Posts in category: Newsletter

Oops I did it again!

New York Times revealed how Facebook, when trying to fight through the crisis, hired a public affairs company missioned to write articles criticizing tech competitors while downplaying the impact of Russia’s misinformation campaign on the platform, and pushing the idea that George Soros was behind a growing anti-Facebook movement. Facebook replied to inaccuracies in a blogpost and President of Open Society Foundation, Patrick Gaspard, addressed a letter to Mark Zuckerberg. As scandals accumulate on Facebook, disinformation researchers, just as citizens start to get out of patience says Nina Jancowicz.

A Message from Paris

Last week was a busy week in Paris. The city was hosting the internet governance forum (IGF), organised by the United Nations. This year, the information disorders issues took a significant part in the debate on media and content. We can only welcome the fact that overall, all debates promoted an active multi-stakeholder collaboration in this field. In the meantime was held the Paris peace forum, a new annual event that gathers all actors of global governance. On that occasion , 7 heads of State (among them Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron) signed an opinion committing to support Reporters Without Borders work of the International Information and Democracy Commission.

Fake can kill

Disinformation can fuel ethnic violence. After information shared on Whatsapp have caused lynching in India (read here the summary of our last webinar about disinformation in India), incendiary images shared on Facebook have contributed to ethnic violence in Plateau state in Nigeria. Facebook’s third-party fact-checking partners in the country have committed just four full-time fact checkers to review false information, on a platform used by 24 million Nigerians. Read the very well documented story on BBC news. Similar issue was raised at IGF by journalist Ishara Danasekar in Sri Lanka.

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What to read, watch and listen to this week:

• Operation Infektion: from Cold War to Kanye, a three-part video series on the history of Russian disinformation in America.
• Beyond fake news: watch BBC stories of fake news around the world.
• How misinformation spreads: Zig-zag podcast on disinformation featuring Knight Foundations report on misinformation spread during and since 2016 and CIVIL use of Blockchain for journalists.
• Governance Innovation for a Connected World: Protecting Free Expression, Diversity and Civic Engagement in the Global Digital Ecosystem special report by the Center for Internet Governance and Innovation.

Agenda

• November 29 @ Berlin – Digitaler Salon: Alles nur gefakt? Organised by Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society
• 11 January @ Paris – News, Representations of Reality and Intermediality. One-day conference at University of Paris Diderot
• 25 February @ London – Launch of the LSE Truth, Trust and Technology Commission report, part of the “New World (Dis)Orders” series, held in the run up to the LSE Festival, a week-long series of events taking place from 25 February to 2 March 2018
• 2-4 May @ Alberta – Workshop on Data Mining for Fake news in Social Media: Propagation, Detection, and Mitigation. You can submit your papers until February 1, 2019.
• The issue of disinformation from Russia is due to be on the agenda of the EU summit in Brussels on December 13-14.

Midterm fakes

Midterms polarized results mirror a polarized debate between democrats and republicans, with rumours of fraud and voters suppression spread by both camps. But that was not the only disinformation, the New York Times called on its readers to share examples of election-related misinformation. In all, more than 4,000 examples of misinformation were submitted. Some were even spread by candidates themselves, as the “jobs not mobs” slogan, which started out as a meme, then turned into a political slogan.

More tapas?

Spain and Russia have agreed on a disinformation forum to tackle fake-news in Catalonia.

Web Summit: the internet father and the sons of anarchy

Last week, the tech community held its major world conference: The Web Summit. Father of the internet Tim Berners-Lee announced a “contract for the web”, setting ethical standards around privacy and open access to the internet. Speaking of ethics, European commissioner Vera Jourova suggested an Hippocrat oath for tech designers in order to put an end to “the online anarchy around elections”. As they feel the change coming, big techs seem to have joined the advocacy for regulation, yet Mark Scott from Politico warns politicians not to get fooled… 

Metadata crafts

MIT technology review present two startups using algorithms to track when images are edited, from the moment they’re taken. Typically, pictures online contain metadata that can be manipulated. Data & Society Research Affiliate Amelia Acker’s analyzes how bad actors manipulate metadata to create effective disinformation campaigns, and provides tips for researchers and technology companies trying to spot this “data craft.” Meanwhile, InVid image fact-checking plug-in is now used by 7000 people.

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Mark your calendar

Facebook is paying the bill

Following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Facebook has been fined £500,000 by UK’s data protection watchdog and European Parliament urges for the ban of targeted political advertising on Facebook to restrict the diffusion of false political information during the upcoming European elections. Under such scrutiny, Facebook has announced it will be downranking stories with false headlines. The new rating comes after several other recent changes to Facebook’s fact-checking project. Timely, former UK prime minister Nick Clegg, just has been appointed head of the global affairs and communications team. Hopefully, this appointment will ease relations between the social media platform and EU institutions. But on the eve of US mid-term elections, and as Facebook promised it would disclose the identity of whom political ads were paid by, Vice revealed it has easily managed to buy news on behalf of senators. Just when the company said last week it had removed 82 pages, accounts and groups linked to Iran that had targeted U.K. and U.S. users. Still a long way to go…

Brazil, India and Whatsapp

On 28/10/2018, Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil. As for most recent elections, false news was intensively spreading during the campaign. Different in Brazil was the massive spread of disinformation through Whatsapp. Alarmed, fact-checkers published an opinion in the New York Times which revealed the scale of the phenomenon. A similar situation on Whatsapp is happening in India. Viral misinformation has become a core problem on the platform, especially because misleading content is now shared virally through end-to-end encrypted solutions.

Join our next webinar on November 8. Govindraj Ethiraj, founder of fact-checking initiative BOOM will describe the disinformation landscape in India and how we can deal with fact-checking on Whatsapp.

From journalism to viruses

Did you ever wonder how journalists verify the truthfulness of eyewitness videos? The New York Times provides some insight on his eyewitness raw video verification process: a mix of traditional journalistic diligence and cutting-edge internet skills. Besides journalists, a new actor has entered the fight against disinformation. McAffee, the 30-year old company traditionally known for its anti-virus software, published an analysis of how cybersecurity breaches could contribute to disseminate false information during the US mid-term elections campaign. 

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Some readings recommendations for your week

• Human and digital rights organisations Access Now, Civil Liberties Union for Europe, and European Digital Rights (EDRi) joint report evaluating the European Commission’s online disinformation and propaganda initiatives. Main recommendations focuses on addressing the business model of online manipulation through appropriate data protection laws, preventing the misuse of personal data in elections and increasing media information and literacy.
• Marten’s centre policy brief on political subversion in the age of social media: four areas of vulnerability are identified, namely individualized political messaging, group dynamics and political polarisation, platform algorithms and self-radicalisation, and falsehood dissemination dynamics. Read their 4 political recommendations
• In a report from ISD and LSE institute of global affairs, investigated foreign attempts to influence the 2018 Swedish elections online. The project revealed the relative isolation of the
• The European Political Strategy Center from the European Commission gathered a collection of think pieces from 35 leading practioners and experts on the topic “election interference in the digital age, building resilience to cyber enabled threats”.

Agenda

• 29/11 Riga: event hosted by civil society organisation “ManaBalss” and it is a part of a EC supported project “Smart eDemocracy Against Fake News (SMARTeD)”
• November 29 @ Pullman Riga Oldtown —  “Disinformation and Fake news challenge to democracy” event hosted by civil society organisation “ManaBalss”, part of a EC supported project “Smart eDemocracy Against Fake News (SMARTeD)””