More About Disinformation

Sadly, it's time to post more links to articles about disinformation and misinformation. It's clear that it's not going away any time soon; indeed, with the US election campaigns in full swing and two major wars, it's going to be a banner year. 

• The Murky Campaign to Discredit Lab-Grown Meat. "A new ad campaign is targeting the cultivated meat industry on TV and online. Industry supporters criticize it as unscientific." It appears to be sponsored by the food and drink industry. 
• Why weird ads about Sophie Trudeau, Howie Mandel — and Mary Berg — mean we're in trouble online. (archive,ph link) "They show how easy it is to borrow name recognition of news companies and celebrities and feed false information into the void."
• Since 2023, right-wing organizations, backed by Republican state attorneys general, have argued that banks are discriminating against them on religious and political grounds. But the attack on banks stuck among MAGA Republicans, especially as other financial platforms like PayPal, Venmo, and GoFundMe have declined to accept business from right-wing figures who spout hate speech, thus cutting off their ability to raise money from their followers. The attempt to create distrust of large financial institutions is part of a larger attempt to destabilize the institutions of democracy. Trump is the figurehead for that attempt, but it is larger than him, and it will outlast him."
• Interview with Jonathan Howard, author of We Want Them Infected. "A physician diligently tracked physician and researcher propagated misinformation during the pandemic."
• Elon Musk Is Spreading Election Misinformation, but X’s Fact Checkers Are Long Gone. 'Civil rights lawyers and Democrats are sounding alarms about Mr. Musk’s claims about voting. The Biden campaign called his posts “profoundly irresponsible.”'
• A new kind of climate change denialism has taken hold on YouTube, says research group. "Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says the center's new report shows that climate misinformation has evolved in ways that make it possible for a lot of it to evade YouTube’s advertising ban on content that denies climate change while generating millions of dollars of revenue in the process." (podcast link)
• Deepfake Dirty Tricks Descend on New Hampshire Ahead of Primary. "Long-time fears about AI-driven misinformation are now a reality with robocalls from AI Biden."
• MAGA grifters cash in selling fake cures to imaginary disease. "This time around, the grifters are telling their suckers that Hillary Clinton and the round-earthers have cooked up a diabolical pathogen called "Disease X" to rid the planet of "excess population," "install a corporate world government," and "enslave humanity." If you don't want your body to get covered in festering boils and carbuncles the size of chicken eggs, you need to buy a "medical contagion kit" with vials of life-saving ivermectin manufactured right here in God's most favorite country in the whole universe." Of course, "Disease X" is just a placeholder used by the WHO to indicate that there will someday be another pandemic.