“It’s deeply concerning to see shady coordinated disinformation campaigns trying to undermine our democracy,” says the man who apparently defeated Kentucky’s Republican governor Bevin in a close election last Tuesday. The New York Times reports on what happened in the hours after Twitter user “Overlordkraken1” decided to tweet to his 19 followers that he’d “just shredded a box of Republican mail-in…
Tag: Disinformation
Mozilla Hits Google, Facebook For ‘Microtargeting’ Political Ads
Mozilla is calling on Google and Facebook to stop “microtargeting” political ads. “Political speech is critical to democratic discourse, but against the very real circumstances of organized disinformation and organic misinformation today, microtargeting keeps ideas from being debated in the open, and fiction parades as fact,” Ashley Boyd, Mozilla’s advocacy vice president, said in a statement. “Online platforms can take the…
Digital Authoritarianism Is On the Rise Around the World, Report Warns
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Internet freedom declined for a ninth consecutive year as governments around the world used social media to monitor citizens and manipulate elections, according to a new study that warned of creeping “digital authoritarianism.” Thirty-three of the 65 countries surveyed were found to have experienced worsening internet freedom since June 2018, compared with 16…
Privacy Concerns Are Jeopardizing Investigations Into Facebook Disinformation
“An unprecedented investigation into disinformation on Facebook has hit turbulence over questions about how much data to release to outside researchers,” reports Fast Company, “curtailing efforts to stem one of social media’s most pernicious threats ahead of the 2020 elections.” Slashdot reader tedlistens writes: Social Science One, an unprecedented, Mark Zuckerberg-backed plan to open up Facebook’s data to outside researchers –…
Facebook Shuts Down New Accounts From Iran and Russia Spreading Disinformation
Facebook on Monday removed nearly 200 newly discovered fake accounts linked separately to Iran and to Russia’s Internet Research Agency. The takedowns demonstrate that foreign influence operations are already targeting the 2020 election, but provide evidence that Russia’s notorious troll farm is struggling to regain anything close to the influence in held in 2016. The Daily Beast reports: The new wave…
New Facebook Features Fight Election Lies Everywhere But Ads
Heaven forbid a political candidate’s Facebook account gets hacked. They might spread disinformation … like they’re already allowed to do in Facebook ads … From a report: Today Facebook made a slew of announcements designed to stop 2020 election interference. “The bottom line here is that elections have changed significantly since 2016” and so has Facebook in response, CEO Mark Zuckerberg…
US Using Trade Deals To Shield Tech Giants From Foreign Regulators
The Trump administration has begun inserting legal protections into recent trade agreements that shield online platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube from lawsuits, a move that could help lock in America’s tech-friendly regulations around the world even as they are being newly questioned at home. From a report: The protections, which stem from a 1990s law, have already been tucked into…
Facebook Said It Would Give Detailed Data To Academics. They’re Still Waiting.
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2018, Facebook announced a partnership to provide data to academics to “help people better understand the broader impact of social media on democracy — as well as improve our work to protect the integrity of elections.” In April of this year, the first batch of winning proposals was announced. “The urgency of this research…
Facebook’s Ex-Security Chief Details His ‘Observatory’ for Internet Abuse
Andy Greenberg, writing for Wired: When Alex Stamos describes the challenge of studying the worst problems of mass-scale bad behavior on the internet, he compares it to astronomy. To chart the cosmos, astronomers don’t build their own Hubble telescopes or Arecibo observatories. They concentrate their resources in a few well-situated places and share time on expensive hardware. But when it comes…
‘YouTube’s Plan To Rein In Conspiracy Theories Is Failing’
An anonymous reader quotes the Huffington Post: Six months ago, under tremendous public pressure, YouTube announced that it would tweak its algorithm to recommend fewer videos “that could misinform users in harmful ways.” It was a major step for a company that has spent years driving people toward increasingly sensationalist content — including dangerous disinformation — that would keep viewers glued…