wdlindsy , to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"I mentioned the 'firehose of falsehood' concept on air. That’s a stream of lies, half-truths, and insinuations, all delivered at high volume (thus the firehose). It’s a Kremlin tactic but practiced by authoritarians around the world. Trump’s one of world’s most skilled practitioners of this dark art, as is the Murdoch family, who deliver a tsunami of lies and smears daily."

~ Ruth Ben-Ghiat


/1

https://lucid.substack.com/p/the-debate-and-the-firehose-of-falsehood

JBShakerman ,
@JBShakerman@mas.to avatar

@wdlindsy helps the authoritarian project by abandoning the journalist's job of verifying facts before sharing them with the public.

Threadbane ,
@Threadbane@newsie.social avatar

@wdlindsy
Volcano of prevarication

emmalbriant , to random
@emmalbriant@mastodon.online avatar

Impressive new investigation by ABC exposing Russian foreign influence operations in the UK election. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-29/uk-election-pro-russian-facebook-pages-coordinating/104038246

wdlindsy , to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"Trump is using tonight's debate to spread his lies to a giant bipartisan audience. Information warfare is the point of Trump's participation. The lack of live fact-checking by the moderators will make his goal of indoctrination easier."

~ Ruth Ben-Ghiat

#Trump #lies #disinformation #CNN #FactChecking #authoritarianism
/1

https://lucid.substack.com/p/trump-is-using-tonights-debate-to

wdlindsy OP ,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

@GrayRabbit Absolutely. We're awash in them and I suspect we may not survive.

wdlindsy OP ,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

@bouriquet I agree that it would be great if AI had that capability — but I also share your reservations about the system.

bicmay , to random
@bicmay@med-mastodon.com avatar

"The Philippines is still seeking clarification from the Pentagon about a secret U.S. propaganda operation that aimed to cast doubt among Filipinos about Chinese vaccines at the height of the COVID pandemic, a foreign ministry official said on Tuesday."

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/philippines-seeking-us-clarification-anti-vax-propaganda-operation-2024-06-25/

Peternimmo , to random
@Peternimmo@mastodon.scot avatar

NYTimes: "I Study . This Will Be Grim".
This by the former research director of the Internet Observatory. It was one of the leading institutions studying disinformation, but it's been shut down recently due to lawsuits and Congressional 'investigations' (which remind me of )
Gift link, as this is important stuff, in Europe, too

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/opinion/stanford-disinformation-election-jordan-twitter.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U0.3S8y.9eoZfkqAYzMo

jsrailton , to random
@jsrailton@mastodon.social avatar

NEW: sprawling -powered pro- operation on Twitter.

More than half a million posts this year.

Used / - drafted posts to propagandize, attack truth tellers & bury negative stories under inauthentic content. 1/

https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=mfh_reports

jsrailton OP ,
@jsrailton@mastodon.social avatar

2/ The devastating report on -powered propaganda needs to be read in context:

Whether spyware, or -enhanced propaganda armies harassing journalists, the government of keeps acquiring cutting-edge technology to increase the global range of their authoritarianism.

Bentley , to random
@Bentley@canada.masto.host avatar
Jam123 ,

@CelloMomOnCars @Bentley unfortunately that kind of thing would probably be unenforceable

CelloMomOnCars ,
@CelloMomOnCars@mastodon.social avatar

@Jam123 @Bentley

I know nothing about the tech of such enforcement, but I have heard that certain types of posts have been traced to troll farms: that suggests it's not an entirely intractable problem.

wdlindsy , to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"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."

~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

https://kareem.substack.com/p/me-and-willie-mays-and-why-americans

rameshgupta ,
@rameshgupta@mastodon.social avatar

⬆️ @wdlindsy

>> "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 “neither , nor , but ‘none of the above’ crowd” are .

wdlindsy , to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"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…."

~ Jay Kuo

https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/sick-lies-and-videotape

wdlindsy OP ,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

@SuneAuken I agree, a very fine piece.

wdlindsy OP ,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

@Jgmeadows I have no doubt at all that you're correct about that. They are unreachable by appeals to fact, logic, decency, respect for the common good, etc.

seanthegeek , to random
@seanthegeek@infosec.exchange avatar

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"

#X

A screenshot of someone overriding GPT-4 prompt the on a Russian X/Twitter troll account, causing it to write a song about historical American presidents

dougiec3 , to random
@dougiec3@libretooth.gr avatar

"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.' ”
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/june-17-2024?r=63j6s&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

wdlindsy , to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"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.'"

~ Heather Cox Richardson


/1

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-17-2024

wdlindsy OP ,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"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.'”


/2

wdlindsy OP ,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"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."


/3

RebelGeo , to random
@RebelGeo@mastodon.social avatar

Russia deliberately flooding newsrooms with fake content to overwhelm fact-checkers.

Finnish IT company Check First has published a report Operation Overload on the Kremlin's disinformation campaign

https://checkfirst.network/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Operation_Overload_WEB.pdf

@GottaLaff @jsrailton

checkfirst ,
@checkfirst@mastodon.social avatar

@RebelGeo @GottaLaff @jsrailton
Dear Peggy, thanks for sharing our investigation! We have been able to show that more than 800 organisations have been targeted by this pro-Russian operation.

🔎 For more information about this massive pro-Russian operation, you can read our blog post here: https://checkfirst.network/operation-overload-how-pro-russian-actors-flood-newsrooms-with-fake-content-and-seek-to-divert-their-efforts/

💻 & also attend this webinar on 20 June: https://www.disinfo.eu/outreach/our-webinars/20-june-operation-overload-please-check-how-pro-russian-propagandists-try-to-manipulate-newsrooms/

Nonilex , to random
@Nonilex@masto.ai avatar

’s top collapses under efforts

Stanford Observatory, which published some of the most influential analysis on the spread of false info on during , has shed most of its staff & may shut down amid & attacks that have cast a pall on efforts to study .

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/14/stanford-internet-observatory-disinformation-research-lawsuits-politics/

Nonilex OP ,
@Nonilex@masto.ai avatar

Major, time-limited grants from the , & others have ended. No comparable new grants have materialized. Staff hoped might fund the group through the momentous Nov .
In supporting the project further, the would have risked alienating , figures, & members of , who have threatened to stop all for or cut back general support.

spocko ,
@spocko@mastodon.online avatar
Nonilex , to random
@Nonilex@masto.ai avatar

It’s a day of reckoning today for , & a long-awaited culmination for the families who sued Jones for . 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 for spreading that the 2012 never happened.


https://www.npr.org/2024/06/14/nx-s1-4991095/alex-jones-bankruptcy-sandy-hook-judge-liquidate-chapter7

WildEyedBoyFromFreecloud ,
@WildEyedBoyFromFreecloud@masto.ai avatar

@Nonilex They don't call it Friyay for nothing!

Blinxeto ,
@Blinxeto@mastodon.social avatar
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