Fediverse vs Disinformation

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The key facts >- Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill in 2023 that provides paid family leave starting in January 2026. >- Democrats in Congress have proposed the Family Act since 2013, but this paid family leave plan has not progressed. >- President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better proposal initially included four weeks of paid family leave, but Sen. Joe Manchin, then a Democrat, objected to the bill. Without Republican support, that doomed the bill. The legislation that became the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act did not include family leave.

>The thing that worries me the most is that disinformation leads to violence. It’s not so much just the actual disinformation, but it’s the effects of that and the side effects of that in our society. That disinformation [about the LGBTQ+ community] really does lead to societal vitriol and violence against the queer community.

Shoutout to @dactylotheca@suppo.fi for mentioning the "Firehose of Falsehood" in a comment in this post, which led me to read the article, which led me to post it here :p

Although the piece was published in 2016, it's still very relevant today, and is definitely worth a look.

Edit: Auto-title was improperly truncated

>Ukraine’s advance in Kursk is not only a striking military move, but also a multi-pronged vehicle for communications. > >Such acts serve as an effective counter to the Kremlin’s continued attempts to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, spoil its relationships with supporters, and force an unjust peace on the Kremlin’s terms. > >Advances also demonstrate to Ukrainian home audiences and supporters alike that Ukraine remains both capable and resolute in its fight. Moreover, these advances cut through the many layers of manipulation and fog of disinformation that the Kremlin has been spreading. > >The Kremlin’s lies and weaknesses have been exposed for everyone to witness. As President Zelenskyy put it, ‘Russia brought war to others, now it’s coming home.’

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/27003255

> Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms has shut down CrowdTangle, a tool widely used by researchers, watchdog organizations and journalists to monitor social media posts, notably to track how misinformation spreads on the company’s platforms. > > Wednesday’s shutdown, which Meta announced earlier this year, has been protested by researchers and nonprofits. In May, dozens of groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, Human Rights Watch and NYU’s Center for Social Media & Politics, sent a letter to the company asking that it keep the tool running through at least January so it would be available through the U.S. presidential elections. > > “This decision jeopardizes essential pre- and post-election oversight mechanisms and undermines Meta’s transparency efforts during this critical period, and at a time when social trust and digital democracy are alarmingly fragile,” the letter said. > > CrowdTangle, “has been an essential tool in helping researchers parse through the vast amount of information on the platform and identify harmful content and threats,” it added.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/20929346

> > The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Wednesday a final rule that will tackle several types of fake reviews and prohibit marketers from The FTC finalizes rule that tackles fake reviews, such as AI-generated reviews, censoring negative reviews, and paying third parties.

PEN America Webinar Thursday, August 15, 2024 | 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm ET Hosted virtually on Zoom

> Fact-checking serves an important function in our news and politics, but it’s not well understood by the general public. What’s involved in fact-checking? How can we recognize when something we’re reading has been adequately verified? With so much questionable information circulating, understanding how fact-checking works can help us better determine when news and information is reliable and trustworthy – or not. > >In this webinar, Kurt Sampsel of PEN America will provide an overview of the main types of fact-checking and what’s involved, followed by a conversation with Wilkine Brutus of WLRN radio Miami and Laura Zommer of Spanish-language information hub Factchequeado about the methods they use to verify information and how fact-checking helps them tell stories and inform their audiences. > >Participants: >- Wilkine Brutus, Palm Beach County Correspondent, Producer, and Host, WLRN Public Media >- Laura Zommer, Co-founder and CEO, Factchequeado >- Kurt Sampsel, Senior Program Manager, PEN America > >Register for the webinar > >Can’t make the live session? Yes, this will be recorded! By registering, you’ll automatically get the recording in your inbox, making it easy to catch up later.

More fake photos doing the rounds.

If someone is using the term, 'colour revolution' be very suspicious. It's a classic authoritarian move to claim that unrest is caused by 'foreign adversaries' to divert attention away from their own corruption and ineptitude, and from the real suffering of their people, which are the main drivers of public protests.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1814591

> cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1814468 > > > Archived link > > > > Here is the stuy: The CCP’s Digital Charm Offensive > > > > TikTok Stacking Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor, Study Claims > > > > A study published on Thursday asserts TikTok’s algorithms promote Chinese Communist Party narratives and suppress content critical of those narratives, a claim the embattled company forcefully denied to KQED. > > > > Titled “The CCP’s Digital Charm Offensive,” the study by the Rutgers University-based Network Contagion Research Institute argues that much of the pro-China content originates from state-linked entities. ByteDance, a Chinese technology company, owns TikTok. > > > > Institute co-founder Joel Finkelstein wrote that includes media outlets and influencers, such as travel vloggers who post toothlessly about Chinese regions like Xinxiang, where the government has imprisoned more than 1 million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities. > > > > “This manipulation is not just about content availability; it extends to psychological manipulation, particularly affecting Gen Z users,” Finkelstein wrote. > > > > [...] > > > > An NCRI analysis published in December looked at the volume of posts with certain hashtags — like “Uyghur,” “Xinjiang,” “Tibet” and “Tiananmen” — across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. That report found **anomalies in TikTok content based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government. **For example, researchers wrote, hashtags about Tibet, Hong Kong protests and the Uyghur population appeared to be underrepresented on TikTok compared with Instagram.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18533065

Highlights:

>In 2023, the International Olympic Committtee (IOC) withdrew its recognition of the IBA owing to longstanding allegations of corruption. Recently, IBA president Umar Kremlev, a Russian sports official, referred to the president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, as ‘a chief sodomite’. Then, in a shambolic press conference on 5 August, Kremlev pushed pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about the Games’ opening ceremonies. > >The Kremlin has also tried other ways to discredit the Paris games with disinformation narratives. The common denominator was to engage in unashamed mud-slinging. Pro-Kremlin TV host Vladimir Solovyov, for example, attacked the opening ceremony with homophobic slurs, calling the French leadership the ‘faggot movement’

>Donald Trump stated on August 8, 2024 in a press conference: “I went down in a helicopter with (Willie Brown). We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together and there was an emergency landing.”

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>No Protection for Pedophiles > >In a previous fact-check on the same topic from PolitiFact, published in May 2023 when Walz signed the Take Pride Act, legal experts confirmed that the law would not protect pedophiles from discrimination in any way. > >"No court in the country has or would ever say that a law protecting people from discrimination based on their sexual orientation extends to protecting pedophilia," Brian Soucek, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, told PolitiFact.

>Heroes and good people on the one hand, traitors, and animals on the other. The propagandists tried to ridicule, belittle, and dehumanise the victims of authoritarian persecution and state hostage-taking. Once again, in the Kremlin’s hall of mirrors, the criminals became the heroes to distract from the obvious – the Kremlin exchanged real criminals for arbitrarily imprisoned, innocent people.