This is the scariest comics panel I’ve seen in ages; Polygon, November 9, 2018

Susana Polo, Polygon; This is the scariest comics panel I’ve seen in ages

"Tom Taylor’s X-Men Red is one of the best comics of 2018, and this week, in its penultimate issue, it delivered the most unsettling comic book moment I’ve read in a while...

[Spoilers for X-Men Red #10]

The Jean Grey video is a deepfake.

A lot of the technology we see in comic books is science fiction, or so cutting edge as to not be readily available, all to make our heroes seem like they’re cut out to do what normal people can’t. But videos that convincingly make a person look like they’ve done or said something they never did aren’t tomorrow’s technology.

Deepfaked video, and audio, is a reality that online spaces are scrambling to confront even now. The potential uses of deepfakes are spooky enough. What’s spookier is the connection that X-Men Red #10 makes in this scene.

There is a commonly available real-world technology that can do what comics books used to have to invent clones, evil twins and shapeshifters for.

Trinary points out that the video of Jean is not a perfect fake, and can be disproven. But the damage is already done.

“There will still be people who want this to be reality so much they will reject any proof,” Storm replies. “They want the worst. This supports their narrative. No amount of truth will sway them.”

Trump Fans Are Suckers and QAnon Is Perfect for Them; The Daily Beast, August 3, 2018

Rick Wilson, The Daily Beast; Trump Fans Are Suckers and QAnon Is Perfect for Them

"Conspiracies are hard. They're even harder when you're stupid.

They are, however, deeply compelling. Some people need a single, grand unifying theory of why the world refuses to line up with their expectations. When difficult realities confront people without the intellectual horsepower to understand and accept the truth, some turn to conspiracy theories to paper over the holes in their worldview. No matter how absurd, baroque, and improbable, conspiracies grow on their own like mental kudzu where inconsistencies aren't signs of illogical conclusions, but of another, deeper layer of some hidden truth, some skein of powerful forces holding the world in its grip...

[Q] works because stupid people are stupid and because Donald Trump's Administration loves what QAnon does to stoke the fires of paranoia, resentment, and division. QAnon works for Trump because people who are not knowledgeable about the world, politics, government, the intelligence community and reality more broadly are desperately looking for confirmation that they're on the winning team. Q tells them that they're on the right side of history and that for once in their dreary little lives they and only they possess the secret, hermetic knowledge from inside the esoteric cult."

What is QAnon? Explaining the bizarre rightwing conspiracy theory; The Guardian, July 30, 2018

Julia Carrie Wong, The Guardian; What is QAnon? Explaining the bizarre rightwing conspiracy theory

"Meet Q

On 28 October 2017, “Q” emerged from the primordial swamp of the internet on the message board 4chan. In a thread called “Calm Before the Storm”, and in subsequent posts, Q established his legend as a government insider with top security clearance who knew the truth about a secret struggle for power involving Donald Trump, the “deep state”, Robert Mueller, the Clintons, pedophile rings, and other stuff.

Since then, Q has continued to drop “breadcrumbs” on 4chan and 8chan, fostering a “QAnon” community devoted to decoding Q’s messages and understanding the real truth about, well, everything...

Imagine a mix of Pizzagate, InfoWars and the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, multiplied by the power of the internet...

For years now, YouTube has been a quagmire of conspiracy theories, the more outrageous and thinly sourced the better. Under pressure from the mainstream media for the platform’s tendency to promote inflammatory and false information in the aftermath of mass shootings and other breaking news events, YouTube has introduced reforms that it claims will promote more “authoritative” news sources.

A YouTube spokesperson provided a statement that did not directly address the Guardian’s questions about the Hanks videos, but noted that the company’s work to “better surface and promote news and authoritative sources” is “still in its early stages”."

‘We are Q’: A deranged conspiracy cult leaps from the Internet to the crowd at Trump’s ‘MAGA’ tour; The Washington Post, August 1, 2018

Isaac Stanley-Becker, The Washington Post; ‘We are Q’: A deranged conspiracy cult leaps from the Internet to the crowd at Trump’s ‘MAGA’ tour

"The thread invited “requests to Q,” an anonymous user claiming to be a government agent with top security clearance, waging war against the so-called deep state in service to the 45th president. “Q” feeds disciples, or “bakers,” scraps of intelligence, or “bread crumbs,” that they scramble to bake into an understanding of the “storm” — the community’s term, drawn from Trump’s cryptic reference last year to “the calm before the storm” — for the president’s final conquest over elites, globalists and deep-state saboteurs.

What Tuesday’s rally in Tampa made apparent is that devotees of these falsehoods — some of which are specific to faith in the president, others garden-variety nonsense with racist and anti-Semitic undertones — don’t just exist in the far reaches of the Web."

Tech's biggest companies are spreading conspiracy theories. Again.; CNN, February 21, 2018

Seth Fiegerman, CNN; Tech's biggest companies are spreading conspiracy theories. Again.

"To use Silicon Valley's preferred parlance, it's now hard to escape the conclusion that the spreading of misinformation and hoaxes is a feature, not a bug, of social media platforms -- and their business models.

Facebook and Google built incredibly profitable businesses by serving content they don't pay for or vet to billions of users, with ads placed against that content. The platforms developed better and better targeting to buoy their ad businesses, but not necessarily better content moderation to buoy user discourse."

‘I am not a crisis actor’: Florida teens fire back at right-wing conspiracy theorists; Washington Post, February 21, 2018

Travis M. Andrews and Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post; ‘I am not a crisis actor’: Florida teens fire back at right-wing conspiracy theorists

"Former congressman Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) on Sunday tweeted a USA Today story about the student organizers helping lead a nationwide student walkout in protest of America’s gun laws, adding the message: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy?”

Kingston then appeared on CNN’s “New Day” Tuesday and doubled down on his remarks.

“Do we really think — and I say this sincerely — do we really think that 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a nationwide rally?” Kingston asked, adding, “They probably do not have the logistical ability to plan a nationwide rally without it being hijacked by groups that already had the preexisting anti-gun agenda.”

The show’s co-host Alisyn Camerota fiercely disagreed.

“I talked to these kids before they knew the body count of how many of their friends had been killed. No one had talked to them yet,” Camerota said. “They hadn’t been indoctrinated by some left-wing group. They were motivated from what they saw and what they endured.”

Brandon Abzug, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas senior who survived the shooting, then appeared on CNN and said of the former representative’s comments, “I think it’s very despicable. … To say that just because we’re young we can’t make a difference is not right and he should apologize for that.”"

A week that reveals how rotten today’s Republican Party is; Washington Post, May 26, 2017

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post; A week that reveals how rotten today’s Republican Party is

"This is the state of the GOP — a refuge for intellectual frauds and bullies, for mean-spirited hypocrites who preach personal responsibility yet excuse the inexcusable.

Conventional wisdom says that Trump executed a hostile takeover of the GOP. What we have seen this week suggests a friendly merger has taken place. Talk radio hosts have been spouting misogyny and anti-immigrant hysteria for years; Trump is their ideal leader, not merely a flawed vehicle for their views. Fox News has been dabbling in conspiracy theories (e.g. birtherism, climate-change denial) for decades; now Republicans practice intellectual nihilism...

The country needs two parties and benefits from the ideas associated with classical liberalism (small “l”) — the rule of law (over the law of the jungle), respect for the dignity of every individual, prosperity-creating free markets (including trade), values-based foreign policy. The Republican Party no longer embodies those ideals; it undermines them in words and in deeds. It now advances ideas and celebrates behavior antithetical to democracy and simple human decency. Center-right Americans, we have become convinced, must look elsewhere for a political home."

Fox News undermines a free, independent press; Washington Post, May 15, 2017

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post; Fox News undermines a free, independent press

"With the departure of credible centrist and conservative voices and professional journalists (e.g. Megyn Kelly, Greta Van Susteren, George Will, Major Garrett), the alternative-reality programming seen in the Fox evening and afternoon lineup and on “Fox & Friends” now overwhelms the rest of the operation. In the firing of Comey, we see Fox coverage devoted to carrying the false Trump narrative (the idea to fire him came from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein) long after every other network had ferreted out the true story. Fox, in short, now is practically indistinguishable from Breitbart — and in some cases, RT. It has become the purveyor of falsehoods and propaganda, not a member of an independent media tasked with holding elected leaders accountable."

Sandy Hook father Lenny Pozner on death threats: ‘I never imagined I’d have to fight for my child’s legacy’; Guardian, May 2, 2017

Hadley Freeman, Guardian; 

Sandy Hook father Lenny Pozner on death threats: ‘I never imagined I’d have to fight for my child’s legacy’

"Pozner realised quickly that there was no point in arguing with these hoaxers, so instead he attacks through copyright law. Every day, he Googles Noah’s name to see if anyone has put up a photo or video of his son without his permission and, if so, he files copyright claims. Thanks to Pozner’s dedication and experience as an IT consultant, he has scrubbed Noah’s search results of toxic-hoaxer content. He has sued other hoaxers for invasion of privacy, and successfully petitioned a Florida university to fire a professor, James Tracy, for hoaxing. (Tracy has sued for wrongful termination.) He also founded the HONR Network, which helps grieving families deal with online abuse, and it lobbies YouTube, Google and Facebook to stop hosting such abuse. "

What happened when ‘Pizzagate’ came to my restaurant; Washington Post, April 20, 2017

James Alefantis, Washington Post; What happened when ‘Pizzagate’ came to my restaurant

"It started in October when WikiLeaks released Podesta’s hacked emails. Podesta and his brother, Tony, are Comet fans, and in these emails I was invited to cook for a Clinton fundraiser.

Anti-Clinton conspiracy theorists and online trolls congregating on Reddit and 4chan decided that the words “pizza” and “cheese” in these emails were code for pedophilia.

They ultimately pushed the lie that my pizza restaurant was being used to abduct children and commit heinous crimes.

These lies ricocheted from shadowy chat rooms to various social-media platforms, encouraged by fake news articles and deliberately amplified by provocateurs such as Alex Jones, who broadcast these smears to his audience of millions."

"Still Living in the Dark Ages"; Bizarro, April 4, 2017

Dan Piraro, Bizarro; "Still Living in the Dark Ages"

"Bullhorn vs. Internet"; Bizarro, March 5, 2017

Dan Piraro, Bizarro; "Bullhorn vs. Internet"

Trolls decided I was taking pictures of Rex Tillerson’s notes. I wasn’t even there.; Washington Post, 1/12/17

Doris Truong, Washington Post; Trolls decided I was taking pictures of Rex Tillerson’s notes. I wasn’t even there.

"Why are people so quick to look for someone to condemn? And during the confusion about the woman’s identity, why is it presumed that she is a journalist? Or that taking pictures of notes in an open hearing is illegal? Or, for that matter, that she was even taking pictures of Tillerson’s notes?

The bright spot is that a few people have acknowledged that they erred. One person left this note on my Facebook timeline: “I was shocked to find that you are in fact not the fox in the henhouse. For that I do apologize. As penance I have gone to several sites that have posted the untrue information about you and corrected them. I doubt it will do a bit of good. I am terribly sorry and wanted you to know that not all Trump supporters are mindless and that the real truth does matter. Hope this mess gets cleared up real soon. God bless.”

The whole episode is not going to drive me off social media, which provides a way for me to connect with people across the miles, including strangers, and to be exposed to a diversity of opinions — including ones I disagree with. But I hope the ridiculousness of what happened to me in less than 12 hours makes others think critically before sharing something that can be easily disproved." 

Did Facebook Just Kickstart the Real Infowar?; Daily Beast, 12/16/16

Gideon Resnick, Ben Collins, Daily Beast; Did Facebook Just Kickstart the Real Infowar? :

"Should Facebook’s fact-check initiative take off and result in censorship of propagandist sites, editors at websites like Infowars and alt-right leaders insist it will only reinforce the belief that certain ideas are being suppressed in favor of facts from mainstream outlets. One editor told The Daily Beast the Facebook plan proves that now the “‘Infowar’ isn’t a cliché, it’s perfectly apt.”"

In Trump’s America, ‘pizzagate’ could be the new normal; Washington Post, 12/5/16

Dana Milbank, Washington Post; In Trump’s America, ‘pizzagate’ could be the new normal:

"This would appear to be the new normal: Not only disagreeing with your opponent but accusing her of running a pedophilia ring, provoking such fury that somebody takes it upon himself to start shooting. Not only chafing when criticized in the press but stoking anti-media hysteria that leads some supporters to threaten to kill journalists.

After The Washington Post reported Sunday about the Comet gunman and the nonsense conspiracy theory that motivated him, the reporters received emails and tweets saying “I hope the next shooter targets you lying sacks of s--- in the media,” “God has a plan better than death,” and “it would also be a shame if someone took a gun to” The Post.

Trump is not directly responsible for every violent word or action of his followers. But he foments violence. As The Post’s executive editor, Marty Baron, has noted, when Trump refers to journalists as “the lowest form of life,” “scum” and the enemy, “it is no wonder that some members of our staff [at The Post] and at other news organizations received vile insults and threats of personal harm so worrisome that extra security was required.”"

N.C. man told police he went to D.C. pizzeria with assault rifle to ‘self-investigate’ election-related conspiracy theory; Washington Post, 12/5/16

Faiz Siddiqui and Susan Svrluga, Washington Post; N.C. man told police he went to D.C. pizzeria with assault rifle to ‘self-investigate’ election-related conspiracy theory:

[Kip Currier: In the wake of post-2016 Presidential Election revelations by fake news writers, research findings on fake news here and here and here, and efforts by tech giants over the past few weeks to rein in fake news dissemination and proliferation here in the U.S. and abroad, this story about a seemingly fake-news-weaponized assailant's dangerous "conspiracy theory reconnaissance" on Sunday at a popular pizza eatery in Chevy Chase, Maryland and his impact on other businesses and area residents is a chilling example of the potentially dire consequences that fake news and conspiracy theories can have. Thankfully no one was physically injured. But this is a wake-up call to all of us about the legitimate threat fake news poses to democratic values and democracy itself, as well as to personal liberty and public safety. I've not been to Comet Ping Pong yet but have enjoyed browsing the nearby Politics and Prose bookstore (which each month hosts an incredible array of authors for book talks nurturing the free flow of information, ideas, and speech!) and grabbing a delicious Fox BLT at The Little Red Fox on my way back to Pittsburgh.]

"The popular family restaurant, near Connecticut and Nebraska avenues NW in the Chevy Chase neighborhood, was swept up in the onslaught of fake news and conspiracy theories that were prevalent during the presidential campaign. The restaurant, its owner, staff and nearby businesses have been attacked on social media and received death threats...

The restaurant’s owner and employees were threatened on social media in the days before the election after fake news stories circulated claiming that then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief were running a child sex ring from the restaurant’s backrooms. Even Michael Flynn, a retired general whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to advise him on national security, shared stories about another anti-Clinton conspiracy theory involving pedophilia. None of them were true. But the fake stories and threats persisted, some even aimed at children of Comet Ping Pong employees and patrons. The restaurant’s owner was forced to contact the FBI, local police, Facebook and other social-media platforms in an effort to remove the articles.

Last month, citing its policy against posting the personal information of others, Reddit banned the “pizzagate” topic.

But it didn’t stop the harassment, and nearby businesses have received threats as well, according to police. On Sunday, Washington Post reporters involved in this article were the target of online threats shortly after it posted.

Matt Carr, the owner of the Little Red Fox market and coffee shop, said his business started getting threats last weekend...

Politics and Prose, the bookstore that has been a Washington institution and neighborhood fixture for more than 30 years, was in the middle of a book event when attendees and staff saw police converging on the block, said Bradley Graham, a store co-owner.

They, too, had received threats recently, Graham said, and were planning to meet with police Monday “because we had feared that what, up to now, had been simply despicable menacing verbal attacks online or on the phone might escalate.”"

Trump has already defeated the news media. And it’s unclear what we can do about it.; Washington Post, 11/28/16

Paul Waldman, Washington Post; Trump has already defeated the news media. And it’s unclear what we can do about it. :

"The entire sequence of events enables Trump to create a meta-message, which is that there’s no such thing as truth and no such thing as genuine authority. Think about it: the president-elect is claiming that an election that he won was beset by fraud, because he heard it from a lunatic radio host who thinks that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged using child actors and the 9/11 attacks were carried out by the U.S. government. At the same time, the conspiracy-theorist-in-chief is turning away the intelligence briefers who are prepared to deliver him daily updates on the world’s hotspots and potential dangers to the United States — what one might call the actual conspiracies we have to be worried about.

Trump has revealed that the entire journalistic system is based on the assumption that political actors will stay within certain parameters of truth and sanity. Some are more dishonest than others, but there’s a limit. “The President said this today” coverage can be problematic, but much of the time it’s perfectly reasonable, since he’s the most important person in the political world and his words and beliefs have a profound effect on what happens not just here but around the globe.

Trump realizes that when you step outside those limits, you can manipulate the media at will because their normal ways of doing things are inadequate to the task. You can take any idea, no matter how preposterous, and make half the country believe it. And when journalists push back, it’ll only make your supporters more firm in their loyalty.

This is part of a broader assault Trump is mounting on almost every institution of public life in America — the government, the media, the education system, even democracy itself. He’s been doing it from the beginning, not only spreading lies in a volume that had never been seen before, but continually arguing that established authority couldn’t be trusted."

Before ‘fake news,’ there was Soviet ‘disinformation’; Washington Post, 11/26/16

Adam Taylor, Washington Post; Before ‘fake news,’ there was Soviet ‘disinformation’ :

"In the parlance of 2016, we would probably refer to the Patriot's front page story as “fake news.” It's not so dissimilar to the flimsy or outright false stories that spread online in the United States this year. There may be a shared Russian link too: This week, a number of groups alleged that a Russian propaganda effort had helped spread these “fake news” stories to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton's chances in the 2016 presidential election.

But during the height of the Cold War, these false stories were referred to as something else: “disinformation.”

That term came into use in the early 1960s, and came into widespread use in the 1980s. It is based upon a Russian word: Dezinformatsiya. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, a high-ranking official in Romania's secret police who defected in 1978, the French-sounding word was invented by Joseph Stalin after World War II. A definition from the 1952 Great Soviet Encyclopedia called it the “dissemination (in the press, on the radio, etc.) of false reports intended to mislead public opinion” and suggested that the Soviet Union was the target of such tactics from the West."

How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth; New York Times, 11/2/16

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times; How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth:

"Next week, if all goes well, someone will win the presidency. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. Will the losing side believe the results? Will the bulk of Americans recognize the legitimacy of the new president? And will we all be able to clean up the piles of lies, hoaxes and other dung that have been hurled so freely in this hyper-charged, fact-free election?

Much of that remains unclear, because the internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth. Polls show that many of us have burrowed into our own echo chambers of information. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 81 percent of respondents said that partisans not only differed about policies, but also about “basic facts.”

For years, technologists and other utopians have argued that online news would be a boon to democracy. That has not been the case...

“There’s always more work to be done,” said Brooke Binkowski, the managing editor of Snopes.com, one of the internet’s oldest rumor-checking sites. “There’s always more. It’s Sisyphean — we’re all pushing that boulder up the hill, only to see it roll back down.”"

Three days after removing human editors, Facebook is already trending fake news; Washington Post, 8/29/16

Abby Ohlheiser, Washington Post; Three days after removing human editors, Facebook is already trending fake news:

"Facebook announced Friday that humans would no longer write descriptions for its Trending topics list, handing over even more responsibility to the already-powerful algorithm. But just days after the policy change, Facebook’s algorithm chose a very bad, factually incorrect headline to explain to its news-hungry users why Megyn Kelly was trending.

The headline, which was visible to anyone who hovered over Megyn Kelly’s name on the Trending list, refers to the Fox News personality as a “traitor” and claims that the cable channel has “Kick[ed] her out for backing Hillary.” (They have not.)

The article was featured prominently as the top news story on Facebook about Megyn Kelly as of Monday morning, until her name disappeared from the Trending list about 9:30 a.m. The story is far down the rabbit hole of junk information, a typo-ridden aggregation of an aggregation about a clash of personalities between Kelly and Bill O’Reilly."