New out of ISD: Can you use language models to pick out suspicious editors trying to manipulate Wikipedia on larger scales? We aimed to find out.

isdglobal.org/isd-publicatio…

I think it's important that we take the potential threat of Chinese influence operations seriously... but the truth is (as far as we know) to date they mostly have been just a waste of Chinese taxpayers' money.

If you want to know why, read David Gilbert's story

Today the FCC has fined US telcos $200 million for illegally sharing phone location data. This comes after a NYTimes investigation into how corrupt law enforcement were using this data, and then my investigation on bounty hunters being able to buy it docs.fcc.gov/public/attachm…

I dug into a pair of The Daily Beast articles about the alleged use of a 'bot farm' and other forms of social media manipulation by the DeSantis campaign. Verdict: the evidence and claims presented do not hold up under scrutiny.

cc: Zippy
conspirator0.substack.com/p/the-bot-farm…

Nothing says 'legitimate news source' quite like repurposing a 13 year old X account. Meet TrimFeed, a 'Media & News Company' account created in June 2010 that has no posts prior to April 2024, 55 followers, and a gold verification checkmark.

cc: Zippy

TrimFeed Substack post with more detail on Trimfeed:
conspirator0.substack.com/p/the-curious-…

Spammy networks tweeting propaganda regarding Xinjiang and the Uyghur Genocide have been a recurring thing on Twitter for the last several years. More info in this article:
conspirator0.substack.com/p/genocide-den…

TrimFeed Why would BNN shut down and rebrand as TrimFeed? A recent article in GroundUp News provides a clue - BNN was apparently delisted from Google search in March 2024. It's not unlikely that Trimfeed is an attempt to evade Google's action.
twitter.com/GroundUp_News/…

TrimFeed There are other signs that TrimFeed is the same operation as BNN. The sites seem to share the same set of authors (or reworders?), and updates to the BNN website largely stopped in early April, with Trimfeed kicking into gear shortly after. (Top row: Trimfeed; Bottom row: BNN)

TrimFeed Trimfeed also has a YouTube channel, which until recently was named 'BNN Breaking', affiliated with plagiarism-intensive 'news' site BNN. The BNN-branded content has been deleted but the concept remains the same: cropped versions of other people's videos.
twitter.com/conspirator0/s…

The TrimFeed account posts links to the Trimfeed website, which allegedly has a 'team of seasoned journalists' offering 'stories directly from the heart of the action'. In reality, all of the articles appear to be similarly formatted summaries of stories from other outlets.

New from me and The Guardian

Police repression is kick starting the anti-war movement on campuses

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

If your solution to fighting disinfo in the US is to make it illegal to spread it, you are completely ignorant of both disinfo and the law.

In October, I wrote about antisemitism in Texas - including this article about a prominent fan of Nick Fuentes who is STILL involved with the Republican Party of Texas.

No, seriously, Uber is deciding what driver gets what job based on their weight, whether they ever missed a payment, what political associations they have.

Algorithmic wage discrimination should be made illegal before it becomes the dominant business model.

Every woman who has defended herself against those who view her as a threat or competition and attempt to marginalize her has been accused of being unprofessional.

Having a spine and advocating for yourself is a mark of self respect.

Those who attempt to belittle you with…

“Continue taking up space. Continue advocating for yourself. Support others who are doing good work so you can all keep fighting.” 🔥

A cat protects her instruments. #Caturday