This Week in Disinformation
L.A.'s ICE raids spark fake videos, false claims....BBC chief warns of "trust crisis" that could tear Britain apart....how to spot an online job scam.....and more
Los Angeles this week
Push button ease
The anti-ICE demonstrations, which erupted in Los Angeles and have now spread to at least five other cities across the country, are fertile ground for the manufacturing and distribution of disinformation.
A central theme of “Disinformation Wire” is that one of the accelerants of disinformation - and its less insidious cousin, misinformation - is the ease with which anyone can say and publish anything. A “send” button is all that’s needed. Because this conveys enormous power, it also conveys - or should - enormous responsibility.
This responsibility is even greater when the person hitting that send button is well-known and has a large number of followers on socia media. Like Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who (or to be fair, a member of his staff) retweeted a clip on X, which showed looting and violence, including L.A. police cars being set ablaze by protesters.
“This…is…not…peaceful,” Cruz (or a staffer) wrote. It has been seen, so far, by at least 3.4 million people.
A3: Absence of Accuracy and Authenticity
Just one problem: According to news reports and X community fact-checkers, the clip was actually five years old, shot during the Black Lives Matter violence which erupted after the death by cop of a Minnesota man, George Floyd.
Looks like L.A. now, right? Nope, this was 2020.
Cruz wasn’t the only one. According to the Poynter Institute’s Politifact, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones - perhaps best known for his hideous disinformation campaign about the 2012 massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, was also quick to retweet the 2020 video to his 4.4 million followers. And in a mere thirty seconds, I found two other large X accounts belonging to people whose identities are hidden: “DramaAlert” (787,000 followers) and Vladcoin” (368,000).
God knows what other big accounts spread the 2020 videos, and in turn who knows how many of their followers retweeted it? And their followers and their followers?
But let’s go upstream. What was the original source of the video that Cruz and all the rest eagerly shared? Cruz, according to a San Antonio newspaper, retweeted it from the account of actor and political activist James Woods. But where did Woods get it? I couldn’t find it, and efforts to reach the actor were unsuccessful. Woods, by the way, also reposted a phony quote attributed to former President Barack Obama, discussing a secret plot to impose socialism on the country.
In any case, this is a prime example of how disinformation spreads - taking a news clip from years ago and passing it off as current. Social media is an accelerant, and the retweeting, and retweeting of the retweet, is what I call a ricochet effect. This is how falsehoods travel around the world in moments (see my Stat of the Week below).
One of my best bosses in the news business, the late, legendary Jim Farley of NBC News, ABC News and WTOP Radio Washington fame, had a saying: “Get it first, but first get it right.” Did anyone posting the 2020 video - claiming it was shot this weekend - ever stop to confirm that they had gotten it right? Did Woods take a moment to think about this? Did Sen. Cruz, who has been previously accused of spreading blatant misinformation? Knowing what I do of Jones - a reprehensible reptile of a man - I’m pretty sure the thought never crossed his tiny little mind. And on and on. This speaks to an inherent human weakness that we all have: the desire to believe something, particularly if it reinforces or validates our pre-existing beliefs. Woods, Cruz and all the rest wanted to believe - needed to believe - that the video they. were sharing with millions was current.
Fact checkers caught this sloppiness and irresponsibility and called them out for it. Good for them. But what of it? Once the falsehood has been exposed to millions, it does little good for a fact checker at a cable channel, newspaper or what not, to point it out. It’s already out there. The problem with fact checking is that it’s always too little, too late.
Of course, disinformation occurs on both sides of an emotionally-charged issue like this. Take Democrat Maxine Waters, an 18-term congresswoman, who tried to spin the ridiculous, blatantly false claim that anti-ICE protests have been peaceful.
“Don’t think that somehow because they called out the National Guard there was violence. There was no violence, I was on the street,” she said. Go to 1:32 for the exact quote. She was on the street? What street was that, Congresswoman? Delusional Avenue?
“There was no violence,” Waters claimed. “I was on the street.” What street, DW wonders?
In the end, claims of the Woods/Cruz variety (passing along phony images) and Waters (saying something utterly preposterous) are similar in this respect: They are both efforts to fool or confuse the public in the name of political partisanship. Lying comes in many shapes and sizes.
The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, Tatum Hunter and Naomi Nix note that “some of the mayhem’s most-talked-about videos and images, often devoid of context (are) aimed at different audiences. Clips showing officers firing less-lethal rounds at an Australian journalist or mounted police directing their horses to stride over a sitting man fueled outrage on one side, while those of self-driving Waymo cars on fire and protesters holding Mexican flags stoked the other.
“To advance your side of the story, you need a piece of content that the algorithm likes. You need something that really grabs people’s attention by the throat and doesn’t let it go,” Laura Edelson, an assistant professor at Northeastern University’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences, told the paper.
“If you’re on the pro-ICE side of this, you need to find visual images of these protests that look really scary, look really dangerous because that’s what’s going to draw human attention,” she added. But if “you don’t think that ICE should be taking moms away from their families and kids, you’re going to have a video that starts with a crying child’s face.”
Meabwhile, Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, an advocacy organization that studies the intersection of media, technology and the law, says disinformation in situations like these spreads so quickly and widely, that efforts to verify facts cannot keep up.
“Information warfare is always a symptom of conflict, stoked often by those in power to fuel their own illiberal goals,” she tells the New York Times, “It confuses audiences, scares people who might otherwise have empathy for the cause and divides us when we need solidarity most.”
Once the lie is out of the gate - once someone, somewhere, hits that send button - it’s too late. Question for readers: What would you do about this? And in an open society where we’re all allowed openm unfettered access to social media, to post what we want, to yell at the top of our lungs, what can we do? Email me (Paul Brandus) - I want to know your opinion: DisinformationWire@yahoo.com.
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“Trust crisis” threatens Britain’s social fabric, the BBC’s top official says
A warning that should resonate with on this side of the pond: Arguably the most powerful media official in Britain says that Britain’s status as a cohesive, democratic society is at risk for the first time in a generation, because of social media and disinformation, which are fueling what he calls a “trust crisis.”
Davie: “The future of our cohesive, democratic society feels for the first time in my life at risk.”
That warning from Tim Davie, the director general of the venerable British Broadcasting Corporation, came during a wide-ranging speech about the future of the 100-year old news organization, traditionally one of the most trusted and revered media outlets in the United Kingdom.
“There is no doubt that this new age is fostering polarisation and threatening communal trust and putting more power in the hands of global social media platforms,” he says. “We see profound changes in people’s trust in the information that they receive … Many feel there is no agreed backbone of facts upon which to base constructive deliberation.
“Those we disagree with become enemies, not friends who think differently. Empathy withers without understanding,” he says. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Like TV networks here, the BBC is struggling to adapt to a world in which young people increasingly get their news elsewhere. Davie says BBC News will go where the audience is by putting content on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, where disinformation currently flourishes unchecked. He says Britain must not become a society in which there are no shared facts.
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That random text offering you a job? It’s probably a disinformation scam
If you’re like me, you might get a few texts each day from someone inviting you to apply for a job. Chances are these are phony, a scam intended to separate you from your money - in other words, a form of disinformation.
In case you’re unfamiliar, here’s how this works. You get an unsolicited text from someone - often giving just their first name, who says they’re a recruiter for XYZ company. It might even be crafted to look like it’s from a company you’re familiar with.
The text might mention appealing things like high pay, flexible hours, working remotely and more. If you respond, and you shouldn’t, the “recruiter” may ask you to move the conversation over to another platform - WhatsApp is a common destination. This is obviously a red flag; yet some fall for it. He/she may ask you to click on a link. Another red flag. Don’t click on any links! How many times have you been told this? I’m telling you again. Do not click on any links.
The Federal Trade Commission, a government agency, also offers some pretty common sense tips:
Start your job search with sources you know are legit. Try visiting sites like your state’s job bank at Career OneStop.
Don’t click on links or respond to unexpected texts. If you think the text could be legit, contact the company using a website or phone number you know is real — not the information in the text.
Do some research. Search online for the name of the company and words like “review,” “scam,” or “complaint.” If you can’t find the company online, steer clear.
Block unwanted texts. Scammers send texts designed to get your attention. Some phone settings and call-blocking apps let you block unwanted texts so you don’t hear from scammers in the first place.
When you think about it, there’s some overlap among this and my first items this week: tweeting out phony news videos and trying to sucker people with phony job offers are both, in essence, attempts to deceive. You can decide for yourself whether the actions and words of Republicans Woods/Cruz and Democrat Waters were deliberate and malicious - obvious disinformation - or whether they’re just dumb and/or too lazy to try and verify things before retweeting or blabbing into a microphone. In any case, these are attempts to fool the public with falsehoods. Here’s the overlap, shown in this handy-dandy Venn diagram:
Lying for perceived political or financial gain - that’s disinformation
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Stat of the week
This from DemandSage, a California-based data analytics firm:
Approx. 62% of online information could be false
80% of U.S. adults have consumed fake news
23% admit to sharing false stories, knowingly or not
Quote of the Week
It’s not so much a quote, but an excerpt from a talk by the utterly brilliant Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, the Amsterdam-based open-research firm. Read the whole thing, it’s worth the two minutes:
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Interviews in the works
Starting in July, I’ll be rolling out a “newsmaker of the week” in the disinformation space. I’ll be speaking with folks in Silicon Valley, Capitol Hill, Wall Street and beyond. Teachers, think tank types, journalists and more, both in the United States and abroad. My goal is to make these non-partisan discussions illuminating, thought-provoking. As a subscriber, you’ll be able to ask questions as well. More on this next week.
My email again - I want to hear your thoughts and ideas: DisinformationWire@yahoo.com
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