It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
Testing - Teenage boy lucky to escape serious injury after being hit by tram
There are renewed calls for pedestrians to be aware of their surroundings after a tram undergoing testing hit a teenager near Moore Park.
“What are the plays telling us that philosophy is not telling us, and that we need to attend to?”
Our politicians still have some way to go if they wish to match the eloquence of Theresa May’s final speech to Britain’s House of Commons.
Where’s the outrage (about disinformation)?
Greetings
from Washington, where the problem of disinformation is generating heightened
alarm on the part of U.S. politicians and policy experts as the 2020 campaign
approaches.
The
question is whether and how that alarm could translate into action by Congress
or the agencies to prevent a repeat of the Russian disinformation campaign that
affected the 2016 presidential election.
When
this issue comes up, people often point to the polarization and paralysis
plaguing the current Congress. Forty bills, they note, have been proposed to
deal with election security and disinformation surrounding elections, and none
of them have seen any action.
But
here’s another way of looking at it. Congress often needs a crisis to act. What
if lawmakers aren’t motivated to do something about this problem because the
people who elect them just aren’t very motivated? What if Americans aren’t
outraged enough about the disinformation problem to put pressure on elected
officials to take action?
Some
experts even say there needs to be a new patriotism around the disinformation
threat, given its threat to democracy.
This
lack of outrage was a theme that came to the surface during a symposium hosted
this week by the Federal Election Commission, which is charged with enforcing
campaign finance laws, and whose chairwoman, Ellen Weintraub, expressed concern
about the integrity of the 2020 election.
While
participants in the event, which you can watch here
(if you have five hours to spare), explored a range of potential solutions to
deal with the disinformation threat, underneath the policy options and proposed
government actions was an almost plaintive concern that the American people
aren’t involved enough.
“The
animating energy for us today was our shared sense that there has been an
inadequate level of public outrage or official response to the foreign
disinformation threat,” said Eileen Donahoe, executive director of the Global
Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University, which along with PEN America
co-sponsored the event. She and other participants said a “society-wide”
approach is needed.
Why
aren’t people outraged enough about the problem? Is it possible that people
trust tech platforms too much? Or do they trust themselves too much, to be able
to discern the true from the false? An issue cited by Donahoe is the “bizarre
ways that foreign disinformation mixes with authentic civic discourse, domestic
media, political commentary and with the speech of our own elected officials.”
Another
reason, one cited by Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), is that people who live in
a polarized society see the issue through a partisan lens.
“A
significant percentage of Republican voters don’t believe Russia interfered at
all, but of those who do, some don’t seem particularly upset about it,” she
said. “The U.S. will never muster a whole-of-society approach if the whole
of society doesn’t first acknowledge the problem.”
She
said the issue has to be reframed as a nonpartisan one.
. . . technology
·
BuzzFeed
News reported that Google’s apps and mobile homepage have been surfacing
stories that deny the science of climate change.
·
A
BBC investigation found that YouTube is running advertisements for major
brands alongside videos promoting bogus cancer cures. Those results were
consistent for searches in 10 languages.
·
Last
year, Daniel wrote
about how misinformation spreads on Line — one of the most popular
social networking platforms in Southeast Asia. Now, the company is
working with the Associated Press on a series of educational videos about
misinformation.
. . . politics
·
The
New York Times showed how more than 200,000 Twitter accounts were part of a
Russian-style disinformation offensive by the Chinese government against Hong
Kong. The data used in the article came from Twitter.
·
Two
U.S. senators are
calling on Google to remove misinformation from Google Maps that directs
women seeking abortions to pro-life clinics. The move came after the
publication of a
Vice News story that found searches for abortion providers in at least 21
cities surface misleading results.
·
Meanwhile,
in California, lawmakers have
proposed a bill that would make it illegal to distribute a selectively edited
video or photo that’s intended to mislead people within 60 days of an election.
. . . the future of news
·
Facebook
and Microsoft are
teaming up with academics on a challenge to build deepfake detection
technology.
·
In
a move to address the potential spread of demographic misinformation in 2020,
the U.S. Census Bureau is
asking Americans to send in any rumors they see about the national count.
The bureau is
also partnering with Apple and Amazon to surface credible information on
the companies’ Siri and Alexa voice assistants.
·
The
opening session of the Online News Association conference in the U.S. was about
misinformation around the world. There was also a session about how to improve
your digital investigation skills. Read more about those sessions here
and here.
The
Facebook
Ad Library was created to provide advertising transparency and is
definitely a place where fact-checkers should look for claims. The amount of
misleading information there could be huge.
Full
Fact experienced that recently.
On
Sept. 3, the British Conservative Party posted an advertisement on its Facebook
page claiming it was “giving schools a record £14 billion, leveling up
per-pupil funding across the country.” The ad showed a picture of a teacher in
a classroom and a BBC logo in the left corner.
But
the real BBC story — linked in the ad — said the figure was £7.1 billion. Full
Fact spotted the falsehood and wrote a detailed article about it. The story
went viral. It was picked up by the CBC, Der Spiegel and The New York Times. A
spokesperson from the Conservative Party had to apologize and the BBC put out a
statement informing it is still “looking into this matter.”
What we liked: Full Fact's team called attention to a
source of misinformation fact-checkers usually forget. The Facebook Ad Library
can be used even by those who don’t have a Facebook or Instagram account to
search the collection of all ads running across its products. There, anyone can
see data about every active and inactive ad run since May 2018. And Facebook
promises to keep them for seven years.
1.
A
story from Anya Schiffrin in Media Power Monitor paints
a good picture of the current landscape of fact-checking and
misinformation.
2.
Researchers
at Indiana University have
come out with new software that helps people identify and track how bots
amplify messages on social media.
3.
Going
into the 2020 election in the U.S., some officials are
more concerned about disinformation from China and Iran than Russia.
4.
Ever
wonder when you’re supposed to use certain reverse image search tools over
others? Domain Tools has
a chart for that.
5.
CJR’s
public editor for CNN spoke
to Daniel Dale, the network’s prolific fact-checker, about his process, his
outlook on Trump and the 2020 election.
6.
The
Financial Times profiled how the Internet is fighting online
misinformation. (Subscription required.)
7.
A
nonprofit association representing the tech giants has
rejected a proposal from Australia’s competition regulator recommending the
companies adhere to a code of conduct related to inaccurate information.
8.
Speaking
of Australia, Russian disinformation about 5G communication networks has
reached the country.
9.
Last
week, Poynter’s MediaWise project traveled to Nebraska to teach teenagers how
to spot misinformation online. A local TV station covered
the trip.
10.
The
first dataset for Facebook’s partnership with misinformation researchers has
finally been released.
