Researchers Including Microsoft Spot Chinese Disinformation Campaign Using AI-Generated Photos (businesstimes.com.sg) 40
"Until now, China's influence campaigns have been focused on amplifying propaganda defending its policies on Taiwan and other subjects," reports the New York Times.
But a new piece co-authored by the newspaper's national security correspondent and its misinformation investigative reporter notes a new effort identified by researchers from Microsoft, the RAND Corporation, the University of Maryland, the intelligence company Recorded Future, and news-rating service NewsGuard. And that newly-discovered effort "suggests that Beijing is making more direct attempts to sow discord in the United States."
It began when, sensing an opportunity,"China's increasingly resourceful information warriors pounced" after high winds in Hawaii downed three power lines that sparked wildfires in Hawaii on August 8th... The disaster was not natural, they said in a flurry of false posts that spread across the internet, but was the result of a secret "weather weapon" being tested by the United States. To bolster the plausibility, the posts carried photographs that appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence programs, making them among the first to use these new tools to bolster the aura of authenticity of a disinformation campaign... Recorded Future first reported that the Chinese government mounted a covert campaign to blame a "weather weapon" for the fires, identifying numerous posts in mid-August falsely claiming that MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, had revealed "the amazing truth behind the wildfire." Posts with the exact language appeared on social media sites across the internet, including Pinterest, Tumblr, Medium and Pixiv, a Japanese site used by artists. Other inauthentic accounts spread similar content, often accompanied with mislabeled videos, including one from a popular TikTok account, The Paranormal Chic, that showed a transformer explosion in Chile...
The Chinese campaign operated across many of the major social media platforms — and in many languages, suggesting it was aimed at reaching a global audience. Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center identified inauthentic posts in 31 languages, including French, German and Italian, but also in less prominent ones like Igbo, Odia and Guarani. The artificially generated images of the Hawaii wildfires identified by Microsoft's researchers appeared on multiple platforms, including a Reddit post in Dutch. "These specific A.I.-generated images appear to be exclusively used" by Chinese accounts used in this campaign, Microsoft said in a report. "They do not appear to be present elsewhere online."
The researchers "suggested that China was building a network of accounts that could be put to use in future information operations, including the next U.S. presidential election," according to the article. It adds that president Biden "has cut off China's access to the most advanced chips and the equipment made to produce them."
The article adds that the impact of China's misinformation campaign "is difficult to measure, though early indications suggest that few social media users engaged with the most outlandish of the conspiracy theories."
But a new piece co-authored by the newspaper's national security correspondent and its misinformation investigative reporter notes a new effort identified by researchers from Microsoft, the RAND Corporation, the University of Maryland, the intelligence company Recorded Future, and news-rating service NewsGuard. And that newly-discovered effort "suggests that Beijing is making more direct attempts to sow discord in the United States."
It began when, sensing an opportunity,"China's increasingly resourceful information warriors pounced" after high winds in Hawaii downed three power lines that sparked wildfires in Hawaii on August 8th... The disaster was not natural, they said in a flurry of false posts that spread across the internet, but was the result of a secret "weather weapon" being tested by the United States. To bolster the plausibility, the posts carried photographs that appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence programs, making them among the first to use these new tools to bolster the aura of authenticity of a disinformation campaign... Recorded Future first reported that the Chinese government mounted a covert campaign to blame a "weather weapon" for the fires, identifying numerous posts in mid-August falsely claiming that MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, had revealed "the amazing truth behind the wildfire." Posts with the exact language appeared on social media sites across the internet, including Pinterest, Tumblr, Medium and Pixiv, a Japanese site used by artists. Other inauthentic accounts spread similar content, often accompanied with mislabeled videos, including one from a popular TikTok account, The Paranormal Chic, that showed a transformer explosion in Chile...
The Chinese campaign operated across many of the major social media platforms — and in many languages, suggesting it was aimed at reaching a global audience. Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center identified inauthentic posts in 31 languages, including French, German and Italian, but also in less prominent ones like Igbo, Odia and Guarani. The artificially generated images of the Hawaii wildfires identified by Microsoft's researchers appeared on multiple platforms, including a Reddit post in Dutch. "These specific A.I.-generated images appear to be exclusively used" by Chinese accounts used in this campaign, Microsoft said in a report. "They do not appear to be present elsewhere online."
The researchers "suggested that China was building a network of accounts that could be put to use in future information operations, including the next U.S. presidential election," according to the article. It adds that president Biden "has cut off China's access to the most advanced chips and the equipment made to produce them."
The article adds that the impact of China's misinformation campaign "is difficult to measure, though early indications suggest that few social media users engaged with the most outlandish of the conspiracy theories."
Re:No such thing. (Score:5, Funny)
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Falsehoods, and falsely presented information, absolutely do exist. So do foreign campaigns to try to enhance discord in a target country, such as Russian attempts to do so [nbcnews.com] to help the Republicans and the Trump campaign, which they feel will be helpful to them against Ukraine [theguardian.com] (note how the likes of Marjorie Treason Greene and others we can trace badly laundered Russian funds to, [nytimes.com] have become staunchly anti-Ukraine).
U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential e
Moryath: Was the Biden Laptop false information? (Score:1)
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It was irrelevant information.
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Was the fake Trump p-tape also irrelevant information?
Final expected trial of Durham investigation returns spotlight to flawed Trump-Russia dossier [cnn.com]
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My fake good, your fake bad?
Re:No such thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no such thing as misinformation or disinformation. Those are just labels used by those who would censor. The most horrible lie told by your worst enemy is still just information. Its very valuable to know what your enemy wants you to think.
Information that is false is literally the very definition of disinformation.
Re:No such thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as misinformation or disinformation. Those are just labels used by those who would censor. The most horrible lie told by your worst enemy is still just information. Its very valuable to know what your enemy wants you to think.
Information that is false is literally the very definition of disinformation.
In the MAGA world they're not called lies. They're called alternative truths.
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People don't seem to realize the more subtle meaning of "alternative facts". They aren't just lies, they are facts carefully selected to be misleading. Half truths, statistics, lack of context, cherry picking.
Choose the ones you want for your preferred narrative, ignore the rest. Think you are smart and rational because you only care about facts and the hard truth.
Re: No such thing. (Score:2)
Re:No such thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Information that is false is literally the very definition of disinformation. - Well, sort of. Actual definitions do exist. [dictionary.com]
Misinformation is false information, that is spread with or without an intent to deceive. For instance, your local "crunchy mana" woo peddler trying to sell everyone anti-vaccination bullcrap or "home remedy" cures for various things that amount to snake oil, may actually believe the dumb shit spewing from her face hole because someone duped her or she's just that fucking stupid. OR she may be a con artist herself, knowingly saying the stuff to try to get people to buy the fake crap she's selling. Misinformation might also just be people simply mis-remembering something they heard or saw on the news.
Disinformation is false (or mostly false) information spread with a definitive intent to deceive, especially in regard to political matters or international matters. Disinformation can also include misleading information, such as "true" information deliberately distorted (such as the infamous republican-supplied "upside down" gun deaths graph [livescience.com] after the Florida "stand your ground" aka "white supremacist enablement" law passed) or "partly true" information that salts in falsehoods with factual information, in order to create a false impression for the recipient. For instance, "greenwashing" by corporate entities is a matter of disinformation. Likewise, republican attacks on a 10-year-old rape victim [thedailybeast.com] and on elections and election officials - amplified by Russian social media disinformation campaigns on behalf of the GOP [nytimes.com] - are disinformation.
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I always find it weird how Democrats always talk about misinformation as a Republican thing. As a non-partisan, I see at least as much coming from the Dem side. A good example is the "10 year old rape victim" story. You, um, fell for it. The girl didn't have to travel out of state (Ohio's law makes an exception for that case, as the AG pointed out) and the doctor who loudly sent her to Indiana for an abortion was required legally to report the rape but didn't. We found out later that the victim actuall
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As a non-partisan, I see at least as much coming from the Dem side.
You go on to lie about a 10 year old victim of rape. You make vague statements without verifying the veracity of who said what, whereas the trumpist cult attempted a literal insurrection and forged false documents trying to get their way. And you top it off with a batshit insane conspiracy theory.
Thank you for proving that trumpists are lying shits though.
YOU ARE A LYING CUNT! (Score:3)
As a non-partisan...
That's a LIE, based on the fact that all your further claims are lies only a Republican Nazi could make.
The girl didn't have to travel out of state (Ohio's law makes an exception for that case, as the AG pointed out) and the doctor who loudly sent her to Indiana for an abortion was required legally to report the rape but didn't. We found out later that the victim actually lived with the rapist and was sent back after the abortion. The doctor was more interested in scoring cheap political points.
That's a whole pile of lies.
For starters, Ohio law has a single exception - "serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman."
That's it. No rape, incest, Down syndrome fetus... no other exceptions. [archive.org]
Also, fertilized egg is an "Unborn child" in Ohio. [archive.org]
The same Republican Ohio attorney general you "quote", Dave Yost, also claimed rape never happened "
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https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/03... [cnn.com]
Abrams, in the wake of her 2018 loss to Kemp by 1.4 percentage points, acknowledged that Kemp, who then worked as Georgia secretary of state, would be the governor of Georgia. But she specifically said in her final speech that she was not concede due to persistent voter suppression allegations, adding that conceding would mean acknowledging “an action is right, true or proper” and “as a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that.”
The rest of
Re: No such thing. (Score:2)
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There is no such thing as misinformation or disinformation.
I think it depends on your definition of those terms. Censors may use the terms but that doesn't mean that everything labeled that way is censorship. All honey bees collect pollen, but not all pollen is collected by honey bees.
Its very valuable to know what your enemy wants you to think.
Can't argue with that.
Bottling (Score:2)
Now investigate downmod bot arrays in use here for well over a decade. Thanks!
Link to photo, paper and website? (Score:2)
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Example? Because I've never seen one of those ads. I've seen plenty of crypto-scammer ads claiming the US Dollar is going to collapse, so "now is the time to put your money in crypto" or "in a stablecoin."
And when I check Fox Noise to see what the gullible conservative retards and 80+ year old white-supremacist senile shits having WW2 flashbacks are being fed this week, they're still peddling the "US is In Collapse! Buy Gold Mine Certificates and Shitty Tasting Survivalist Food Buckets!" ads.
What are ads ? (Score:2)
You mean like this? (Score:2)
This is an AI-generated photo [twitter.com] some people are stupid enough to believe is real. They're apparently willing to ignore [mediaite.com] the grifter's draft dodging escapades.
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FWIW, it looked like a photo to me. It also looked like he was about a well-hung-over 60. So I don't think it was related to his draft dodging.
Those amateur idiots! (Score:4, Interesting)
1) The Maui fires were made possible by climate change
2) Maui lacked resource to avoid the fires because all their money was sent to Ukraine
3) The Hawaiian sovereignty movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] has cited the fires as another reason Hawaii should be independent
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In that case:
1. The Maui fires were made possible by Hunter Biden's laptop.
Is that better?
Reports the New York Times ;) (Score:1)
The real disinformation is the above.
'The researchers "suggested that China was building a network of accounts that could be put to use in future information operations, including the next U.S. presidential election," according to the article'
Ah so, this New York Times misinformation is going to be used as a pretext to shut-down legitimate criticism of the Biden Regime.
What the heck is a
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You don't have to agree with the political leanings of the New York Times. I don't particularly care for the political leanings of the Wall Street Journal, but I'll take both publications over just about anything that comes out of the dark corners of the Internet, social media, or cable "news"
They publish their journalistic [nytimes.com] standards [wsj.com] if you care to read them. Kinda doubt you do, it's a lot more fun to just burn it all down, eh?
"few social media users engaged". Uhhhh. (Score:2, Informative)
Except for the users on Truth Social.
Re: "few social media users engaged". Uhhhh. (Score:2)
Not super reassured (Score:2)
The fact that the news are outlandish conspiracy theories few people believed should not make us believe such propaganda campaigns are inefficient and without consequences. That might be a low noise test to see if the fake news go through. Later, at the time of election a more subtle and misleading campaign can flood our social medias.
They don't need to sway everyone. Just sway a little bit the vote of the dumb ones. Of which we have many.
Playing Conspiratroll (Score:2)
Clever tactic, use Americans' love of conspiracy theories to drive them completely off the deep end, Russia has used similar tactics before.
This could backfire on them though, did they already forget the last time a conspiracy-theory-loving right-wing strongman got the 2nd most human votes and was elected President, and initiated a stupid-ass trade war against them? Do they want to risk that again?
Or do they think that would be worth getting the kid-glove treatment on a Taiwan invasion?
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