assassination of Trump are spreading across TikTok, X, Instagram, YouTube and other top platforms—sowing misinfo over whether the man shown is, in fact, the actual gunman:https://www.forbes.com/ .…
One-eyed media commentary ignores the fact that professional, responsible journalists only publish what they know in the moment because in a breaking news situation there is so much you don't know. And of course much of the accurate information on X comes from journalists.