À #VIGINUM, nous avons pour mission de détecter et caractériser les manipulations de l'information impliquant des acteurs étrangers dans le débat public français.
Nous recrutons un•e développeur•se fullstack pour renforcer le pôle technique. Au programme, pas mal de #scraping et de collecte de données mais aussi développement d'outils en interne.
I recently saw a conversation between two people I respect that ended poorly. This being a social platform, shortage of mutual understanding is not surprising. Most of the time, I just back away slowly, but this time, the topic is important enough, and I think I can see a framing that can help make conversations about it less antagonistic.
Global social networks with algorithmic feeds make #disinfo 10x worse.
A lot of people underestimate how bad it is, for the same reason people underestimated COVID: humans have no intuition for exponents, mechanical metaphors like weight and velocity really don't work for epidemiology.
In a race of exponents, a 0.1% advantage takes only 700 iterations to grow into a 2x advantage. On a platform with a billion users, a 0.1% difference can make one narrative overtake another in hours. 6/
The main threats to democracy are #war and #disinfo. Mitigating the risk of war has never been as straightforward as today: arm #Ukraine, arm #Taiwan, and let their resistance deter fascist empires from invading their neighbors.
Disinfo is a harder problem. Like cancer, it exploits freedom of speech and other essential aspects of democracy to turn a society against itself. Like with cancer, any treatment has to walk a careful balance to eradicate the disease without killing the host. 5/
The appropriate response to concerns about #disinfo is more critical thinking education, better funding of quality journalism without paywalls and decentralization such that ads and algorithms outside of user control are unworkable. Top down solutions will only lead to a worse informed public due to bias and unavoidable human error by those who try to run those systems in good faith, or eventual capture by those seeking power and profit. #disinformation#censorship#moderation#fediblockmeta
Did you know that IT/tech-related #risks rank really high in the new #WEF Global Risks report?
AI-generated #disinfo is considered to be the 2nd biggest risk (right after extreme weather events). And it's of course connected to the 3rd biggest risk: social/political polarization.
#Cyberattacks are ranked 5th – and can in turn be connected to the disruption of supply chains and critical infrastructure (a topic that also features prominently).
Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch tweets that in 8 weeks #Israel dropped 29000 bombs on #Gaza whereas the US dropped only 3600 bombs in 6 years in Iraq starting 0ct 2004.
(Note the start date Roth chose)
The problem: the US invaded Iraq in March 2003 and dropped >29,000 bombs in the 1st 4 weeks.
Roth knows what he's doing: generating a misleading talking point. Why does the media run with his propaganda? #disinfo
À #VIGINUM, on a pour mission de protéger le débat public français contre les manipulations de l'information opérées par des acteurs étrangers. L'équipe comprend à la fois des analystes géopolitiques, des spécialistes #osint et des data scientists.
Si vous voulez venir bosser avec moi, j'ai ouvert deux postes dans mon équipe :
Less than a year from the 2024 election, the latest polls show that some two-thirds of Republicans falsely believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
Gateway Pundit’s influence helps explain why, experts in disinformation say.
Though the site employs only a handful of regular writers, it has played an outsize role in popularizing false claims.
“Gateway Pundit is a known source of disinformation that quickly trades up the chain,” said Joan Donovan, an assistant professor at Boston University studying online disinformation and media manipulation.
“Because when they report a piece of information, it gives others license to do so.”
The site’s founder, Jim Hoft, who started blogging as a hobby in 2004, is among “the best at creating a right-wing echo system,” right-wing podcast host and former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon said in an interview.
Hoft did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this report.
@josephcox@404mediaco "Hall’s theory, a common one in the Um, isn’t That AI? Group is that some of these larger groups will sell their accounts once they’ve amassed large numbers of followers, pivot to political disinformation, or try to monetize what they’re doing. A few of them have begun posting links to sites outside of Facebook, while others add links to online stores in the comment sections of their posts once an image has gone viral." #AI#disinformation#disinfo#AIpocalypse
Prominent conspiracy theorists — including Gen. Michael Flynn — are promoting an unfounded theory that pedophiles have been using Etsy to distribute child porn, sold under the guise of wildly expensive digital downloads of images of pizza. | Rolling Stone