Tag: 2020 election

How Worried Should You Be About Those Tom Cruise Deepfakes?

Are the TikTok deepfake videos of Tom Cruise doing magic and playing golf a threat to global democracy? Not exactly. “[T]he reality is that they took a lot of time, technical expertise, and the skilled performance of a real actor,” reports VICE News. “Rather than predicting a dark future of disinformation for the masses, they’re simply another example of what can…

Twitter Disabled ‘Likes’ and ‘Replies’ on False Trump Tweets. Inadvertently.

Business Insider reports: Twitter on Saturday briefly took new action to stem the spread of President Donald Trump’s false tweets about his loss in the 2020 election. Replies and likes were disabled on several of Trump’s tweets Saturday morning before Twitter the company reversed course hours later, telling Business Insider the change was made “inadvertently….” “We try to prevent a Tweet…

Trump Fires Election Security Director Who Corrected Voter Fraud Disinformation

phalse phace shares a report from NPR: Christopher Krebs, the Department of Homeland Security director who had spearheaded a campaign to counter rumors about voter fraud, has been fired, President Trump tweeted on Tuesday. Trump, in two misleading tweets about the security of the U.S. election, said Krebs’ termination was “effective immediately.” The CISA campaign, led by Krebs, was originally intended…

YouTube Criticized For Not Removing Post-Election Misinformation

“YouTube is facing growing criticism for allowing election misinformation after it decided not to remove or individually fact-check videos that spread unfounded conspiracy theories alleging voter fraud,” reports NBC News: While all internet platforms are struggling to contain the volume of misinformation since voting ended last week — and all have been criticized to some degree by researchers for their handling…

Russian Hackers Targeted California, Indiana Democratic Parties In Repeat of 2016 Attacks

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The group of Russian hackers accused of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election earlier this year targeted the email accounts of Democratic state parties in California and Indiana, and influential think tanks in Washington and New York, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The attempted intrusions, many of which were…

Snopes.com Exposes 4chan Campaign to ‘Kindle Mistrust in Snopes’

“This is the perfect moment to do this. This is an age of conspiracies for boomers… Let’s kindle their mistrust in Snopes and other fact checkers,” wrote one 4chan poster. Snopes.com later reported:
In October 2020, a series of threads was posted to the anonymous internet forum 4Chan as part of operation “Snopes-Piercer,” a smear campaign with the stated goal of “red-pilling…

America’s ‘Cyber Command’ Is Trying to Disrupt the World’s Largest Botnet

The Washington Post reports: In recent weeks, the U.S. military has mounted an operation to temporarily disrupt what is described as the world’s largest botnet — one used also to drop ransomware, which officials say is one of the top threats to the 2020 election. U.S. Cyber Command’s campaign against the Trickbot botnet, an army of at least 1 million hijacked…

Twitter Orders Politicians, Journalists To Fortify Passwords Before Election

Twitter will require certain political candidates, elected officials and journalists to beef up their passwords, the company said Thursday, in an effort to head off any more breaches of high-profile accounts as the 2020 election draws near. From a report: The change comes two months after an embarrassing cyberattack in which hackers exploited Twitter employees’ credentials to wrest control of dozens…

Letting people in the US vote by mail has little impact on who wins

A statistical analysis of counties that mail out ballots to US voters has found there is little difference in election outcomes compared with counties who vote in person – a find that could be important for the 2020 election Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2253038-letting-people-in-the-us-vote-by-mail-has-little-impact-on-who-wins/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…