American creating deepfakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show; The Washington Post, October 23, 2024

Catherine Belton , The Washington Post; American creating deepfakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show

"The more than 150 documents — which were shared with The Post to demonstrate the extent of Russian interference through Dougan and focus mostly on the period between March 2021 and August 2024 — for the first time expose some of the inner workings of a network that researchers and intelligence officials say has become the most potent source of fake news emanating from Russia and targeting American voters over the past year.

Disinformation researchers say Dougan’s network was probably behind a recent viral fake video smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, which U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday was created by Russia. It received nearly 5 million views on X in less than 24 hours, Microsoft said.

Since September 2023, posts, articles and videos generated by Dougan and some of the Russians who work with him have garnered 64 million views, said McKenzie Sadeghi, who has closely followed Dougan’s sites and is a researcher at NewsGuard, a company that tracks disinformation online."

Fake news, social media, and "The Death of Truth"; CBS News, September 8, 2024

Ted Koppel, CBS News; Fake news, social media, and "The Death of Truth"

"Brill said, "We're at a point where nobody believes anything. Truth as a concept is really in trouble.  It's suspect."

The cumulative impact of the lies and distortions just keeps growing, such that Brill titled his new book "The Death of Truth." "There are facts," he said, "and it used to be in this world that people could at least agree on the same set of facts and then they could debate what to do about those facts.

But we're losing our grip on any sort of shared reality. Brill's company, NewsGuard, is attempting to put the brakes on. Its 40 or so staffers around the world identify and rate the credibility of online news and information sources."

Sinclair Infiltrates Local News With Lara Trump’s RNC Playbook; The New Republic, June 17, 2024

Ben Metzner, The New Republic; Sinclair Infiltrates Local News With Lara Trump’s RNC Playbook

"Sinclair Broadcast Group, the right-wing media behemoth swallowing up local news stations and spitting them out as zombie GOP propaganda mills, is ramping up pro-Trump content in the lead-up to the 2024 election. Its latest plot? A coordinated effort across at least 86 local news websites to suggest that Joe Biden is mentally unfit for the presidency, based on edited footage and misinformation.

According to Judd Legum, Sinclair, which owns hundreds of television news stations around the country, has been laundering GOP talking points about Biden’s age and mental capacity into news segments of local Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates. One replica online article with the headline “Biden appears to freeze, slur words during White House Juneteenth event” shares no evidence other than a spliced-together clip of Biden watching a musical performance and another edited video of Biden giving a speech originally posted on X by Sean Hannity. The article was syndicated en masse on the same day at the same time, Legum found, suggesting that editors at the local affiliates were not given the chance to vet the segment for accuracy.

Most outrageously, the article, along with at least two others posted in June, makes the evidence-free claim that Biden may have pooped himself at a D-Day memorial event in France, based on a video of the president sitting down during the event. According to Legum, one of the article’s URLs includes the word “pooping.”

Supersharers of fake news on Twitter; Science, May 30, 2024

 SAHAR BARIBI-BARTOV , BRIONY SWIRE-THOMPSON , AND NIR GRINBERG  , Science; Supersharers of fake news on Twitter

"Editor’s summary

Most fake news on Twitter (now X) is spread by an extremely small population called supersharers. They flood the platform and unequally distort political debates, but a clear demographic portrait of these users was not available. Baribi-Bartov et al. identified a meaningful sample of supersharers during the 2020 US presidential election and asked who they were, where they lived, and what strategies they used (see the Perspective by van der Linden and Kyrychenko). The authors found that supersharers were disproportionately Republican, middle-aged White women residing in three conservative states, Arizona, Florida, and Texas, which are focus points of contentious abortion and immigration battles. Their neighborhoods were poorly educated but relatively high in income. Supersharers persistently retweeted misinformation manually. These insights are relevant for policymakers developing effective mitigation strategies to curtail misinformation. —Ekeoma Uzogara

Abstract

Governments may have the capacity to flood social media with fake news, but little is known about the use of flooding by ordinary voters. In this work, we identify 2107 registered US voters who account for 80% of the fake news shared on Twitter during the 2020 US presidential election by an entire panel of 664,391 voters. We found that supersharers were important members of the network, reaching a sizable 5.2% of registered voters on the platform. Supersharers had a significant overrepresentation of women, older adults, and registered Republicans. Supersharers’ massive volume did not seem automated but was rather generated through manual and persistent retweeting. These findings highlight a vulnerability of social media for democracy, where a small group of people distort the political reality for many."

Teaching kids to spot fake news: media literacy to be required in California schools; The Guardian, December 5, 2023

Robin Buller, The Guardian ; Teaching kids to spot fake news: media literacy to be required in California schools

"California next year will become one of the few US states to teach students media literacy, a move experts say is imperative at a time when distrust in the media is at an all-time high and new technologies pose unprecedented challenges to identifying false information.

A state bill signed into law this fall mandates public schools to instruct media literacy, a set of skills that includes recognizing falsified data, identifying fake news and generating responsible internet content.

Researchers have long warned that the current digital ecosystem has had dire consequences on young people, and have argued that such instruction could make a difference. The US surgeon general has cited digital and media literacy support as one way to combat the youth mental health crisis spurred by social media. The American Psychological Association already has urged parents and schools to teach media literacy before they expose young people to social media platforms."

How to avoid falling for and spreading misinformation about Ukraine; The Washington Post, February 24, 2022

Heather Kelly, The Washington Post ; How to avoid falling for and spreading misinformation about Ukraine

"Anyone with a phone and an Internet connection is able to watch the war in Ukraine unfold live online, or at least some version of it. Across social media, posts are flying up faster than most fact-checkers and moderators can handle, and they’re an unpredictable mix of true, fake, out of context and outright propaganda messages.

How do you know what to trust, what not to share and what to report? Tech companies have said they’re trying to do more to help users spot misinformation about Ukraine, with labels and fact checking. On Saturday, Facebook parent company Meta announced it was adding more fact-checkers in the region dedicated to posts about the war. It’s also warning users who attempt to share war-related photo when they’re more than a year old — a common type of misinformation.

Here are some basic tools everyone should use when consuming breaking news online."

Trapped in a hoax: survivors of conspiracy theories speak out; The Guardian, January 24, 2019

Ed Pilkington, The Guardian; Trapped in a hoax: survivors of conspiracy theories speak out

"Conspiracy theories used to be seen as bizarre expressions of harmless eccentrics. Not any more. Gone are the days of outlandish theories about Roswell’s UFOs, the “hoax” moon landings or grassy knolls. Instead, today’s iterations have morphed into political weapons. Turbocharged by social media, they spread with astonishing speed, using death threats as currency.

Together with their first cousins, fake news, they are challenging society’s trust in facts. At its most toxic, this contagion poses a profound threat to democracy by damaging its bedrock: a shared commitment to truth...

Amid this explosive growth, one aspect has been under-appreciated: the human cost. What is the toll paid by those caught up in these falsehoods? And how are they fighting back?"

Meme Warfare to Divide America; Wired, December 17, 2018

Nicholas Thompson and Issie Lapowsky, Wired; Meme Warfare to Divide America

"All of this demonstrates, according to the report authors, that “over the past five years, disinformation has evolved from a nuisance into high-stakes information war.” And yet, rather than fighting back effectively, Americans are battling each other over what to do about it. “We have conversations about whether or not bots have the right to free speech, we respect the privacy of fake people, and we hold congressional hearings to debate whether YouTube personalities have been unfairly downranked,” the report reads. “It is precisely our commitment to democratic principles that puts us at an asymmetric disadvantage against an adversary who enthusiastically engages in censorship, manipulation, and suppression internally.”"

The godfather of fake news: Meet one of the world’s most prolific writers of disinformation; BBC News, November 2018

Anisa Subedar, BBC News; The godfather of fake news:
 
Meet one of the world’s most prolific writers of disinformation

"As the conversation winds down, I ask Blair - this godfather of fake news - and the man who tracked him down, if they have any parting words.

“Don’t ever stop doing what you’re doing,” Blair says.

And, with a hint of respect in his voice, Schenk replies:

“Likewise."

Inside The Russian Disinformation Playbook: Exploit Tension, Sow Chaos; Fresh Air with Terry Gross via 91.7 FM San Francisco KALW,

[Podcast] Fresh Air with Terry Gross via 91.7 FM San Francisco KALW; Inside The Russian Disinformation Playbook: Exploit Tension, Sow Chaos

"This is FRESH AIR I'm Terry Gross. The Russian playbook for spreading fake news and conspiracy theories is the subject of a new three-part video series on The New York Times website titled "Operation Infektion: Russian Disinformation: From The Cold War To Kanye." One episode goes back to the 1980s, when the Russians created and spread the conspiracy theory that the AIDS virus was created by the U.S. military for use as a biological weapon. The other episodes are "The Seven Commandments Of Fake News" and "The Worldwide War On Truth." My guest, Adam Ellick, produced and co-directed the series. He's the executive producer of opinion video at The New York Times, which is a new feature on their website.

Previously, he was senior international video correspondent and a reporter at the Times who focused on human rights. When he was reporting from Pakistan in 2009, he was the first journalist to tell the story of Malala and how, with her father, she fought for girls to have the right to attend school. That was three years before she was shot. In 2015, Ellick co-produced a Pulitzer Prize-winning video about an Afghan woman who was burned to death by a mob. Ellick won three Overseas Press Club awards for his coverage of Pakistan and the Arab Spring. He produced videos from North Korea one year ago.

Adam Ellick, welcome to FRESH AIR. So I want to start with the conspiracy theory about the AIDS virus. And you track how this originates with Russian fake news, with Russian disinformation. So just describe the conspiracy theory for those people who don't remember it."

White House shares doctored video to support punishment of journalist Jim Acosta; The Washington Post, November 8, 2018

Drew Harwell, The Washington Post; White House shares doctored video to support punishment of journalist Jim Acosta

"The video has quickly become a flashpoint in the battle over viral misinformation, turning a live interaction watched by thousands in real time into just another ideological tug-of-war. But it has also highlighted how video content — long seen as an unassailable verification tool for truth and confirmation — has become as vulnerable to political distortion as anything else."

Interview: Yuval Noah Harari: ‘The idea of free information is extremely dangerous’; The Guardian, August 5, 2018

Andrew Anthony, The Guardian; Interview: Yuval Noah Harari: ‘The idea of free information is extremely dangerous’

"Why is liberalism under particular threat from big data?
Liberalism is based on the assumption that you have privileged access to your own inner world of feelings and thoughts and choices, and nobody outside you can really understand you. This is why your feelings are the highest authority in your life and also in politics and economics – the voter knows best, the customer is always right. Even though neuroscience shows us that there is no such thing as free will, in practical terms it made sense because nobody could understand and manipulate your innermost feelings. But now the merger of biotech and infotech in neuroscience and the ability to gather enormous amounts of data on each individual and process them effectively means we are very close to the point where an external system can understand your feelings better than you. We’ve already seen a glimpse of it in the last epidemic of fake news.
There’s always been fake news but what’s different this time is that you can tailor the story to particular individuals, because you know the prejudice of this particular individual. The more people believe in free will, that their feelings represent some mystical spiritual capacity, the easier it is to manipulate them, because they won’t think that their feelings are being produced and manipulated by some external system...

You say if you want good information, pay good money for it. The Silicon Valley adage is information wants to be free, and to some extent the online newspaper industry has followed that. Is that wise?
The idea of free information is extremely dangerous when it comes to the news industry. If there’s so much free information out there, how do you get people’s attention? This becomes the real commodity. At present there is an incentive in order to get your attention – and then sell it to advertisers and politicians and so forth – to create more and more sensational stories, irrespective of truth or relevance. Some of the fake news comes from manipulation by Russian hackers but much of it is simply because of the wrong incentive structure. There is no penalty for creating a sensational story that is not true. We’re willing to pay for high quality food and clothes and cars, so why not high quality information?"

Facebook's pledge to eliminate misinformation is itself fake news ; The Guardian, July 20, 2018

Judd Legum, The Guardian; Facebook's pledge to eliminate misinformation is itself fake news

"The production values are high and the message is compelling. In an 11-minute mini-documentary, Facebook acknowledges its mistakes and pledges to “fight against misinformation”.

“With connecting people, particularly at our scale, comes an immense amount of responsibility,” an unidentified Facebook executive in the film solemnly tells a nodding audience of new company employees.

An outdoor ad campaign by Facebook strikes a similar note, plastering slogans like “Fake news is not your friend” at bus stops around the country.

But the reality of what’s happening on the Facebook platform belies its gauzy public relations campaign."

Shadow Politics: Meet the Digital Sleuth Exposing Fake News; Wired, 7/18/18

Issie Lapowsky, Wired; Shadow Politics: Meet the Digital Sleuth Exposing Fake News

"After about 36 hours of work, during which his software crashed dozens of times under the weight of  all that data, he was able to map out these links, transforming the list into an impossibly intricate data visualization. “It was a picture of the entire ecosystem of misinformation a few days after the election,” Albright says, still in awe of his discovery. “I saw these insights I’d never thought of.”

And smack in the center of the monstrous web, was a giant node labeled YouTube."

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."

Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now; New York Times, February 18, 2018

Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times; Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now

"Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin —just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.

My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office."

Computational Propaganda: Bots, Targeting And The Future; NPR, February 9, 2018

Adam Frank, NPR; Computational Propaganda: Bots, Targeting And The Future

"Combine the superfast calculational capacities of Big Compute with the oceans of specific personal information comprising Big Data — and the fertile ground for computational propaganda emerges. That's how the small AI programs called bots can be unleashed into cyberspace to target and deliver misinformation exactly to the people who will be most vulnerable to it. These messages can be refined over and over again based on how well they perform (again in terms of clicks, likes and so on). Worst of all, all this can be done semiautonomously, allowing the targeted propaganda (like fake news stories or faked images) to spread like viruses through communities most vulnerable to their misinformation.

As someone who has worked at the hairy edges of computational science my entire career I am, frankly, terrified by the possibilities of computational propaganda. My fear comes exactly because I have seen how rapidly the power and the capacities of digital technologies have grown. From my perspective, no matter what your political inclinations may be, if you value a healthy functioning democracy, then something needs to be done to get ahead of computational propaganda's curve."

"Trump Day", robrogers.com, August 6, 2017

Rob Rogers, robrogers.com; "Trump Day"

Facebook’s Latest Move to Fight Fake News Might Finally Be the Right One; Slate, August 3, 2017

Will Oremus, Slate; Facebook’s Latest Move to Fight Fake News Might Finally Be the Right One

"Facebook may have finally hit on a promising way to fight its “fake news” problem.

The company on Thursday announced that it is launching a feature called Related Articles, which it has been testing since April. Now, when you see certain controversial or hotly debated stories in your news feed, below them will appear a series of headlines from other publishers on the same topic."

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. "