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"The government is introducing some amendments in time for the report stage on 12 July, with another batch to be announced shortly after. Under one confirmed change, tech firms will be required to shield internet users from state-sponsored disinformation that poses a threat to UK society and democracy. This is a tightening of existing proposals on disinformation in the bill, which already require tech firms to take action on state-sponsored disinformation that harms individuals - such as threats to kill. Another confirmed amendment is equally incremental. A clause in the bill aimed at end-to-end encrypted services already gives Ofcom the power to require those platforms to adopt "accredited technology" to detect child sexual abuse and exploitation [CSEA] content. If that doesn't work, then they must use their "best endeavours" to develop or deploy new technology to spot and remove CSEA. This move appears to be aimed at Mark Zuckerberg's plans to introduce end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger and Instagram."

"Rival French and Russian disinformation campaigns have sought to deceive and influence internet users in the Central African Republic ahead of an election later this month, Facebook said on Tuesday. Facebook said it was the first time it had seen foreign influence operations directly engage on its platforms, with fake accounts denouncing each other as "fake news"."

"Facebook disabled our personal accounts, obstructing the research we lead at New York University to study the spread of disinformation on the company's platform. The move has already compromised our work - forcing us to suspend our investigations into Facebook's role in amplifying vaccine misinformation, sowing distrust in our elections and fomenting the violent riots at the US Capitol on 6 January."

"The investigation reveals extraordinary details about how disinformation is being weaponised by Team Jorge, which runs a private service offering to covertly meddle in elections without a trace. The group also works for corporate clients. Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services, which others describe as "black ops", were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion. He said they had been used across Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe."

"At first glance, the Twitter user "Canaelan" looks ordinary enough. He has tweeted on everything from basketball to Taylor Swift, Tottenham Hotspur football club to the price of a KitKat. The profile shows a friendly-looking blond man with a stubbly beard and glasses who, it indicates, lives in Sheffield. The background: a winking owl. Canaelan is, in fact, a non-human bot linked to a vast army of fake social media profiles controlled by a software designed to spread "propaganda". Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls more than 30,000 fake social media profiles, can be used to spread disinformation at scale and at speed. It is sold by "Team Jorge", a unit of disinformation operatives based in Israel."

"Especially at voting time, fears grow of TikTok 'disinformation' threatening democracy. Politicians and their paymasters are terrified that they can no longer control the supply of information to the public, thanks to platforms like Facebook and TikTok. With Thailand's general election only a few months away, the Election Commission of Thailand (ECT) is battling to take back control of information through self-censorship of the TikTok video-sharing platform. Ostensibly, this is to keep young voters on the government's straight and narrow path."

""Bots view, 'like,' subscribe and repost content and manipulate view counts to move content up in search results and recommendation lists," the analysis said. In some cases, Fabrika targets users with disinformation directly after gleaning their emails and phone numbers from databases. The campaign's goals include demoralising Ukrainians and exploiting divisions among western states, the document added. Experts have downplayed the 1% claim. Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at Surrey University, said the figure sounded implausible and that sock puppet accounts - a term for accounts with fake identities - need their content to be reposted by plausible accounts such as those operated by influencers."

"Already, artificially intelligent software can evolve false political and social constructs highly targeted to sway specific audiences. Users find themselves in highly individualized, algorithmically determined news and information feeds, intentionally designed to: isolate them from conflicting evidence or opinions, create self-reinforcing feedback loops of confirmation, and untether them from fact-based reality. And these are just early days. If memes and disinformation have been weaponized on social media, it is still in the musket stage."

"The disinformation campaign promotes unfounded conspiracy theories that the US is behind the new coronavirus outbreak, in an apparent bid to damage America's image around the world."

"John became increasingly radicalised by an online barrage of far-right disinformation. "Posts of homeless British soldiers were set against Muslim families being given free homes. Now I know the posts were all fake, but the 15-year-old me didn't bother to fact-check." The worry is that John's contemporaries won't either. A surge of online extremism and disinformation has arrived at a time of lockdown-induced isolation, loneliness and home-schooling, creating what police call a "perfect storm". One British far-right group has even started pushing an alternative white-supremacist school curriculum for lockdown learning."

""It's frankly shocking that these massive firms with the technological prowess they clearly have, are unable to weed out such blatant disinformation being pushed onto their users. In the case of Facebook, not once, not twice, but three times some of the same ads have been approved.""

"Next year's elections in Britain and the US could be marked by a wave of AI-powered disinformation, experts have warned, as generated images, text and deepfake videos go viral at the behest of swarms of AI-powered propaganda bots. Sam Altman, CEO of the ChatGPT creator, OpenAI, told a congressional hearing in Washington this week that the models behind the latest generation of AI technology could manipulate users."

"But the reporters in those videos aren't real. Their names are Daren and Noah, and they're computer-generated avatars crafted by Synthesia, a London-based artificial intelligence company. The clips are from a YouTube channel called House of News, which presents itself as an English-language media outlet. Researchers say the videos are part of the Venezuelan government's attempts to spin the narrative on social media, considered one of the last bastions of free speech in a nation where outlets are censored and journalists are often persecuted. The incorporation of AI, experts told The Washington Post, seems to be a new addition to the government's disinformation campaigns, which range from incentivizing Twitter users to post specific talking points to using bots that spit out the regime's messaging."

"Claims that artificial intelligence will help solve the climate crisis are misguided, with the technology instead likely cause rising energy use and turbocharge the spread of climate disinformation, a coalition of environmental groups has warned. Advances in AI have been touted by big tech companies and the United Nations as a way to help ameliorate global heating, via tools that help track deforestation, identify pollution leaks and track extreme weather events. AI is already being used to predict droughts in Africa and to measure changes to melting icebergs."

"How many conspiracy theorists does it take to change a lightbulb? QAnon won't let me tell you. I can, however, reveal that it takes only a dozen anti-vaxxers to spread dangerous misinformation to millions of people. According to a report from the NGO Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), up to 65% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter can be traced back to just 12 people. Although Facebook has disputed the report's methodology, the 12 have been nicknamed the "disinformation dozen", and include Robert F Kennedy Jr, the nephew of John F Kennedy. A few of the 12 have been removed from at least one social media platform, but are still free to post on others."

"Although disinformation has been extensively discussed as a powerful weapon employed by state and non-state actors, especially given the quick rise of AI tools capable of generating fabricated texts, sounds, and moving or still images,"

"A wave of artificial intelligence-driven misinformation and disinformation that could influence key looming elections poses the biggest short-term threat to the global economy, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has said. In a deeply gloomy assessment, the body that convenes its annual meeting in Davos next week expressed concern that politics could be disrupted by the spread of false information, potentially leading to riots, strikes and crackdowns on dissent from governments."

"I started to feel that propaganda had fundamentally changed. The types of actors who could create it and spread it had shifted, and the impact it was having on our society was quite significant, but we weren't using the word. We were using words like "misinformation" or "disinformation", which seemed to be misdiagnoses of the problem. And so I wanted to write a book that asked, in this media ecosystem, what does propaganda look like?"

"A "massive anti-vaccination campaign" has been cited by the European Commission as a reason for social media platforms to intensify their factchecking and revise the internal algorithms that can amplify disinformation. Under a revised code of practice proposed by Brussels, companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter would need to show why particular material is disseminated and prove that false information is being blocked."

"A Chinese bot network played a key role in spreading disinformation during and after the US election, including a debunked video of "ballot burning" shared by Eric Trump, a new study reveals. The misleading video shows a man filming himself on Virginia Beach, allegedly burning votes cast for Donald Trump. The ballots were actually samples. The clip went viral after Trump's son Eric posted it a day later on his official Twitter page, where it got more than 1.2m views."