DisinfoDocket 5 December
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* All weekend's developpments at Twitter including fears of rising levels of anti-semitism on the platform
* Chinese protestors embrace low tech strategies to try to evade government censors
* Spam on WhatsApp ahead of India's elections
* And lots more!
Highlights:
🚀Did the Musk takeover boost engagement for contentious actors on Twitter❓
— Christopher Barrie (@cbarrie) December 2, 2022
To answer this, I use a publicly released list of far-right and far-right-adjacent accounts that paid for blue-tick verification
🙏 @travisbrown and @CaseyHo for the original data pic.twitter.com/rHyytCRKq5
📢 #disinformation targeting electoral officials is a serious threat to #democracy. Being a women is an additional layer that portrays them as incapable of fulfilling their duties due to their #gender, linked to stereotypes. Read mor via @Int_IDEA👇https://t.co/NAm8mhSn2g
— iKNOW Politics (@iKNOW_Politics) December 5, 2022
WATCH: Informed - Conversations on democracy in the digital age (Knight Foundation, 28-30 November)
- From quitting to blocking: How to protect yourself on Musk’s Twitter: Here’s everything you can do now to secure your personal information (Washington Post, 1 December)
- Trump’s call for suspending the Constitution is too dangerous to ignore (Washington Post, 4 December)
- Factchecking organisation wins prestigious British Academy award: Full Fact receives president’s medal 2022 for exposing and countering misinformation in news and political campaigns (Guardian, 4 December)
- To Eliminate Violence Against Women, We Must Take the Fight to Online Spaces (CIGI, 28 November)
- Musk reopens door for Covid disinfo, Chinese trolls blame US for unrest and NZ couple reject blood from vaccinated donors (Coda Story, 2 December)
- “We’re going to kill you all”: Facebook fails to detect death threats against election workers in the U.S., while Youtube and TikTok succeed (Global Witness & NYU C4D, December)
Facebook failed to block ads containing death threats to election workers (The Hill, 1 December)
1. Platforms & Technology
- Who's responsible when recommendations kill? With a critical Supreme Court battle looming, the platforms mount their defense (Platformer, 2 December)
- Social Networks Are Going Much, Much Smaller (Slate, 30 November)
- Google Threat Analysis Bulletin Q4 2022: This bulletin includes coordinated influence operation campaigns terminated on our platforms in Q4 2022. (Google, 1 December)
- Amazon won't take down antisemitic film tweeted by Kyrie Irving, CEO says (AXIOS, 2 December)
- Twitch's new 'Shield Mode' is a one-button anti-harassment tool for streamers (Engadget, 30 November)
Twitter Alternatives
- Mastodon and Hive Social are hailed as Twitter’s successors. But where are the users? (Fortune, 2 December)
Corporate Governance
- Elon Musk Has Reached the Limit of Things He Can Do Without Consequences: The limit’s name is Apple. (Slate, 1 December)
- The Redpilling of Elon Musk Isn’t Funny (Slate, 1 December)
- Twitter's World Cup ad revenue is reportedly way down (Mashable, 3 December)