Disinfo Docket 28 August
DisinfoDocket curates influence operations-related academic research, news, events and job opportunities.
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Highlights
- Iran Hack Illuminates Long-Standing Trends—and Raises New Challenges (Lawfare, 26 August)
- Why we created an AI community care agreement (Tiny News Collective)
- Chinese government hackers penetrate U.S. internet providers to spy (Washington Post, 27 August)
- Telegram Founder’s Arrest Part of Broad Investigation, French Prosecutors Say (NYT, 26 August)
- A tool that lets users fight misinformation online (MIT, 27 August)
- Are people more likely to accurately evaluate misinformation when the political stakes are high? Haha, no (Nieman Lab, 27 August)
Our Justice & Accountability team is looking for an open source analyst on a part-time consultancy contract basis. They will collect and analyse information from open sources regarding the conflict in Palestine and Israel which will be used for accountability purposes...🧵
— Bellingcat (@bellingcat) August 27, 2024
1. Academia & Research
- Very Demure, Very Mindful Phishing (Memetic Warfare, 28 August)
2. Platforms & Technology
- Debate over “open source AI” term brings new push to formalize definition (ArsTechnica, 27 August)
Telegram
- How Telegram played itself (Platformer, 26 August)
- Arrest of Telegram’s Durov inflames debate over online crime and free speech (Washington Post, 26 August)
- Macron loves Telegram. French judges hate it. (Politico, 27 August)
- Macron on Telegram CEO’s arrest: French government was not involved (Politico, 26 August)
- Russia says France better come up with strong evidence against Telegram CEO (Politico, 27 August)
Meta
- Zuckerberg says he regrets caving to White House pressure on content (Politico, 26 August)
X (Twitter)
- Grok AI: Elon Musk's unrestricted chatbot that could cause 'reckless' fake news (France 24, 26 August)
- How the Journal Analyzed Elon Musk’s Posts on X (WSJ, 25 August)
- Social platform X edits AI chatbot after election officials warn that it spreads misinformation (ABC, 26 August)
- X’s Grok will direct users to Vote.gov after bungling basic ballot question (ArsTechnica, 27 August)