https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/02/chinese-face-swap-app-zao-triggers-privacy-fears-viral
Released on Friday, the Zao app went viral as Chinese users seized on the chance to see themselves act out scenes from well-known movies using deepfake technology, which has already prompted concerns elsewhere over potential misuse.
As of Monday afternoon it remained the top free download in China, according to the app market data provider App Annie.
Concerns over deepfakes have grown since the 2016 US election campaign, which saw wide use of online misinformation, according to US investigations.
In June, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said the social network was struggling to find ways to deal with deepfake videos, saying they may constitute “a completely different category” of misinformation than anything faced before.
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more on deepfake in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=deepfake
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-01-16-here-s-what-happened-when-students-solved-social-media-problems-with-design-thinking
“Social: The New Media.” So I got to work, curating a playlist of videos on topics I wanted them to explore—such as the well-publicised problems with social media platforms and false news
the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), Google’s Applied Digital Skills and the archives of The Sift from the News Literacy Project.
certification with Future Design School, and equipped with their curriculum app,
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more on social media and education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+media+education
more on fake news in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=FAKE+NEWS
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000006188102/what-is-pizzagate.html
Russia and far right spreading disinformation ahead of EU elections, investigators say
‘The goal here is bigger than any one election. It is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself’
Matt Apuzzo, Adam Satariano 2019-05-12T13:13:04+01:00″
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-elections-latest-russia-far-right-interference-fake-news-meddling-a8910311.html
How to Combat Fake News Online? Bring Reddit (and Other Online Forums) Into the Classroom.
By Jeffrey R. Young Nov 30, 2016
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-11-30-how-to-combat-fake-news-online-bring-reddit-and-other-online-forums-into-the-classroom
Reddit has become an important way for scholars to distribute and explain their findings—you just have to know where on the bustling online community to look. The r/Science section of Reddit now boasts 1,300 volunteer moderators—all with some kind of graduate degree—who block out climate deniers and other views that lack rigorous proof.
AMAs have become a signature part of Reddit, and experts from all walks of life participate in these open office hours in many sections of the community: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/
A new paper calls it “crowdsourcing the curriculum,” where students are taught to become digital citizens in online communities and develop habits—like knowing how to participate in Reddit AMAs—that they can continue once class is over.
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more on Fake News in this iMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=fake+news
The Digital Destruction of Democracy
ANYA SCHIFFRIN JANUARY 21, 2019
https://prospect.org/article/digital-destruction-democracy
Social media is the best friend disinformation ever had, and the cure is far from obvious.
Anya Schiffrin is an adjunct faculty member at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She worked in Hanoi from 1997 to 1999 as the bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires.
Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics
By Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, & Hal Roberts
Oxford University Press
A Harvard law professor who is a well-known theorist of the digital age, Benkler and colleagues have produced an authoritative tome that includes multiple taxonomies and literature reviews as well as visualizations of the flow of disinformation.
clickbait fabricators
white supremacist and alt-right trolls
a history of the scholarship on propaganda, reminding the reader that much of the discussion began in the 1930s.
Benkler’s optimistic 2007 book, The Wealth of Networks, predicted that the Internet would bring people together and transform the way information is created and spread. Today, Benkler is far less sanguine and has become one of the foremost researchers of disinformation networks.
Fox News, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, InfoWars, and Zero Hedge
As a result, mainstream journalists repeat and amplify the falsehoods even as they debunk them.
There is no clear line, they argue, between Russian propaganda, Breitbart lies, and the Trump victory. They add that Fox News is probably more influential than Facebook.
after George Soros gave a speech in January 2018 calling for regulation of the social media platforms, Facebook hired a Republican opposition research firm to shovel dirt at George Soros.
The European Union has not yet tried to regulate disinformation (although they do have codes of practice for the platforms), instead focusing on taxation, competition regulation, and protection of privacy. But Germany has strengthened its regulations regarding online hate speech, including the liability of the social media platforms.
disclosure of the sources of online political advertising.It’s a bit toothless because, just as with offshore bank accounts, it may be possible to register which U.S. entity is paying for online political advertising, but it’s impossible to know whether that entity is getting its funds from overseas. Even the Honest Ads bill was too much for Facebook to take.
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more on the issues of digital world and democracy in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2019/02/19/facebook-digital-gangsters/
One Gut Check and Four Steps Students Can Apply to Fact-Check Information
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/49580/one-gut-check-and-four-steps-students-can-apply-to-fact-check-information Anya Kamenetz Oct 31, 2017
Stanford University report found that more than 80 percent of middle schoolers didn’t understand that the phrase “sponsored content” meant “advertising.”
- Check for previous work: Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research. [Some places to look: Wikipedia, Snopes, Politifact and NPR’s own Fact Check website.]
- Go upstream to the source: Most web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information. Is it a reputable scientific journal? Is there an original news media account from a well-known outlet? If that’s not immediately apparent, then move to step 3.
- Read laterally: Once you get to the source of a claim, read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network.
- Circle back: If you get lost, or hit dead ends or find yourself going down a rabbit hole, back up and start over.
Caulfield is also the director of the Digital Polarization Initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities‘s American Democracy Project. Starting this spring, the initiative will bring at least 10 universities together to promote web literacy.
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more on fake news in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=fake+news
Mario Vargas Llosa: “Political correctness is the enemy of freedom”
https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/02/27/inenglish/1519736544_699462.html
Besides writing prize-winning fiction, the Nobel Laureate has fought tirelessly for civil liberties. With his new book, ‘The Call of the Tribe,’ he promotes liberal thought and pays tribute to seven authors who embrace it. We talk to him about liberalism, intellectual blindness and the dangers facing democracy today
liberalism defends some basic ideas: freedom, individualism, the rejection of collectivism and nationalism – in other words, all the ideologies or doctrines that limit or annihilate freedom within society.
Nationalism is present, but my impression is that, as with Catalonia, it’s a minority and the strength of democratic institutions is going to gradually undermine it until it’s derailed.
I wanted to be a communist. I thought communism represented the antithesis of a military dictatorship, corruption and, above all, inequality.
But the communism in Latin America was pure Stalinism, with parties subject to the Comintern in Moscow.
Fidel invited myself and a dozen other intellectuals to speak to him. We spent the whole night, 12 hours, from eight in the afternoon to eight the next morning, basically listening to him speak. It was impressive, but not very convincing.
Blindly, intellectuals have always seen democracy as a mediocre system that lacked the beauty, perfection and coherence of the big ideologies. And this blindness is not incompatible with great intelligence. How could Heidegger, perhaps the greatest philosopher in recent times, for example, be a Nazi? The same happened with communism. It attracted writers and poets of great stature who applauded the Gulag. Sartre, the most intelligent French philosopher of the 20th century supported the Cultural Revolution in China.
In Latin America, if you weren’t a left-wing intellectual in the 1970s, you simply weren’t an intellectual. You were shut out. Culture was controlled by a left that was very clannish and dogmatic and that had a profound warping effect on cultural life
intelligence is not a guarantee of intellectual honesty.
In the case of misinformation and manipulation, communism was incredibly clever at distorting things, undermining honest people and masking lies with false truths that came to substitute reality.