Microsoft says it has found a Russian operation targeting U.S. political institutions Washington Post, August 21, 2018, by Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg A group affiliated with the Russian government created phony versions of six websites — including some related to public policy and to the U.S. Senate — with the apparent goal of hacking […]Read More

From Hayley Tsukayama in the August 15th, 2018, Washington Post Facebook turns to artificial intelligence to fight hate and misinformation in Myanmar https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/16/facebook-turns-artificial-intelligence-fight-hate-misinformation-myanmar/?utm_term=.22b634e6caeeRead More

Alliance for Securing Democracy – Weekly Dispatch U.S. officials and lawmakers take steps to secure elections, counter interference:  On August 7, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis stated that the military is taking steps to protect the 2018 midterm elections from foreign interference. Measures include protecting troops from foreign information campaigns, and working alongside DHS “in order to […]Read More

Challenging Truth and Trust:  A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation By Samantha Bradshaw and Philip Howard Computational Propaganda Research Project, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford July, 2018  Read More

Today, the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Director Laura Rosenberger testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on: Foreign Influence Operations and their use of Social Media Platforms  (transcript) Other witnesses included Renee DiResta, director of research at New Knowledge, John Kelly, founder and CEO of Graphika, Todd Helmus, senior behavioral scientist at the RAND […]Read More

The UK’s Commons Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport just published data submitted by Facebook as part of the Committee’s inquiry into Fake News. These PDFs show advertisements run by AggregateIQ (AIQ) on behalf of the Vote Leave and ‘50 Million’, BrexitCentral/BeLeave and DUP Vote to Leave campaigns ahead of the UK’s referendum on […]Read More

Breaking the fever – WhatsApp suggests a cure for virality Other tech firms should watch and learn The Economist, 26 July 2018 Priests, teachers and parents have for generations advised their wards to think twice before speaking, to count to ten when angry and to get a good night’s sleep before making big decisions. Social […]Read More

Wired’s article, The ‘Guerrilla’ Wikipedia Editors Who Combat Conspiracy Theories by Louise Matsakis (posted July 25th, 2018) is worth a read. … companies like YouTube, Google and Facebook have turned to Wikipedia to help fight the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories on their own platforms … the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project has more […]Read More

The RAND Corporation released a perspective, An American Way of Political Warfare – a Proposal by Charles T. Cleveland, Ryan Crocker, Daniel Egel, Andrew M. Liepman, and David Maxwell. The seven-page read highlights a need to establish an American political warfare capability, with the authorities and knowledge to synchronize all elements of national power in […]Read More

The Heritage Foundation’s July 19th, 2018 event, Deep Fakes:  A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy and the National Security began with Senator Marco Rubio’s remarks and then a panel discussion hosted by Klon Kitchen with Bobby Chesney (Univ. TX), Danielle Citron (Univ. MD), and Chris Bregler (Google AI). The attached summary captures this hour event […]Read More