AP: Cyborgs, Trolls and bots: A guide to online misinformation
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captainmorgan
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Facebook, what a sewer, I deleted my account and don't miss it.
DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
I use it for local stuff and to connect with actual friends, recently joined, the pandemic and social isolation drove me to it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://www.rawstory.com/organized-crime-has-infiltrated-online-dating-with-sophisticated-pig-butchering-scams/
While we have been focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine mandates and related protests for much of the past two years, a wave of financial fraud has spread rapidly across Canada and around the world.
While not a deadly respiratory virus, this new approach to scamming has affected thousands of individuals globally, with victims defrauded of a record US$14 billion in 2021. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reported nearly $100 million stolen from victims in Canada alone in 2020 and 2021.
Emotional manipulation
The pig-butchering, or “sha zhu pan,” scam is a highly sophisticated form of romance and cryptocurrency investment scam. Scammers — mainly working for Chinese organized crime gangs — pose as attractive professionals or entrepreneurs looking for true love. They use dating apps, including Tinder, Grindr and Hinge, as well as social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to match with their potential victims. The scammers target single women and men, LGBTQ+ and those over 50 years old, as well as new immigrants as their potential victims.
Using a combination of savvy technological tools, fake social media profiles and psychological manipulation, the scammers trick victims into believing that they live close by and are willing to meet in person whenever COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. In reality, the scammers are located mainly in Southeast Asia.
They slowly gain victims’ trust by using their personal information on social media against them to play the role of their dream romantic partner. They also shower their victims with messages of love and affection day and night.
According to the Global Anti-Scam Organization, this stage of the scam is referred to as fattening or raising the pig before slaughtering it. The “pig” here is the unsuspecting person, located in Asia, North America or Europe who is looking for a genuine love match on dating apps.
Contrary to more traditional romance scams, scammers manage to convince their victims that they are not interested in their money or personal banking information. Instead, they want to build a bright economic future with their soulmate by investing in cryptocurrency together as a couple.
Once the victims’ guard is down, scammers convince them to invest increasing amounts of money. Victims have, in many cases, emptied out their bank accounts, spent their inheritances and life savings, taken out loans and mortgages, and sold their houses and cars to invest in fake crypto platforms. Victims realize they were scammed only after being blocked from withdrawing the thousands or millions of dollars they invested.
Isolation and vulnerability
My doctoral research examines how gay men across international borders navigate romantic relationships online. As such, I understand how unsuspecting people looking for love and companionship online during the COVID-19 pandemic can fall victim to these highly sophisticated romance-cryptocurrency investment scams.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted everybody’s life. Its intense periods of isolation, fear and uncertainty have particularly affected single people who don’t have emotional and social support systems in place. And dating during the pandemic has been especially difficult.
Limited to online dating and dating apps, singles have become the perfect prey for criminals. Taking advantage of their vulnerability, loneliness and desire for human connection, organized criminals have feigned romantic interest to con them out of their money.
Previously, people may have thought they could outsmart being “catfished” — misled by an individual scammer pretending to be someone else — but most of the perpetrators of these new scams work in organized crime gangs. They appear to be made up of experts in psychological profiling who can hook their victims more efficiently using elaborate scripts and algorithms, gradually making them fall in love with a good-looking and wealthy professional looking for a long-term relationship. At some point, they offer financial advice, particularly in investments, usually in cryptocurrency.
Often, the plan is for the scammer and the victim to invest together, getting even greater returns, only the victim’s money is real while the scammer’s isn’t. This has left victims with huge debts, while also dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, shame, embarrassment and anger after being scammed.
Regulating online safety
In the United Kingdom, a landmark online safety bill has been proposed that would compel online companies to proactively tackle fraudulent content and harmful advertising.
If passed, the Online Safety Bill will allocate greater funds to police and anti-fraud departments, which are critically underfunded.
In addition, senators in the United States and officials in India have called for tighter government regulations of cryptocurrencies to protect people from fraud.
Given the devastating financial and emotional impact that scams have on victims, some banks and other financial institutions in the U.S. and the U.K. have refunded their customers.
Canadian government, financial institutions and the media need to work toward preventing online fraud and helping victims recover. As we increasingly integrate the virtual world with our day-to-day living, more needs to be done to protect Canadians.
Carlo Handy Charles, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology/Geography and Research Fellow at Convergence Migrations Institute (Paris), McMaster University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
hanimmal
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https://www.rawstory.com/far-right-propaganda-sites-masquerading-as-journalism-are-a-threat-to-national-security-analysis/
Foreign policy expert Kevin Baron, the founding executive editor of the military news website Defense One, warned of the threat right-wing media poses to American in a new analysis.
"It’s hard to watch Russia's version of journalism and not think of the American far-right’s version of it. Indeed, the connections are both direct and philosophical—and of import to national security leaders," he wrote. "In the past few months, we’ve seen just how closely related the two are, Putin’s propaganda and our own. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, America’s far-right denied the looming threat as a wag-the-dog conspiracy concocted by deep-state Democrats and centrist Republicans, or tried to blame President Joe Biden. Russian propaganda outlets gleefully put those clips into heavy rotation."
Baron warned this should be a wake-up the national security community.
"Two weeks into the invasion, far-right leaders continue to sow doubt on war reporting, claiming or implying there is an elite conspiracy to keep Americans uninformed, and often parroting Russian propagandists’ distortions and lies," he wrote. "So, while commentators and security legends by now have called the Ukraine war a wake-up call to Americans for many reasons, allow me to add one more: If you look upon Russia’s state-controlled, loyalist media with horror, then it’s time to wake up with equal concern toward America’s own rising partisan propaganda machines. There have already been calls for security professionals to add America’s far-right extremism to their portfolios. It’s time to do the same for domestic far-right propaganda."
Russia's war propaganda has been likened to Donald Trump's crusade against "fake news."
"It’s almost as if some never learned their lesson from 2015, when the natsec establishment hoped they could make Trump go away by ignoring him. Or when everyone ignored the right’s openly-stated, disinformation-fueled plans for the Jan. 6 insurrection, perhaps the most troubling national security incident on American soil since the 9/11 attacks. That day was made possible by 40 years’ worth of right-wing, anti-government propaganda. Propagandists continue to lie about it more than one year after," Baron warned. "While politicians come and go, the lasting damage is in the lingering popularity of Soviet-style agitprop propaganda from loyalist far-right media operations deliberately masquerading as journalism. These outlets—designed to look, sound, and feel like journalism—are de facto paid actors, directors, and scriptwriters of a carefully crafted fiction that would make the Kremlin proud. They call themselves reporters and operate in pretend newsrooms like Steve Bannon’s Breitbart, Carlson’s Daily Caller, Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, and upstarts like One America News Network and Newsmax."
Read the full analysis.
Foreign policy expert Kevin Baron, the founding executive editor of the military news website Defense One, warned of the threat right-wing media poses to American in a new analysis.
"It’s hard to watch Russia's version of journalism and not think of the American far-right’s version of it. Indeed, the connections are both direct and philosophical—and of import to national security leaders," he wrote. "In the past few months, we’ve seen just how closely related the two are, Putin’s propaganda and our own. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, America’s far-right denied the looming threat as a wag-the-dog conspiracy concocted by deep-state Democrats and centrist Republicans, or tried to blame President Joe Biden. Russian propaganda outlets gleefully put those clips into heavy rotation."
Baron warned this should be a wake-up the national security community.
"Two weeks into the invasion, far-right leaders continue to sow doubt on war reporting, claiming or implying there is an elite conspiracy to keep Americans uninformed, and often parroting Russian propagandists’ distortions and lies," he wrote. "So, while commentators and security legends by now have called the Ukraine war a wake-up call to Americans for many reasons, allow me to add one more: If you look upon Russia’s state-controlled, loyalist media with horror, then it’s time to wake up with equal concern toward America’s own rising partisan propaganda machines. There have already been calls for security professionals to add America’s far-right extremism to their portfolios. It’s time to do the same for domestic far-right propaganda."
Russia's war propaganda has been likened to Donald Trump's crusade against "fake news."
"It’s almost as if some never learned their lesson from 2015, when the natsec establishment hoped they could make Trump go away by ignoring him. Or when everyone ignored the right’s openly-stated, disinformation-fueled plans for the Jan. 6 insurrection, perhaps the most troubling national security incident on American soil since the 9/11 attacks. That day was made possible by 40 years’ worth of right-wing, anti-government propaganda. Propagandists continue to lie about it more than one year after," Baron warned. "While politicians come and go, the lasting damage is in the lingering popularity of Soviet-style agitprop propaganda from loyalist far-right media operations deliberately masquerading as journalism. These outlets—designed to look, sound, and feel like journalism—are de facto paid actors, directors, and scriptwriters of a carefully crafted fiction that would make the Kremlin proud. They call themselves reporters and operate in pretend newsrooms like Steve Bannon’s Breitbart, Carlson’s Daily Caller, Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, and upstarts like One America News Network and Newsmax."
Read the full analysis.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
Technically, a pharmaceutical must contain a unique chemical entity that confers the effect. However the basic idea is correct: social media have as powerful a driving effect on a human mind as strong drugs.
Which is why I’m behind the idea that this is a level-1 national security threat.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
The last few paragraphs make me wonder how much someone like Russell Brand makes to push their lying spam.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-eileen-gu-winter-olympics-technology-business-81388bca676c560e02a1b493ea9d6760
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-eileen-gu-winter-olympics-technology-business-81388bca676c560e02a1b493ea9d6760
WASHINGTON (AP) — To her 1.4 million followers across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, Vica Li says she is a “life blogger” and “food lover” who wants to teach her fans about China so they can travel the country with ease.
“Through my lens, I will take you around China, take you into Vica’s life!” she says in a video posted in January to her YouTube and Facebook accounts, where she also teaches Chinese classes over Zoom.
But that lens may be controlled by CGTN, the Chinese-state run TV network where she has regularly appeared in broadcasts and is listed as a digital reporter on the company’s website. And while Vica Li tells her followers that she “created all of these channels on her own,” her Facebook account shows that at least nine people manage her page.
That portfolio of accounts is just one tentacle of China’s rapidly growing influence on U.S.-owned social media platforms, an Associated Press examination has found.
As China continues to assert its economic might, it is using the global social media ecosystem to expand its already formidable influence. The country has quietly built a network of social media personalities who parrot the government’s perspective in posts seen by hundreds of thousands of people, operating in virtual lockstep as they promote China’s virtues, deflect international criticism of its human rights abuses and advance Beijing’s talking points on world affairs like Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Some of China’s state-affiliated reporters have posited themselves as trendy Instagram influencers or bloggers. The country has also hired firms to recruit influencers to deliver carefully crafted messages that boost its image to social media users.
And it is benefitting from a cadre of Westerners who have devoted YouTube channels and Twitter feeds to echoing pro-China narratives on everything from Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims to Olympian Eileen Gu, an American who competed for China in the most recent Winter Games.
The influencer network allows Beijing to easily proffer propaganda to unsuspecting Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube users around the globe. At least 200 influencers with connections to the Chinese government or its state media are operating in 38 different languages, according to research from Miburo, a firm that tracks foreign disinformation operations.
“You can see how they’re trying to infiltrate every one of these countries,” said Miburo President Clint Watts, a former FBI agent. “It is just about volume, ultimately. If you just bombard an audience for long enough with the same narratives people will tend to believe them over time.”
____
While Russia’s war on Ukraine was being broadly condemned as a brazen assault on democracy, self-described “traveler,” “story-teller” and “journalist” Li Jingjing took to YouTube to offer a different narrative.
She posted a video to her account called “Ukraine crisis: The West ignores wars & destructions it brings to Middle East,” in which she mocked U.S. journalists covering the war. She’s also dedicated other videos to amplifying Russian propaganda about the conflict, including claims of Ukrainian genocide or that the U.S. and NATO provoked Russia’s invasion.
Li Jingjing says in her YouTube profile that she is eager to show her roughly 21,000 subscribers “the world through my lens.” But what she does not say in her segments on Ukraine, which have tens of thousands of views, is that she is a reporter for CGTN, articulating views that are not just her own but also familiar Chinese government talking points.
Most of China’s influencers use pitches similar to Li Jingjing’s in hopes of attracting audiences around the world, including the U.S., Egypt and Kenya. The personalities, many of them women, call themselves “travelers,” sharing photos and videos that promote China as an idyllic destination.
“They clearly have identified the ‘Chinese lady influencer’ is the way to go,” Watts said of China.
The AP identified dozens of these accounts, which collectively have amassed more than 10 million followers and subscribers. Many of the profiles belong to Chinese state media reporters who have in recent months transformed their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts — platforms that are largely blocked in China — and begun identifying as “bloggers,” “influencers” or non-descript “journalists.” Nearly all of them were running Facebook ads, targeted to users outside of China, that encourage people to follow their pages.
The personalities do not proactively disclose their ties to China’s government and have largely phased out references in their posts to their employers, which include CGTN, China Radio International and Xinhua News Agency.
Foreign governments have long tried to exploit social media, as well as its ad system, to influence users. During the 2016 U.S. election, for example, a Russian internet agency paid in rubles to run more than 3,000 divisive political ads targeting Americans.
In response, tech companies like Facebook and Twitter promised to better alert American users to foreign propaganda by labeling state-backed media accounts.
But the AP found in its review that most of the Chinese influencer social media accounts are inconsistently labeled as state-funded media. The accounts — like those belonging to Li Jingjing and Vica Li — are often labeled on Facebook or Instagram, but are not flagged on YouTube or TikTok. Vica Li’s account is not labeled on Twitter. Last month, Twitter began identifying Li Jingjing’s account as Chinese state-media.
Vica Li said in a YouTube video that she is disputing the labels on her Facebook and Instagram accounts. She did not respond to a detailed list of questions from the AP.
Often, followers who are lured in by accounts featuring scenic images of China’s landscape might not be aware that they’ll also encounter state-endorsed propaganda.
Jessica Zang’s picturesque Instagram photos show her smiling beneath a beaming sun, kicking fresh powered snow atop a ski resort on the Altai Mountains in China’s Xinjiang region during the Beijing Olympics. She describes herself as a video creator and blogger who hopes to present her followers with “beautiful pics and videos about life in China.”
Zang, a video blogger for CGTN, rarely mentions her employer to her 1.3 million followers on Facebook. Facebook and Instagram identify her account as “state-controlled media” but she is not labeled as such on TikTok, YouTube or on Twitter, where Zang lists herself as a “social media influencer.”
“I think it’s likely by choice that she doesn’t put any state affiliations, because you put that label on your account, people start asking certain types of questions,” Rui Zhong, who researches technology and the China-U.S. relationship for the Washington-based Wilson Center, said of Zang.
YouTubers Matthew Tye, an American, and Winston Sterzel, who is from South Africa, believe that, in many cases, China’s paying for videos to be created.
Their evidence?
The pair was included last year on an email pitch to numerous YouTube influencers from a company that identified itself as Hong Kong Pear Technology. The email asked the influencers to share a promotional video for China’s Hainan province, a tourist beach destination, on their channels.
Tye and Sterzel, who spent years living in China and became vocal critics of its government, assume they were probably included on the pitch by mistake.
But, intrigued, they engaged in a back-and-forth with the company while feigning interest in the offer. The company representative soon followed up with a new request — that they post a propaganda video that claimed COVID-19 did not originate in China, where the first case was detected, but rather from North American white-tailed deer.
“We could offer $2000 (totally negotiable considering the nature of this type of content) lemme know if u are interested,” an employee named Joey wrote, according to emails shared with the AP.
After Tye and Sterzel asked for articles that would back up the false claim, the emails stopped.
In an email to the AP, a Pear Technology employee confirmed he had contacted Tye and Sterzel, but said he did not know much about the client, adding “it might be from the government??”
Tye and Sterzel say the exchange pulls back the curtain on how China pushes propaganda through influencers who profit from it.
“There’s a very easy formula to become successful,” Sterzel said in an interview. “It’s simply to praise the Chinese government, to praise China and talk about how great China is and how bad the West is.”
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
@JamieThePainter
Good video to watch (at least the first 7 minutes or so, especially when you add into it some understanding of the trolling attack on all of our democracies that has been going on for at least a decade online.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/change-my-mind-please.1024266/post-15668217
Good video to watch (at least the first 7 minutes or so, especially when you add into it some understanding of the trolling attack on all of our democracies that has been going on for at least a decade online.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/change-my-mind-please.1024266/post-15668217
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JamieThePainter
Well-Known Member
@hanimmal Aye, I can't say I disagree with that at all. I've been saying it for years tbf. As a result, since around 2014, the only social media sites I tend to visit are YouTube and cannabis sites. Both of which are just as bad, I am aware, but hey I like to chat.
I'll be honest though, I was a bit shocked when I came here. You can't say even a mildly contrary statement without it resulting in a flamewar. I'll stick around though because I find it all very interesting.
I'll be honest though, I was a bit shocked when I came here. You can't say even a mildly contrary statement without it resulting in a flamewar. I'll stick around though because I find it all very interesting.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Why were you shocked? Every website with a comment section is under the same attack.
JamieThePainter
Well-Known Member
I was shocked by the utter hate I received for posting an opinion that wasn't quite within the narrative that some people wish to maintain. You can justify this by claiming that other websites are all the same, but in my personal experience it escalated much quicker in here - especially when some found out that I was not from their lands. Which is strange itself considering that said members claim to be liberals. I had no idea xenophobia was so rife among such.
I say shocked, but that does not mean I was offended. I genuinely just did not expect such harsh outbursts against what I had to say. The misrepresentations (see the white supremacy thread) that were made of me were astounding. Usually it takes a few pages before such tactics are employed in the hope that other readers have forgotten what it was that I had actually said, but here it was a mere couple of posts later.
I'm 41 years old and I've been surfing the web since I was around 16 so it's not anything I can't handle. I do miss the old days of the internet though, when we were all nerds. Now that everyone and their dog has access to it there is no camaraderie to be found anywhere. Everyone has a war to win and like your video suggests, everyone has a performance to play.
It's all six n two threes to me like, but I do prefer discussions/debates to refrain from trolling attacks because then you can actually discover new thoughts and ideas. It's very hard to promote an idea that does not conform to the local narrative without being hounded these days and I find that very sad.
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