Joan Donovan, The Guardian; First came the bots, then came the bosses - we’re entering Musk and Zuck’s new era of disinformation
"In 2024, lies travel further and faster across social media, which is now a battleground for narrative dominance. And now, the owners of the platforms circulating the most incendiary lies have direct access to the Oval Office."
MIRANDA NAZZARO , The Hill; Rapid spread of election disinformation stokes alarm
"The long-lasting falsehoods over the 2020 election have made voters and election watchers more attuned to the potential for disinformation, though experts said recent technology advances are making it more difficult for users to discern fake content.
“We are seeing new formats, new modalities of manipulation of some sort including … this use of generative AI [artificial intelligence], the use of these mock news websites to preach more fringe stories and, most importantly perhaps, the fact that now these campaigns span the entire media ecosystem online,” said Emilio Ferrara, professor of computer science and communication at the University of Southern California
“And they are not just limited to perhaps one mainstream platform like we [saw] in 2020 or even in 2016,” said Ferrara, who co-authored a study that discovered a multiplatform network amplifying “conservative narratives” and former President Trump’s 2024 campaign.
False content has emerged online throughout this election cycle, often in the form of AI-generated deepfakes. The images have sparked a flurry of warnings from lawmakers and strategists about attempts to influence the race’s outcome or sow chaos and distrust in the electoral process."
JOHN SAKELLARIADIS, Politico; A torrent of Election Day disinformation is coming. Here’s how to avoid falling for it.
"Haitian immigrants did not vote multiple times for Vice President Kamala Harris in Georgia, and poll workers in Pennsylvania did not destroy ballots for Trump, though a pair of videos that went viral in the last 10 days would have you think otherwise.
Both were fabrications of Kremlin influence actors, the U.S. intelligence community has said, and late Monday, it released a new statement calling out “additional influence operations” from Russia...
America’s adversaries “likely learned lessons” from the political turmoil that engulfed the U.S. after Election Day in 2020, senior U.S. intelligence officials told reporters last month. That means Russia, China and Iran are likely to amp up their efforts to spread lies and even incite violence between Election Day and inauguration.
One key defense is to refer any pressing questions to your local officials. “The bottom line when it comes to mis- and disinformation is that voters need to go to the source, and the source is your local and your state election officials,” said Marci Andino, the senior director of the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center."
Margaret Brennan, Robert Legare, James LaPorta, , CBS News; 2 more Russian disinformation videos targeting U.S. election are circulating online, sources say
"U.S. officials believe another two fake videos circulating online and publicly identified by the FBI as an attempt to push false election security claims are likely part of a Russia-backed malign influence campaign ahead of Tuesday's presidential election, two sources familiar with the process told CBS News.
The news comes after the FBI said in a statement Saturday that the videos "are not authentic, are not from the FBI, and the content they depict is false."
The agency said that one of the videos falsely claims "the FBI has apprehended three linked groups committing ballot fraud, and the second relates to first gentleman Doug Emhoff."
The FBI in its statement did not say who was behind the videos, and when reached by CBS News, declined to comment further.
It added that the two videos — using Justice Department and FBI signage within them and images of Emhoff — were being circulated as part of "attempts to deceive the public with false content about FBI operations."
Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson, The New York Times; Disinformation Watchdogs Are Under Pressure. This Group Refuses to Stop
"Inside two small, windowless conference rooms on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, a group of students and researchers is prowling the internet to track the rumors and conspiracy theories eroding faith in this year’s presidential election...
“We can’t possibly track them all down,” Kate Starbird, a founder of the university’s Center for an Informed Public, said of the rumors, which began with a steady drip in recent weeks and have now turned into a torrent.
Four years ago, the center’s researchers were part of a larger coalition formed to debunk claims by President Donald J. Trump and others that the 2020 election was rigged. At its peak in the weeks around that vote, the effort had 120 analysts working around the clock to monitor disinformation.
In the last two years, however, that work came under a concerted political and legal attack from conservatives who portrayed it as a secret scheme to censor critics.
Called the Election Integrity Partnership, the coalition has since collapsed under the weight of that attack, smothered by civil lawsuits, Congressional subpoenas and records requests that have been time consuming and costly.
But the Center for an Informed Public has persevered, adapting to more limited resources, even as disinformation about the country’s electoral process has become more pernicious than ever."
Sarah Ellison, The Washington Post; Elon Musk targets Michigan with voter misinformation
"Two weeks before the presidential election, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) accused billionaire Elon Musk of spreading “dangerous disinformation” about voting in her state after Musk, owner of X and Tesla, shared a post suggesting falsely that the state’s voter rolls, swelled by large numbers of inactive voters, were likely to result in widespread fraud."
