DisinfoDocket 3 May
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!
* Google clashes with Brazil over disinformation law
* Climate disinformation ads proliferate on YouTube
* How Moscow is preparing propaganda messaging ahead of anticipated Ukrainian offensive.
Highlights
- How Social Media Incentives Helped Drive the Discord Leaks (Tech Policy Press, 1 May)
- Inauthentic activity and Twitter Blue verification: When "verification" boils down to "someone has a phone and paid $8", it's not surprising that spam and fake accounts slip through the cracks (Conspirator Norteńo, 1 May)
LISTEN: Ghouling: The trolls targeting bereaved people (BBC, 29 April)
🧵Best practices for positioning community engagement journalism as a bulwark against mis/disinformation:@wearehearken @EngagingNews @anxious_maria @TexasTribune @anniezyu @politico @Derrick_Resolve @resolvephilly @laurencaguirre @VotebeatUS
— PEN America (@PENamerica) May 1, 2023
1. Academia & Research
- After Musk’s takeover, big shifts in how Republican and Democratic Twitter users view the platform (Pew, 1 May)
2. Platforms & Technology
- AI-enabled disinformation: Waging an unviable war of scale (Rappler, 1 May)
- Undercover in the metaverse: Human moderators in the metaverse are proving essential to digital safety (MIT, 1 May)
- Top scientist quits Google, issues AI warning: ‘Bad actors’ could use it ‘for bad things’ (The Hill, 1 May)
- AI Chatbots Have Been Used to Create Dozens of News Content Farms (Bloomberg, 1 May)
- Tech industry allowing 'deluge' of misinformation (France 24, 3 May)
- Google, Microsoft CEOs called to AI meeting at White House (Reuters, 2 May)
BlueSky
- Bluesky's big moment: A new Twitter clone is surging in popularity. Could it have legs? (Platformer, 2 May)
Twitter's new API paywall is pricing out even well-resourced institutions like ours. "If we don't have research on the impact of these platforms on society then how can we make good policy?" asks @j_a_tucker in @FT https://t.co/Zeq4aNRlpH pic.twitter.com/V94X7fw5Xl
— NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics (@CSMaP_NYU) May 1, 2023
- Companies wary as Twitter checkmark policy fuels imposter accounts (Reuters, 2 May)
TikTok
- TikTok Parent ByteDance’s ‘Sensitive Words’ Tool Monitors Discussion Of China, Trump, Uyghurs (Forbes, 1 May)
- TikTok’s head of US trust and safety is leaving: He was a key leader for the separate entity TikTok recently created to try and avoid a US ban. (The Verge, 2 May)