T. Kenny Fountain's Avatar

T. Kenny Fountain

@tkennyfountain.bsky.social

Associate Professor of English, UVA. Scholar of rhetoric (old & current), studying conspiracy theory belief, disinformation, extremism, and visual media. Writing a book, Imagining Conspiracy Theories.

731 Followers  |  463 Following  |  557 Posts  |  Joined: 04.10.2023
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Posts by T. Kenny Fountain (@tkennyfountain.bsky.social)

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Here’s Why Trump Posted About Iran ‘Stealing’ the 2020 Election Hours After the US Attacked Donald Trump’s post on Truth Social about Iran echoed a conspiracy theory that has been circulating online for years.

NEW

At 2.30am on Saturday morning Donald Trump announced he had decided to attack Iran

Two hours later, he shared a link suggesting Iran rigged the 2020 election

Here's why

www.wired.com/story/heres-...

03.03.2026 23:26 — 👍 139    🔁 43    💬 15    📌 3
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U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military

I don't think we fully appreciate how much Christian Nationalism has embedded itself in the highest positions of this administration and, it seems, the US military. No one should die for someone else's religious beliefs.

open.substack.com/pub/jonathan...

03.03.2026 17:49 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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These guys were selling t-shirts until they needed a war to cover up the intentional damage they did to the economy and the president's involvement in a pedophilia scandal.

01.03.2026 17:01 — 👍 10841    🔁 3545    💬 249    📌 104

Conspiracy theories have become a dominant political discourse in this country. What was two decades ago periphery is not central to millions of people.

27.02.2026 00:53 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Russia Moves Closer to Banning Telegram App, Saying It Foments Terrorism

👀 "Russia is laying the groundwork for terrorism-related charges against Pavel Durov, the billionaire founder of the app Telegram, in the latest indication that the Kremlin plans to ban the go-to means of communication for millions of Russians." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/w...

25.02.2026 12:19 — 👍 7    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 1

Is there actually an English Department in the USA that has succeeded in meaningfully integrating literary studies, creative writing, and writing & rhetoric? Have any of them moved beyond the three-separated-units-in-one-department system? Is it even possible to wish for more?

24.02.2026 15:49 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Tax payers paying for the FBI Director to attend the Olympics. But we cant have affordable healthcare.

22.02.2026 23:29 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The reason we're here is that tens of millions of people will punch a hole in a wall if they hear someone used food stamps to buy soda but they're fine if the right-wing podcaster turned fbi director uses his taxpayer funded private jet to go party whenever he feels like it bsky.app/profile/thed...

22.02.2026 23:01 — 👍 18515    🔁 6562    💬 431    📌 175

If billionaires don't comprehend that human beings have more worth and value than an AI model, we are screwed. And I'm hear to tell you we are screwed! This is another example of the dehumanization of what billionaires see as the expendable masses.

22.02.2026 14:43 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents | Fortune Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said older generations “screwed up” giving students access to so much technology: “I genuinely hope Gen Z quickly figures that out and gets mad.”

The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents

22.02.2026 01:30 — 👍 318    🔁 100    💬 13    📌 17
The political effects of X's feed algorithm
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2
Received: 16 December 2024
Accepted: 4 January 2026
Published online: 18 February 2026
Open access
• Check for updates
Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m
Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects.
Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.

Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.

This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

19.02.2026 18:57 — 👍 6388    🔁 3185    💬 159    📌 394

This is an odd brag! It's like, let me demonstrate how much I don't understand the concerns of progressives.

16.02.2026 01:52 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Large language model can fuel extremists attitudes

LLM-generated arguments using universal moral framings increase moral absolutism, willingness to fight and die, and justification of violence.
nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

14.02.2026 17:33 — 👍 26    🔁 7    💬 0    📌 1

I called up one of the White House's "special government employees" involved in the Fulton County FBI raid.

I ended up on the phone for almost two hours hearing about the "deep state" "cabal," "Satanists," poison soda, and the "pure evil" of "gay pride." talkingpointsmemo.com/news/meet-th...

11.02.2026 23:53 — 👍 3698    🔁 1214    💬 152    📌 123

Trump might deal our democracy its death blow, but Citizens United kicked it over and pinned it to the ground.

12.02.2026 03:03 — 👍 103    🔁 25    💬 1    📌 0

Fantastic detailed thread identifying key element of Bad Bunny's halftime show.

09.02.2026 12:43 — 👍 5    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The Barbaric History of Sugar in America (Published 2019) How sugar became the “white gold” that fueled slavery — and an industry that continues to exploit black lives to this day.

As long as we’re talking about sugar and its history:

09.02.2026 05:46 — 👍 219    🔁 85    💬 4    📌 2
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Good Morning, Happy Benito "Bad Bunny" Martínez Ocasio Day! 💖
"There is no better dance than the one that comes from the heart." -Bad Bunny

08.02.2026 13:30 — 👍 335    🔁 99    💬 22    📌 6
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Bad Bunny: TOGETHER WE ARE AMERICA

09.02.2026 01:35 — 👍 2108    🔁 433    💬 45    📌 26
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“It can be the latest chapter, and be different too… the scope of this dwarfs what we had after 9/11. The 🇺🇸 President is building a white supremacist army. I don’t know what else to call it.”

@timmiller.bsky.social & Ta-Nehisi Coates on Trump’s state-sponsored racism - on @thebulwark.com

07.02.2026 19:19 — 👍 823    🔁 308    💬 26    📌 12
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ICE detainees from Maine being held under ‘inhumane’ conditions in Mass. facility, attorneys say An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson said the allegations of overcrowding and lack of access to lawyers are false.

Concentration camps: stories of as many as 50 people to a cell — men and women in some cases — with no windows and limited airflow, a single camera-monitored toilet, aluminum blankets, no showers and poor quality food.

07.02.2026 13:10 — 👍 4409    🔁 2718    💬 135    📌 222

Trump is suggesting the Clintons shouldn't testify, recognizing he could face the same subpoena as a former president.. and with his ties to Epstein, perjury charges are pretty much a guarantee..

06.02.2026 09:25 — 👍 926    🔁 213    💬 59    📌 12

Yes. The folks who study election rumors and conspiracy theories are worried that a forced (and false) confession by Maduro (of 2020 election fraud) is a real possibility, and we’ve already seen some (wink, wink) foreshadowing of such a move.

06.02.2026 01:41 — 👍 988    🔁 343    💬 22    📌 15

Igor Bobic
@igorbobic
Tillis warns that sending ICE to the polls in November, as Steve Bannon suggested, could have “a chilling effect” on voting:

“I think there's an estimated 60 million Hispanics legally present in this country. We have seen some apprehensions of legally present people…I think it can have a chilling effect on even US citizens going to the polls because they don't want to be detained and have to prove citizenship.”

Igor Bobic @igorbobic Tillis warns that sending ICE to the polls in November, as Steve Bannon suggested, could have “a chilling effect” on voting: “I think there's an estimated 60 million Hispanics legally present in this country. We have seen some apprehensions of legally present people…I think it can have a chilling effect on even US citizens going to the polls because they don't want to be detained and have to prove citizenship.”

he's so close to figuring it out!

05.02.2026 20:23 — 👍 4943    🔁 925    💬 152    📌 45
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Congress Receives Redacted Version of Whistleblower Complaint Against Gabbard Significant portions of the document had been blacked out for executive privilege.

There is no justification whatsoever for redacting a complaint before transmitting it to the Gang of Eight. The redaction should be taken as evidence of bad faith and failure to comply with the law, and should be challenged. www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

05.02.2026 20:12 — 👍 1011    🔁 319    💬 21    📌 5
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Email appears to confirm photo of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Virginia Giuffre is real The message, believed to be from Ghislaine Maxwell, was released as part of the latest tranche of the Epstein files

Email appears to confirm photo of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Virginia Giuffre is real www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

05.02.2026 06:52 — 👍 270    🔁 76    💬 14    📌 3

Oh my go, don't be surprised if this administration does that: gets Madura to confess to wild lies of interfering in the 2020 election, so they can seize control of all subsequent elections!

05.02.2026 01:26 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

People! Post the EFTA# when you post images of documents from the Epstein files. We live in a disinformation ecosystem. Posting the EFTA # makes it easier to verify the authenticity of what we see online. It gets us all in the habit of looking for these numbers. Consider it like citing your sources!

05.02.2026 00:18 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Striking paper from researchers at Anthropic using a randomised control trial to look at the effects of AI use on skills acquisition.

TL:DR ‘We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.’
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...

04.02.2026 07:47 — 👍 555    🔁 331    💬 22    📌 62

I personally do not think some rich man should be able to buy an institution like this like a toy and then break it when he doesn’t want to play with it anymore. bsky.app/profile/benm...

04.02.2026 11:53 — 👍 7883    🔁 1806    💬 209    📌 74