Financial Times: Russian disinformation campaigns to undermine support for Ukraine in Europe have grown significantly in scale, skill and stealth, according to the head of the department for culture and communication at Germany’s Federal Foreign Office. Russia is combining greater subtlety and plausibility in its messaging with automation to make its disruptive attacks more effective and harder to combat. 🔗 https://www.ft.com/content/12c58303-ca41-4b16-bfd3-4612f3f3ae4c
Yesterday, I shared a statement from the editor of Cleveland's Plain Dealer, Chris Quinn. He states,
"The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it."
@wdlindsy
My argument is that you can interrupt that by saying, "You're right! Trump should be interrogated, investigated, put on the no fly list, and lose all his businesses, too."
"The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it."
Politicians from Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Hungary are accused of being paid to promote Russian interests in the European Parliament.
It’s not hard to think of possible recipients of Russia’s “influence operation” in America including a certain Republican presidential candidate, a number of elected Republican officials and a slew of right wing media figures.
Moscow has found better ways to conceal #influence ops, by using harder-to-trace tech, to amplify arguments for #isolationism before #UnitedStates elections, acc/to disinfo experts & #intelligence.
In recent days, #intelligence agencies have warned that #Russia has found better ways to hide its #InfluenceOperations, & Treasury issued #sanctions last week against 2 Russian companies that it said supported the Kremlin’s campaign.
The stepped-up ops, run by aides to #Putin & Russian #military intelligence, come at a critical moment in the debate in the #UnitedStates over support for #Ukraine.…
Russian ops are laying the groundwork for what could be a stronger push to support candidates who oppose aiding #Ukraine, or who call for pulling the #UnitedStates back from #NATO & other alliances, US ofcls & independent researchers say.
Investigators say that firms working in the “#Doppelgänger” network —& #Russia’s #intelligence agencies duplicating the tactics— are using the techniques to replicate & distort legitimate #news sites in order to undermine #aid to Ukraine.
The mainstream media should not normalize Donald Trump’s behavior, nor should they give a platform to his lies or those of his sycophants, who for years have spread disastrous untruths that may have irreparably damaged our nation.
But in one fell swoop, NBC News has managed to do both."
Todd Beeton writes that the Republican attempt to impeach Biden has revealed Republicans to be Russian assets:
"By calling this impeachment hearing, and giving Democrats the opportunity to call Parnas to testify in front of Congress for the first time, Republicans inadvertently left themselves exposed as compromised officials who actively placed Russian disinformation ahead of the truth."
"Trump’s Russian ties and his admiration for Vladimir Putin have been well-established. It’s clear that if reelected, Trump will do Putin’s bidding, particularly when it comes to the war with Ukraine, by ending U.S. funding of the war effort. So, it’s no accident that Republicans in Congress are actively resisting approval of that funding as well."
"Their use of Russian disinformation to try to impeach Biden aligns with their opposition to funding the war in Ukraine. These Republicans have shown themselves to be nothing less than Russian assets, and if they are reelected along with Trump in November, Putin will have what he wants most of all: a sort of shadow government right here in the U.S."
“Today, #immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than all US-born men, and 30% less likely to be incarcerated relative to white US-born men.”
There is also state level research, that shows similar results: researchers at the #CATOInstitute, a #CONSERVATIVE#LIBERTARIAN think tank, looked into #Texas in 2019. They found that undocumented #immigrants were 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a #crime.
Our appeal for the use of #Fediverse services 🐘 and the termination of #X/Twitter at #universities states:
"#Disinformation and #HateSpeech, #cyberbullying and #discrimination are still dominant elements on the media that describe themselves as social. Even legal regulations have not been able to change this. Our elected politicians ... continue to be intimidated and threatened on these platforms, persecution of women is instigated, elections are manipulated and democratic institutions are attacked."
Below is a simple version in visualized form.
Please share the image widely - it is also suitable for sharing on the major advertising platforms 😉
And: You can use the QR code 🔠 to direct your friends to the page to join in.
#LevParnas, the reformed convicted former #Trump associate who worked hand-in-glove with #DonaldTrump and #RudyGiuliani to try to dig up “dirt” on the #Bidens so that Trump could spread #disinformation heading into the #2020election, exposed the details of Trump’s scheme during another sham #GOP hearing today about the Bidens.
In news that really should qualify as a "water is wet" moment, it turns out that contrary to the beliefs of evangelists and folks who have a vested financial interested in selling you so-called "AI" products, LLMs and "artificial intelligence" are not going to save us from climate crisis, but are rather directly contributing to the problem and actively accelerating the heat death of a planet that can support 8B+ humans:
Look, quite frankly I don't think you should have to be told that a product astronomically increasing energy demands in the Pig Empire, that requires an obscene amount of water just to keep the servers cool enough to operate, and allows climate science deniers and conspiracy theorist to generate a buttload of cheap propaganda and garbage disinformation, is not going to help us fight climate catastrophe. Given however that big market players who are actively trying to sell you AI products, companies like Google, are openly lying about its ability to do so however, I guess it's necessary to keep producing and sharing articles like this one.
The plain truth here is that capitalists, corporations, and techbro fascists have long since decided that short term profits matter more to them than whether or not the rest of us boil to death on a rapidly overheating planet. Indeed, a desire to lock in that dynamic is almost certainly why all these rich people are paying to install fascism throughout the entire "West." AI products themselves are ultimately about locking in a fascist social order that precludes the possibility of change or human agency, because if you have the ability or the knowledge to affect change, you'll probably stop them from running us off the ecological cliff in pursuit of endless profits.
These folks will, and are, lying to you because all they care about is that filthy lucre, and they have long since bought up your states and regulatory bodies that should be warning you about this and working to stop them. It's not just a question of "don't believe the hype" but rather understanding that reactionary capitalists are not going to help you save a planet they've already decided to burn to ash for 5 points a share.
The BBC News Verify team has published their first article using a new open media provenance technology called C2PA that we've been working on for the past three years.
This shows where media comes from and how it’s been edited - like an audit trail or a history.
“The information war is about territory—just not the geographic kind. In a warm information war, the human mind is the territory.”
—Renée DiResta, “The Digital Maginot Line”