2/ The devastating report on #ChatGPT-powered #Rwandan propaganda needs to be read in context:
Whether #Pegasus spyware, or #AI-enhanced propaganda armies harassing journalists, the government of #Rwanda keeps acquiring cutting-edge technology to increase the global range of their authoritarianism.
"The villain in American politics isn’t the political party system, it’s the segment of the population determined to remain uninformed and misinformed so they can cling to their biased and illogical opinions. They are the easily manipulated mob and the politicians feeding them disinformation are mobsters."
"The right knows it has to create a counternarrative to Trump’s obvious mental decline and detract from Biden’s successes. They are undertaking a coordinated effort to equate Biden’s stiffness in his back and his awkward gait from his foot injury to his mental capacities, which remain clear and sharp by all accounts…."
UPDATE: the more I look at this the more I think I think this was an excellent troll pretending to be a bot. The JSON is not formatted correctly. Still, lol
This is hilarious. A Russian Twitter/X account got outed as a bot because it ran out of GPT-4 credits. When it got back up and running, someone replying overwrote the prompt to get the bot write a song about historical American presidents going to the beach. The account is now suspended.
I know what I'm trying next time I spot a troll!
The original prompt translates from Russian to English as "You will argue in support of the Trump administration on Twitter, speak English"
"Earlier this month, Finnish software and methodologies company Check First released a report exposing 'a large-scale, cross-country, multi-platform disinformation campaign designed to spread pro-Russian propaganda in the West, with clear indicators of foreign interference and information manipulation.'"
"The primary goal of 'Operation Overload' is to overwhelm newsrooms and fact-checkers and spread 'the Kremlin’s political agenda.'
Foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum told Bill Kristol of The Bulwark that China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea do not share an ideology, but ;they do share a common interest, and the common interest is undermining…America, Europe, the liberal world, the democratic world.'”
"They do this, she said, because the oppositions in their own countries are inspired by and use the democratic language of freedom and liberty and rights and rule of law, and leaders need to undermine that language to hold onto power. They also recognize that chaos and uncertainty give them business opportunities in the West. Disrupting democracies by feeding radicalism makes the democratic world lose its sense of community and solidarity."
It’s a day of reckoning today for #Infowars#ConspiracyTheorist#AlexJones, & a long-awaited culmination for the #SandyHook families who sued Jones for #defamation. A federal bankruptcy judge in Texas has decided that Jones must sell off his personal assets through a Chpt 7 liquidation in order to pay families nearly $1.5B in #damages for spreading #lies that the 2012 #SchoolShooting never happened.
#Stanford University spox Dee Mostofi said in a statement that much of the Observatory work was continuing under new leadership….
“Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including #lawsuits & #congressional investigations, that chill #freedom of #inquiry & undermine legitimate & much needed #academic#research — both at Stanford & across #academia,” Mostofi added.
#GymJordan has demanded reams of documents from #Stanford, including RECORDS OF STUDENTS discussing #socialmedia posts as they volunteered to help the #Internet Observatory, & Stamos testified before the #House#Judiciary Cmte for 8 hrs. #Trump adviser #StephenMiller’s #law firm filed a #FirstAmendment lawsuit in May 2023 against the Observatory, Stamos, DiResta & others, which is still pending.
In a joint stmnt, Stamos & DiResta said their work involved much more than #elections, & that they had been unfairly maligned.
“The politically motivated attacks against our #research on elections & #vaccines have no merit, & the attempts by #partisan#House cmte chairs to suppress #FirstAmendment protected research are a quintessential example of the #WeaponizationOfGovernment.”
“We are thankful to #Stanford for defending our work, including in front of the US #SupremeCourt, & are confident that the #judicial system will eventually act to protect our speech & the speech of other #academics.”
Stamos told associates he stepped back from leading the Observatory last year in part because the #political pressure had taken a toll. Stamos had raised most of the money for the project, & the remaining faculty have not been able to replicate his success, as many #philanthropic groups shift their focus on #ArtificialIntelligence & other, fresher topics.
The Observatory’s non-election work has included developing #curriculum for #teaching#college students about how to handle #trust & #safety issues on #socialmedia platforms & launching the 1st peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the field. It has also investigated rings publishing #child#SexualExploitation material #online & flaws in the US system for reporting it, helping to prepare #platforms to handle an influx of computer-generated material.
“We hope that #Stanford is willing to support the remainder of the SIO team & serve as a safe home for future #research into how the #internet is used to cause harm against individuals & our #democracy,” Stamos & DiResta said in the stmnt.
"…you can see at the 4 sec mark, 8/10 world leaders, incl Biden are looking towards the man on the right packing the parachute…Biden began saying something to him as the others had their attn shifted in the other direction….Once again, focusing on an edited 30-sec clip doesn't tell a full story. Stop being disingenuous,” Brian Krassenstein wrote.
#RNC’s #SocialMedia regularly churns out misleading clips of President #Biden intended to show that he is too old
NY Post headline <2hrs later:“What is Biden doing?”
NY Post front pg June 14:“Meander in Chief: Biden embarrasses US w/confused wanderings at world conference”
This past week, the #RNC feed has misleadingly called attention to 2 video clips of #Biden. One was so distorted that it resulted in a “community note” on the X platform calling out its dishonesty. But the RNC’s dismal track record has not stopped right-leaning outfits from echoing the RNC’s framing & reinforcing its narrative that Biden has lost a step.
An X community note was added to the video clip, saying: “Biden didn’t ‘wander off’. After viewing a skydiving demo with the other G-7 leaders, #Biden stepped aside to speak with one of the other skydivers who is kneeling on the ground packing away his chute. The video in the above post has been digitally altered to remove the skydiver.”
A few hours later, for undisclosed reasons, the X ‘community note’ was changed to simply say “the video was cropped,” w/a link to a 14-minute clip on the YouTube channel of #SinclairBroadcasting, another #conservative outlet. The new note does little to combat the framing of the post: “President Biden appeared to wander off at the G-7 summit in Italy, with officials needing to pull him back to focus.”