Centre for Information Integrity

‘Bye, bye birdie’: EU bids farewell to Twitter as company pulls out of code to fight disinformation

 5/29/2023

Euronews

Giulia Carbonaro

The European Commission’s Vice-President for Values and Transparency bashed Twitter’s latest decision to leave the EU’s anti-disinformation code as “irresponsible” at a time when Russia’s disinformation is extremely dangerous. Twitter’s decision to pull out of the EU’s voluntary code to fight the spread of disinformation and fake news in the bloc was announced by Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner.

‘Racism is embedded in our society’: how attacks on immigrants in Ohio highlight US disinformation crisis

 9/18/2024

Guardian

Gloria Oladipo

In recent weeks, racist conspiracy theories about immigrants have dominated the election cycle. High-ranking Republicans have doubled down on unsubstantiated rumors about Black and brown migrants, tapping into anxieties that immigrants are responsible for increased crime in US cities. Experts argue that the spread of such disinformation amplifies existing xenophobic beliefs within the American psyche as a means of political gain. “It’s so dangerous when people with a platform are repeating these very fabricated rumors,” said Gladis Ibarra, co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. “These are very much part of a large coordinated strategy to continue to demonize our immigrant neighbors. It’s undermining the values of our nation and historically what people have said this nation stands for.”

2024 will be the year of democracy - or disinformation

 2/27/2024

King’s Colledge London

Resham Kotecha & Elena Simpiri

In this year of elections around the world, how will AI shape or harm democracies? The authors of this article explore the impact AI is already having, whether states are ready for the sheer volume of rule-breaking we might see and why everyone should take a more critical approach to what we see. With nearly 2 billion people heading to the polls this year, 2024 is being touted as the year of democracy. Key elections are being held in the UK, the US, the EU, and India, with many other countries also set to hold elections over the course of the year. Along with many organisations working with data and AI, at the Open Data Institute, we’re cognisant of the vast opportunities - and significant challenges - that these technologies can play in shaping and harming our democracies.

3 Lessons on Misinformation in the Midterms Spread on Social Media

 1/5/2023

Brennan Center for Justice

Maya Kornberg et al.

The Brennan Center has developed recommendations on how to fight misinformation based on analysis of how it takes root and circulates. Election-related falsehoods corrode American democracy. Since 2020, lies about a stolen presidential election cropped up in dozens of campaigns for election administrator positions and spurred unprecedented threats to election officials. The result has been a deluge of resignations that drained expertise from election offices across the country. Further, public trust in elections has plummeted amid disinformation promoted by Donald Trump and other prominent election deniers.

4 ways to future-proof against deepfakes in 2024 and beyond

 2/12/2024

World Economic Forum

Anna Maria Collard

With an increased accessibility to genAI tools, today’s deepfake creators do not need technical know-how or deep pockets to generate hyper-realistic synthetic video, audio or image versions of real people. For example, the researcher behind Countercloud used widely available AI tools to generate a fully automated disinformation research project at the cost of less than $400 per month, illustrating how cheap and easy it has become to create disinformation campaigns at scale.

90% of People Claim They Fact-Check News Stories As Trust in Media Plummets

 11/4/2022

Security Org

Aliza Vigderman

As the popularity of social media surpasses traditional news sources, information has grown more unreliable, and “fake news” becomes harder to detect. The same digital platforms that empower global communication seed doubt and spread misinformation. The misinformation and disinformation that have influenced elections and hampered public health policies also damaged faith in all forms of media. Meanwhile, political attacks on some news sources have divided Americans further into partisan camps. The nation is united, however, in recognizing the problem. Our second annual study of more than 1,000 people revealed that nine out of 10 American adults fact check their news, and 96 percent want to limit the spread of false information.

A coup, fake signatures and deepfakes are the latest conspiracy theories about 2024

 7/23/2024

NPR

Shannon Bond

President Joe Biden’s decision to bow out of the 2024 election followed weeks of pressure from Democrats concerned about his age and ability to win and serve another four years. But conspiracy theorists, right-wing influencers and even some Republican politicians immediately cast Biden’s resignation from the campaign as evidence of something more sinister. The flurry of unverified rumors, speculation, and conspiracy theories comes as people are reeling from an onslaught of high-stakes political upheaval, from the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump on July 13 to Biden’s withdrawal from the race eight days later.

A new Twitter policy cripples journalists’ efforts to halt disinformation

 5/23/2023

The Hill

Shannon Jankowski

Bot detection tools can be a game changer for exposing targeted falsehoods and conspiracy theories, especially for small, local newsrooms serving marginalized communities. Because of upcoming U.S. election - public will rely on journalists to detect and expose this disinformation in their reporting. But, under Elon Musk’s leadership — which, ironically, began with a focus on eliminating bots on the platform — Twitter’s newly amended application programming interface (API) policy may rob journalists of access to bot detection tools, which are critical to identifying and understanding the spread of disinformation on social media.

A Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections

 2/1/2024

AI Elections accord

2024 will bring elections to more people than any year in history, with 40+ countries and more than four billion people choosing their leaders and representatives through the right to vote. At the same time, the rapid development of artificial intelligence, or AI, is creating new opportunities as well as challenges for the democratic process. All of society will have to lean into the opportunities afforded by AI and to take new steps together to protect elections and the electoral process during this exceptional year.

A tsunami of AI misinformation will shape next year’s knife-edge elections

 8/12/2023

Guardian

John Naughton

If you thought social media had a hand in getting Trump elected, watch what happens when you throw AI into the mix. And it is precisely in that respect that 2024 will be different from 2016: there was no AI way back then, but there is now. That is significant because generative AI – tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion et al – are absolutely terrific at generating plausible misinformation at scale. And social media is great at making it go viral. Put the two together and you have a different world.

A.I.’s unlearning problem: Researchers say it’s virtually impossible to make an A.I. model ‘forget’ the things it learns from private user data

 8/30/2023

Yahoo Finance

Stephen Patis

It’s nearly impossible to remove a user’s data from a trained A.I. model without resetting the model and forfeiting the extensive money and effort put into training it. To use a human analogy, once an A.I. has “seen” something, there is no easy way to tell the model to “forget” what it saw. And deleting the model entirely is also surprisingly difficult. This represents one of the thorniest, unresolved, challenges of our incipient artificial intelligence era, alongside issues like A.I. "hallucinations" and the difficulties of explaining certain A.I. outputs. According to many experts, the A.I. unlearning problem is on a collision course with inadequate regulations around privacy and misinformation.

AI ‘Tom Cruise’ joins fake news barrage targeting Olympics

 11/10/2023

Politico

Seb Starcevic

In a dramatic voiceover interspersed with footage of International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach, Hollywood A-lister Tom Cruise warns that “corrupt officials” are “slowly and painfully destroying the Olympic sports that have existed for thousands of years.” The bizarre revelation comes as part of a purported four-part Netflix documentary series, “Olympics Has Fallen,” alleging corruption at the heart of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Just one big problem: The entire thing is fake.

AI and Content Policy

 6/1/2023

Dig Watch

Overall, by automating and simplifying online content moderation procedures, AI has the potential to improve the enforcement of content policies. However, difficulties and ethical concerns must be addressed, such as algorithmic biases that unintentionally result in the unjust targeting or exclusion of particular groups and issues like algorithmic transparency and accountability. In addition, the proliferation of AI-generated content adds considerably to the debate.

AI and misinformation: what’s ahead for social media as the US election looms?

 2/10/2024

Guardian

Rachel Leingang

Innovation is outpacing our ability to handle misinformation, experts say. That makes falsehoods easy to weaponize. As the United States’ fractured political system prepares for a tense election, social media companies may not be prepared for an onslaught of viral rumors and lies that could disrupt the voting process – an ongoing feature of elections in the misinformation age.

AI Floods Amazon with Political Books Before Election

 4/22/2025

AllAboutAI

Anosh Shariq

In the weeks leading up to Canada’s federal election, Amazon’s online bookstore has been flooded with a wave of AI-generated political books many of them focused on Prime Minister Mark Carney. A recent review of Amazon’s listings found that at least 16 such books were published in March, with five released on a single day. This surge in political content created by generative AI has sparked a fresh wave of concern among election experts, digital ethics scholars, and publishing professionals who warn that the convergence of automated content generation and unregulated self-publishing platforms presents a risk to electoral transparency and public trust.

AI will play a role in election misinformation. Experts are trying to fight back

 8/19/2024

Washington State Standard

Paige Gross

AI-created likenesses, often called “deepfakes,” have increasingly become a point of concern for those battling misinformation during election seasons. Creating deepfakes used to take a team of skilled technologists with time and money, but recent advances and accessibility in AI technology have meant that nearly anyone can create convincing fake content. “Now we can supercharge the speed and the frequency and the persuasiveness of existing misinformation and disinformation narratives,” Tim Harper, senior policy analyst for democracy and elections at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said.

AI-driven misinformation ‘biggest short-term threat to global economy’

 1/10/2023

Guardian

Larry Elliott

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.

AI-generated election disinformation can subtly influence voters, deepen political divide

 9/18/2024

UPI

Joe Fisher

Experts warn that false images, video and audio created by artificial intelligence to spread disinformation about the 2024 elections can subtly influence voters and worsen the nation's political divide. A survey by Elon University's Imagining the Digital Future Center found that 69% of participants are not confident that most voters can detect fake photos, audio or video. The survey examined attitudes about AI and the role it is playing in U.S. politics in 2024.

AI-Generated Fake News Is Coming to an Election Near You

 1/22/2024

WIRED

My prediction for 2024 is that AI-generated misinformation will be coming to an election near you, and you likely won’t even realize it. In fact, you may have already been exposed to some examples. In May of 2023, a viral fake story about a bombing at the Pentagon was accompanied by an AI-generated image which showed a big cloud of smoke. This caused public uproar and even a dip in the stock market. Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis used fake images of Donald Trump hugging Anthony Fauci as part of his political campaign. By mixing real and AI-generated images, politicians can blur the lines between fact and fiction, and use AI to boost their political attacks.

AI-generated images have become a new form of propaganda this election season

 10/18/2024

NPR

Huo Jingnan

After images of the devastation left by Hurricane Helene started to spread online, so too did an image of a crying child holding a puppy on a boat. Some of the posts on X (formerly Twitter) showing the image received millions of views. It prompted emotional responses from many users - including many Republicans eager to criticize the Biden administration’s disaster response. But others quickly pointed out telltale signs that the image was likely made with generative artificial intelligence tools, such as malformed limbs and blurriness common to some AI image generators.

AI-Generated Misinformation: Silent Saboteur of the 2024 Election?

 8/21/2024

Divided We Fall

Hany Farid and Chris McIsaac

AI-generated misinformation will definitely impact the 2024 election, but we don’t know how significant the effect will be. AI-generated misinformation (e.g. deepfakes) includes machine-generated, human-like prose, image, audio, or video. This content manifests itself as Twitter/X bots pushing state-sponsored disinformation, fake photos of former President Trump surrounded by adoring Black voters, AI-generated robocalls in the voice of President Biden urging voters not to vote, or a bogus video of Biden misspeaking.

AI-powered disinformation is spreading — is Canada ready for the political impact?

 1/18/2023

CBC

Catherine Tunney

The rise of deepfakes comes as billions of people around the world prepare to vote this year. Just days before Slovakia's national election last fall, a mysterious voice recording began spreading a lie online. The manipulated file made it sound like Michal Simecka, leader of the Progressive Slovakia party, was discussing buying votes with a local journalist. But the conversation never happened; the file was later debunked as a "deepfake" hoax.

Algorithmic Transparency

Algorithmic transparency is openness about the purpose, structure and underlying actions of the algorithms used to search for, process and deliver information. An algorithm is a set of steps that a computer program follows in order to make a decision about a particular course of action.

Algorithmic Transparency in the Public Sector

A YouTube video presented by Natalia Domagala of AI Ethics: Global Perspectives. Drawing on her professional experience working on data ethics, open data and open government, Domagala explains the concept of algorithmic transparency and why it is a critical need in our society today. She shares different examples of algorithmic transparency measures from Europe and North America with a special focus on the UK’s new Algorithmic Transparency Standard. She concludes her module with an outlook on the field of algorithmic transparency over the next few years and suggestions on what actors in the field ought to focus on going forward.

Algorithms can be useful in detecting fake news, stopping its spread and countering misinformation

 6/7/2023

The Conversation

Laks V.S. Lakshmanan

Fake news is a complex problem and can span text, images and video. For written articles in particular, there are several ways of generating fake news. A fake news article could be produced by selectively editing facts, including people’s names, dates or statistics. An article could also be completely fabricated with made-up events or people. Fake news articles can also be machine-generated as advances in artificial intelligence make it particularly easy to generate misinformation.

America’s Cyber Defence Agency: #Project2024

 10/1/2024

CISA

Our Mission: Help election officials and election infrastructure stakeholders protect against the cyber, physical, and operational security risks to election infrastructure during the 2024 election cycle. CISA’s election security resource library provides voluntary, no-cost informational resources designed to enhance the security and resilience of election infrastructure by helping stakeholders understand and mitigate risks to elections.

Apple co-founder says AI may make scams harder to spot

 5/9/2023

BBC News

Philippa Wain

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has warned that artificial intelligence (AI) could make scams and misinformation harder to spot. Mr. Wozniak says he fears the technology will be harnessed by "bad actors.” Speaking to the BBC, he said AI content should be clearly labelled, and regulation was needed for the sector.

Are social media, AI and misinformation undermining Indian democracy?

 5/17/2024

East Asia Forum

Usha M. Rodrigues

Social media platforms are playing a major role in Indian election campaigns, allowing parties to directly connect with voters, but also circulating misinformation and AI-generated deepfakes, raising concerns for the 2024 General Elections. Social media platforms have become a ubiquitous part of Indian election campaigns, as political parties and their leaders seek to directly connect with their followers, bypassing traditional news gatekeepers, such as journalists. In the process, misinformation, manipulated messages, malicious claims and AI-enabled fabrications are being circulated online with impunity.

As 2022 midterms approach, disinformation on social media platforms continues

 10/21/2022

PBS

David Klepper (AP)

With less than three weeks before the polls close, misinformation about voting and elections abounds on social media despite promises by tech companies to address a problem blamed for increasing polarization and distrust. While platforms like Twitter, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube say they’ve expanded their work to detect and stop harmful claims that could suppress the vote or even lead to violent confrontations, a review of some of the sites shows they’re still playing catch-up with 2020, when then-President Donald Trump’s lies about the election he lost to Joe Biden helped fuel an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

As Deepfakes Flourish, Countries Struggle With Response

 1/22/2023

NYT

Tiffany Hsu

Deepfake technology — software that allows people to swap faces, voices and other characteristics to create digital forgeries — has been used in recent years to make a synthetic substitute of Elon Musk that shilled a cryptocurrency scam, to digitally “undress” more than 100,000 women on Telegram and to steal millions of dollars from companies by mimicking their executives’ voices on the phone. In most of the world, the authorities can’t do much about it. Even as the software grows more sophisticated and accessible, few laws exist to manage its spread.

As the media’s resources dwindle, it’ll only get harder to tell fact from fake

 5/1/2024

Politico

Tom Harper

Fewer checks and balances across most mainstream media groups mean an increasing threat of reputational damage.

Audio deepfakes and AI tricks threaten elections around the world

 4/25/2024

Advox

Dren Gerguri

Deepfakes continue to develop and each time with better quality, more convincing, and closer to reality. The large number of elections around the world during 2024 raises with it the concern about the inclusion of artificial intelligence in these electoral processes, which may compromise the integrity of the elections. Voter manipulation by deepfakes is one of the main discussions in many countries of the world that are preparing for elections. About 4 billion people will turn to the ballot boxes in over 50 different countries. Concerns have been expressed by academics, journalists, and politicians over the use of AI-generated content in political influence operations.

Beware Fake News

 5/1/2023

CIGI

Influence operations targeting liberal democratic regimes are deeply troubling. They disrupt the twin bedrocks of effective democratic governance: the free flow of information and trust. These campaigns can be undertaken by malicious foreign governments who aim to sow chaos, or by non-state actors, such as ISIS, who seek to radicalize disaffected individuals in the West. Countering these operations is both necessary and possible. Such efforts require the engagement of not only governments but also the platforms. Working together, these actors can preserve liberal democratic governance by minimizing exposure to fake news and other influence operations, promoting user immunity and promulgating counter narratives to misinformation.

Biden admin pushed to bar Twitter users for COVID ‘disinformation,’ files show

 12/26/2022

New York Post

Jesse O'Neill

The Biden White House pressured Twitter to both “elevate” and “suppress” users based on their stances on COVID-19 — ultimately “censoring info that was true but inconvenient” to policy makers, according to the latest edition of the “Twitter files”. The coercion campaign during the pandemic began with the Trump administration — which asked Twitter to crack down on stories about panic buying and “runs on grocery stores” in the early days of the outbreak — but was stepped up under Biden, whose administration was focused on the removal of “anti-vaxxer accounts,” according to The Free Press reporter David Zweig.

Blinken warns risks of disinformation, falsehoods over U.S. Elections

 3/18/2024

Global News

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said at a democracy summit in Seoul Korea, that 2024 is an “extraordinary election year” to highlight risks of disinformation and falsehoods in cyberspace. Blinken repeated Washington’s accusation that Russia and China are behind global campaigns aimed at manipulating information, while some European officials have also accused Russia of conducting disinformation campaigns using AI.

Brand Danger: X and Misinformation Super-spreaders Share Ad Money from False or Egregiously Misleading Claims About the Israel-Hamas War

 11/22/2023

NewsGuard

Jack Nrewster, Coalter Palmer et al.

On X, programmatic ads appear below viral posts spreading false claims about the Israel-Hamas war. Shockingly, a new ad revenue sharing program rewards these misinformation spreaders with a portion of income from major brands, governments, and non-profits.

Break free from misinformation in an escape room (Video clip)

 6/14/2022

Center for an Informed Public

Our mission is to resist strategic misinformation, promote an informed society, and strengthen democratic discourse. A research project of the University of Washington‘s Center for an Informed Public in partnership with the UW Technology & Social Change Group, UW GAMER Research Group and Puzzle Break, immerse people in an interactive escape room of manipulated media, social media bots, deep fakes, and other forms of deception to learn about misinformation. These games are designed to improve people’s awareness of misinformation tactics and generate reflection on the emotional triggers and psychological biases that make misinformation so powerful.

Brief: Disinformation Risk in the United States Online Media Market, October 2022

 10/21/2022

Global Disinformation Index

GDI’s research looked at 69 U.S. news sites, selected on the basis of online traffic and social media followers, as well as geographical coverage and racial, ethnic and religious community representation. The index scores sites across 16 indicators – indicators which themselves contain many, many more individual data points – and generates a score for the degree to which a site is at risk of disinforming its readers. The data from the study corroborates today’s general impression that hyperbolic, emotional, and alarmist language is a feature of the U.S. news media landscape.

Brookings Institute: The Role of Technology in Online Misinformation

This report outlines the logic of digital personalization, which uses big data to analyze individual interests to determine the types of messages most likely to resonate with particular demographics. Those same technologies can also operate I the service of misinformation through text prediction, tools that receive user inputs and produce new texts that is as credible as the original text itself. The report addresses potential policy solutions that can counter digital personalization, closing with a discussion of regulatory or normative tools that are less likely to be effective in countering the adverse effects of digital technology.

ChatGPT: Faking it, a genuine artificial concern

 1/23/2023

The Economic Times

Spread of misinformation can have serious consequences, from influencing public opinion to undermining trust in institutions. With the ability to generate large amounts of text quickly and convincingly, generative AI tools like ChatGPT could be used to create and disseminate fake news on a large scale.

China is using the world’s largest known online disinformation operation to harass Americans, a CNN review finds

 11/13/2023

CNN

Donie O’Sullivan, Curt Devine & Allison Gordon

The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found.

CIA analyst decries free speech 'nonsense' on Musk's Twitter, claims it will benefit Russian disinformation

 11/26/2022

Fox News

Gabriel Hays

CIA analyst Bob Baer claimed that "Putin is going to be all over Twitter" thanks to billionaire owner Elon Musk’s policies for running the company. He also stated that the "voice of the people" Musk claimed wants free speech is "Russian intelligence" looking to undermine American support for Ukraine. During a recent segment on CNN, the analyst argued that Musk’s pro-free-speech attitude towards operating the company, particularly in the way he has decided to reinstate banned accounts and not suspend users for any speech, means Russian hackers will benefit.

Climate change misinformation 'rocket boosters' on Elon Musk's Twitter

 1/19/2023

CTV News

David Klepper (AP)

Search for the word "climate" on Twitter and the first automatic recommendation isn't "climate crisis" or "climate jobs" or even "climate change" but instead "climate scam." Clicking on the recommendation yields dozens of posts denying the reality of climate change and making misleading claims about efforts to mitigate it. Such misinformation has flourished on Twitter since it was bought by Elon Musk last year, but the site isn't the only one promoting content that scientists and environmental advocates say undercuts public support for policies intended to respond to a changing climate.

Coalition Sends Letter Urging Social Media Platforms to Prevent Online Election Disinformation

 10/13/2022

Legal Defence Fund

Today, LDF and a coalition of civil rights, public interest, voting rights, and other organizations, sent a letter urging social media companies to take immediate steps to curb the spread of voting disinformation in the midterms and future elections and to help prevent the undermining of our democracy. This letter is a follow up to another sent last May. Many companies have announced updates to their voter interference and disinformation policies in recent weeks but the policies have little effect unless enforced continually and consistently.

Confronting the Threat of Deepfakes in Politics

 11/10/2023

Tech Policy Press

Maggie Engler and Numa Dhamani

Next year, more than 2 billion voters will head to the polls in a record-breaking number of elections around the world, including in the United States, India, and the European Union. Deepfakes are already emerging in the lead up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, from Trump himself circulating a fake image of himself kneeling in prayer on Truth Social to a DeSantis campaign video showing Trump embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Chief Medical Advisor to the President of United States. The most obvious concern with deepfakes is the ability to create audio or video recordings of candidates saying things that they never said. But perhaps a bigger concern revolves around the ability to distinguish the authenticity of a candidate’s statement. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a 2005 Access Hollywood tape captured Trump saying that he could grope women without their consent. Trump initially apologized, but then later suggested that it was fake news. In a world where the public does not know if an audio or video of a candidate is real or fake, will individuals caught in a lie or scandal now blame it on a deepfake?

Congressman Schiff, Senator Whitehouse Urge Meta to Maintain Policies on Election Misinformation, Uphold Trump Suspension

 12/14/2022

News Release

Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sent a letter to Meta's President of Global Affairs, Nicholas Clegg, urging Meta to maintain its commitment to keeping dangerous election denial content off its platform. “After each election cycle, social media platforms like Meta often alter or roll back certain misinformation policies, because they are temporary and specific to the election season,” Schiff and Whitehouse write. “Doing so in this current environment, in which election disinformation continuously erodes trust in the integrity of the voting process, would be a tragic mistake. Meta must commit to strong election misinformation policies year-round, as we are still witnessing falsehoods about voting and the prior elections spreading on your platform.”

Deepfakes are still new, but 2024 could be the year they have an impact on elections

 3/19/2024

The Conversation

Eileen Culloty

Disinformation caught many people off guard during the 2016 Brexit referendum and US presidential election. Since then, a mini-industry has developed to analyse and counter it. Yet despite that, we have entered 2024 – a year of more than 40 elections worldwide – more fearful than ever about disinformation. In many ways, the problem is more challenging than it was in 2016. Advances in technology since then are one reason for that, in particular the development that has taken place with synthetic media, otherwise known as deepfakes. It is increasingly difficult to know whether media has been fabricated by a computer or is based on something that really happened.

Designing Responsible AI Technologies to Curb Disinformation

 10/1/2022

University of Texas

The rise of social media and the growing scale of online information have led to a surge of intentional disinformation and incidental misinformation. It is increasingly difficult to tell fact from fiction, and the challenge is more complex than simply differentiating “fake news” from simple facts. This project uses qualitative methods and machine learning models to understand how digital disinformation arises and spreads, how it affects different groups in society, and how to design effective human-centred interventions.

Disinformation and freedom of expression during armed conflict

 10/19/2022

UN Web TV

At the 77th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression presented her new report on disinformation and freedom of opinion and expression during armed conflicts.

Disinformation Day 2022 Considers Pressing Need for Cross-sector Collaboration and New Tools for Fact Checkers

 11/9/2022

University of Texas

Stacey Ingram-Kaleh

October 26, 2022 marked the first annual Disinformation Day hosted by Good Systems’ “Designing Responsible AI Technologies to Curb Disinformation” research team. Approximately 150 attendees from across the globe came together virtually to discuss challenges and opportunities in curbing the spread of digital disinformation. Thought leaders representing a range of disciplines and sectors examined the needs of fact checkers, explored issues of bias, fairness, and justice in mis- and disinformation, and outlined next steps for addressing these pressing issues together.

Disinformation Is a Global Risk. So Why Are We Still Treating It Like a Tech Problem?

 8/20/2025

United Nations

The UN’s 2024 Global Risk Report ranks mis- and disinformation as a top global threat. UN Development Coordination Office Chief of Communications and Results Reporting, Carolina G. Azevedo, explores why youth-led, UN-backed efforts in Kenya and Costa Rica may hold lessons for building trust in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

DISINFORMATION: Top Risks of 2023

EURASIA GROUP

Ian Bremmer & Cliff Kupchan

Rapid-fire advancements in artificial intelligence could help misinformation thrive in the year ahead, a new report is warning. That’s according to the Top Risk Report for 2023, an annual document from the U.S.-based geopolitical risk analysts at the Eurasia Group. The “weapons of mass disruption” that are emerging from speedy technological innovations “will erode social trust, empower demagogues and authoritarians, and disrupt businesses and markets,” the report said.

Elon Musk Will Test the EU’s Digital Services Act

 9/11/2023

Tech Policy Press

Gabby Miller

Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, has once again ramped up attacks meant to silence his critics, this time while bolstering an online movement with ties to white nationalists and antisemitic propagandists. His latest target is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an anti-hate organization focused on combating antisemitism, which he threatened with legal action via Tweet early last week. Musk blames ADL for the exodus of advertisers from his rapidly deteriorating social media platform. The platform formerly known as Twitter, referred to as "X," is now required by law to conduct its first annual risk assessment to demonstrate compliance with the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA applies to Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Search Engines (VLOSEs) like X, and it aims to combat disinformation, similar to the content Musk promotes on the platform.

Email Remains Primary Gateway for Disinformation and Cyberattacks in 2025 According to New Report from Valimail

 4/22/2025

Globe&Mail

In an era marked widespread disinformation, trust in digital communications is eroding. Malicious actors are increasingly exploiting email to impersonate brands, launch phishing campaigns, and spread false information-often using sophisticated methods made simpler by emerging technologies. This environment calls for a layered approach to email protection.

EU Disinformation Code Takes Effect Amid Censorship Claims and Trade Tensions

 7/1/2025

Ramsha Jahangir

Ramsha Jahangir

As of July 1, 2025, Europe’s Code of Conduct on Disinformation is officially in effect. What was once a voluntary self-regulatory framework is now locked into the Digital Services Act (DSA), requiring the Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs) to meet tougher transparency and auditing obligations aimed at stamping out disinformation. Full compliance with the Code now counts as a key risk-mitigation measure and marker of DSA compliance. And come audit time, tech platforms will have to prove they’re sticking to their commitments – or face scrutiny from Brussels.

EU official says Twitter abandons bloc's voluntary pact against disinformation

 5/26/2023

ABC News

Kelvin Chan

Twitter has dropped out of a voluntary European Union agreement to combat online disinformation, a top EU official said Friday. European Commissioner Thierry Breton tweeted that Twitter had pulled out of the EU's disinformation “code of practice” that other major social media platforms have pledged to support. But he added that Twitter's “obligation” remained, referring to the EU's tough new digital rules taking effect in August.

EU Official Says Twitter Abandons Bloc's Voluntary Pact Against Disinformation

 5/26/2023

Associated Press

Twitter has dropped out of a voluntary European Union agreement to combat online disinformation, a top EU official said Friday. European Commissioner Thierry Breton tweeted that Twitter had pulled out of the EU's disinformation “code of practice” that other major social media platforms have pledged to support. But he added that Twitter's “obligation” remained, referring to the EU's tough new digital rules taking effect in August.

EU Policy. Meta second to set up EU online election centre to fight disinformation

 2/26/2024

Euronews

Cynthia Kroet

The online platform will add fact-checking organisations in Bulgaria, France, and Slovakia to its network ahead of the EU elections. US tech giant Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is to set up an EU-specific 'operations centre' to combat misinformation around the European Parliament elections in June, the company has announced weeks after its Chinese rival TikTok made a similar move.

EU Policy. TikTok sets up in-app ‘election centres’ to fight fake news

 2/14/2024

EuroNews

Cynthia Kroet

Major online platforms must tackle disinformation, under new EU digital service rules that take effect Saturday. TikTok announced today (14 February) that it will set up what it calls in-app election centres for each of the 27 EU countries. The move by the social media network is a bid to reduce the spread of online misinformation as the bloc goes to the polls in June. The tool will be available as of next month to ensure people can “separate fact from fiction”, Kevin Morgan, TikTok’s head of trust and safety for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said in a statement.

EU takes shot at Musk over Trump interview — and misses

 8/13/2024

Politico

Mark Scott

The European Union's top digital enforcer tried to take on Elon Musk. Within hours, he faced accusations of meddling in American politics and his own staff were back-pedaling hard. Thierry Breton, who oversees the bloc's enforcement of new social media rules, sent Musk a letter posted on X that warned the tech mogul about spreading "harmful content," ahead of Musk's livestreamed interview with Donald Trump.

EU warns Elon Musk after Twitter found to have highest rate of disinformation

 9/26/2023

Guardian

Lisa O’Carroll

The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk to comply with sweeping new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda, after X – formerly known as Twitter – was found to have the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms. The report analyzed the ratio of disinformation for a new report laying bare for the first time the scale of fake news on social media across the EU, with millions of fake accounts removed by TikTok and LinkedIn. Facebook was the second-worst offender, according to the first ever report recording posts that will be deemed illegal across the EU under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in August.

EU warns Elon Musk over ‘disinformation’ on X about Hamas attack

 10/10/2023

Guardian

Lisa O’Carroll

The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk over the alleged disinformation about the Hamas attack on Israel, including fake news and “repurposed old images”, on X, which was formerly known as Twitter. The letter arrives less than two months after sweeping new laws regulating content on social media seen in the EU came into force under the Digital Services Act.

European Commission to revise Code of Practice against Disinformation

 3/31/2022

Lexology

Herbert Smith Freehills

The Code of Practice against Disinformation was published in September 2018 and was subsequently signed by Facebook, Google, Mozilla and Twitter, among others. The Code is a self-regulatory document and, following European Commission assessments and reports on adherence, guidance was issued in May 2021 to address shortfalls in the Code of Practice and provide a more robust monitoring framework. Most recently, the Commission announced that there will be 26 new signatories joining the drafting process for a revised version of the Code, expected to be released by the end of March 2022.

Exclusive: Elon Musk's X restructuring curtails disinformation research, spurs legal fears

 11/6/2023

Reuters

Shelia Dang

Social media researchers have canceled, suspended or changed more than 100 studies about X, formerly Twitter, as a result of actions taken by Elon Musk that limit access to the social media platform, nearly a dozen interviews and a survey of planned projects show. Musk's restrictions on critical methods of gathering data on the global platform have suppressed the ability to untangle the origin and spread of false information during real-time events such as Hamas' attack on Israel and the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, researchers told Reuters.

Experts grade Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube on readiness to handle midterm election misinformation

 10/26/2022

The Conversation

The 2016 U.S. election was a wake-up call about the dangers of political misinformation on social media. With two more election cycles rife with misinformation under their belts, social media companies have experienced identifying and countering misinformation. However, the nature of the threat misinformation poses to society continues to shift in form and targets. The big lie about the 2020 presidential election has become a major theme, and immigrant communities are increasingly in the crosshairs of disinformation campaigns – deliberate efforts to spread misinformation. Social media companies have announced plans to deal with misinformation in the 2022 midterm elections, but the companies vary in their approaches and effectiveness. We asked experts on social media to grade how ready Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube are to handle the task.

Explicit fake images of Taylor Swift prove laws haven't kept pace with tech, experts say

 1/26/2024

CBC

Rhianna Schmunk

Explicit AI-generated photos of one of the world's most famous artists spread rapidly across social media this week, highlighting once again what experts describe as an urgent need to crack down on technology and platforms that make it possible for harmful images to be shared.

Facebook and Instagram face EU probes in content crackdown

 4/29/2024

Politico

Clothilde Goujard and Aoife White

Facebook and Instagram will get European Union investigations into potential infringements of content-moderation rules as soon as today, four people told POLITICO. The probes are likely to target a range of issues including Meta's handling of ads, especially political ads, to examine suspected breaches of the Digital Services Act (DSA), said the people who were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential procedure.

Facebook, Instagram in EU crosshairs for election disinformation

 4/30/2024

Reuters

Foo Yun Chee

Meta Platforms' (META.O), Facebook and Instagram have failed to tackle disinformation and deceptive advertising in the run-up to European Parliament elections, the European Commission said on Tuesday as it opened an investigation into suspected breaches of EU online content rules. The move by EU tech regulators came amid concerns about Russia, China and Iran as potential sources of disinformation, but also inside the EU, with some political parties and organisations seeking to attract voters with lies in the June 6-9 vote to select the next five-year parliament.

Fake news offers unexpected opportunities for trusted media

 6/17/2024

DW

Cathrin Schaer

Disinformation is acknowledged as one of journalism's, if not the democratic world's, biggest problems. Fake news and misleading visuals have deepened social division and interfered with elections, as well as having other destructive aspects. And generative artificial intelligence, or AI, where, for example, advanced computing allows users to make a minutes-long video from one photograph of a politician, is only about to make things worse. However, at DW's annual Global Media Forum (GMF) in Bonn there was some unexpectedly positive news regarding the increase and spread of disinformation.

Fakery and confusion: Campaigns brace for explosion of AI in 2024

 6/18/2023

Politico

Madison Fernandez

Dozens of Democratic strategists gathered on Zoom on Wednesday for a novel meeting. The topic: How to combat an expected explosion of AI-generated fake content flooding TV airwaves and mailboxes in 2024. The meeting, hosted by the progressive group Arena, drew more than 70 officials. They talked about how generative AI could produce misinformation and disinformation at a pace and scale campaigns have not experienced before.

FBI and CISA Issue Public Service Announcement Warning of Tactics Foreign Threat Actors are Using to Spread Disinformation in the 2024 U.S. General Election

 10/18/2024

CISA

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued their final four-part joint public service announcement (PSA) today titled "Just So You Know: Foreign Threat Actors Likely to Use a Variety of Tactics to Develop and Spread Disinformation During the 2024 U.S. General Election Cycle." This PSA highlights efforts by foreign actors to spread disinformation in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. general election with the goal of casting doubt on the integrity of the democratic process and sowing partisan discord. Foreign adversaries are using a variety of sophisticated disinformation campaigns, often leveraging new tools, such as generative artificial intelligence (AI), to craft and spread misleading content.

For Teens (and Adults) Fighting Misinformation, TikTok Is Still ‘Uncharted Territory

 12/7/2022

EdSurge

Nadia Tamez-Robledo

TikTok may have started as the preferred social media platform for modern dance crazes, but the platform’s growth has made it a home for something else—misinformation. Add to that its popularity among teens and its powerful algorithm, and you have a mix that worries some educators about TikTok’s potential negative impacts for young users. A recent study from NewsGuard found that roughly one in five TikTok videos contain misinformation, whether the topic is COVID-19 vaccines or the Russia-Ukraine war.

For the second year running, the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos has ranked disinformation as the greatest short-term risk to society. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) agrees and calls on advertisers to take responsibility when it comes to the threats that major online platforms — especially thos

Reporters Without Borders

For the second year running, the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos has ranked disinformation as the greatest short-term risk to society. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) agrees and calls on advertisers to take responsibility when it comes to the threats that major online platforms — especially those that embody the values of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg — pose to accessing reliable information and quality journalism.

Former Harvard disinformation scholar says she was pushed out of her job after college faced pressure from Facebook

 12/4/2023

CNN

Donie O’Sullivan & Clare Duffy

A nationally recognized online disinformation researcher has accused Harvard University of shutting down the project she led to protect its relationship with mega-donor and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The allegations, made by Dr. Joan Donovan, raise questions about the influence the tech giant might have over seemingly independent research. Facebook’s parent company Meta has long sought to defend itself against research that implicates it in harming society: from the proliferation of election disinformation to creating addictive habits in children. Details of the disclosure were first reported by The Washington Post.

Free speech groups blast EU official who sent Elon Musk disinformation warning: 'Alarming'

 8/21/2024

NBC

Jackson Walker

Eighteen U.S. free speech advocates and groups on Wednesday condemned European Union Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Thierry Breton for chiding X owner Elon Musk, according to a letter acquired by The National Desk (TND). Breton this month sent a letter to Musk demanding he comply with European Union digital law ahead of his interview with former President Donald Trump. That letter acknowledged the impending interview and urged Musk to remember the Digital Services Act (DSA), a European Union regulation addressing online disinformation hate speech.

From deepfakes to ChatGPT, misinformation thrives with AI advancements: report

 1/4/2023

Global News

Rachel Gilmore

Rapid-fire advancements in artificial intelligence could help misinformation thrive in the year ahead, a new report is warning. That’s according to the Top Risk Report for 2023, an annual document from the U.S.-based geopolitical risk analysts at the Eurasia Group. The “weapons of mass disruption” that are emerging from speedy technological innovations “will erode social trust, empower demagogues and authoritarians, and disrupt businesses and markets,” the report said.

From Iran and Russia, the disinformation is now. The target is America.

 8/19/2024

Washington Post

The artificial-intelligence company OpenAI announced Friday that it disrupted a covert Iranian campaign using its ChatGPT tool to create social media posts and long-form articles to influence American voters about political candidates in both parties, spiced up with remarks about fashion and beauty to look more authentic. The disruption was based in part on the Aug. 9 warning from Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center that “Iranian actors have recently laid the groundwork for influence operations aimed at US audiences.”

Generative AI is Already Catalyzing Disinformation. How Long Until Chatbots Manipulate Us Directly?

 10/23/2023

Tech Policy Press

Zak Rogoff

Over the last few years, it's become clear that unscrupulous companies and politicians are willing to pursue any new technology that promises the ability to manipulate opinion at scale. Generative AI represents the latest wave of such technologies. Despite the fact that the potential harms are already apparent, law- and policymakers have to date failed to put the necessary guardrails in place.

Generative AI: A Double-Edged Sword in Shaping Canada’s Future Elections

 11/17/2023

The Niagara Independent

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands poised to revolutionize the landscape of Canadian elections, promising both transformative advancements and worrisome challenges. As this technology rapidly evolves, its potential impact on the democratic process demands close scrutiny, navigating a complex terrain of opportunities and risks.

Glaring and dangerous omission in State’s new plan to tackle disinformation

 4/17/2025

IICL

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has criticized the Government’s new strategy against disinformation for failing to tackle the social media algorithms threatening our democracy. The National Counter Disinformation Strategy was published today [Thursday] following two years of discussion by a working group, of which ICCL was a member. But ICCL quit the group in August following Government refusal to include any concrete action to tackle dangerous algorithms.

Global Media Congress discusses ways to be combatting misinformation, fake news on social media

 11/28/2024

WAM

On the last day of the Global Media Congress, where the theme of the day was Digital Disruption, a stimulating panel discussion on one of the most pressing issues of the digital age, disinformation, took place. Is It Fake? Combatting Misinformation and Fake News on Social Media brought together industry professionals to investigate the psychological, technological, and social issues that contribute to the spread of incorrect information online. Together, the panel studied the functions of algorithms, echo chambers, and content moderation, emphasising the critical importance of better media literacy in navigating today’s complex digital ecosystem.

Google to make disclosure of AI-generated content mandatory for election advertisers

 9/6/2023

Reuters

Google will make it mandatory for all election advertisers to add a clear and conspicuous disclosure starting mid-November when their ads contain AI generated content, the company said on Wednesday. The policy would apply to image, video, and audio content, across its platforms, the company said in a blog post. Deepfakes created by AI algorithms threaten to blur the lines between fact and fiction, making it difficult for voters to distinguish the real from the fake.

Guardrails Urgently Needed to Contain “Clear and Present Global Threat” of Online Mis- and Disinformation and Hate Speech, says UN Secretary-General

 6/11/2023

U.N. Africa Renewal

António Guterres

The world must address the “grave global harm” caused by the proliferation of hate and lies in the digital space, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said at the launch of his report into information integrity on digital platforms. Alarm over the potential threat posed by the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence must not obscure the damage already being done by digital technologies that enable the spread of online hate speech, mis- and disinformation, stressed the UN chief.

Handbook to combat CBRN disinformation

 1/13/2023

United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Institute

To produce the Handbook to combat disinformation, UNICRI has monitored several social media platforms, paying specific attention to the role of violent non-state actors, namely: violent extremists; terrorist organizations (particularly those associated with ISIL, also known as Da’esh and Al-Qaida); and organized criminal groups. The Handbook aims at enhancing understanding of CBRN disinformation on social media while developing competencies to prevent and respond to disinformation with a specific focus on techniques for debunking false information. It also equips practitioners with the competencies to effectively analyse, understand and respond to CBRN disinformation in the media and on social media platforms.

Handshaking with God: the 2022 Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation and its Impact on Digital Sovereignty

 11/8/2022

Ylenia Maria Citino

Media Laws

Hate and disinformation spiked after Musk's Twitter takeover | View

 11/24/2022

Euronews

Heather Dannyelle Thompson

In just over two weeks, Musk’s takeover of Twitter has rocked the internet. Hate speech and disinformation have already spiked in what appears to be mostly trolls and right-wing extremists seeking to test the boundaries of Musk’s approach to unchecked free speech on his newly acquired platform. The chaos at Twitter comes at a distinct time of transformation of the internet. Not only is the online space facing regulation globally, but the advances in artificial intelligence that power tomorrow’s tools of disinformation are not slowing down either.

High-school students should be taught to spot fake videos and disinformation, public safety minister says

 11/18/2022

Globe and Mail

Marie Woolf

High-school students should be educated about how to spot fake videos and photos and disinformation, because they are so prevalent online, federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino says. Speaking from the G7 summit in Germany, the minister said disinformation is “one of the most pervasive threats to all our democracies right now” and more needs to be done to raise awareness and equip Canadians to navigate its dangers.

History Is a Good Antidote to Disinformation About the Invasion of Ukraine

 3/8/2022

CIGI

Heidi Tworek

Much of the current misinformation online exists to scam and to manipulate through speed. TikTok has become a key platform for misleading content. TikTok’s algorithm appears to offer up many misleading videos alongside scam calls for donations. These videos often depict older conflicts or conflicts in other places; the posters claim they are occurring in Ukraine and can garner millions of views. Abbie Richards suggests that “TikTok’s platform architecture is amplifying fear and permitting misinformation to thrive at a time of high anxiety,” calling the platform’s design “incompatible with the needs of the current moment.” It is hard to resist the siren call of doom scrolling. But a slower accumulation of knowledge at moments of crisis can avoid hurtful faux pas and prevent inadvertent spreading of disinformation.

How AI can help combat mis- and disinformation about migration

 12/18/2024

Webforum

Maria McAuliffe

The World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Risk Report ranked disinformation as the top immediate threat currently facing the world. The harsh reality highlighted in the risk report is that mis- and disinformation are key features of the discourses on some of the most pressing global challenges facing the world today, including climate change, environmental degradation and human displacement and migration. New technology such as AI could be used to help combat disinformation, so the world can instead see migration as a global strategic asset. This will mean embracing AI’s potential for good in combating disinformation and leveraging accurate information at scale.

How AI deepfakes polluted elections in 2024

 12/21/2024

NPR

Shannon Bond

In January, thousands of New Hampshire voters picked up their phones to hear what sounded like President Biden telling Democrats not to vote in the state's primary, just days away. "We know the value of voting Democratic when our votes count. It's important you save your vote for the November election," the voice on the line said. But it wasn't Biden. It was a deepfake created with artificial intelligence — and the manifestation of fears that 2024's global wave of elections would be manipulated with fake pictures, audio and video, due to rapid advances in generative AI technology.

How AI-generated disinformation might impact this year’s elections and how journalists should report on it

 3/15/2024

Reuters

Marina Adami

From satire to robocalls, generative AI is entering politics in a crucial year. Four experts reflect on its possible consequences and on how to cover it. A phone call from the US president, covert recordings of politicians, false video clips of newsreaders, and surprising photographs of celebrities. A wide array of media can now be generated or altered with artificial intelligence, sometimes mimicking real people, often very convincingly.

How Blockchain Can Help Combat Disinformation

As digital disinformation grows more and more prevalent, there’s one emerging technology with the potential to address many of the root causes of and risks associated with misleading and manipulated media: blockchain. While it’s no panacea, blockchain can help in three key areas: First, a blockchain-based system could offer a decentralized, trusted mechanism for verifying the provenance and other important metadata for online content. Second, it could enable content creators and sharers to maintain a reputation independent of any publication or institution. And finally, it makes it possible to financially incentivize the creation and distribution of content that meets community-driven standards for accuracy and integrity. Of course, any technological solution will have to be complemented by substantial policy and education initiatives — but in an ever-more complex digital media landscape, blockchain offers a promising starting point to ensure we can trust the information we see, hear, and watch.

How online misinformation exploits ‘information voids’ — and what to do about it

 1/9/2024

Nature

In 2024’s super election year, providers of online search engines and their users need to be especially aware of how online misinformation can seem all too credible. This year, countries with a combined population of 4 billion — around half the world’s people — are holding elections, in what is being described as the biggest election year in recorded history. Some researchers are concerned that 2024 could also be one of the biggest years for the spreading of misinformation and disinformation. Both refer to misleading content, but disinformation is deliberately generated.

How Rest of World Tracks AI Use in 2024 Elections Around the Globe

 5/22/2024

Global Investigative Journalism Network

Marina Adami

As two billion people around the world head to the polls, a key concern for many has been the potential role new AI could play in election campaigns. This technology could worsen issues around disinformation or online harassment.

How to avoid falling for misinformation, fake AI images on social media

 5/22/2023

Washington Post

Heather Kelly

The rapid spread of easily accessible AI tools is muddling the waters even further. Look no further than the mystery of the Pope in an expensive-looking puffy coat, or a recent fake tweet that was quickly debunked claiming there was an explosion near the pentagon. How do you know what to trust, what not to share and what to flag to tech companies? Here are some basic tools everyone should use when consuming breaking news online.

How to avoid nuclear war in an era of AI and misinformation

 7/18/2025

Nature

Alexandra Witze

The previous great build-up of nuclear weapons, the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, essentially involved two, reasonably matched superpowers. Now, China is emerging as a third nuclear-armed superpower, North Korea is growing its nuclear arsenal and Iran has enriched uranium beyond what is needed for civilian use.

How to fight disinformation, according to a historian of media

 6/6/2025

UBC

Today, the narrative around social media and democracy has flipped into a dystopian vision. Social media is now blamed for fuelling disinformation, division, and violence around the world, algorithmically funnelling audiences into disparate partisan echo chambers, and eroding a shared sense of reality on everything from health, to climate, to politics. A 2024 World Economic Forum report named misinformation and disinformation the top global risks for the next two years, outranking war, climate disasters, and health epidemics.

How We’re Being Manipulated on Social Media

 5/30/2025

Baltic Sentinel

Pekka Kallioniemi

In a world where more people get their news from social media than from newspapers or TV, it’s time we asked a hard question: How much of what we see online is real? The uncomfortable answer is: less than we think. What we often perceive as authentic public opinion is increasingly the result of manipulation—by bots, paid armies of fake accounts, marketing companies, AI-generated news sites, and even entire states weaponizing information. And most of it is happening in plain sight.

Image Provenance Analysis for Disinformation Detection

Composite images are the outcome of combining pieces extracted from two or more other images, sometimes with the intent to deceive the observer and convey false narratives. Consider an image suspected of being a composite, and a large corpus of images that might have donated pieces to the composite (such as photos from social media. In this conversation, we will discuss our most recent advances in provenance analysis, concluding with our latest endeavours towards extending it to unveil disinformation campaigns. Video of event included in this site. Speakers: Walter Scheirer, Dennis O. Doughty Collegiate Associate Professor, University of Notre Dame Daniel Moreira, Incoming Assistant Professor, Loyola University

In This Presidential Campaign, Disinformation May Be the Winner

 10/18/2024

Tufts Now

Heather Stephenson

The outcome of the 2024 U.S. election is still unknown, but one clear winner of this campaign season is disinformation, according to professors at The Fletcher School. This false information, which is spread deliberately to deceive voters and advance political goals, is dangerous and it’s challenging to regulate, the experts said. False claims have been flying in political debates and on social media, with real-world consequences, said Bhaskar Chakravorti, Fletcher’s dean of global business, as he introduced a panel discussion on the topic on October 15.

Is AI the only antidote to disinformation?

 7/20/2022

World Economic Forum

The stability of our society is more threatened by disinformation than anything else we can imagine. It is a pandemic that has engulfed small and large economies alike. People around the world face threats to life and personal safety because of the volumes of emotionally charged and socially divisive pieces of misinformation, much of it fuelled by emerging technology. This content either manipulates the perceptions of people or propagates absolute falsehoods in society.

Is Europe ready for an information war?

 6/23/2022

Debating Europe

What does it mean to “win the information war”? During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, headlines have proclaimed Ukraine to be “winning” its information war against Russia. But what is an information war? Is it a fancy name for propaganda? Does it also include, for example, controlling the flow of information to open source platforms (which can then be geolocated using Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) techniques)? What might future information war mean in a world of the metaverse and Extended Reality (XR)?

Israel-Iran conflict unleashes wave of AI disinformation

 6/21/2025

BBC

Matt Murphy

A wave of disinformation has been unleashed online since Israel began strikes on Iran last week, with dozens of posts reviewed by BBC Verify seeking to amplify the effectiveness of Tehran's response. Our analysis found a number of videos - created using artificial intelligence - boasting of Iran's military capabilities, alongside fake clips showing the aftermath of strikes on Israeli targets. The three most viewed fake videos BBC Verify found have collectively amassed over 100 million views across multiple platforms.

Justice Sees Fake News Disaster, and TSE Seeks Police Power to Act in The Final Stretch of Brazil's Election

 10/20/2022

UOL

Patricia Campos Mello

Court will vote on a resolution that extends the power to act against misinformation and also ban paid advertising on the internet during the election period. Chief Justice of the TSE (Supreme Electoral Court), Alexandre de Moraes, had a meeting this Wednesday (19) with representatives of the main social media platforms. At the meeting, he said that the platforms' performance was reasonably good in the first round, but that in this second round the fake news situation is disastrous.

Labour MPs begin quitting X over ‘hate and disinformation’

 8/12/2024

Guardian

Eleni Courea

Labour MPs have begun quitting X in alarm over the platform, with one saying Elon Musk had turned it into “a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups”. Over the weekend, newly elected MPs took to WhatsApp groups to raise growing concerns about the role X played in the spread of misinformation amid the far-right-led riots in parts of England and Northern Ireland. Two Labour MPs are known to have told colleagues they were leaving the platform. One of them, Noah Law, has disabled his account. Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives, including Threads, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.

Managing truth: Misinformation and disinformation in 2025

 6/3/2025

Black Hat Middle East and Africa

Black Hat Middle East and Africa

A peer-reviewed study in 2021 found that misinformation sources on Facebook received 6X more engagement than reputable news sites. Fake news is often provocative and specifically designed to drive comments and shares – so it spreads fast and has real potential to do damage. With generative AI, deception has become more sophisticated and widespread. The potential impact is so significant that the World Economic Forum has labeled misinformation and disinformation the ‘biggest short-term threat to the global economy’.

Managing Truth: Misinformation and Disinformation in 2025.

 8/28/2025

Black Hat

Research suggests that 48% of people across 27 countries have believed fake news, before later finding out that the story they’d trusted was fabricated. Misinformation is everywhere; it’s been identified in content published by trusted news outlets, and it’s rife on social media. The digital era has created a hurricane of possibility for anyone who wants to engineer public feeling based on false stories, as well as anyone who wants to trick individuals into parting with their resources through targeted disinformation.

Meet the Future of AI: Generative AI and Democracy: A Summary of Event Findings

 7/23/2024

EDMO

Symeon Papadopoulos

Following the success of the 2023 edition and the White Paper that resulted from the event, researchers from EU-funded AI and disinformation projects, carried out in dialogue with EDMO, have once again joined forces to hold the second edition of the ‘Meet the Future of AI’ event.

Meta says it will end fact checking as Silicon Valley prepares for Trump

 1/7/2025

NPR

Huo Jingnan, Shannon Bond, Bobby Allyn

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that the social media company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, would stop working with third-party fact-checking organizations. Repeating talking points long used by President-elect Donald Trump and his allies, in a video Zuckerberg said the company's content moderation approach resulted too often in "censorship".

Meta Takes Down 'Largest Ever' Chinese Influence Operation

 8/31/2023

Time

Vera Bergengruen

A sprawling network of fake accounts linked to Chinese law enforcement was taken down by Meta this week in what the social-media company called “the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world.” The operation was the largest the company has removed in its history: on Facebook alone, Meta says it removed 7,704 accounts, 954 pages, and 15 groups linked to the effort to push pro-China talking points and attack the government’s critics. But its fingerprints extended beyond Facebook and Instagram, the platforms owned by Meta. The Chinese influence operation targeted at least 50 other platforms and apps, including YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, Pinterest, Medium, and X, the company formerly known as Twitter, according to Meta's analysts.

Meta to shutter key disinformation tracking tool before 2024 election

 3/22/2024

The Record

Suzanne Smalley

Meta’s decision to close its CrowdTangle division — a tool that tracks content across social media — has raised the ire of more than 100 research and advocacy groups who say it will make it harder to fight disinformation. Groups including the Mozilla Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology and Access Now sent the social media behemoth an open letter Thursday decrying the decision to shutter the unit in August, asking Meta to, at a minimum, invest in CrowdTangle through January. Meta announced it would close CrowdTangle last week.

Meta unveils team to combat disinformation and AI harms in EU elections

 2/26/2024

Aljazeera

Tech giant’s head of EU affairs says team will bring together experts from across the company. Facebook owner Meta has unveiled plans to launch a dedicated team to combat disinformation and harms generated by artificial intelligence (AI) ahead of the upcoming European Parliament elections.

Meta, TikTok given a week by EU to detail measures against disinformation

 10/19/2023

Reuters

Charlotte Van Campenhout and Bart H. Meijer

Meta (META.O) and TikTok have been given a week by the European Commission to provide details on measures taken to counter the spread of terrorist, violent content and hate speech on their platforms, a week after Elon Musk's X was told to do the same.

Mis- and Disinformation Trends and Tactics to Watch in 2025

 2/6/2025

ADL

Throughout 2024, the ADL Center on Extremism documented the tactics deployed by extremists and purveyors of hate to promote false narratives, as well as the harmful impact of conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation on communities including Jews, immigrants and other marginalized groups. Predicting how extremists may weaponize false narratives requires an understanding of the strategies that allow them to spread most effectively. Here, we highlight three key mis- and disinformation trends and tactics that saw success throughout 2024 and could deeply impact the extremist landscape in 2025 and beyond.

Misinformation and hate are trending in this election year

 10/31/2022

CNN Politics

Zachary B. Wolf

Misinformation is trending now that Elon Musk, the self-described “Chief Twit,” has bought Twitter, his favourite social media platform. Meanwhile, displays of hate are breaking out in public now that Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, has despicably fashioned himself as a folk hero for those spewing antisemitic messages, pushing his own anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. The stories dovetail not just because they are built on the wild spread of false claims, but also because West’s Twitter account – locked in early October for an antisemitic tweet in which he said he was going “death con 3 on Jewish people” – was recently reactivated. More on that below.

Misinformation floods social media in wake of breakneck news cycle

 7/28/2024

The Hill

Ella Lee & Sarakshi Rai

A weeks-long, breakneck news cycle has set off a parallel explosion of misinformation online, which experts warn could make it harder to parse out what is real versus what is fake as the 2024 election gets underway. Some of the misinformation included false allegations that Trump’s assassination attempt was “staged” and that the shooter had been identified before authorities officially released that information. A made-up statement purporting to be from the office of former President Jimmy Carter suggested he had died, when he had not.

Misinformation might sway elections — but not in the way that you think

 6/18/2024

Nature

David Adam

Rampant deepfakes and false news are often blamed for swaying votes. Research suggests it’s hard to change people’s political opinions, but easier to nudge their behaviour.

MPs say tech giants must be held responsible for online misinformation by foreign actors

 10/25/2023

National Observer

Mickey Djuric

A parliamentary committee is calling on Canada to hold tech giants accountable for publishing false or misleading information online, especially when it is spread by foreign actors. That was among 22 recommendations the House ethics committee made in a report released Tuesday after its study into threats posed by foreign interference in Canada's affairs, with a focus on China and Russia.

Multistakeholder Pledge: Digital Protection - Prevention of the Harmful Impact of Hate Speech, Misinformation, and Disinformation

 9/1/2023

Global Compact on Refuges

The rise of misinformation, disinformation and hate speech on digital platforms is causing real-world harm to the most vulnerable, especially refugees, displaced and stateless people. These offline harms include xenophobia, racism, persecution, violence, killings. Misinformation, disinformation and hate speech can be a contributing factor of forced displacement. In the case of people who are already displaced, harms can include trafficking, exploitation, barriers to accessing rights and services. The pledge will increase the number of stakeholders who are taking action to prevent the harmful impact on displaced and stateless populations, and on humanitarian action, of mis/disinformation and hate speech on their platforms.

Musk’s Twitter takeover highlights disinformation risk

 11/7/2022

Emerald Insight

Musk has repeatedly said he wants the platform to prioritize ‘free speech,’ but has also reassured European regulators that he will be complying with local laws, even where they involve content screening. Although Twitter’s policy has yet to be finalized, the turmoil highlights the risks of online disinformation. The business models of social media companies and tech platforms contain strong incentives that promote misinformation and disinformation. Advertising comprises 80% of the income of Google's parent company Alphabet, and well over 90% for Twitter and for Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram. Social media offer advertisers hundreds of millions of users who are difficult to reach through other media. High levels of engagement ensure that the audience becomes 'captive'. Moreover, using data collected on users enables platforms to match advertisers and potential customers efficiently.