Disinfo Docket 7 October

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Highlights

#Disinformation around elections doesn’t just seek to cast doubt on election results, but can also influence turnout, such as by convincing voters to vote on the wrong day. Read more: https://t.co/06g3vIYaPJ #IJNeternal

— IJNet (@IJNet) October 6, 2024

1. Another Hurdle in Recovery From Helene: Misinformation Is Getting in the Way (The New York Times, 7 October)
2. The news business is dying? That’s a tired and incomplete narrative. (Poynter, 7 October)
3. 2024 US Election: Women of Color Political Candidates are Targeted with More Offensive Speech and Hate Speech Than Other Candidates (Tech Policy Press, 4 October)
4. What are the rules on MP ‘freebies’? (Full Fact, 4 October)
5. How Russia Invaded Wikipedia (Foreign Policy, 4 October)
6. Elon Musk Co-Starred in Trump’s Disinformation Fest in Butler (Mother Jones, 6 October)

1. Academia & Research

1. The cryptocurrency spam treadmill: In which a swarm of X accounts posts a bunch of identical posts in an effort to get various cryptocurrency tokens to trend (Conspirator Norteño, 4 October)

A new study reveals that positive political messages on Twitter spread more efficiently than negative ones, challenging assumptions about online polarization. This suggests that promoting in-party support is more popular than attacking opponents, even in… https://t.co/wKhHAEfDia

— PsyPost.org (@PsyPost) October 6, 2024

2. Platforms & Technology

1. Social media suspensions may be linked to misinformation, not platform bias: Study (The Hill, 4 October)
2. Meta must limit data for personalised ads - EU court (BBC, 4 October)
3. Meta faces data retention limits on its EU ad business after top court ruling (Tech Crunch, 4 October)
4. AI's detection gap opens new vulnerabilities (Axios, 7 October)

X (Twitter)

1. Australian court upholds order for Musk's X to pay $418,000 fine over anti-child abuse probe (Reuters, 4 October)
2. Brazil's top court says X paid pending fines to wrong bank (Reuters, 5 October)

3. Russia & Ukraine

1. Sketches of the war in Ukraine: dispatch from the Russian border (FT, 4 October)
2. Russia: Government official threatens foreign journalist covering the war in the Kursk region (IFJ, 4 October)