The 95th Block: Debunking dubious disinformation
Not the time for amateur sleuths to hone their OSINT skills.
This week…
Exceptional work particularly by Bellingcat and Poynter debunking dubious UGCs from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here’s a selection of top stories related to Russia-Ukraine disinformation, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
How tech platforms are trying to stop Russia-Ukraine disinformation
Mixed response as The Drum’s Chris Sutcliffe asks YouTube, Meta, Twitter, Linkedin and Snapchat what they’re doing to stop misinformation:
Online disinformation has erupted following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Numerous fact-checking teams, both on-the-ground and international, have warned of the dangers of spreading deliberate and inadvertent misinformation on social networks, particularly from unverified sources.
Within Russia information is tightly controlled, with Vladimir Putin’s government forbidding the dissemination of any information about the invasion that does not originate from the government itself. That, combined with the relative freedom of Ukraine’s citizens to film and share videos of the invasion, has created an ecosystem in which disinformation is rapidly escalating and being disseminated across social media.
Scammy Instagram ‘war pages’ are capitalizing on Ukraine conflict
Taylor Lorenz for Input, taken in parts:
Just hours after the first explosions rocked Ukraine Wednesday night, massive Instagram meme pages began promoting an account purporting to be that of a journalist live-streaming from the ground.
But @livefromukraine and @POVwarfare were not run by Ukrainian journalists — they were operated by a young meme admin in the U.S. who oversees a network of viral content across the web.
Hayden, who claims to be a 21-year-old from Kentucky, says that after learning about the war breaking out through the hip-hop Instagram page @Rap, he saw an opportunity. He had already run a popular war page called @liveinafghanistan. More recently, he had renamed it @newstruths and pivoted to posting viral, vaguely conservative-leaning videos featuring people shoplifting and clips of President Biden. But on Wednesday night, it was wartime again, and so the page became @livefromukraine.
Biden’s experiment in intelligence transparency bears repeating
Dan Froomkin for Press Watch:
A stream of disclosures of the most sensitive intelligence imaginable by the Biden administration in the runup to the Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a huge step forward for government transparency.
It dramatically undercuts the intelligence community’s single-minded devotion to secrecy in the name of protecting “sources and methods” that might be lost if targets learn they are being successfully surveilled.
Going forward, it shifts the equilibrium toward greater disclosure.
What I read, watch, and listen to…
I’m reading The US Fixation on Chinese Espionage Is Bad for Science ($) by Yangyang Cheng for Wired.
I’m watching The White Lotus.
More stray links:
Le podcast, nouveau média d’information ou de désinformation ? by Evarestos Pimplis for Méta-Media.
Here’s how the Russia-Ukraine conflict affects Malaysia and why we should care by Keertan Ayamani and Ashman Adam for The Malay Mail.
A far-right website created 36 days ago is more popular on Facebook than the Washington Post by Judd Legum for Popular Information.
Intimate or irritating: are voice notes killing the phone call? “Voice notes gives women an avenue to speak in the same way men do – without fear of being cut off or dismissed,” writes Annie Lord for The Guardian.
Chart of the week
Felix Richter for Statista:
Surely we can have more non-Western takes on the war and the disinformation campaigns. But only one link here that didn't come from the "Global North".
Are we not going to talk about the racism and classism and wokeism of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the choice recommendation of The White Lotus or is it just a coincidence?