Latest in Disinformation
The report doesn't break any new ground and highlights the decline of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Tackling disinformation requires humility, calm and attention to details as the threat evolves and becomes more complex: Tropes such as the “Russian playbook” are no longer helpful ahead of the November election.
Over the course of two short days, figures affiliated with the GOP published three different deceptively edited videos on social media. Platforms can’t handle the challenge alone.
Numerous individuals and groups are posing—both online and in person—as members of groups they oppose. Malign state actors have also begun to enter the fray.
During protests in Washington, D.C., a conspiracy theory spread on Twitter that the federal government had cut off communications within and from the city. Twitter users could have been warned.
The president retweeted a deepfake of Joe Biden. The fake was made on an iPhone app that I’d already been researching.
In this episode, I interview Thomas Rid about his illuminating study of Russian disinformation, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. It lays out a century of Soviet, East European, and Russian disinformation, beginning with an elaborate and successful operation against the White Russian expatriate resistance to Bolshevik rule in the 1920s.
With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s disinformation campaign has taken a dangerous turn.
As trade-wars proliferate, technological rivalries intensify and U.S. corporations take public positions on hot-button social issues, American businesses will increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs of nation-state sponsored disinformation operations.
The 2020 U.S. presidential election is playing out in the shadow of disinformation, but few candidates are promising to take action against it. Elizabeth Warren has a plan, but it’s not perfect.