Was E-mail a Mistake? The mathematics of distributed systems suggests that meetings might be better - The New Yorker: “The walls of the Central Intelligence Agency’s original headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, contain more than thirty miles of four-inch steel tubing. The tubes were installed in the early nineteen-sixties, as part of an elaborate, vacuum-powered intra-office mail system. Messages, sealed in fibreglass containers, rocketed at thirty feet a second among approximately a hundred and fifty stations spread over eight floors. Senders specified each capsule’s destination by manipulating brass rings at its base; electro-mechanical widgets in the tubes read those settings and routed each capsule toward its destination. At its peak, the system delivered seventy-five hundred messages each day.
'Largest case of its kind': FBI takes down alleged $68m Nigerian love scam
The FBI arrest 14 people in predawn raids in LA over alleged fraud and money laundering schemes targeting those susceptible to 'romance scams'.
Major Telecom Companies Partner With Attorneys General to Implement New Principles to Combat Robocalls Mass.gov: “…The principles, announced today by a group attorneys general in partnership with AT&T, Bandwidth, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, Consolidated, Frontier, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon, and Windstream, will help service providers incorporate call-blocking technology, monitor their networks for robocall traffic, and cooperate with investigations that trace illegal robocalls
2 regions, 1 misinformation problem
As
Kashmir ends its 11th day on a strict lockdown in which India has
imposed a communications blackout, misinformation has taken off in the
region.
Fact-checkers
for the Agence France-Presse in Southeast Asia have
debunked several false and misleading claims about the lockdown, which
was imposed Aug. 4 after New Delhi moved to revoke Kashmir’s autonomy. The
border region has been hotly contested with Pakistan for decades.
Much
of the false information AFP fact-checked on social media was out-of-context
photos or images, which purported to show armed conflicts between the Indian
and Pakistani militaries. Some hoaxes, debunked
by Boom Live, another Indian fact-checking site, even made their way into
mainstream media outlets. The outlet rounded
up other rumors in a YouTube video.
This
kind of false information has been spread on social media despite the internet
shutdown in Kashmir, which
is not the first time India has taken such action. And people in
Kashmir don’t have access to much reliable information at all.
“As
a fact-checker, I don’t know what communication the people in Kashmir are
subjected to. We don’t know what the local rumours are. And if the locals want
to verify information, there is no means for them to do that,” said Pratik
Sinha, co-founder of Indian fact-checking site Alt News, in Dawn,
an English-language newspaper in Pakistan.
Meanwhile,
nearly 4,000 kilometers away, another deluge of misinformation is plaguing
social media — but the circumstances are completely different.
Amid
ongoing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the Chinese government has been
accused of spreading disinformation and propaganda about the
demonstrations. The
New York Times reported that the Communist Party and state-controlled
media outlets have falsely claimed the protesters are paid and have manipulated
photos and videos to make them look violent to cut down on their support.
Other
social media rumors focus on potential Chinese action against the
protests. CNN
reported on one viral tweet that warned the military was about to
impose a Tiananmen Square-style crackdown.
“In
Hong Kong, there’s virtually no way to avoid misinformation,” the outlet
reported. “In the subway, fake news is anonymously AirDropped onto commuters’
phones. Rumors and speculation posted by both individuals and local blogs are
plastered over Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and shared on messaging apps
such as WhatsApp and Telegram.”
In
Kashmir, misinformation has proliferated both in spite of and due to the
absence of internet access in the region. But the Chinese government has taken
the opposite approach, rapidly censoring pro-democracy speech on social media
platforms and saturating the networks with propaganda and disinformation.
Both
situations are concerning developments in the global struggle against political
disinformation and how governments intrinsically play a role in it. They
show that falsehoods don’t exclusively spread on a free and open internet —
they also spread widely in highly censored regimes, as well as regions where
there’s no internet access at all. And fact-checkers have their work cut out
for them.
. . . technology
- Meedan, a journalism and tech startup based in San Francisco, launched a new tool to help fact-checkers receive hundreds of reader-submitted tips and, at the same time, automatically distribute their conclusions in private messaging apps. Cristinainterviewed Ed Bice, the company’s CEO and co-founder, who managed to get WhatsApp approval and technical support.
- Google has published a 29-page document in Chinese to show how the company “uses algorithms to elevate authoritative, high-quality information in its products”. In 2018, Google laid out its “roadmap for supporting the growth of an Intelligent Taiwan.”
- Get this: In the U.S., the Democratic National Committee created a deepfake video of its own chairman to warn about the threat the technology could post to the 2020 presidential election. Meanwhile, Claire Wardle from First Draft worked with The New York Times on a smart PSA about deepfakes, in which she impersonated Adele.
. . . politics
- Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide is a case surrounded by misinformation, conspiracy theories and some questions with no answers. U.S. President Donald Trump shared a tweet suggesting former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were involved in the case. PolitiFact reportedthat that theory, as well as a similar one connecting Epstein’s death to Trump, is unfounded. Interestingly, BuzzFeed News reporter Jane Lytvynenko revealed that Epstein’s death was on 4chan before officials announced it.
- Roll Call pointed out that lawmakers looking to do something about the spread of misinformation on social media are largely only looking at platforms like Facebook and Twitter. But fringe platforms like 4chan and Reddit play huge roles in the spread of fakery, too.
- Chequeado’s team has put together a detailed article (in Spanish only) explaining what Argentinians should look for when reading the results of an electoral poll. The country will elect a new president in October and misinformation around poll results exists.
. . . the future of news
- BuzzFeed News’ Craig Silverman wrote about how there has been an uptick in digital disinformation campaigns aimed at influencing politics in the Philippines. That development came in spite of Facebook’s expanding fact-checking partnership and removal of inauthentic accounts, he reported.
- In Indonesia, fact-checking site Mafindo and the Google News Initiative are teaming up to teach media literacy skills in 17 cities. The program is targeting “youths and housewives,” according to the Jakarta Post.
- Going back to Epstein for a moment, several reporters commented this week that the misinformation that followed his death expose how Twitter is complicit in the spread of hoaxes. Abby Olheiser wrote in The Washington Post that the platform “has become the perfect vehicle for conspiracy theories,” while The New York Times’ Charlie Warzel wrote that the conspiracies “are a grim testament to our deeply poisoned information ecosystem.”
Mass
shootings are not only a sad and controversial topic in the United States. They
can be confusing too — even for presidential candidates.
On
Saturday, during an event in Iowa, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, one of
the Democratic frontrunners in the 2020 election campaign, falsely remembered
the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Florida.
During
a speech, he repeated
twice that survivors had visited him while he was vice president and
even added details about that meeting. When they arrived on Capitol Hill, Biden
said, they were “basically cowering,” not wanting to see politicians. “They did
not want to face it on camera.”
But
Biden wasn’t even vice president in 2018. He left the White House on Jan. 20,
2017 — more than a year beforehand.
Bloomberg was
the first news outlet to call Biden out on his astonishing inaccuracy.
Biden’s team explained later he was actually thinking of the mass shooting at
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, when he misspoke. That
attack took place in December 2012.
What
we liked: Bloomberg
was quick to call Biden out on a blatant falsehood made during a pivotal
election stop. It didn’t take much to refute the claim, but it highlighted how
some political misinformation isn’t necessarily all that complicated. Plus, the
fact check came from an organization that doesn’t have a dedicated
fact-checking department.
- Alexios Mantzarlis (Remember him? Former author of this newsletter? Bueller?) has a new gig as the information credibility lead at Google. He will help coordinate efforts to fight misinformation through both product and partnerships.
- The IFCN’s Daniela Flamini wrote about how fact-checkers in Turkey and Bosnia are being personally attacked for their work.
- The Washington Post Fact Checker has updated its ongoing tally of President Trump’s false or misleading claims: 12,019 over 928 days.
- First Draft spoke to reporters about what it was like to cover the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, through the lenses of extremism and misinformation.
- A QAnon blogger made six figures from a book about the conspiracy theory, The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer reported.
- Know an enterprising teenager interested in journalism? Have them apply for MediaWise’s Teen Fact-Checking Network!
- The New York Times wrote about how foreign disinformation campaigns are contributing to the rise of far-right nationalism in Sweden.
- Brazilian fact-checking site Aos Fatos has been nominated for an Online Journalism Award in the Micro Newsroom category.
- The New York Times informs that YouTube’s search and recommendation system appears to have “systematically diverted users to far-right and conspiracy channels in Brazil.”
- The IFCN will be in Medellín, Colombia, during Gabriel García Márquez’s Festival, and will offer a free 4-hour fact-checking workshop for a group of 40 participants. Applications are open until Aug. 21.
