Detecting and Fighting Disinformation

I was going to do yet another blog post with articles pointing out examples of misinformation and disinformation (there's just SO much of it right now), but instead I wanted to highlight some sites and tools that you can use to detect disinformation. 

Note: Although I use the term "disinformation" for simplicity in this and other posts, you can assume everything here applies to misinformation. 

• 20 Helpful Verification Tools for Journalists. Although aimed at journalists, the tools linked in this article will be useful to anyone. Verify location, whether an image has been modified, spot AI-generated content, and more. 
• Wikipedia's list of fake news websites. "Fake news websites are those which intentionally, but not necessarily solely, publish hoaxes and disinformation for purposes other than news satire. Some of these sites use homograph spoofing attacks, typosquatting and other deceptive strategies similar to those used in phishing attacks to resemble genuine news outlets."
• Disinformation Designed to Ingrain Erroneous Beliefs and Lies. "Google search can bring results that confirm disinformation, not debunk it." Tips on how to spot disinformation in Google Search results. 
• Joint Advisory: Cyber officials warn Canadians of malicious campaign to impersonate high-profile public figures, from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. "Cyber security officials in the Government of Canada are warning Canadians about a spike in malicious cyber activity, where threat actors are using text and AI-generated voice messages impersonating senior officials and prominent public figures to steal money and information." Includes tips, guidelines, and links to useful resources.
• How to Spot and Combat Health Misinformation. 'While recent events have magnified the problem, misinformation “is not necessarily a new phenomenon. It has been around for centuries,” said Kylie Hall, M.P.H., Operations Director for the Center for Immunization Research and Education at North Dakota State University, during a session at ASM Microbe in June 2022. Misinformation gains traction in periods of uncertainty, as people try to make sense of events when verified facts are lacking. Various factors, including social media, contribute to the dissemination of misinformation. Learning how to spot and correct it—and help others do the same—can slow the spread of misinformation now, and in the future.'

Treating Disinformation Like a Disease

It's been noted here and elsewhere that disinformation and misinformation spreads like a disease. Now researchers and companies are beginning to treat it like a disease and to try to use disease fighting techniques to combat it. 

On Tuesday, Edelman launched what it calls the Disinformation Shield, a tool that uses artificial intelligence, real-time media monitoring of the open and dark webs, and social psychology to track, identify, and defuse the next viral meme or hideous conspiracy theory that brings a major corporation to its knees. The product draws on van der Linden’s inoculation theories to try to prevent the spread of disinformation, not unlike a public-health agency would do to prevent a highly transmissible and potentially dangerous virus from rampaging through a population.

Jim O’Leary, Edelman’s head of global corporate affairs, said in an interview that disinformation was the new battleground not just for elections and governments but for the business world. Just as most of corporate America awoke to the importance of cybersecurity six or seven years ago, companies large and small now realize they can’t ignore the global information crisis. “Disinformation is not ‘the next great threat,’” he says. “It’s here today. For our clients, this has entered the realm of not ‘if’ but ’when.’”

Disinformation About Dead Canadian Doctors Keeps Spreading

Back in October of last year, I posted about Druthers, a right-wing, conspiracy-laden "newspaper" that I received in the mail. The lead article suggested that a large number of Canadian doctors have died as a result of getting the COVID-19 vaccine. This is, of course, not true. 

Unfortunately, this conspiracy theory continues to spread. Last week I came across a long Twitter thread by Ashleigh Stewart, a Toronto journalist, who looked into the story in much more detail. Here's a bit from a couple of the early tweets in the thread.

A big conspiracy theory says the Covid vaccine could have killed 80+ Canadian doctors

I spent months investigating & speaking with the doctor's families. Most died from heart attacks, cancer or suicide

But it won't go away. And those behind it are Canadian doctors themselves.

A November iteration of the Canadian doctor conspiracy theory features 80 photographs & names. They're all real people. But none that I could find died from the Covid-19 vaccine

But many people believe it. And now the vaccine abuse is being directed at grieving families.

Of the 48 doctors I could determine the cause of death of: 10 died from cancer, 3 in car accidents, 1 while climbing K2, 1 drowned, 5 had heart attacks & 6 died by suicide. Others battled ongoing/ abrupt illnesses or the family preferred not to say. 1 was not even vaccinated."

The Twitter thread goes on to look at the source of the conspiracy theory and the effects it's having on the families of those doctors mentioned in the article. 

Global News has since published her more detailed story about it: "Kraken, Elon Musk and dead Canadian doctors: Disinformation surges 3 years into the pandemic". 

The article looks at the doctors who originated and continue to promote the theory (I'm boggled that anyone with medical training could do this, but there we have it), the response of the country's governing medical bodies and provincial and federal governments (pretty useless), and its continuing spread, especially after Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. 

After welcoming back a slew of people previously barred from Twitter for spreading COVID-19 disinformation under Musk’s new leadership, the platform went even further on Nov. 23 – quietly dismantling its policy against COVID-19 misinformation.

But disinformation didn’t quietly creep back – it exploded.

After the online release of misinformation documentary Died Suddenly on Nov. 21, the phrase “Died Suddenly” trended on Twitter for days. That helped it reach more than 10 million views on alternative video website Rumble in a little over a week.

Disinformation is now being shared by huge accounts, including those verified with Twitter Blue.

It's scary and upsetting reading. God help us if we get hit with a pandemic disease that has a death rate a couple of orders of magnitude higher than COVID-19 (H5N1 or MERS, for example). The lack of social cohesion demonstrated in this relatively mild pandemic will be our doom. (Historically, pandemics have had much higher death rates). 

More on Disinformation

It's time for another post with links to articles about disinformation and misinformation. There's been a lot of it recently. 

Vitamin A and Measles: What the data show (and how to talk about it). "RFK Jr. and a new form of germ theory denialism." Bad information about diseases can kill. 

Madonna, Extreme Weather and Disinformation. "There is a connection." No, Madonna did not cause extreme weather in Brazil despite what some conspiracy theorists would have you believe.

Measles Is One Of The Most Contagious Diseases On Earth. "With the Trump administration suppressing public health information, here's what you need to know."

Bogeymen and Trojan Horses. "How to identify and call out Trump and Musk’s fascist tactics." The amount of disinformation spewing from the mouths of these two people is truly staggering. Knowing their tactics can help you avoid it.

The Emperor’s New Philosophy. "Of drunkards, lampposts and economic doctrines." How to understand what Trump is saying about the economy really means. 

Canada’s greatest vulnerability is disinformation, and we have no defence for it. (archive link) "Targeting our population with content normalizing the idea of absorbing Canada aims to destabilize our institutions and sap our will to resist. It exploits intergenerational conflict, denigrates our history and culture, and makes America seem like the land of endless opportunity. The aim, after a couple of years of bombarding social media and torquing its algorithms, is to make us believe joining the U.S. isn’t much of a leap."

As Pope Francis Ails, Outlandish Rumors Run Wild (gift link). "Audio, a photo, medical reports: The truth may be out there, but when it comes to the health of the pontiff, many people prefer more fanciful tales."

The Curse of Disinformation

I've posted quite a bit about disinformation and misinformation; I've even set up a blog topic for tracking posts about it. 

Sadly there's more to it than just reading something online that is false or misleading. Disinformation, and the organized campaigns that spread it and often result in harassment, can have major effects on people's lives. Here are some examples.

Canada Day fireworks

'Murderers' and 'Criminals': "Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists." 

The '15-minute city' conspiracy spreads to Canada. "The concept of 15-minute cities — where a person's daily needs in a city are accessible within a 15-minute walk, bike or transit ride from their home — is a few years old. It's been picked up by many cities to guide urban planning and design. But in recent months, the 15-minute city idea has also been seized on by people who fear it's an elaborate conspiracy to limit individual freedoms, mobility, and to create barricaded sectors to keep them trapped." 26-minute podcast.

He Wanted to Unclog Cities. Now He’s ‘Public Enemy No. 1.’ (gifted-no paywall) "Researchers like Carlos Moreno, the professor behind a popular urban planning concept, are struggling with conspiracy theories and death threats."

After Elon Musk, Joe Rogan vaccine Twitter brawl, scientists say ‘vile rhetoric & misinformation’ is forcing them off the platform. "Scientists have long used Twitter. Now, they question its future as a tool for sharing medical information."

Death threats and harassment: 2024 election workers already are scared. "A new NPR investigation shows that election workers nationwide are already bracing for threats as the 2024 presidential race looms."

A vaccine scientist says being tag-teamed and dogpiled on by Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and RFK Jr. all at once has been 'overwhelming'. 'Hotez became the target of widespread ire after he tweeted in support of a Vice article published on Friday titled: "Spotify Has Stopped Even Sort of Trying to Stem Joe Rogan's Vaccine Misinformation." That episode featured presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who discussed his conspiracy theory-fueled stance on vaccines during a three-hour episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.'

Disinformation researchers under investigation: what’s happening and why. "Researchers who study how disinformation spreads are under investigation in the United States for allegedly helping to censor conservative opinions about COVID-19 vaccines and government elections. Jim Jordan, a US representative for Ohio, is leading the charge against the scientists. He is also one of the Republican leaders who have suggested that the Democrats have stolen the 2020 presidential election from former president Donald Trump, and who have made unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud."

More About Disinformation

It's time to publish links to several articles about misinformation and disinformation. I don't know if it's just that there's more of it or people are paying more attention to it. As you might expect, most of the articles are about politics and not just the US election as Canada gets in there too. 

Halloween decorations

• The Russians had money. The Canadian had far-right influencers. The U.S. Department of Justice says it has a criminal case. "A U.S. indictment alleges that two Russians helped funnel millions of dollars into a media company in order to spread misinformation that would benefit Moscow."
• From the Storm to the Stormtroopers. "Today, our American fascists blame the hurricanes on the meteorologists and disrupt the government response.  Tomorrow they will blame climate change on the climate scientists and deport their enemies of choice.  And the day after tomorrow there will be no democracy and no country, just a politics of impotence and a fascist catastrophe."
• The Climate Clowns. "An outrageous new lie is being spread about hurricanes, and I can’t even." I don't know which is scarier: that a politician would have the nerve to spout garbage like that, or that people are stupid enough to believe them.
• A Disinformation Trial Run. "The conspiracies and false claims surrounding hurricane relief efforts carry an important silver lining." About the only positive side to the flood of disinformation is that the media seem to be catching on to the nonsense.
• The Media Is Finally Calling Trump Out. But Is It Too Late? "The double standard Kamala Harris is being held to by the media is mind numbing."
• A fringe party packed with conspiracy theorists could soon be leading one of Canada’s largest provinces. Here’s why I’m not surprised. "British Columbia’s provincial election is getting extremely weird, and it might be a sign something’s deeply broken in Canadian democracy. The Conservative Party of B.C. — led by a man who had to issue a mea culpa after discussing the idea of prosecuting doctors in “Nuremberg”-style COVID-19 trials — has been surging in the polls. The party now looks set to make significant gains or perhaps even replace the incumbent B.C. NDP."
• Weaponized Polling Is More Dangerous Than Ever. "Right-leaning outfits are skewing the polls for Trump for quite sinister reasons."
• What Keeps Latino Voting-Rights Activists Up at Night? Disinformation (gift link). Activists say the nefarious material is more widespread, sophisticated and complex than ever.

More About Disinformation

It's time, unfortunately, for links to more articles about disinformation and misinformation. 

• DisinfoWatch.org "DisinfoWatch is a leading Canadian foreign disinformation monitoring and debunking platform. Our data is sourced through an international network of journalists, civil society organizations and analysts, as well as some automated sources, and is anaylized and exposed in order raise broader general awareness of disinformation and build long-term resilience against it." If you're from the US, don't let the fact that this is a Canadian site deter you from using it. Their database 
• A polite disagreement bot ring is flooding Bluesky — reply guy as a (dis)service. The new kid on the block is being introduced to the real world. 
• Meta’s Abandonment of Fact-Checking Empowers a President Who Traffics in Lies. "As false information about wildfires in Los Angeles rages online, Mark Zuckerberg is fanning the flames of disinformation."
• Distorting Trump's Language. "MAGA's terminology is an inaccurate means of describing our state of affairs--together, we must reframe and rename our political vocabulary."
• Voodoo Trade Policy Comes to America. "What to expect when you’re expecting tariffs." There's a lot of economic misinformation coming our way these days. Paul Krugman exposes some of it. 

Disinformation Is Causing More Real-World Pain

Disinformation can have some serious real-world consequences and in the last week I've seen more examples of that.

• How conspiracy theories affect the families of believers (22 minute listen). "Over the past several years, followers of QAnon – a conspiracy theory suggesting Donald Trump is the leader of a secret war against the "deep state" – have gained political influence in the United States and beyond. Several of them were part of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Now, investigative reporter Jesselyn Cook is looking into the human toll of believing in such conspiracies – both on followers, and their loved ones. She joins Piya Chattopadhyay to discuss her book The Quiet Damage, which explores the social fallout of QAnon and challenges our ideas about truth and reality." This is heartbreaking. 
• U.K. Police Officers Injured in Far-Right Riot After Deadly Stabbing (gift link). "A day after an attacker with a knife killed three girls in Southport, northwestern England, violence driven in part by disinformation erupted in the town." As if the stabbing of children wasn't bad enough. 
• The blaze in Jasper fueled a wider disinformation firestorm. "The researchers found that social media lubricates the spread of false and misleading information in times of crisis. But the effects persist beyond hindering evacuation efforts and emergency response; disinformation about the wildfires also helped fuel opposition to climate policies." Hindering evacuation efforts is not a good thing. 

Older Articles About Disinformation and Misinformation

Over the last couple of years, I've become increasingly concerned about the spread of disinformation and misinformation in social media and the news media. 

The two terms are closely related. As I understand it misinformation is inaccurate information and disinformation is false information. Both are intended to mislead and can be considered propaganda, depending on their source.

I've set up a separate topic on the blog to cover both although, for simplicity, I've labelled it Disinformation. 

These links will take you to older articles on misinformation an disinformation.

More About Disinformation

Once again, I've collected links to several articles about misinformation and disinformation. Some of these are quite long, but very much worth taking the time to read. 

I'm going to start with a newsletter post from author Annalee Newitz, who has just published a book called Stories Are Weapons about the history of psychological operations, or psyops. Many modern disinformation campaigns fall into this category. If you read one article from this post, it should probably be this one. The post is titled "How to recognize a psyop in three easy steps".  Here's how it starts:

Psyops are everywhere, but not in the way that you might think. Here is a quick-and-dirty guide to recognizing these mind-warping weapons in the wild. 

As I discovered while researching my new book Stories Are Weapons, psychological warfare became a professional industry in the early twentieth century, modeled in part on the new field of public relations. The basic structure of an American psyop is cobbled together out of advertising techniques, pop psychology, and pulp fiction tropes. Using insights gleaned from these sources, the military spent the early years of the 20th century figuring out how to craft messages that can hurt, demoralize, and distract you. 

Then something terrible but predictable happened. Just as military equipment was transferred to civilian police forces during the 1990s, psyops found their way into the arsenals of culture warriors today. 

Unlike bombs, however, psyops can be dodged. Once you know what to look for, your brain can treat this cultural ordinance exactly the way your spam filter treats e-mails about CrYpT0 InVeStMeNt$ – it will throw them in your mental trashcan unread, so that you can focus on constructive information.

In a following newsletter post, she talks about two other psyop campaigns, both of which have had major effects. 

• The first was conducted by the US military in the Philippines in 2020 urging Filipinos not to use the Sinovac covid vaccine from China, and to avoid masks from Chinese manufacturers. This was particularly devastating for a country where the death toll from covid was tremendous, largely due to vaccine hesitancy." 
• The second is a right-wing campaign that resulted in the shutdown of the Stanford Internet Observatory, which "has done brilliant work studying the spread of dangerous content online, from covid misinformation to child sexual abuse material." 

The Washington Post (and other media outlets) reported on how right-wing media outlets are deceptively editing videos of President Biden to make him appear disoriented or senile. 

This past week, the RNC feed has misleadingly called attention to two video clips of Biden. One was so distorted that it resulted in a “community note” on the X platform calling out its dishonesty. But the RNC’s dismal track record — which we have highlighted on multiple occasions — has not stopped right-leaning outfits from echoing the RNC’s framing and reinforcing its narrative that Biden has lost a step.

It's a sad commentary on the current state of the news media that such blatant misrepresentations are being passed off a actual news by media outlets. 

Here's another example of disinformation, perhaps not as impactful, about videos and photos purporting to show US aircraft carriers being attacked in the Red Sea. However:

This video shows the USS Eisenhower docked at Pier 12 at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia in April 2023.

It was created by combining an image from Google Earth/Maps of the ship at dock & pasting a Shutterstock photo of a bullet hole over the flight deck as fake damage.

Here's an article about a major Russian campaign to influence news media in the West. 

“Please Check”. More than 800 organisations, among which many media outlets have been flooded with emails and social media mentions urging them to verify dubious claims undermining Ukraine, France and Germany for the most part. The issue is that these solicitations are part of a massive pro-Russian operation, still ongoing at the time of writing.

Finally, a long article from Wired about how programmatic advertising leads to the spread of misinformation. There's more going on than just ads that can load malware. The unintended consequences of the current system are wider and deeper than you might think. 

The Perils of Thought Scams

 Here's an interesting article about the perils of mis- and disinformation written from a Canadian perspective. The author uses the term "thought scams" which I haven't come across before but is a good descriptor. We Canadians have a tendency to be somewhat smug and dismissive about some of the political excesses that we seen in othe countries, especially  the United States. But as the recent "Freedom Convoy" and occupation of Ottawa have shown, we're not so different. 

In the face of an increasingly disastrous war in Ukraine, Russia is shutting down independent media outlets, and threatening massive punishments for anyone caught spreading “fake news.” But Russian citizens aren’t the only victims of that country’s propagandizing and disinformation campaigns: Russia, and other foreign regimes, have been pushing insidious thought scams on Canadians for years, robbing our institutions of trust and our citizens of informed thought.

Foreign bad actors have worked hard to sow conspiracy theories, distrust and division. They encouraged anger and disinformation to impact recent American elections, and they have become well-entrenched here in Canada too.

Researchers at Simon Fraser University found Russia and Iran have been “spreading disinformation around highly emotional and divisive issues to further their strategic interests” in Canada. 

But let’s be clear, the foreign, state-sponsored bad actors aren’t the only ones creating fake news. Often, their most effective attempts to amplify misinformation and lies begin with stories and claims that began right here at home. In a single week last month, as protesters descended on Ottawa and tensions around the country ran high, we saw a fake death by horse-trampling, a fake Governor General registry of 3.5 per cent of Canadians to secure a vote of no confidence, a fake frozen bank account, and a fake UN reinforcements story because a plane was getting maintenance in North Bay.

More on Disinformation 9

It's time for another post about disinformation and misinformation. I could probably do a post a day like this if I had the time and the stomach for it.  

• The War Against Misinformation Is Over. The Lies Won. "New research suggests people know images and headlines are false but share them anyway." What a journalist has to cope with. 
• "Klansplaining": A Field Guide to The Term And Language Trump/MAGA Have Perfected. 'A new word — Klansplaining — for rhetoric engineered so racists hear racism and everyone else hears "concerns about crime"'
• Russia and U.S. amplifying Alberta separatist narratives to stoke division, distrust: report. "Moscow's influence scheme is covert, while Trump-aligned meddling is overt and public." Just one of many articles on the subject: see also my blog post from earlier this week. 
• Canada Is Building a Firewall Around, Disinformation, Hate Speech And Democracy. "While the U.S. is busy letting the president sign executive orders restricting who can vote by mail, Canada just quietly dropped two of the most consequential pieces of legislation to protect democracy from foreign-funded gaslighting machines."
• AI Fakes Spread Disinformation. Is the Distrust They Create Even Worse? "Manipulated images undermine our shared reality—and the democracy built upon it."
• Scientists warn fake research is spreading faster than real science. "A major investigation found organized networks producing fake scientific papers, selling authorships, and manipulating journals to mass-publish fraudulent research."
• 5 (more) logical fallacies in the era of RFK Jr. "Common rhetorical tricks that are used to spread false health information."
• The Nursery Is No Place for Misinformation. "A basic newborn shot has become another target of the distrust machine, and the consequences can be devastating."

Elections Canada Resource to Combat Election Disinformation

Elections Canada has introduced a resource called ElectoFacts to helo counter misinformation and disinformation about elections and the electoral system. In their press release, they say:

To counter misinformation and disinformation about our electoral process, Elections Canada now flags incorrect information and narratives, and responds by providing accurate information and sources.

'ElectoFacts' is part of Elections Canada's overall efforts to give Canadians the information they need to participate in federal elections. Canadians should have easily accessible and accurate information about the federal electoral process and the safeguards in place to protect it, directly from the source.

The site shows inaccurate or misleading information commonly observed by Elections Canada with accurate information placed beside it.  

This is a good initiative on the part of the government and I hope it gets widely publicized.

 

Verification Handbook for Disinformation and Media Manipulation

In parallel with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are suffering through an infodemic, a deluge of information and misinformation. It's critically important that we are able to filter the good stuff from the garbage and deliberately misleading that we see online. And that's true not just for pandemic-related material, but for political and scientific information, to name just two other important areas.

To help deal with this, the European Journalism Centre has published the Verification Handbook for Disinformation and Media Manipulation. You can read it online for free.

The latest edition of the Verification Handbook arrives at a critical moment. Today’s information environment is more chaotic and easier to manipulate than ever before. This book equips journalists with the knowledge to investigate social media accounts, bots, private messaging apps, information operations, deep fakes, as well as other forms of disinformation and media manipulation. The first resource of its kind, it builds on the first edition of the Verification Handbook and the Verification Handbook for Investigative Reporting.

This is the table of contents from the second section: Investigating Actors and Content.

 Investigating Actors & Content

1. Investigating Social Media Accounts

1a. Case Study: How investigating a set of Facebook accounts revealed a coordinated effort to spread propaganda in the Philippines

1b. Case Study: How we proved that the biggest Black Lives Matter page on Facebook was fake

2. Finding patient zero

3. Spotting bots, cyborgs and inauthentic activity

3a. Case study: Finding evidence of automated Twitter activity during the Hong Kong protests

4. Monitoring for fakes and information operations during breaking news

5. Verifying and questioning images

6. How to think about deepfakes and emerging manipulation technologies

I've only had a chance to skim through some of the chapters, but at a first glance it looks like an extremely valuable and useful resource. Here's a Twitter thread from Craig Silverman, Media Editor at BuzzFeed News, that touches on some of the highlights of the book.

More About Disinformation 7

It's time for another post with links to articles about disinformation and misinformation. There's enough of it about that it's becoming a regular topic on this blog. I do plan on doing a another post next week about a tool I came across that some people might find useful.

• Community colleges have been dealing with an unprecedented phenomenon: fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds. While it has caused chaos at many colleges, some Southwestern faculty feel their leaders haven’t done enough to curb the crisis."
• Scroll through Trump’s new covid website — and have your mind blown. "Scrolling through Trump’s latest foray into history-washing."
• AI Slop Farms Are Churning Out Fake Heartwarming Videos About Trump Figures. "Machine-made YouTube videos are racking up views while fooling the MAGA faithful." I haven't seen any of these myself yet, but I have seen a fair number of posts on Facebook that are just general heartwarming stories, and I'm prertty sure a lot of them are AI slop. 
• Sask. mushroom pickers sound alarm on dangerously misleading AI-generated books. "Amazon says it has removed the books after being contacted by CBC." AI misinformation can kill. 
• Fact file: Ways to spot fake visuals during coming federal election (gift link). "The Globe and Mail will cover topics as they arise. Here is a selection of tools and processes we use that you can also employ."
• Online sabotage (gift link). "Disinformation from abroad is a real danger in a race where Canada-U.S. mistrust is high (gift link). Here’s what the cyber threats might look like." 

The New Cold War

I'm a child of the Cold War. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the periodic tests of the air raid sirens, and the B-52 bombers flying low over my uncle's cottage on their way to Kincheloe Air Force Base. That settled down to a dull background anxiety with the fall of the Soviet Union, with the occasional proxy war flareup. But the Cold War is back though it's being fought on a different and less tangible front using propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation, and hacking to destabilize societies. 

In Tuesday's Big Picture post, Jay Kuo outlines how the US Republican party has become an ally, if not an outright tool, of Russia's propaganda machine. 

This piece walks through the three types of compromise—disinformation, extortion, and bribery—to give a sense of what we know and what we don’t really know, and, importantly, where we should be on our guard. As this summary will show, from the 2016 election till now, there’s enough Russian smoke now to assume there is a fire, one that compromises not only the integrity of our own system of elections, but the safety and security of the free world.

Given that so much of modern society depends on computers and automated systems, they've become a target for government-sponsored hacking groups. Wired reports on one such group that calls itself the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn or People's Cyber Army of Russia. 

Whether or not it's winning hearts and minds, Cyber Army of Russia—which also at times calls itself the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn or People's Cyber Army of Russia—seems to at least be getting some of the attention it seeks. Last week, a group of government bodies including the US National Security Agency, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the UK's National Cybersecurity Center, and several others issued a joint report warning of “Russian hacktivists” targeting so-called operational technology targets like control systems for water and wastewater utilities. The report warned that victims had “experienced minor tank overflow events” and other disruptions—although it noted the effects were temporary, and the hacktivists had historically exaggerated their hacking's impact.

The Financial Times reports that Russia could be planning more serious attacks including bombing, arson, and attacks on infrastructure. (archive.ph link)

European intelligence agencies have warned their governments that Russia is plotting violent acts of sabotage across the continent as it commits to a course of permanent conflict with the west. 

Russia has already begun to more actively prepare covert bombings, arson attacks and damage to infrastructure on European soil, directly and via proxies, with little apparent concern about causing civilian fatalities, intelligence officials believe. 

 Finally, the Washington Post reports (gift link) that Putin is " re-engineering his country into a regressive, militarized society that views the West as its mortal enemy."

In “Russia, Remastered,” The Washington Post documents the historic scale of the changes Putin is carrying out and has accelerated with breathtaking speed during two years of brutal war even as tens of thousands of Russians have fled abroad. It is a crusade that gives Putin common cause with China’s Xi Jinping as well as some supporters of former president Donald Trump. And it raises the prospect of an enduring civilizational conflict to subvert Western democracy and — Putin has warned — even threatens a new world war.

Putin's plans were also covered by CBC Radio One on their morning news show, The Cuurent.  

I grew up with the Cold War. Now it looks like I might die with it. 

TikTok Spreads COVID-19 Disinformation

I've seen quite a bit of press about how Facebook and YouTube lead to radicalization and spread disinformaion, especially about COVID-19. Now it seems that we have another disinformation vector: TikTok. 

On Wednesday, Media Matters published new research findings that suggest that, despite community guidelines that specifically prohibit the spread of health misinformation, TikTok’s algorithm frequently amplifies lies about COVID-19 and vaccines to the platform’s 1 billion-strong user base.

During the course of its research into Covid-19 misinformation on the platform, Media Matters engaged with anti-vaccination and COVID-19 misinformation by watching relevant videos all the way through and liking them. Sure enough, the positive engagement had the effect of filling the account’s “For You Page”—TikTok’s landing page for algorithmically recommended content—with videos that almost exclusively featured anti-vaccination and COVID-19 hoax content.

In its report, Media Matters also kept tabs on 18 specific vaccine misinformation videos and found that at the conclusion of its research, those videos had garnered a combined total of more than 57 million total views. The tracked content reportedly included a video that told viewers that “your children and elderly that are not vaccinated will be removed permanently from your home,” (3.9 million views) and a video promoting a hoax about “vaccine bandits” who will “walk up to you on the street and they ask if you’re vaccinated and if you hesitate at all, they inject you with a vaccine right on the spot,” (6.3 million views).

The Anatomy of Online Bullshit in the Fog of Impending Doom

Here is a very detailed analysis of the news and social media postings surrounding the assassination of Qassem Soleimani by the US. It's mind boggling and seriously dismaying just how much disinformation is being spread about this. The article is definitely worth reading and thinking about.

Stateside and in the short term, the killing has largely acted to rally Trump’s conservative support—and trigger a tirade of criticism from many of his opponents, who worry he made an impulsive decision with little regard for its potentially sweeping consequences (and perhaps to distract from his domestic political crises). In 2020, that also means we are headed into another disinformation hell fueled by internet rumors, lies, and propaganda. Here’s some of what to watch out for.

We're Toast 41

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. It is part of an ongoing series of posts.

Dying branches

• June 2023 was the world’s warmest June on record. "June featured unprecedented Canadian heat and wildfires, record-low Antarctic sea ice, and a strengthening El Niño."
• New disinformation series promotes terrain theory pseudoscience. "So, basically, it's a disinformation extravaganza grounded in "terrain theory," which is a widely debunked ideology that denies that germs cause disease. If you didn't know that there are growing numbers of people who don't believe in germ theory, surprise!" Semmelweis must be spinning in his grave.
• The Rise of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Omicron Subvariant Pathogenicity. "We show that the rise of Omicron pathogenicity is exponential, and we have modeled the case fatality rate of the next major subvariant as 0.0413, 2.5 times that of the Alpha strain and 60% of the original Wuhan strain which caused the greatest morbidity and mortality during the pandemic."
• ‘Frankenstein Chemicals’ Are Even Worse Than ‘Forever Chemicals’. "PFAS get a lot of attention, but there are other compounds in our drinking water that are more dangerous — and much more common."
• We’re Building Things Based on a Climate We No Longer Live In. "NOAA precipitation estimates that engineers and planners use to design bridges, roads and other infrastructure are decades out of date because of climate change."
• Catastrophic climate 'doom loops' could start in just 15 years, new study warns. "Climate "tipping points," such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, could come within a human lifetime, scientists have said."
• The hard right and climate catastrophe are intimately linked. This is how. "As climate policy is weakened, extreme weather intensifies and more refugees are driven from their homes – and the cycle of hatred continues."
• ‘Absolutely stunned’: Sperm counts are falling faster than ever. 'Chemicals in tin can linings, cosmetics, nail polish, teflon pans and flame retardants on cushions have been linked to a steep decline in sperm counts and a potential “crisis in human reproduction”, Australian fertility specialists have been warned.'

A Disinformation Campaign About the Maui Wildfires

The wildfires that devastated the town of Lahaina and other locations on Maui were likely caused by high winds and electric power lines, a bad combination that's caused fires in many other locations. But that's not stopping bad actors from circulating  conspiracy theories about the fires. 

NewsGuard says it traced the conspiracy theory back to a post on the Chinese platform called 163.com in early August. From there, the accounts reportedly jumped platforms and made their way to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and around 10 other sites by mid-August. By September, the posts appeared on over a dozen platforms with posts attempting to target users from a wide variety of countries. Some of the shady accounts interacted with each other to boost their content and used the hashtag #meteorologicalweapon to amplify the falsehoods. Many of the posts appeared to have replies and likes generated by bot accounts trying to make it appear as if humans were organically interacting with them.

In an email to Gizmodo, Meta confirmed the accounts shared by NewsGuard were part of a disinformation operation called Spamouflage that originated in China. That campaign, which dates back to 2019, was linked to another trove of inauthentic Facebook accounts and pages detected recently highlighted by Meta researchers. Meta said the accounts mentioned in the NewsGuard report were unsuccessful in their attempts to reach real audiences on Facebook.