.....I got her a pack of cards
How the ATO is catching more tax fraudsters
Centrelink contractor Concentrix wrongly cut thousands off welfare in the UK
Press Release: Stellar appointed to manage Australian Taxation Office contact centre - PRWire
Australian Taxation Office call centre staff paid less than Macca's workers, CPSU says | Daily Telegraph
Australian Taxation Office call centre staff paid less than Macca's workers, CPSU says | Daily Telegraph
ATO announces call centre outsourcing contracts worth $285M - CX Central
PwC slashes R&D staff after being targeted by ATO
If you think the hue and cry about stadiums is over, think again
Premier's stadium deal premium reveals cavalier attitude
Either
there is something seriously wrong with the NSW government's
procurement practices, or the independence of the planning approval
system must be questioned
If you think the hue and cry about stadiums is over, think again
I do hope to avoid tedious disclaimers whenever Channel Nine comes up, given that from Monday they own this humble masthead.
Don’t sign on dotted line yet: Sanity on stadiums might yet prevail
Bloody hell, who saw that coming? When it comes to stopping #StadiumSplurge, new Opposition Leader, Michael Daley, is as serious as a ruptured testicle.
Jake Saulwick (@JakeSaulwick) | Twitter
No Pasarán!: BLOGGER IN PARIS IN THE MIDST OF TEAR GAS CANISTERS RAINING DOWN ON THE CROWDS (video)
(Graphic
by Isaac Avila Rodriguez)
(AP Photo/Leo Correa)
(Shutterstock)
(Shutterstock)
by Daniel
and Alexios
How the same, or very similar, NSW development scandals keep happening and happening againwww.smh.com.au/natio…
The history of property development scandals in NSW is long, lurid, and, in instances, lascivious. For sordidness, it’s hard to go past what went on at Wollongong a decade or so ago – when a council employee logged into her bosses’ computer to approve a $100 million apartment tower for her lover. But give Canterbury a chance. An Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry into the former Sydney council this year has already claimed the political career of the Liberal member for Wagga Wagga. And the inquiry has not yet wrapped.
NSW ports privatisation in firing line after ACCC takes legal action
The
competition watchdog has launched legal action against NSW Ports for
striking alleged anti-competitive deals with the state government.
No Pasarán!: BLOGGER IN PARIS IN THE MIDST OF TEAR GAS CANISTERS RAINING DOWN ON THE CROWDS (video)
Job
sharing at the senior levels of the public sector
MOVERS & SHAKERS: New appointments, plus how job sharing is
evolving beyond the straightforward cases.
Engaging
Victoria – can a platform increase government legitimacy?
JEREMI MOULE: People need to understand what influence they have over the
policymaking process.
Knowledge
jobs the future of Melbourne’s prosperity
BEN RIMMER: In his final week in the role, the CEO of the City of Melbourne
discusses the role of innovation districts and the importance of partnerships
between the public and private sectors.
PARTNER EVENT: Raising
the Citizens’ Voice
MOVERS & SHAKERS: New appointments, plus how job sharing is evolving beyond the straightforward cases.
JEREMI MOULE: People need to understand what influence they have over the policymaking process.
BEN RIMMER: In his final week in the role, the CEO of the City of Melbourne discusses the role of innovation districts and the importance of partnerships between the public and private sectors.
Former Ryde mayor Ivan Petch avoids jail time for blackmail offence
The
former independent mayor of Ryde displayed "a sense of entitlement" and
a "preparedness to manipulate others for his advantage", a District
Court Judge said.
Measuring fakery on smaller platforms
Misinformation
on Twitter and Facebook feeds seemed to have been somewhat
contained in the recent U.S. midterm elections compared to the 2016
presidential campaign. But that doesn’t mean fakery has been banished from the
internet.
In
the leadup to the midterms, Facebook groups, which remain hidden from the
public eye, were
responsible for seeding a variety of political conspiracies. In countries
like Brazil
and Nigeria,
encrypted messaging app WhatsApp is a primary vehicle for misinformation. And
sites like Gab provide
a safe haven for people who have been banned from larger, more mainstream
networks.
Around
the world, misinformers are migrating to private groups, chats and fringe sites
to avoid detection by journalists and tech companies. So how can fact-checkers
adapt to monitor them?
Maarten
Schenk at the fact-checking project Lead Stories has developed a way to track
what’s being shared the most on Gab. Last month, he built a script that
automatically pulls public posts into his Trendolizer platform and measures
what’s going viral by adding up the number of reposts, comments and upvotes.
While the site is basically one big echo chamber, it can prove useful for
tracking how hoaxes move to other platforms.
“I
basically look for what’s trending, and usually the stuff on Gab isn’t worth
debunking because it’s not getting much traction anyway,” Schenk told Daniel.
“It’s only once it starts jumping into these Facebook groups that it starts to
explode.”
Earlier
this year, researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil developed
a method of monitoring content on WhatsApp during the Brazilian election. It
pulled data from public political groups and displayed them in an online
dashboard that fact-checkers and journalists could access.
Fabrício
Benevenuto, the associate professor behind the project, said he could see it
being useful in future elections, such as February’s contest in Nigeria. But
that method was still pretty limited, only pulling from 347 public groups. And
until WhatsApp takes more direct action against misinformation, it’s unlikely
that the status quo will change.
So
tell us: How are you monitoring smaller or more closed platforms for
misinformation? Email factchecknet@poynter.org
with your tips and we’ll compile them into a future article.
(Graphic
by Isaac Avila Rodriguez)A new podcast about misinformation
There
are a lot of big questions in the ongoing battle against misinformation.
Starting today, we’re tackling them in audio form.
Over
the next three weeks, the
IFCN is releasing a limited-run podcast about fact-checking and fake news.
In each of the three episodes, we talk to fact-checkers, journalists and
experts around the world to try and answer one big question about the industry.
Listen
to the promo today and subscribe on Spotify,
Stitcher,
Google
Play and TuneIn (Apple
Podcasts coming soon!)
This is new
- WhatsApp is releasing "Share Joy, Not Rumours" anti-misinformation ads on Indian TV ahead of state elections.
- Last week, Daniel reported that Nigeria is the next battleground for election misinformation. This week, the president there had to deny that he was a clone. (Related: Is this Washington Post tweet a little too cute? And read this by media literacy pro Mike Caulfield on the limitations of fake news “recognition” strategies.)
- The European Union is asking the platforms for monthly reports on foreign disinformation campaigns.
(AP Photo/Leo Correa)Show and tell
- Here’s how Comprova used WhatsApp’s business API to fact-check misinformation about the Brazilian election.
- One strategy for studying the spread of misinformation on social media: Create your own deceptive bots.
- BuzzFeed News’ Craig Silverman has some tips for how to tell if a smartphone app could be fraudulent.
The Bad Place
- U.S. Vice President Mike Pence deleted a picture he tweeted of himself with a Florida deputy wearing a QAnon patch, saying he didn’t want to amplify the conspiracy theory.
- Twitter suspended an account with hundreds of thousands of followers that had been active for years purporting to be Russian president Vladimir Putin
- Foreign Policy published an in-depth piece about how WeChat has become a hub for Islamophobic conspiracy theories.
(Shutterstock)LOL
- Some guy is scamming Instagram users by saying he can sell them verification. Matt Navarra called him out.
- Behold: Vladimir Trump.
- The baby’s name was Abcde, not Abdce. OK.
A closer look
- What does France’s new law against misinformation actually say — and what does it mean for the rest of the EU? Alexander Damiano Ricci delved into the measure and its implications.
- Reuters published an investigation about how an Iranian agency used at least 70 websites to disseminate propaganda in a variety of countries — including the United States.
- The Conversation published a great analysis of how far-right conspiracy theories become memes and get covered by the mainstream media.
(Shutterstock)Help us improve this newsletter
We’re
revamping The Week in Fact-Checking for 2019 — including the name. Tell us
what you want it to be like by
filling out this survey.
9 quick fact-checking links
- The New York Times fact-checked the new broadway show, “The Lifespan of a Fact.”
- Forbes tested out the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s new media literacy video game, which is aimed at helping children tell real from fake news online.
- These viral images of Sydney during a thunderstorm are still fake.
- Full Fact is opening its live fact-checking tools to other journalists.
- The IFCN is looking for journalism researchers or professors with a strong understanding of fact-checking to serve as assessors for its code of principles.
- That Mars sunset picture is genuine, but several years’ old.
- More than 20 fact-checkers around the world teamed up to fact-check the G20 summit in Buenos Aires.
- Happy 15th birthday, Factcheck.org! PolitiFact founder Bill Adair also wrote a tribute to the fact-checking site.
- On Twitter, Syracuse University professor Emily Thorson asks: “Thought experiment: if Facebook required users to pay a small amount of money (let’s say 1 cent) to post a link, would we see more or less misinformation posted?” What do you think?