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Category: Social media

An AI-powered bot army on X spread pro-Trump and pro-GOP propaganda, research shows

An AI-powered bot army on X spread pro-Trump and pro-GOP propaganda, research shows

NBC News reports: An army of political propaganda accounts powered by artificial intelligence posed as real people on X to argue in favor of Republican candidates and causes, according to a research report out of Clemson University. The report details a coordinated AI campaign using large language models (LLM) — the type of artificial intelligence that powers convincing, human-seeming chat bots like ChatGPT — to reply to other users. While it’s unclear who operated or funded the network, its focus…

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Some online conspiracy-spreaders don’t even believe the lies they’re spewing

Some online conspiracy-spreaders don’t even believe the lies they’re spewing

When people spread lies online, they may know they’re sharing falsehoods. Timucin Taka/500 px via Getty Images By H. Colleen Sinclair, Louisiana State University There has been a lot of research on the types of people who believe conspiracy theories, and their reasons for doing so. But there’s a wrinkle: My colleagues and I have found that there are a number of people sharing conspiracies online who don’t believe their own content. They are opportunists. These people share conspiracy theories…

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What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis

What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis

Charlie Warzel writes: The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene…

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Russia shares AI images of Hurricane Milton as disinformation abounds in U.S.

Russia shares AI images of Hurricane Milton as disinformation abounds in U.S.

The Guardian reports: Disinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding Milton began long before the storm even made landfall. Since last week, Donald Trump has been spreading lies about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene, accusing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) of “abandoning” North Carolina residents in what is a hotly contested state in the November presidential election. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an extremism and disinformation watchdog organization, told the Guardian that hostile actors are known for using…

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Elon Musk is piling onto all the hurricane disinformation, hampering relief efforts

Elon Musk is piling onto all the hurricane disinformation, hampering relief efforts

Politico reports: Elon Musk is using his social media network to spread election conspiracy theories about U.S. disasters — just as online falsehoods are complicating the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Musk has helped spread accusations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “actively blocked” donations to victims of Helene and is “seizing goods … and locking them away to state they are their own” — allegations that FEMA officials call false and which run afoul of state and…

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Helene response hampered by misinformation, conspiracy theories spread through social media

Helene response hampered by misinformation, conspiracy theories spread through social media

The Washington Post reports: One day after Helene slammed into Asheville, N.C., leading to seven trees falling on her house and destroying her roof, Nicole McNeill read an alarming article that warned a second storm was barreling toward the area. McNeill, 43, had a panic attack, her anxiety spiking and her heart pounding. She knew she didn’t have enough gasoline in her car to evacuate from yet another disaster. But it was all a hoax. “The second storm turned out…

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Truth Social users are losing ridiculous sums of money to scams

Truth Social users are losing ridiculous sums of money to scams

Gizmodo reports: Donald Trump launched Truth Social in 2022 as a social media platform where the MAGA faithful could hang out without any liberals to spoil the fun. The biggest selling point? It was the only place where Trump was personally posting his unhinged screeds after getting banned from Twitter over that whole coup attempt. But new documents obtained by Gizmodo reveal the site has also been flooded with scammers who are swindling users out of enormous sums of money….

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How Musk threatens America’s national security, and what must be done

How Musk threatens America’s national security, and what must be done

Robert Reich writes: Shortly after the apparent second assassination attempt against Trump, Elon Musk responded in a now deleted post: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala 🤔 ????” Musk later said his post was intended as a joke. But it could be interpreted as a call to murder Biden and Harris — at least by one of the 198 million followers of Musk who initially received it. Presumably this is why the Secret Service is investigating it. Under 18…

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Labelling Trump’s lies as ‘disputed’ on X makes supporters believe them more, study finds

Labelling Trump’s lies as ‘disputed’ on X makes supporters believe them more, study finds

The Guardian reports: Labelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little to nothing to change Trump voters’ pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study. The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published…

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Elon Musk is debasing American society

Elon Musk is debasing American society

Thomas Chatterton Williams writes: To paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, you wage mimetic warfare with the unsubstantiated smear you’ve got, not the one you want. It just so happens that the one most recently deployed by Donald Trump is the kind that proliferates these days on X. When Trump declared, seemingly out of nowhere, during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that Haitian immigrants living legally in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs … eating the cats ……

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Russian election interference efforts focus on the Harris-Walz campaign

Russian election interference efforts focus on the Harris-Walz campaign

Microsoft Threat Analysis Center: Russia and Iran have both undertaken cyber influence operations headed into the 2024 presidential election. In our last report, published on August 8, we detailed how Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations sought to undermine the Republican campaign through targeted hack-and-leak operations, covert social media personas, and imposter US news sites. In the past two months, Microsoft has observed a notable shift in Russian influence operations tactics reflecting the changing U.S. political environment. Specifically, we have observed Russia…

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Leaked records detail vast Russian influence campaign targeting Ukraine, EU

Leaked records detail vast Russian influence campaign targeting Ukraine, EU

RFE/RL reports: A trove of leaked records from a Russian disinformation campaign reveals how Moscow sought to discredit Ukraine and Western governments that support it while also trying to boost support for far-right political parties in the European Union. The documents obtained by a consortium of European media outlets and shared with Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, highlight the internal operations of the Social Design Agency, a Moscow-based company that the United States says has led the propaganda campaign at…

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Elon Musk is a national security risk

Elon Musk is a national security risk

Wired reports: Shortly following reports of an apparent second assassination attempt against former US president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Elon Musk decided to speak up. “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala 🤔,” Musk, X’s owner, wrote in a now deleted post, in response to another person asking, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?” After deleting the post—which could be interpreted as a call to murder President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the US…

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‘The most complex, dynamic and dangerous threat environment I’ve experienced’

‘The most complex, dynamic and dangerous threat environment I’ve experienced’

Politico reports: The toxic political climate and a complex web of threats — punctuated by Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump — is putting an extraordinary strain on the national security officials tasked with safeguarding American democracy. Security experts say sharp polarization and increasingly hateful political rhetoric — fanned by foreign adversaries and supercharged by social media — have combined to test the nation’s ability to protect its candidates and institutions. “The 2024 presidential election is taking place at…

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Stephen Fry: Musk and Zuckerberg are ‘the worst polluters in human history’

Stephen Fry: Musk and Zuckerberg are ‘the worst polluters in human history’

BBC News reports: Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk are “the worst polluters in human history”, Stephen Fry has said. The actor and comedian made the claim during a lecture at Kings College, London. “You and your children cannot breathe the air or swim in the waters of our culture without breathing in the toxic particulates and stinking effluvia that belch and pour unchecked from their companies into the currents of our world,” he said of the…

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After Trump and Vance’s baseless claims about pet-eating immigrants, Springfield faces bomb threats

After Trump and Vance’s baseless claims about pet-eating immigrants, Springfield faces bomb threats

Parker Molloy writes: The lie was absurd, and yet it spread like wildfire. A baseless rumor, claiming Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating people’s pets, began as a fringe social media post. In a matter of days, it had evolved into a talking point at the highest levels of Republican politics. Trump mentioned it in a presidential debate, and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, repeated it without a shred of evidence. But the fallout didn’t stay…

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