In France, the Yellow Jacket movement has embraced the American movement. In Italy, backers hail from the anti-vaccine community. In Britain, adherents draw from Brexit followers.
The FFTCUK Facebook group has now amassed more than 13,000 members.
People were dressed in QAnon shirts or ones displaying the slogan “WWG1WGA”. Short for “Where we go one we go all”, it is the best-known rallying cry for QAnon believers.
Alexandra Arkhipova, an anthropologist at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration who tracks the spread of online conspiracy theories, has found that while there are fewer explicit references to QAnon on Russian-language social media than Covid-19 denialism and 5G fears, its prevalence is spreading.
Data gathered by Arkhipova since August reveals thousands of Russian-language social media posts about QAnon. On VKontakte and Telegram — an encrypted messaging service popular in Russia – groups dedicated to spreading the conspiracy theory in Russia have grown to include tens of thousands of members.
Can We Develop Herd Immunity to Internet Propaganda?
Internet propaganda is becoming an industrialized commodity, warns Phil Howard, the director of the Oxford Internet Institute and author of many books on disinformation. In an interview, he calls for greater transparency and regulation of the industry.
Platforms like Parler, TheDonald, Breitbart and Anon are like petri dishes for testing out ideas, to see what sticks. If extremist influencers see that something gets traction, they ramp it up. In the language of disease, you would say these platforms act as a vector, like a germ that carries a disease into other, more public forums.
at some point a major influencer takes a new meme from one of these extremist forums and puts it out before a wider audience. It works like a vector-borne disease like malaria, where the mosquitoes do the transmission. So, maybe a Hollywood actor or an influencer who knows nothing about politics will take this idea and post it on the bigger, better known platform. From there, these memes escalate as they move from Parler to maybe Reddit and from there to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. We call this “cascades of misinformation.“
Sometimes the cascades of misinformation bounce from country to country between the U.S., Canada and the UK for example. So, it echoes back and forth.
Within Europe, two reservoirs for disinformation stick out: Poland and Hungary.
Our 2020 report shows that cyber troop activity continues to increase around the world. This year, we found evidence of 81 countries using social media to spread computational propaganda and disinformation about politics. This has increased from last years’ report, where we identified 70 countries with cyber troop activity.
identified 63 new instances of private firms working with governments or political parties to spread disinformation about elections or other important political issues. We identified 21 such cases in 2017-2018, yet only 15 in the period between 2009 and 2016.
Why would well-funded Russian agencies buy disinformation services from a newcomer like Nigeria?
(1) Russian actors have found a lab in Nigeria that can provide services at competitive prices. (2) But countries like China and Russia seem to be developing an interest in political influence in many African countries, so it is possible that there is a service industry for disinformation in Nigeria for that part of the world.
Each social media company should provide some kind of accounting statement about how it deals with misuse, with reporting hate speech, with fact checking and jury systems and so on. This system of transparency and accountability works for the stock markets, why shouldn’t it work in the social media realm?
We clearly need a digital civics curriculum. The 12 to 16 year olds are developing their media attitudes now, they will be voting soon. There is very good media education in Canada or the Netherlands for example, and that is an excellent long-term strategy.
More than 5,000 years ago a nomadic group of shepherds rode out of the steppes of eastern Europe to conquer the rest of the continent. The group, today known as the Yamna or Pit Grave culture, brought with them an innovative new technology, wheeled carts, which enabled them to quickly occupy new lands. More than 4,500 years ago, the descendants of these people reached the Iberian peninsula and wiped out the local men, according to new research by a team of international scientists.
colonized by the first Neolithic migration wave 8,000 or 9,000 years ago but also by a later one 4,500 years ago, which brought with it a very different culture
War axes and carts with four wheels can be found in the layers of earth that date back 4,500 years. “From then on, almost all men’s tombs were filled with weaponry, adornments, displays of wealth. The archaeology reveals marked signs of a hierarchical society that broke with the old egalitarianism of the early Neolithic period.
This research team announced they had discovered a “discontinuity” in the Y chromosome during the Bronze Age in the Iberian Peninsula, after studying the DNA of the remains of 14 people found in archaeological sites in Portugal.
“In terms of why the Y chromosome was replaced, we could speculate that the populations from the steppes had superior technology, better weapons and also domesticated horses that could have given them an advantage in war
Former German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel‘The World Is Changing Dramatically’
Former German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel speaks to DER SPIEGEL about his call for the country to take on a new global role and why Germans are underestimating the dangers posed by the current geopolitical situation.
Interview Conducted by Mathieu von Rohr and Britta Sandberg September 24, 2018 04:32 PM
Now Trump is criticizing us for not spending enough money on our military. Part of the truth, however, is that the U.S. wanted exactly that for a very long time. They were worried that too much military power in Germany could provoke the next world war. I once told Tillerson, I don’t know what you are complaining about, you raised us for 70 years to be peaceniks. Now that’s what we are and you’re surprised. He laughed.
Some people want Germany to be something like a large Switzerland, but we are simply too big. We can’t just stand on the sidelines. Because of the Assad regime’s bombs, almost a million refugees were standing in front of our door. It’s not just about military operations, but about crisis prevention, diplomacy, economic development. Germany shouldn’t transform from a geopolitical abstainer to an influential geo-strategist. I wish that we would return to once again having strategic debates — no matter the result. It is important to prepare the public for the fact that the world has changed.
1. Using a blockchain for automatic recognition and transfer of credits
The decline in first-time, first-year student enrollments is having a real financial impact on a number of institutions across the United States and focusing on transfer students (a pool of prospects twice as large) has become an important strategy for many. But credit articulation presents a real challenge for institutions bringing in students from community colleges. While setting standardized articulation requirements across the nation presents a high hurdle, blockchain-supported initiatives may hold great promise for university and city education systems looking to streamline educational mobility in their communities.
2. Blockchains for tracking intellectual property and rewarding use and re-use of that property
If researchers were able to publish openly and accurately assess the use of their resources, the access-prohibitive costs of academic book and journal publications could be circumvented, whether for research- or teaching-oriented outputs. Accurately tracking the sharing of knowledge without restrictions has transformative potential for open-education models.
3. Using verified sovereign identities for student identification within educational organizations
The data footprint of higher education institutions is enormous. With FERPA regulations as well as local and international requirements for the storage and distribution of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), maintaining this data in various institutional silos magnifies the risk associated with a data breach. Using sovereign identities to limit the proliferation of personal data promotes better data hygiene and data lifecycle management and could realize significant efficiency gains at the institutional level.
4. Using a blockchain as a lifelong learning passport
Educational institutions and private businesses partner with online course delivery giants to extend the reach of their educational services and priorities. Traditional educational routes are increasingly less normal and in this expanding world of providers, the need for verifiable credentials from a number of sources is growing. Producing a form of digitally “verifiable CVs” would limit credential fraud, and significantly reduce organizational workload in credential verification.
5. Using blockchains to permanently secure certificates
The open source solution Blockcerts already enables signed certificates to be posted to a blockchain and supports the verification of those certificates by third parties.
When an institution issues official transcripts, obtaining copies can be expensive and burdensome for graduates. But student-owned digital transcripts put the power of secure verification in the hands of learners, eliminating the need for lengthy and costly transcripts to further their professional or educational pursuits. An early mover, Central New Mexico Community College, debuted digital diplomas on the blockchain in December of 2017.
6. Using blockchains to verify multi-step accreditation
As different accreditors recognize different forms of credentials and a growing diversity of educational providers issue credentials, checking the ‘pedigree’ of a qualification can be laborious. Turning a certification verification process from a multi-stage research effort into a single-click process will automate many thousands of labor hours for organizations and institutions
A large global change in data protection law is about to hit the tech industry, thanks to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). GDPR affects any company, wherever they are in the world, that handles data about European citizens. It becomes law on 25 May 2018, and as such includes UK citizens, since it precedes Brexit. It’s no surprise the EU has chosen to tighten the data protection belt: Europe has long opposed the tech industry’s expansionist tendencies, particularly through antitrust suits, and is perhaps the only regulatory body with the inclination and power to challenge Silicon Valley in the coming years.
So, no more harvesting data for unplanned analytics, future experimentation, or unspecified research. Teams must have specific uses for specific data.
According to a survey by the European Commission, two out of three EU online providers use geo-blocking, forcing third country customers to pay more for products or not offer their services.
Customers in smaller countries like Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus, and Slovenia were affected by practices experienced by residents of border regions. They are often unable to order services or goods online from a neighbouring country.
