Disinfo Docket 23 April

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Highlights

1. One Third of Americans Believe Russian Disinformation, NewsGuard-YouGov Survey Finds (NewsGuard, 16 April)
2. Scam & Fraud: Social Engineering at Scale (Graphika, April)
3. Von der Leyen warns X, Meta, TikTok to play by the rules in Europe — no matter who’s CEO (Politico, 21 April)
4. The Hidden Game: How Scammers Use “Chameleon Ads” to Bypass Meta’s Moderation (Social Media Lab, 21 April)
5. LISTEN: Stop the World: Democracy in the age of disinformation, with Audrey Tang (ASPI, 17 April)

1. Academia & Research

1. Spam in the firehose, part IV: Further adventures with low effort fake follower networks (Conspirator Norteño, 18 April)
2. Source: I made it up (Memetic Warfare, 21 April)

2. Platforms & Technology

1. It’s not too late to stop Trump and the tech broligarchy from controlling our lives, but we must act now (Guardian, 20 April)
2. Bluesky Launches User Verification After Initial Skepticism of Checkmarks (Gizmodo, 21 April)
   1. Bluesky may soon add blue check verification (TechCrunch, 18 April)
3. X is taking the Indian government to court over content moderation tools. Expect India to win. (Chatham House, 11 April)

Meta

1. Read what Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook execs said about Instagram before buying it (TechCrunch, 19 April)
2. Meta is ramping up its AI-driven age detection (The Verge, 21 April)
3. Meta's move on AI bias raises risk, eyebrows (AXIOS, 21 April)
4. Uncovered emails showed how Meta struggled to keep Facebook culturally relevant (TechCrunch, 20 April)

AI

1. Why AI is the New Social Media (Big Technology, 18 April)
2. How Sam Altman was fired and rehired at OpenAI, in only five days (Times, 19 April)
3. OpenAI updated its safety framework—but no longer sees mass manipulation and disinformation as a critical risk (Fortune, 16 April)
4. As scammers latch on to artificial intelligence, Microsoft says it blocks 1.6 million bots every hour (ABC, 18 April)

TikTok

1. TikTok removes videos promoting birth control misinformation after The Independent investigation (Independent, 18 April)
2. TikTok is adding Footnotes, its take on Community Notes (Engadget, 16 April)
3. Protecting the integrity of TikTok during the Singapore General Elections 2025 (TikTok, 22 April)