Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
Ach Memories of the 1st May Marches and Fake Communist News
As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that make an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself.
Deloitte may be on a mission to extend into all types of professional services but the big four consulting firm may be struggling to accommodate the truly creative types. That’s one take-out of a decision by Nicola Mansfield to jump ship from her role as a director in Deloitte’s experience design team, to become the new managing director of a branding consultancy owned by one of the five big advertising companies Omnicom Group.
If Labor or the Coalition have to negotiate with the crossbench, they will face demands to block the Adani coal mine and take concrete action on climate change.
When
news broke that six sites, including churches, hotels and housing complexes, had
been bombed on Easter Sunday, the Sri Lankan government acted swiftly.
Following the terrorist attacks, which had killed more than 300 people as of
this publication, government officials blocked several social media sites in an
attempt to stop the potential spread of misinformation. The
New York Times reported that the ban included Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube,
Instagram, Snapchat and Viber.
While
extraordinary, the unilateral decision to block social media platforms during
national crises is not a new tactic in Southeast Asia.
In
October, Wired
wrote about how turning off the internet had become a strategy favored by
the Indian government to slow the spread of misinformation that could lead to
violence. Last year’s shutdowns, which came after dozens of civilians were
killed in lynch mobs following the spread of rumors on WhatsApp, have cost the
country billions of dollars and are more frequent than in any other country, according
to Freedom House.
Sri
Lanka has borrowed that strategy from India. The former country shut down the
internet for two days last March when misinformation about communal riots
spread on social media, resulting in violence targeting the Muslim minority.
Two people died, Freedom
House reported.
In her
New York Times column this week, Kara Swisher said her first thought about
the Sri Lanka shutdown was “good,” though later she acknowledged that it
wouldn't work in the end. Meanwhile, observers at outlets like The
Verge, BuzzFeed
and Wired
wrote that the ban is a serious overreach of government power that could have
ramifications for civil liberties in Sri Lanka.
“If
the current U.S. government blocked all access to social networks after a
terrorist attack, we would rail against the move as an authoritarian outrage,”
Casey Newton wrote in his newsletter for The Verge on Monday. “When other
countries do it, we ought to be just as suspicious.”
There’s
ample evidence to back up Newton and others’ concerns about the use of internet
shutdowns. Exhibit A is how
governments around the world have co-opted fears about misinformation to
legislate against the mainstream media.
And
does shutting off social media platforms or the internet altogether even slow
the spread of misinformation in the first place? Not really.
“The
first day, it was effective as very little came out from Sri Lanka. But even
despite the ban (I am not sure if it’s still in place) there is lots of
disinformation being shared,” Uzair Hasan Rizvi, a fact-checker for the Agence
France-Presse, said in a message. “Some of them are even trying to incite
anti-Muslim sentiments by sharing old videos claiming it to be after the
attacks. This could have serious repercussions.”
On
Wednesday, AFP
debunked a bogus photo, shared thousands of times on Facebook, that claimed
to show the youngest victim of Sunday’s attacks. Rizvi said he’s working on
four more fact checks that debunk social media misinformation about the attacks
— and he expects to keep finding bogus claims over the next several days in
spite of the ban.
BuzzFeed
News also reported that the social media ban in Sri Lanka probably had
little effect on the overall spread of misinformation following last weekend’s
terror attacks. Reporter Jane Lytvynenko spoke to a Sri Lankan researcher who
found that past bans were quickly circumvented by Facebook users who would use
virtual private networks (VPNs).
Then
there’s the fact that, once the government shuts down social media platforms,
it’s not only misinformers who are affected. The reach of work from
fact-checkers and journalists — which rely on the platforms to reach their
audiences — could tank, too. That means valuable fact checks and context about
a developing breaking news story are lost.
From
what he can tell, Rizvi said he hasn’t seen the Sri Lankan social media ban
affect AFP’s engagement numbers in any meaningful way. But the possibility is
still there — and in the future, fact-checkers with a less global reach could
see their work buried while misinformation continues to circumvent the defense
mechanisms of governments and the platforms.
. . . technology
In
its latest monthly report on the big social media platforms, the
European Union called on Facebook, Google and Twitter to do more to fight
misinformation ahead of next month’s parliamentary election.
Relatedly,
Twitter is encouraging users to flag misinformation in the EU and Indian
elections as part of its efforts to head off threats to electoral integrity.
Here’s The
Washington Post’s take, and here’s Twitter’s
own blog post on the move.
Last
week, Facebook
added Science Feedback and The Daily Caller’s Check Your Fact to its
fact-checking program. The addition of the latter outlet caused backlash from
liberal media commentators online, pointing out that its parent organization
frequently publishes hyperpartisan right-wing content. Here’s
how the IFCN responded.
. . . politics
NBC
News wrote
about how a network of more than 5,000 bots amplified false claims that the
Mueller report was a media hoax aimed at tarnishing the reputation of President
Donald Trump. So much for Twitter’s
efforts to limit the influence of automated accounts.
The
advocacy group Avaaz alerted Facebook to three far-right networks that were
publishing “inauthentic behavior” aimed at spreading divisive content ahead of
Spain’s elections this Sunday. TechCrunch
quoted Christoph Schott, campaign director at Avaaz, as saying Facebook did
a great job in removing the pages, but “these networks are likely just the tip
of the disinformation iceberg — and if Facebook doesn’t scale up, such
operations could sink democracy across the continent.”
Singapore’s
anti-misinformation bill will likely become law in the second half of this
year, Bloomberg
reported. The
Agence France-Presse reported that nearly 100 academics have expressed
concern over the legislation, saying it could threaten academic freedom in the
city.
. . . the future of news
Remember
Alexios, the former co-author of this newsletter? Yeah, we don’t either
— but Wired
wrote about the project that he’s working on with Claire Wardle at TED. Its
mission: “to bring the power of crowdsourcing to the fight against
misinformation online.”
NewsGuard
has
expanded its site credibility ranking system to the United Kingdom. For
more context on the project, and what it hopes to accomplish, read this
excellent Slate piece from January.
Each week, we analyze five of the top-performing fact checks on
Facebook to see how their reach compared to the hoaxes they debunked. Read more
about this week’s numbers, and how out-of-context news content spreads
misinformation on social media, here.
We
liked
PolitiFact’s piece detailing eight instances in which last week’s report
from Special Counsel Robert Mueller showed President Trump or White House
officials had spread false or misleading claims.
The
Mueller report was a treasure trove for fact-checkers. They checked the report
against what President Trump
has said in past tweets and in person. They came up with some
new angles.
They
used it to confirm that certain conspiracy theories, were, in fact, just that
(to wit: the
Seth Rich murder). They checked it against
the “dossier.” And they used it to help the public understand what
was, and wasn’t, consistent with what the president has said about obstruction
of justice. A good example here is Factcheck.org’s explainer.
To
be sure, the report was itself the subject of hoaxes and misinformation
circulated in the days after its release,
as BuzzFeed reported.
But
mostly it was a catalyst of good journalism, and (Poynter-owned) PolitiFact’s
day-after rundown was among the most impressive.
What we liked: Within 24 hours of the report’s
release, PolitiFact’s Miriam Valverde had compiled several examples showing the
ways in which the report contradicted prominent Trump tweets or statements from
his aides. We
know falsehoods are not unusual in this White House, but this piece didn’t
try to be comprehensive. It very straightforwardly presented eight examples in
which the White House officials or Trump himself simply gave out false
information.
4.Meghan
Markle has been the subject of online conspiracy theories over her pregnancy,
among other things, The
Daily Beast reported, quoting one correspondent who covers the royals as
being surprised by “the amount of bile and vitriol thrown her way.”
5.Factcheck.org
won a 2019 “Webby”
award in the news and politics category.
6.BuzzFeed
News has
a new video series aimed at debunking misinformation on YouTube and other
social media platforms.
7.Twitter
is
hiring a senior policy researcher to “to increase the health of the public
conversation, the integrity of information and customer trust.”
8.The
Conversation wrote
about why misinformation is so insidious for the human mind.
