#readlaterally

[faiths-fright-flicks]

Read Laterally

By: Faith Ortega

While scrolling through X recently, I came across an interesting post that danced with the field of conspiracy theories. The post used four pictures, including two of Kamala Harris wearing earrings during the recent debate and two of a similar-looking wireless earbud product meant to look like earrings. The post insinuates that Harris used wireless earbuds to receive answers during the debate. This is a bold and highly accusatory claim. After reading such an intense accusation, I wondered what credentials this X user, Ryan Rozbiani, had. Thus began my journey to “read laterally” and investigate X influencer Ryan Rozbiani.

I first looked into Rozbiani’s page to investigate the type of content he regularly posts. I found many politically aimed posts, mostly about the war in Gaza and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

Each post seemed to contain chilling images, accompanied by emotionally charged statements regarding the war. This further led me to question the credibility of Rozbiani, as he was reporting on national and international news topics of influential natures. I thought, well is Rozbiani a reporter of some sort? Does Rozbiani have any credentials to assert his expertise in political and world news? 

I dove further by scrolling up to Rozbiani’s public biography on X. The caption contained many phrases like ��freedom of speech”, “finance & economics”, and “my views are my own, posts are informational, NOT endorsements”. Already Rozbiani seemed to be an unreliable source. The caption points to “finance & economics” while the majority of Rozbiani’s posts have nothing to do with financial topics. Additionally, Rozbiani states that the X page is full of “my views” and that posts are strictly “NOT endorsements”. By asserting the posts are filled with personal opinions, it is already clear that there is no promise of factual reporting present. The phrase “NOT endorsements” also seems to be aggressive and possibly defensive in my opinion, pointing towards heavy bias. The caption contains zero official credentials such as a degree or official job relating to journalism or political expertise. So far, Rozbiani seemed to be an uncredited individual focused on personal opinions rather than factual reporting.

Next, I searched for Ryan Rozbiani on Google. Many social media platforms came up. I first opened the Ryan Rozbiani YouTube channel and read the About section. In the About section, Rozbiani explains that this is a financial YouTube channel and that he is “not a financial advisor, this is all for educational and entertainment purposes only! Any risks you take are your own”. Once again, Rozbiani makes it clear he is not an expert of any kind, whether it be about politics or finance. 

By digging further, I found that Rozbiani had no formal profiles, such as Linked In. Instead, Rozbiani had profiles on sites called F6S and Crunchbase. The F6S profile: https://www.f6s.com/member/ryanrozbiani, which is an unofficial and unreliable site to start with focused on startup owners, stated he works as a college aide for the New York City Department of Transportation and is the CEO of a startup company called U.START. The Crunchbase profile: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/ryan-rozbiani , which is a site I’ve personally never heard of which seems to report information about companies through self-entries, stated Rozbiani has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from NYU. Whether or not Rozbiani actually has this degree is unknown, and even if he did, a degree in computer science has nothing to do with politics or reporting of any kind.

In total, Ryan Rozbiani has no expertise in politics or world news. He doesn’t even have credited expertise in finance, which he seems to heavily lean on in his content. He seems to half admit to his lack of accreditation by saying his posts are “his views” but also goes against full accountability by claiming his X page is “informational”. If anything, I’d say that Ryan Rozbiani’s X page is a heavily biased and un-fact-checked page meant just for “funsies” and should not be looked at as a reputable news source. Therefore, none of the X posts from the Ryan Rozbiani page should be taken at face value.