Sohan Dsouza

«Recent trends point to pro-Duterte influencers representing China’s interests in their content too. Beijing “increasingly [relies] on indirect messaging, using intermediaries to shape or convey its narratives without direct attribution,” […]»

#Philippines #AI #astroturfing #tech #platforms #China

2025 Climate Disinformation Media Fellowships | Heinrich Böll Stiftung | Washington, DC Office - USA, Canada, Global Dialogue Apply if you have research ideas on the threat of growing climate denialism, the relation between big tech and climate obstruction, the climate counter-disinformation community or similar topics. Appl...

[Fellowship for journalists] The Heinrich Böll Foundation is seeking journalists based in Canada, the United States for the third iteration of Climate Disinformation Media Fellowship, providing research fellowship stipend of $2,000.
Deadline: September 9, 2025: us.boell.org/en/2025/07/2...

Ninety laptops, millions of dollars: US woman jailed over North Korea remote-work scam Christine Chapman apologizes for role in identity fraud that amassed millions to allegedly aid nuclear weapons program

"tale of isolation and working from home in a gig-dominated economy where increasingly everything happens..."

Wait, what?

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Crazy thing is, this post embeds a video from another post *condemning* the harassment, and shamelessly adds the unsubstantiated claims rationalizing the harassment.

Nick Timothy MP has criticised the police for protecting a man delivering food to a hotel from intimidation + violence. He + Max Tempers both seem to assume they can intuit immigration status (that he must be an asylum seeker without the right to work) simply from a man's appearance (ethnicity)

NYT Crossword July 30, 2025 🏛🎓✨

"… and I don't think you should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of"
– some superstar lawyer, apparently

〝Right-wing information spaces treat the lies as established fact, similar to how Star Wars and Marvel fans talk about canon. Republicans in Congress have to go along with Trump’s latest lies when asked, but some try to avoid that by lying that they didn’t see what he said.〞

No matter how bad you think media illiteracy and polarized vision are in Britain, it turns out it's worse.

This despite even Grok confirming that it is misinformation (although only when specifically asked, with no effect on the original post up-thread).

Not a single one of these Xitter posts—or of countless others like them—got Community Noted.

The Qatar Plot Read the Report

The report from our investigation: sites.google.com/view/theqata...
@anujchopra.bsky.social's coverage for @afp.com: www.barrons.com/news/shadow-...
And a feature of it in a recent @artefr.bsky.social documentary: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIqY...

Evidence we've collected and analyzed since shows an even stronger link between those campaigns and that person—an Evangelical Trump evangelist/advisor/appointee—who is currently still maintaining silence about his role in it or what he knows about it.

This operation astroturfed vast amounts of political and often xenophobic content into the UK, EU, and other places, often through "phone farms" and other inauthentic efforts on VLOPs, often using hacked, boilerplate, and burner digital assets, with any attribution only to nonexistent entities.

👹🌍🧑‍💻🕵️ Our OSINT/SOCMINT investigation last year revealed strong connections between the "It's in Your Hands"/"You Have the Power" campaigns and other campaigns in covert online influence operation "The Qatar Plot". One person of interest stood out for multiple circumstantial links to it. 🧵

This is the kind of outcome we foretold six years ago in a paper aptly titled Drivers Are Blamed More Than Their Automated Cars When Both Make Mistakes, with @awad.bsky.social @sohandsouza.info @sydneylevine.bsky.social @maxkw.bsky.social @azimshariff.bsky.social @iyadrahwan.bsky.social

This network of hijacked Bluesky spam accounts with repetitive biographies has continued to expand. The growth can be monitored by watching the Bluesky firehose for changes to the biographies and display names of established accounts.
bsky.app/profile/cons...

we have always been at war with the bureau of labor statistics

Message sur X U.S. Embassy France @USEmbassyFrance Nous devons démanteler l’industrie de la vérification des faits qui censure les opinions impopulaires auprès des élites mondiales. Affiche où figure le mot "Censorship" barré d'une croix blanche, sur fond jaune pâle 3:08 PM · 2 août 2025 · 2 145 vues

Le compte officiel de l'ambassade des Etats-Unis en France en vient désormais à nier l'importance des *faits* dans une démocratie.

Et emprunte le phrasé habituel (« élites mondiales ») des complotistes de tous poils.

Quelle incroyable déchéance sans fin pour un tel pays.

«Posts from the UK made up 61 percent of all those mentioning remigration followed by the US (17 percent), Canada (3 percent), and Australia and Germany (both 2 percent) […] in August, for example, only one of the top 10 mentions was British while nine out of 10 were in September.»

Fact check: Sharia law administrator job ad was for role with private employer A local mosque said it had raised money to fund the position through private donations.

«The advert was not for a Government job. The administrator was being hired using money a mosque said it had raised through donations.»

#disinfo #factCheck #UK #England

YouTube video by LBC Nigel Farage takes your calls | Watch LIVE

He also concedes about the police bussing some of the counterprotesters back, then lies that it's "in case they were tired". The police made it very clear that it was for safety reasons, and there is plentiful video documentation of them being assaulted while arriving and demonstrating.

YouTube video by LBC Nigel Farage takes your calls | Watch LIVE

Apparently, Farage thinks that you need to use a VPN to access "the dark web".

YouTube video by Al Jazeera English Why are lies thriving? | Al Jazeera Untangles

Check out this new series by AJE untangles on the "war on truth". It looks at the transformative impact of mis and disinformation in the digital age. This episode, called "Why are lies thriving?", includes interviews with myself Hossein Derakshan and Claire Wardle
youtube.com/watch?v=yw_P...

Also "Quiet Posters" ( bsky.app/profile/why.... ) and "Gift Links/Gift Articles" ( bsky.app/profile/davi... )

I talked to some people recently who said they got bored or overwhelmed by Bluesky after a while. Turns out they didn't know about alternative feeds yet and we're scrolling the chronological one.

If you like that, great, but here are some alternative feeds I like.

🎯
This whole article is full of brilliant observations.

#polarization #terminallyOnline #discourse #socialMedia

〝Other claims […] include one that Epping police has been paying protesters £40 “for three hours” work […] disseminated in online spaces including the Epping Says No! Facebook group […] Its administrators include activists from the far-right Homeland party, Adam Clegg and Callum Barker.〞

That is why banning political ads doesn't end paid political influence.

And some of the will simply be rerouted from a semi-transparent system (through ad libraries, however flawed) into more opaque channels. Think undisclosed influencer payments and PR agencies. We just lose a money trail.

Meta to ban political ads in EU due to bloc's 'unworkable' rules Meta on Friday said it will be forced to ban political advertising on its platforms in the European Union from October because of rules the Facebook and Instagram owner called "unworkable".

Following Google, Meta is also ending political advertising in the EU.

I gathered some thoughts on why this is an abdication of responsibility that will make our elections less transparent AND not even end paid political influence online. A short thread. 🧵

www.france24.com/en/live-news...