DisinfoDocket 19 April
Hi! I'm Victoria and welcome to DisinfoDocket. DisinfoDocket curates influence operations-related academic research, news, events and job opportunities.
Did you know that DisinfoDocket takes requests? If you have suggestions or relevant work that you'd like to see included, simply reply to this email and send us the details!
* Broadcasters suspend their Twitter accounts in response to 'government-funded media' labels
* FBI probes pro-Russia social media account’s spread of classified information
* Misinformation about abortion in the wake of 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision
* Venezuela's Maduro launches new TV show, a year ahead of presidential poll
* Uganda's Twitter battleground
Highlights
- Join Bellingcat’s April 2023 Hackathon and Increase the Accessibility of Open Source Tools (Bellingcat, 21-23 April)
- AI’s main threat is disinformation, warns GCHQ chief (Times, 19 April)
- ‘Dominion wins but the public loses’: Fox settlement avoids paying the highest price (Guardian, 19 April)
Are you interested in the best practices in OSINT research?
— EU DisinfoLab (@DisinfoEU) April 17, 2023
These new #OSINT #Guidelines provide you with the framework comprising good practices and an opportunity to reflect on their methodology, skills, and documentation.
Read more here 👉 https://t.co/t1p20SEdUt pic.twitter.com/k4a7flLXxo
1. Academia & Research
Twitter has started suspending api accounts.
— Sol Messing (@SolomonMg) April 17, 2023
🧵 on what it means for Twitter, social media more broadly, researchers, and others. And it ends with growing list of public goods and public interest research that will end with this announcement. pic.twitter.com/Cv1zjTkXAZ
- Correcting COVID-19 vaccine misinformation in 10 countries (Royal Society, 15 March)
- The Challenges of Conducting Open Source Research on China (Bellingcat, 18 April)
- Potentially hijacked Twitter accounts promote Sudanese paramilitary force (DFRLab, 18 April)
- Echo chamber effects on short video platforms (Nature, 18 April)
- As the case against Fox News goes to trial, a similar outlet in Brazil is in legal trouble (Reuters Institute, 18 April)
- I'm sorry, this spam network cannot generate inappropriate or offensive content: The presence of ChatGPT error messages in the tweets of a network of spammy Twitter accounts is a potential sign of the presence of AI-generated text (Conspirator Norteño, 18 April)
2. Platforms & Technology
Our position remains clear. We will not back down on providing private, safe communications. Today, we join with other encrypted messengers pushing back on the UK's flawed Online Safety Bill. pic.twitter.com/MwGBgcvgjk
— Signal (@signalapp) April 18, 2023
We believe that only your intended recipient should be able to read your personal messages.
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) April 18, 2023
So we’ve signed a letter that highlights our concerns with the UK's Online Safety Bill — a law that could force companies to break end-to-end encryption and put your privacy at risk.
- In letter to EU, open source bodies say Cyber Resilience Act could have ‘chilling effect’ on software development (Tech Crunch, 18 April)
- WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging apps unite against law plan (BBC, 18 April)
- Thousands fled to Mastodon after Musk bought Twitter. Are they still ‘tooting’? (Guardian, 18 April)
- A Chart of Twitter Alternatives, From Mastodon to Spill (The Information, 18 April)
- The social costs of not sharing fake news: Not engaging with fake news online has its social costs; individuals are therefore forced to choose between spreading misinformation and social exclusion (Forbes, 18 April)
- AI Propaganda Will Be Effective and Easily Accessible (Tech Policy Press, 12 April)
- Nation-state actors are taking advantage of weak passwords to go after cloud customers, Google says (CyberScoop, 13 April)
- Amazon’s Twitch Safety, AI Ethics Job Cuts Raise Concerns Among Ex-Workers (Bloomberg, 11 April)
- AI has social consequences, but who pays the price? Tech companies’ problem with ‘ethical debt’ (The Conversation, 19 April)
- Why tech companies can no longer ignore their role in shaping politics and society (Global Voices, 19 April)