The 178th Block: Likes for lies
Facebook's India dilemma, Maui's rumour-infested fire recovery, and that thing that the South Korean man did
This week…
Your reading time is about 6 minutes. Let’s start.
September 30th was World Podcast Day, but guess who’s shutting down their podcast app? Yep, (you didn’t hear it here first, but) it is Google. They are instead herding listeners over to YouTube after announcing earlier this year that YouTube Music will support podcasts now-ish (soon-ish).
Personal footnote (literally?): I have changed my “Find me on” links to remove X/Twitter and to include Threads at the bottom of each newsletter edition from this issue onwards. I find the former a lot harder to sift through for high-quality posts lately, and with a lot less time on my hands now, the latter seems to provide a better browsing experience.
If you like the stories I curate weekly for The Starting Block, and you are interested in something more frequent — say, daily — follow me on Threads because I post between three and five stories (sometimes more) every weekday. The story-hunting net I cast there is a bit wider, so the threads are not solely “focusing on disinformation, data, and democracy beyond the Anglosphere,” although they tend to have a slightly more Canadian slant because I’m most likely reading them at work, for work.
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
ICYMI: The Previous Block summarised a timeline of Canada’s diplomatic fallouts in recent years. CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.Under India’s pressure, Facebook let propaganda and hate speech thrive ($)
Joseph Menn and Gerry Shih for WaPo:
Nearly three years ago, Facebook’s propaganda hunters uncovered a vast social media influence operation that used hundreds of fake accounts to praise the Indian army’s crackdown in the restive border region of Kashmir and accuse Kashmiri journalists of separatism and sedition.
What they found next was explosive: The network was operated by the Indian army’s Chinar Corps, a storied unit garrisoned in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, the heart of Indian Kashmir and one of the most militarised regions in the world.
But when the U.S.-based supervisor of Facebook’s Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) unit told colleagues in India that the unit wanted to delete the network’s pages, executives in the New Delhi office pushed back. They warned against antagonising the government of a sovereign nation over actions in territory it controls. They said they needed to consult local lawyers. They worried they could be imprisoned for treason.
Those objections staved off action for a full year while the Indian army unit continued to spread disinformation that put Kashmiri journalists in danger. The deadlock was resolved only when top Facebook executives intervened and ordered the fake accounts deleted.
“It was open-and-shut” that the Chinar Corps had violated Facebook’s rules against using fictional personas to surreptitiously promote a narrative, said an employee who worked on the Kashmir project. “That was the moment that almost broke CIB and almost made a bunch of us quit.”
Battle of likes and rights.
How rumours and conspiracy theories got in the way of Maui's fire recovery
Pien Huang and Huo Jingnan for NPR:
After the wildfires in Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui last month, unsubstantiated rumours and conspiracy theories spread nearly as fast as the flames had. There was the one about the government — in some versions it was the U.S., in others a foreign government — using energy beam weapons to start the fire. Others blamed Oprah, the wealthy media mogul, and falsely claimed she was making a land grab. Still others claimed the fires were a cover-up for military malfeasance.
Lahaina residents told NPR reporters on the ground that the rumors were spreading fear and confusion at a vulnerable time. On a visit to Danilo Andres’ home in the burn zone — miraculously standing after the fires — Andres says there was talk that the homes left standing might be further targeted: “There’s a satellite in the sky, they just pinpoint the house,” he said, explaining the theory. “The rumour’s in the hotel right now, so everybody’s moving out.”
Andres said he didn’t find the rumours credible, “... but I don’t know. What do you guys know?” he asked reporters.
Vulnerability, even temporarily, increases susceptibility to quack, sadly.
South Korea has jailed a man for using AI to create sexual images of children in a first for country’s courts
Gawon Bae and Jessie Yeung for CNN:
Prosecutors argued during the case that the definition of sexually exploitative material should include descriptions of sexual behaviors by “virtual humans” and not just the appearance of actual children.
The ruling showed that sexually abusive content can include imagery made with “high level” technology that is realistic enough to look like real children and minors, the prosecutor’s office said.
Yeah, first; won’t be the last.
What I read, listen, and watch…
I’m reading Angus Reid’s latest report on “Canada and the Culture Wars.”
I’m listening to episode 189 for Citations Needed, “PragerU, the 'Product Of His Time' Defense and the White Guilt Amelioration Industrial Complex.” Hosts Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson speak with historian and museum educator Erin Bartram.
I’m watching X/Twitter’s Linda Yaccarino at Code Conference 2023, who at times contradicts Elon Musk’s recent statements regarding the platform and at times seems unaware of them.
Other curious links:
“What’s in a domain name?” by Amy Thorpe for Rest of World. Or how Anguilla, a British territory of fewer than 20,000 people in the Caribbean, benefits from the AI wave. Malaysia’s domain name, .my, is pretty neat, so I am surprised it didn't make the list, although Montenegro’s .me did.
“A 23-year-old is getting Gen Z hooked on newspapers and print media” by Paola de Varona for Slate.
“How ChatGPT is putting college ghostwriters out of work” by Katrya Bolger for The Walrus.
“In major blow to TikTok, Indonesia bans e-commerce transactions on social media” by Dewi Kurniawati and Stanley Widianto for Reuters.
“El director español que ya hace doblajes con inteligencia artificial” por Carlos del Castillo en elDiario.es.
« L’Algérie met brusquement fin à l’enseignement des programmes scolaires français dans les écoles privées » par Mustapha Kessous et Ténéré Majhoul dans Le Monde.
Chart of the week
From Angus Reid’s latest report on “Canada and the Culture Wars” linked above, based on answers from 660 respondents who are “visible minority,” only 38 per cent say they use the term to describe their own demography or background. One in six (16 per cent) say they prefer to be identified with a hyphen, i.e. Chinese-Canadian, etc., while six per cent selected the term “racialised person” and BIPOC each. The remaining 35 per cent would not use any of these terms.
I wouldn’t use any of these, either.
And one more thing
