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☆ How some of the biggest right-wing media stars ended up as unwitting puppets of Russian propaganda
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-07 | by ( Hadas Gold | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +13 min

Now, the Justice Department is alleging that some of the biggest stars in right-wing social media were, unwittingly, part of a sinister Russian operation to influence the 2024 US election. What is Tenet Media? “Overt shilling”The Russians also pushed Tenet to promote videos that were going viral on social media, according to the indictment. Tenet Media has not responded to requests for comment and stopped posting content on Wednesday. After the 2016 US presidential election, congressional and federal investigations showed Moscow had successfully co-opted unwitting Americans to stage protests, run social media accounts and host events at its behest.

Persons: CNN — They’re, weren’t, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Lauren Southern, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen, Dave Rubin, Johnson, MAGA influencers, Rubin, Glenn Beck’s, Enrique Tarrio, Jack Posobiec, Pool, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Christiansen, Lauren Chen, Liam Donovan, Chen, Donovan, ”, Donald Trump’s, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Evgenia Novozhenina, “, Trump, Q, Justin Trudeau, Putin, Trudeau, Israel, ” Rubin, Eduard Grigoriann, “ Grigoriann, Tenet, Tucker Carlson, Carlson fawned, I’ll, Nina Jankowicz, ’, unvarnished ’, Renee DiResta, Donie O’Sullivan Organizations: CNN, Justice, Justice Department, Tenet Media, Kremlin, Vice Media, Independent, Young Turks, YouTube, Tenet, Google, Proud Boys, Blaze Media, Ukraine, The Justice Department, Republican Party, Trump, Democrats, ”, United, ISIS, Hungary's, Reuters “, Canadian, Hamas, FBI, Fox News, American Sunlight, Media, DOJ, Soviet, Stanford Internet Observatory Locations: Tennessee, Russia, Ukraine, ”, “ Ukraine, United States, Moscow, Russian, Colorado, American

☆ Renée DiResta: We Are Losing the Battle Against Election Disinformation - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-25 | by ( Renée Diresta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 2020, the Stanford Internet Observatory, where I was until recently the research director, helped lead a project that studied election rumors and disinformation. As part of that work, we frequently encountered conspiratorial thinking from Americans who had been told the 2020 presidential election was going to be stolen. First, an image or video, such as a photo of a suitcase near a polling place, was posted as evidence of wrongdoing. The poster would tweet the purported evidence, tagging partisan influencers or media accounts with large followings. Partisan media would follow.

Organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory

☆ Opinion | Why MAGA Loves Russia and Hates Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-08 | by ( David French | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As I type this newsletter, continued American aid for Ukraine is in grave doubt. And we’re receiving reports from the front lines that Russia is advancing, in part because of Ukrainian ammunition shortages. Ronald Reagan isn’t just rolling over in his grave; he may also lurch from it in a fit of incredulous rage. To explain the intensity of Republican resistance to Ukraine aid, I need to return to a concept I wrote about in November: that of bespoke realities. But the mass Republican movement against Ukraine is rooted far less in policy than it is in a particular bespoke reality of the MAGA universe, in which Ukraine is a pernicious villain, Putin is a flawed hero and Russia should have crushed Ukraine long ago.

Persons: Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Putin, Ronald Reagan isn’t, Renée DiResta, MAGA, Putin Organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory Locations: Ukraine, Moscow, Russia

☆ US Receives Thousands of Reports of AI-Generated Child Abuse Content in Growing Risk
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-31 | by ( Jan. | At A.M. | ) www.usnews.com time to read: +2 min

The NCMEC has not yet published the total number of child abuse content reports from all sources that it received in 2023, but in 2022 it received reports of about 88.3 million files. "We are receiving reports from the generative AI companies themselves, (online) platforms and members of the public. It's absolutely happening," said John Shehan, senior vice president at NCMEC, which serves as the national clearinghouse to report child abuse content to law enforcement. Content flagged as AI-generated is becoming "more and more photo realistic," making it challenging to determine if the victim is a real person, said Fallon McNulty, director of NCMEC's CyberTipline, which receives reports of online child exploitation. OpenAI, creator of the popular ChatGPT, has set up a process to send reports to NCMEC, and the organization is in conversations with other generative AI companies, McNulty said.

Persons: Sheila Dang, John Shehan, Fallon McNulty, NCMEC's, McNulty, Kylie MacLellan Organizations: U.S . National Center for, Reuters, Meta, Stanford Internet Observatory Locations: NCMEC, Austin

☆ Hundreds of images of child sexual abuse material were found in a massive dataset used to train AI image-generating tools
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-21 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —More than a thousand images of child sexual abuse material were found in a massive public dataset used to train popular AI image-generating models, Stanford Internet Observatory researchers said in a study published earlier this week. The presence of these images in the training data may make it easier for AI models to create new and realistic AI-generated images of child abuse content, or “deepfake” images of children being exploited. The massive dataset that the Stanford researchers examined, known as LAION 5B, contains billions of images that have been scraped from the internet, including from social media and adult entertainment websites. Of the more than five billion images in the dataset, the Stanford researchers said they identified at least 1,008 instances of child sexual abuse material. “Stability AI models were trained on a filtered subset of that dataset.

Persons: ” LAION Organizations: New, New York CNN, Stanford Internet, Stanford, Internet Watch, National Center for, Canadian Centre for Child, CNN, Stability Locations: New York, London

TikTok app logo is seen in this illustration taken, August 22, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsNov 16 (Reuters) - TikTok will prohibit content that promotes Osama bin Laden's 2002 letter detailing the former al Qaeda leader's justifications for attacks against Americans, the short-form video app said on Thursday. "Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism," TikTok said in a statement, adding that reports that it was "trending" on the platform were inaccurate. A search for "Letter to America" on TikTok surfaced no results on Thursday, with a notice that said the phrase may be associated with "content that violates our guidelines." On Wednesday, The Guardian removed the full text of bin Laden's letter, which it had published in 2002.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Osama bin, al, Laden, TikTok, Josh Gottheimer, Andrew Bates, Renee DiResta, Sheila Dang, David Shepardson, Rosalba O'Brien, David Gregorio Our Organizations: REUTERS, U.S, Democratic, Guardian, Stanford Internet Observatory, Thomson Locations: al Qaeda, Israel, United States, Pakistan, America, Austin, Washington

NEW YORK (AP) — The already-alarming proliferation of child sexual abuse images on the internet could become much worse if something is not done to put controls on artificial intelligence tools that generate deepfake photos, a watchdog agency warned on Tuesday. In a written report, The U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation urges governments and technology providers to act quickly before a flood of AI-generated images of child sexual abuse overwhelms law enforcement investigators and vastly expands the pool of potential victims. If it isn’t stopped, the flood of deepfake child sexual abuse images could bog investigators down trying to rescue children who turn out to be virtual characters. “That is just incredibly shocking.”Sexton said his charity organization, which is focused on combating online child sexual abuse, first began fielding reports about abusive AI-generated imagery earlier this year. It particularly targets the European Union, where there's a debate over surveillance measures that could automatically scan messaging apps for suspected images of child sexual abuse even if the images are not previously known to law enforcement.

Persons: “ We're, ”, Dan Sexton, ’, isn’t, Sexton, who’ve, “, ” Sexton, they're, David Thiel, Kamala Harris, Susie Hargreaves, ” ___ O'Brien, Barbara Ortutay, Kim Organizations: Internet Watch Foundation, Court, IWF, European Union, Technology, Stanford Internet Observatory, U.S, Associated Press Locations: South Korea, Busan, Spain, London, Providence , Rhode Island, Oakland , California, Seoul

REGULATORY SCRUTINYWhile disinformation has spread on all major social media platforms including Facebook and TikTok, X appeared to be the most recent to draw scrutiny from regulators. On Tuesday, European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton warned Musk that X was spreading "illegal content and disinformation," according to a letter Breton posted on X. Musk himself recommended that X users follow two accounts that had previously spread false claims for "real-time" updates on the conflict, the Washington Post reported. False information has also spread on messaging app Telegram and short-form video app TikTok, said DFRLab's Trad. Like other online platforms, YouTube has moderation employees and technology to remove content that violates its rules.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Ruslan Trad, X, Bruno Mars miscaptioned, Thierry Breton, Breton, Musk, Renee DiResta, Jack Brewster, Brewster, Tamara Kharroub, DFRLab's Trad, TikTok, Solomon Messing, there's, Messing, Kharroub, Sheila Dang, Riniki Sanyal, Deepa Babington Organizations: Twitter, REUTERS, Elon, European Union, Reuters, Atlantic, Forensic Research, Hamas, Meta, Facebook, European, EU, Stanford Internet Observatory, Washington Post, Washington, Arab Center Washington DC, New York University's Center for Social Media, YouTube, Thomson Locations: Israel, American, New, Dallas, Bangalore

☆ Elon Musk has 'cut off the good guys, empowered the bad guys' on X, says Stanford's Alex Stamos
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-05 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailElon Musk has 'cut off the good guys, empowered the bad guys' on X, says Stanford's Alex StamosAlex Stamos, Krebs Stamos Group partner, Stanford Internet Observatory director and former Facebook chief security officer, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss X, formerly known as Twitter, slashing its disinformation and election integrity team ahead of the 2024 election, the potential implications for next year's presidential election, and more.

Persons: Elon Musk, Alex Stamos Alex Stamos, Krebs Organizations: Krebs Stamos, Stanford Internet Observatory, Facebook

☆ Twitter’s future is in doubt as Threads tops 100 million users
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-10 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

The results underscore the risk Meta poses to Twitter’s business and raise questions about how, or if, Twitter can stem its losses. Twitter traffic had already been trending downward for months, according to data from the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare and the web analytics firm Similarweb. “Twitter traffic tanking,” Prince said as he posted the chart. A Twitter rival but not quite a Twitter replacementFueling Threads’ rapid growth has been Meta’s use of Instagram as a springboard to sign up new users, along with what many Threads users have identified as a dissatisfaction with Twitter. But after a Threads user pointed out that the new app was not featured in Twitter’s trending topics tab, Zuckerberg replied “Concerning” with a crying-laughter emoji.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Twitter didn’t, Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, ” Prince, Similarweb, ”, David Carr, We’ve, Alex Stamos, —, Stamos, ” Stamos, Kim Kardashian, Jeff Bezos, Axios, Adam Mosseri, Mosseri, Musk Organizations: Washington CNN, Twitter, Meta, Elon, CNN, “, Stanford Internet Observatory, Facebook

☆ Analysis: Meta's 'friendly' Threads collides with unfriendly internet
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( Katie Paul | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Maintaining that idealistic vision for Threads - which attracted more than 70 million users in its first two days - is another story. To be sure, Meta Platforms (META.O) is no newbie at managing the rage-baiting, smut-posting internet hordes. For starters, the company will not extend its existing fact-checking program to Threads, spokesperson Christine Pai said in an emailed statement on Thursday. Asked by Reuters to explain why it was taking a different approach to misinformation on Threads, Meta declined to answer. INTO THE FEDIVERSEFurther challenges in moderating content are in store once Meta links Threads to the so-called fediverse, where users from servers operated by other non-Meta entities will be able to communicate with Threads users.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Christine Pai, Pai, Adam Mosseri, Instagram, satanists, Donald Trump, Meta's Pai, Alex Stamos, Solomon Messing, Katie Paul, Kenneth Li, Matthew Lewis Organizations: YORK, Meta, Reuters, New York Times, West Bank, Conservative, Stanford Internet Observatory, Center for Social Media, New York University, San, Thomson Locations: San Francisco

☆ Instagram's algorithms are promoting accounts that share child sex abuse content, researchers find
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Instagram's recommendation algorithms have been connecting and promoting accounts that facilitate and sell child sexual abuse content, according to an investigation published Wednesday. Meta's photo-sharing service stands out from other social media platforms and "appears to have a particularly severe problem" with accounts showing self-generated child sexual abuse material, or SG-CSAM, Stanford University researchers wrote in an accompanying study. Stamos, who is now director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, said the problem has persisted after Elon Musk acquired Twitter late last year. "They then cut off our API access," he added, referring to the software that lets researchers access Twitter data to conduct their studies. Earlier this year, NBC News reported multiple Twitter accounts that offer or sell CSAM have remained available for months, even after Musk pledged to address problems with child exploitation on the social messaging service.

Persons: Instagram, Alex Stamos, Stamos, Elon Musk, CSAM, Musk Organizations: Stanford University, Wall Street Journal, Stanford, Policy Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Stanford Internet Observatory, Elon, Twitter, NBC News, YouTube

☆ Explainer: How Montana could enforce a TikTok ban
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Montana's ban is set to take effect on Jan. 1 2024. While TikTok can theoretically block IP addresses registered in Montana, app stores will have a more difficult time. "It would thus be impossible for our members to prevent the app from being downloaded specifically in the state of Montana," the TechNet representative testified. The app stores also would need to monitor more detailed location data from users' phones than they currently use, infringing on users' privacy, Stamos said. "The youth of Montana are about to become America's experts in VPNs," Railton said.

☆ Twitter research group stall complicates compliance with new EU law
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Sheila Dang | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

Twitter signed a voluntary agreement in June with the EU related to the DSA committing to "empowering the research community" through means including sharing datasets about disinformation with researchers. The EU law would require platforms with over 45 million EU users to respond to EU-vetted researcher proposals. THE WORK OF THE CONSORTIUMThe research consortium was formed in response to backlash against Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Twitter had been preparing to disclose at least a dozen new datasets to researchers before then, the former employees said. If the research consortium is eliminated, "we will be returning to the 2017 era of limited shared communication about malicious state actor activity," said Renée DiResta, research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory.

How Bots Pushing Adult Content Drowned Out Chinese Protest TweetsTwitter and its new owner, Elon Musk, have recently vowed to crack down on bots. When contacted, two businesses that appeared in spam tweets said that they had purchased the tweets using advertising services. The bots posting content during the protest did not focus on related hashtags; instead they included broader terms like the names of Chinese cities alongside adult content. BOT n BOT BOT BOT Searching for “北京” A search on Twitter for “Beijing” in simplified Chinese brought up tweet after tweet of spam ... BOT BOT BOT BOT Searching for “Beijing” ... but searching for “Beijing” in English showed no bot or spam activity among the top tweets. Bot advertising on Twitter A company listed on some spam tweets confirmed it ran an advertising business using bots.

☆ Elon Musk has divided Silicon Valley friendships in the same way Donald Trump divided American families, according to former Facebook executive
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Tom Dotan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Musk's fans and critics in Silicon Valley find it increasingly hard to get along, according to Alex Stamos, Facebook's former CISO. Stamos, who helped oversee content moderation at Facebook during the turbulent post-2016 election period, compared the situation to Donald Trump's divisiveness. "There's a scary impulse in the valley right now [to defend Musk]," Stamos said. "The fact that he has become this pied piper for otherwise serious people...it feels in Silicon Valley like after Trump was elected and families got a little riven." Stamos also predicted that as the Musk-Twitter experiment continues to unravel, Musk's Silicon Valley supporters will recant their position if his free-for-all approach results in real-world consequences.

☆ Twitter searches for China protests bombarded by spam and porn, raising alarms among researchers
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

The fire, and long simmering frustration over the country’s zero Covid policies, helped spur the rare protests in China. GreatFire.org, which helps Chinese citizens get around the country’s internet censorship, noted a torrent of “dating” spam tweets appearing on Friday tagged with “Urumqi,” the capital of Xinjiang. The flood of spam tweets is still ongoing, Smith told CNN on Monday. Twitter is officially blocked in China, but estimates of the number of Twitter users in China have ranged between 3 million and 10 million. Musk has pushed back on suggestions that his ownership of Tesla, which is heavily invested in China, may give the Chinese government “leverage” over Twitter.

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