DisinfoDocket 30 August

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Highlights:

1. Meta’s ‘Biggest Single Takedown’ Removes Chinese Influence Campaign (The New York Times, 29 August)
2. Russians impersonate Washington Post and Fox News with anti-Ukraine stories (The Record by Recorded Future, 29 August)
3. X to allow political ads for the first time since 2019 (The Hill, 29 August)
4. Fox spent nearly 3 hours on its Viktor Shokin interview in rerun of its Ukraine disinformation campaign (Media Matters for America, 28 August)
5. Insights from covering the Wagner Group in Africa (IJNet, 28 August)

Our information ecosystem has become a massive false-balance machine.

Needed: more accurate representations of the scientific consensus.

My new piece: Is bothsidesism killing us? (And why scientific consensus matters) https://t.co/rmUVbOhYtc via @HealthyDebate#ScienceUpFirst…

— Timothy Caulfield (@CaulfieldTim) August 29, 2023

1. Academia & Research

1. Diving Deep into UNC4841 Operations Following Barracuda ESG Zero-Day Remediation (CVE-2023-2868) (Mandiant, 29 August)
2. How can doctors counter health misinformation on social media? (The BMJ, 30 August)

2. Platforms & Technology

1. Google tests watermark to identify AI images (BBC, 29 August)
2. Google to invest another $1.7 billion into Ohio data centers (AP News, 28 August)
3. Schumer to host AI forum with CEOs including Musk and Zuckerberg (The Washington Post, 28 August)
4. Behind the AI boom, an army of overseas workers in 'digital sweatshops' (The Washington Post, 28 August)

X/Twitter

1. Is Elon Musk a threat to Australia? (Financial Review, 28 August)
2. X/Twitter Will Accept Political Ads Again, Reversing Pre-Musk Ban (Variety, 29 August)
3. Elon Musk’s X Is Facing 2,200 Arbitration Cases From Ex-Twitter Employees (Forbes, 29 August)

Meta

1. B.C. Indigenous groups call on Facebook to reverse news ban (Vancouver Sun, 28 August)
2. Exclusive: Meta's Canada news ban fails to dent Facebook usage (Reuters, 29 August)
3. Meta's Adversarial Threat Report - Second Quarter (Meta, August)

🚨New: Meta rejects its Oversight Board’s recommendation to suspend the account of former Cambodian PM Hun Sen after he used his accounts to incite violence.

Once again Facebook renders its Oversight Board meaningless as the recommendation was non-bindinghttps://t.co/5aoIzMlJae

— Real Facebook Oversight Board (@FBoversight) August 29, 2023