Category Archives: Fake News

fakehunter.pap.pl/en

Internet users in Poland will be able to test their fake news hunting skills in a special competition to be held under the auspices of the Polish Press Agency and the government's GovTech Polska new technology programme for the public sector.

The competition, organised as part of PAP's #FakeHunter disinformation detection project and titled #FakeHunter Challenge/Geopolityka, will take place on March 24-27. Its co-sponsors are the Polish education ministry and the Digital Poland Union.

Announcing the competition during a press conference on Wednesday in the education ministry, PAP head Wojciech Surmacz said it would focus "solely and exclusively on the war in Ukraine, on Russia's brutal attack on Ukraine."

Surmacz said the idea for the #FakeHunter tool and mechanism dates back to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported a sharp rise in false information about the disease.

"Together with the pandemic, the World Health Organisation announced an infodemic, in other words, an unprecedented... increment on false information concerning a single event, namely the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic," said Surmacz.

He also said that, today, Russia has brought the spread of fake news to the level of a "real disinformation war."

Education Minister Przemysaw Czarnek said the event, addressed to school-age youth and students, would concentrate on Russian trolling techniques. He added that the competition also aimed to make young people realise they were not likely to find true information on social media.

"We want to make (young people - PAP) aware that if we are looking for truth, we will not find it in the social media - especially today, with the war in Ukraine which (Russian President Vladimir - PAP) Putin has started," Czarnek said.

Czarnek said about 10,000 Russian trolling accounts have appeared on Polish social media since Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine and stressed that the surest sources of true information for young people were parents and official information channels.

"The truth can be obtained from parents, the truth can be found in Polish Press Agency reports and on government websites," Czarnek said.

Excerpt from:

PAP announces fake news hunting competition The First News - The First News

W

ar in Ukraine is unfolding in real time, both in person and online, as variants of the truth are being shared.

There has been a slew of misinformation from falsely credited images to stories of supposed war victories all adding to the confusion between truth and tall tales.

While Russia has introduced new laws punishing those deemed to discredit armed forces, the freedom of the net elsewhere has allowed for myths and facts to mix on social media.

Heres how to check who to trust and do your due diligence when consuming online content:

How can I help?

Information is being uploaded too fast for human moderators to handle, so while many posts go live sans warning, proceed with caution.

The virality of breaking news on the internet tempts immediacy in our reactions but it is vital to pause, read and check before clicking retweet.

Is social media being fact-checked?

Twitter and Meta have ordered content from Russia Today and Sputnik to be labelled as state-sponsored content on their platforms, including Instagram.

YouTube said it will block both news outlets, while Google has banned RT and Sputnik from their Play app store.

How do I check my sources?

Digging through threads on Twitter and Facebook to verify users can be time consuming.

Instead, you can make a list of trusted sources and use news tools like Google News and Apple News to help sift through information.

On the ground reporters and vetted professionals can be a reliable but be sure to check their credentials by a blue tick or their previous work.

Google search names and organisations while remaining wary of new and unverified accounts with only a few followers.

How do I spot fake images?

Visual media is often the first insight into new stories and the spread of old videos and images resurfacing as new content can cause more perplexity in times of crisis.

An image of an airstrike from the video game War Thunder, falsely attributed to the Ukraine crisis, was viewed more than 300,000 times in one tweet.

A zombie video of a 2015 chemical warehouse explosion in China has also resurfaced out of context multiple times, according to AFP Fact Check.

Spotting a fake image can be as easy as running a reverse image search.

Google Chrome and browser extension RevEye offer right-click options to reverse search images.

Search engines Yandex, TinEye and Bing allow users to search by URL or upload images to see if they have been previously published online.

Whats the difference between misinformation and disinformation?

Misinformation is the sharing of false or inaccurate information while disinformation is added with bad intent.

The deliberately deceptive nature of the latter can be important to identify anecdotal tales like the unverified Ukrainian war hero Ghost of Kyiv from Russian propaganda that is being used to justify war crimes.

Both should not be shared carelessly but one is more insidious.

Go here to see the original:

Ukraine Information War: How to spot fake news and misinformation online - Evening Standard

A photograph of a heavily pregnant woman wrapped in a blanket, her face smeared with blood, stumbling out of a ruined maternity hospital in Mariupol may well be one of the most striking images to come out of the invasion of Ukraine so far.

But alongside an outpouring of sympathy, the photo was soon being used to promote a very different narrative.

The Russian Embassy to the UK claimed in a series of now-removed tweets the woman was a beauty influencer hired as an actor to cover up the fact the hospital was empty of patients and being used as a military base. Her injuries? Some very realistic make-up, it said.

The story illustrates how social media has become a battleground in the war. Thousands of videos and images purporting to be from the conflict are posted every day to an audience of millions as Ukraine and Russia fight to influence public opinion at home and abroad. While some are genuine, many are misleading, mistaken or outright fakes.

Razan Ibraheem, an analyst at Kinzen, has spent years researching misinformation and said social media fakes have played a role in every conflict since the Syrian civil war.

But the scale of fake news coming out of Ukraine is beyond what shes seen before, she told Buzz. The narrative is evolving unbelievably fast It is a really challenging time.

The Dublin-based company was founded in 2018 by former employees of Facebook and RT. Its team of journalists and researchers monitors online discussion to sift news from noise spotting hoaxes and hate speech related to wars, elections and other crises around the world before they go viral. Up until recently, Covid-19 was a huge part of their work, but now the war is their main focus.

Many fakes circulating are similar to those weve seen before. But Ibraheem said one emerging trend is pro-Kremlin accounts using fact-checking language against Ukraine.

Clips and photos which may or may not be related to the war are taken out of context and used to say that Ukraine is spreading fake news or employing crisis actors. The posts are often tagged with phrases like debunked and see it for yourself.

They are trying to take examples from misleading content and saying its a fake, so it means the whole war is a fake, Ibraheem said.

Even government accounts are using this tactic. Usually you will see Russian-sponsored media spreading misinformation or justifications for the invasion, she explained. But now because they are blocked on many platforms, the Russian official accounts are replacing them.

Although Russia has been a major source of misinformation, pro-Ukraine accounts are also posting hoaxes of their own. Ibraheem said she has seen several clips which claimed to show Ukrainians in a good light, but were actually taken from a video game or TV show.

However, she was keen to point out that while all misinformation is damaging, pro-Ukraine fakes are incomparable in terms of the harm.

The Russian misinformations agenda is to justify war, invasion, killing and bombing a hospitalWhereas if we sometimes identify Ukrainian misinformation, its coming from [a place of] defence.

They are the victim, they are under invasion They are sharing content to get more support and solidarity.

Identifying misinformation from any source is complicated, Ibraheem said. I understand sometimes when people share content and they dont know it is misleading, because its not an easy process to do.

Video quality is one indicator. A low quality, pixelated clip could have been copied and shared multiple times, meaning it's more likely to have been taken out of context.

Viewers should also search for the original source to spot if a clip is from another war, or has had new audio added. Google Image search can uncover where screenshots were taken from, while account names or dates on the video itself may help you trace it.

Meanwhile, the surroundings can offer clues. Its very cold at this time of year in Ukraine, so look for people wearing light clothes or short sleeves as a clue the image is from another country.

When in doubt, several organisations and journalists are dedicated to exposing fake news. As well as Kinzen, check the likes of Bellingcat, Snopes and Politifact to see if they have already debunked a particular piece of content.

TikTok has been mentioned frequently as a hub for misleading content during the war. But Ibraheem said the problem is bigger than one platform: fake news can spread anywhere online.

Whats dangerous about TikTok, however, is how engaging and therefore convincing its short videos can be.

You listen, you watch, [you read] the language, so it captures more of your senses than a post or a phone, she said. On TikTok videos get millions of views because of that. We are seeing some videos being watched 20 million times.

Many who post deceptive content may not have an agenda to push beyond increasing their follower count.

But even innocently shared misinformation can have a heavy toll. For example, experts believe Russia may be planning to use misinformation to pin a false flag chemical weapons attack on Ukraine.

Misinformation can change the whole political narrative, said Ibraheem. Thats why its really important for the integrity of news and journalism to separate the news from the noise and have trusted information.

Read the rest here:

The Irish company combating fake news about the invasion of Ukraine - Buzz.ie

The Russian television producer who staged an extraordinary anti-war protest live on national television said she was fearful for my safety but would not take a single word back from her statement criticising Russias actions in Ukraine.

I dont regret one bit what I did, Marina Ovsyannikova told the Guardian in a phone interview on Wednesday. I will not take a single word back. These are my views.

Ovsyannikova, who was a senior producer at Russias state-run Channel One, staged her protest on air on Monday night when she waved a sign reading: Dont believe the propaganda. Theyre lying to you here.

She also released a pre-recorded video in which she expressed her shame at working for Channel One and spreading Kremlin propaganda.

Ovsyannikova told the Guardian that her anger with Russias political direction had been growing over the last few years.

First they cancelled the governor elections, then they started to ban independent media, then they poisoned [opposition leader Alexei] Navalny. My anger kept on growing. I was experiencing cognitive dissonance, the country wasnt going in the right direction.

The war was the last drop and I decided to act, she said.

In a separate interview with Reuters, she added: I believe in what I did, but I now understand the scale of the problems that Ill have to deal with and, of course, Im extremely concerned for my safety.

She told Reuters her actions were intended to send a direct message to the Russian public: Dont be such zombies, dont listen to this propaganda. Learn how to analyse information, learn how to find other sources of information, not just Russian state television.

A Russian court fined Ovsyannikova 30,000 roubles (215) on Tuesday for her recorded video in which she violated protest laws. The decision was met with relief by friends and supporters who feared the authorities were preparing serious criminal charges after she disappeared into police custody for nearly 24 hours after her arrest. She has not yet been prosecuted for her live protest on Channel One.

Ovsyannikova said that she managed to get some rest this morning and that she was on her way to meet her lawyers.

Of course, the situation is very tense. Everything is still unfolding in front of our eyes. I am worried, she said.

The Guardian earlier learned that Ovsyannikova had outlined her protest plan to a friend the day before, having become increasingly angry about Russias invasion of Ukraine. She also told her friend she was fully aware of the consequences her actions would have on her and her family.

Since the start of the war, Russia has launched an unprecedented crackdown on protesters, independent news outlets and foreign social media networks. Russian parliament earlier this month passed a law imposing a jail term of up to 15 years for spreading intentionally fake news about the military. On Wednesday, the countrys investigative committee said it had launched three criminal cases against people for spreading what it called fake news about the Russian army on Instagram and other social media.

Read more from the original source:

Russian TV producer extremely concerned for safety after protest live on air - The Guardian

FactCheck Initiative has announced plans to set up a team with the government and other agencies to combat fake news and misinformation during the 2023 general election.

This, the Country Director, FactCheck Initiative, Adeoye Temitope, said would ensure free, fair and peaceful elections in 2023.

He expressed concern that as the Nigeria elections draw nearer, false information, unverified news and misinformation are some of the tools used to cause unrest and chaos in the country.

Complementing the efforts of government and other institutions in achieving a state of the total spread of authentic information is one of our main aims and objectives, he said.

This cause will help to defend Nigerias open and democratic society and free opinions by selecting, analysing and tackling inappropriate influences and other misleading information directed at the general elections in 2023. It will swiftly determine any unsavoury information or news rapidly spreading and nip it in the bud as quickly as possible.

We are also open to as many partnerships and support we can get; so, organisations/individuals in and outside Nigeria can reach out to us to join the cause.

The team will be tasked with identifying and countering foreign propaganda and disinformation; also observing social media closely before the general elections in 2023 to identify countries who may have taken an interest in seeing the elections take an unpleasant turn which Nigerians may not be favourable disposed towards.

Read this article:

2023: FCI, other agencies to combat fake news - Punch Newspapers

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Professor Isa Pantami, has called for the need to entrench transparency, laws, and regulations in social media usage to ensure a safer digital space, devoid of illegalities and promoters of fake news.

The Minister who was represented by the Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, said this while hosting a Delegation of video-focused social networking service, TikTok, in his office.

Kashifu Inuwa raised concerns bordering on security, tax payment, direct contact with TikTok and general content hygiene.

There is a need for you to be more transparent on what you do with the data, experience you take and your algorithm design; because most algorithms are designed to promote hate speech.

According to him technology can be used as a weapon, or a tool, which he noted depends on the users intent.

Inuwa therefore, emphasised that there should be consequences for anyone who uses social media to commit a crime and maintained that anything that is illegal offline should also be illegal online.

In Nigeria, people are using TikTok for so many things; some use it to promote rituals and domestic violence while others use it for hate speech; So, we cannot continue to have people put out random contents without appropriate checks/verifications.

The NITDA Boss who recalled the issues that ensued between the Federal Government and Twitter which led to the suspension of the platforms operations in Nigeria said the microblogging and social networking service had to agree and meet certain conditions upon which its ban was lifted.

ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE

The conditions, the DG explained, are to be extended to other social media platforms, including TikTok.

We are working on drafting Code of Practice which we are going to share with you soon; get your feedback and see how we can make it better.

Inuwa reiterated the need for direct contact with the company to agree on the timeline to either delete erring content or suspend accounts that violate rules.

He encouraged TIKTOK to register and have an Office in the Country to enable prompt Communications for subsequent engagements.

The leader of the TikTok Delegation & Head of Government Relations and Public Policy, TikTok- Middle East, Turkey, Africa and Pakistan, Farah Tukan, said the team intends to host a series of workshops in Abuja and Lagos with the aim of enlightening Nigerians on how the platform works; taking a deep dive into how contents are moderated; developed and how policies are enforced.

We are committed to providing opportunities for Nigerians to earn a living through their creativity and expression, and as a global platform that thrives on creativity, it is essential that our users feel safe and comfortable online.

Our user policies and tools are developed to promote a positive and safe environment for our community, and we trust that users will respect and utilise these measures to keep TikTok fun and welcoming for everyone.

She confirmed TikToks readiness to explore more areas of collaboration with the agency to continue to contribute to keeping Nigerian users safe on its platform as well as promote the creative industries in Nigeria.

We take misinformation and fake news very seriously, and its actually against our community guidelines; we have policies that address misinformation, we also have a system (the human elements as well) that looks into this issue as well.

The team leader also affirmed that the Company is open to conversations with the Nigerian Government regarding updating its rules and regulations to ensure a more excellent user experience.

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FG to TikTok: Suspend accounts of Nigerians using your platform to promote ritual, fake news

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FG to TikTok: Suspend accounts of Nigerians using your platform to promote ritual, fake news

Originally posted here:

FG to TikTok: Suspend accounts of Nigerians using your platform to promote ritual, fake news - Tribune Online

In a flak jacket and helmet, the Chinese reporter Lu Yuguang stands on the side of a road as a Russian tank roars past. Im on the frontline in Mariupol, he says into the microphone. He then interviews a Russian soldier who says hes not nervous as hes been fighting for eight years. In another shot, Lu talks with a group of Russian soldiers in the back of a military vehicle.

The dispatches are unusual for their extraordinary access Lu, a veteran war reporter for a Chinese news outlet, Phoenix TV, is perhaps the only foreign correspondent embedded with Russian troops as they continue the brutal invasion of Ukraine.

He has filed reports from cities under Russian attack since the invasion began almost three weeks ago, including in Mariupol where local authorities say thousands of people have been killed.

Lu appears to have gained exclusive access to Russias side of the conflict. In one report on 2 March, he interviewed the leader of the self-proclaimed republic in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin. Lu said the Donetsk militia cannot compare to Ukrainian forces, but with the help of Russian forces, eastern Ukraine militia have liberated 40 residential areas within the administrative line. The victory keeps expanding.

The Guardian is not aware of any other foreign journalists reporting from such close quarters on the Russian side of the invasion. A long-running Russian government campaign against independent media has intensified since the war began, with foreign outlets among those forced to end operations after Vladimir Putin signed a law carrying 15-year prison terms for what the Kremlin considers fake news. As such, Lus unusual access to the Russian military stands in stark contrast to that of other reporters. It has also fuelled questions about the extent of cooperation between Moscow and Beijing.

Since the two governments signed an unlimited partnership shortly before Russia went to war in Ukraine, Beijing has struggled to balance its support for Moscow with the global condemnation of the invasion and swaths of international sanctions. It has outwardly sought to maintain a neutral position in the conflict but refuses to label Russias act as an invasion or the fighting as a war, and has amplified anti-western narratives, blaming the US and Nato for the conflict.

Beijing has also pushed Russian disinformation and conspiracy theories, including un-evidenced accusations that US-funded labs in Ukraine were secretly producing chemical weapons, and early claims by Russian state media that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had fled Kyiv.

Lu is a well-known journalist in China, and his career and background have been reported on by Tencent, Sohu and Sina.

His reports from Ukraine have included Russian disinformation such as claims of more than 1,000 people held hostage as human shields by Ukrainian militants. However, his interviews with Ukrainian civilian victims, and criticism of Chinese internet users objectifying Ukrainian women, have also drawn nationalistic and pro-Russia trolling, accusing him of creating pro-Ukraine rumours and being crooked assed, an internet slang term for having bias or lacking objectivity.

According to profiles on Phoenix TVs website and news articles about Lu, the correspondent is a former navy officer in the Peoples Liberation Army, who lived in Moscow for several decades and covered events including the Chechen war, where he reportedly had Russian military protection. He has received multiple awards from the Russian government and military for his reporting. He has previously said that his outlet has good relations with intelligence figures in Russia.

ProfSteve Tsang, the director of the Soas China Institute, said Lu could have gained access through his personal connection to Russia, or because of Chinas general support for its government.

They are not mutually exclusive. The only thing I think we know for sure is that Russia will not allow any foreign journalist to be embedded with Russian forces unless it is certain that the embedded foreign journalist will portray Russian forces and efforts in a positive light. The fact that Lu is embedded should show that the Russian authorities know him well enough to be certain he would not write negatively about the Russian war efforts.

Phoenix TV did not respond to questions about how Lu was able to embed with Russian troops.

Originally posted here:

Im on the frontline in Mariupol: the Chinese reporter embedded with Russian troops - The Guardian

The rise of fake news in the American popular consciousness is one of the remarkable growth stories in recent yearsa dizzying climb to make any Silicon Valley unicorn jealous. Just a few years ago, the phrase was meaningless. Today, according to a new Pew Research Center study, Americans rate it as a larger problem than racism, climate change, or terrorism.

But remarkable though that may seem, its not actually whats most interesting about the study. Pew finds that Americans have deeply divergent views about fake news and different responses to it, which suggest that the emphasis on misinformation might actually run the risk of making people, especially conservatives, less well informed. More than making people believe false things, the rise of fake news is making it harder for people to see the truth.

Pew doesnt define what it calls made-up news, which is a reasonable choice in the context of a poll, but matters a great deal in interpreting it. The term has come to mean different things to different people. It was coined to describe deliberately false articles created by Potemkin news sites and spread on social media. But in a deliberate effort to muddy the waters, President Donald Trump began labeling news coverage that was unfavorable to him fake news. (Indeed, Pew finds that Americans blame politicians and their aides, more than the press, activist groups, or foreign actors, for the problem of made-up news.) Now when Trumps supporters refer to fake news, they often seem to mean mainstream news they dislike, whereas when others do so, they mean bogus information spread by fringe actors.

Read: Why bogus news stories are so hard to stop

If Pews data are taken to mean that people find this latter category more dangerous than climate change, that is almost certainly an overreaction. As the political scientist Brendan Nyhan wrote in February, summarizing the state of research in the field:

Relatively few people consumed this form of content directly during the 2016 campaign, and even fewer did so before the 2018 election. Fake news consumption is concentrated among a narrow subset of Americans with the most conservative news diets. And, most notably, no credible evidence exists that exposure to fake news changed the outcome of the 2016 election.

Pew finds a significant gap between Democrats and Republicans views on the seriousness of the problem with made-up news, though:

This looks a lot like a split over the definition of fake news, rather than the actual problem. Put differently, Republicans may well be responding not to out-and-out fakery, but to biasreal or perceivedin news coverage. It would make sense that conservatives would be primed to accept the idea of widespread bias in the press after a decades-long campaign against the credibility of the mainstream press. Indeed, Republicans are about three times more likely than Democrats (58 percent versus 20 percent) to say that journalists create a lot of fake news, though they still assign more blame to both politicians and activist groups.

How do people respond when they sense fake news? Here again, the partisan splits are notable:

Its a positive sign that people are trying to fact-check stories themselves, though its an open question whether theyre any good at it. (Respondents thought little of their peers ability to find bad information, but believe that they, like the children in Lake Wobegon, are all above average: Survey respondents also put a good deal more faith in their own ability to recognize potentially inaccurate or misleading information than they do in the broader publics ability to discern it.)

Some of the other choices are more troubling. One of the biggest risks often imputed to the current media environment, in which audiences can pick and choose news outlets that agree with them, is that people will become more and more siloed, cutting themselves off from information that they dont like or that contradicts their prior assumptions.

The Pew study suggests that fake-news panic, rather than driving people to abandon ideological outlets and the fringe, may actually be accelerating the process of polarization: Its driving consumers to drop some outlets, to simply consume less information overall, and even to cut out social relationships.

Read: How the left lost its mind

If people stop reading a website, because its peddling conspiracy theories, thats good news. If they stop consuming any coverage from mainstream outlets like CNN or The Washington Post, because they believe a story is biased, or because the president has labeled it fake news, thats less positive. While nearly six in 10 Democrats have dropped an outlet over perceived fake news, a full 70 percent of Republicans have. A much larger portion of Republicans has also reduced their overall consumption of news. The less politically aware are also 20 percent more likely to have reduced their overall consumption of news than the more politically awaremeaning that people who were already acquiring the least information are now acquiring even less.

Fully half of respondents said they had avoided talking with someone, because they thought that person might bring made-up news and information into the conversation. The numbers are roughly equivalent across parties48 percent of Republicans, 51 percent of Democrats. Its another example of an action that might seem rational under certain circumstances; no one should feel obliged to listen to an Alex Joneslistening relatives Sandy Hook trutherism or a neighbors Louise Menschderived Trump conspiracy theories. But given the relatively small actual prevalence of true fake news, this figure is probably just another sign of people siloing themselves from information that challenges their assumptions.

Nor does Pews study offer much reason for optimism that these problems will fade anytime soon. The publics solutions are fraught with contradictions. More than half of respondents said that journalists bear the most responsibility for fixing the problem (53 percent, versus 20 percent for the public, 12 percent for the government, and 9 percent for tech companies), and yet eight in 10 say limitations on made-up news and informationrestrictions on free speech, in other wordsare needed. Moreover, almost two-thirds of people said that political divisions are a big challenge to addressing made-up news. Yet the steps that they report taking themselves seem likely to only exacerbate those political divisions.

See the rest here:

The Real Problem With Fake News - The Atlantic

But the prevailing medical wisdom, I soon learned, was that my left-eye odds were more like 20 percent. Other doctors thought that oxygen was unnecessary. And the two airlines that I asked about giving it to me said that they didnt do that doctors note or no doctors note. Id have to contact a separate company and pay a whole lot of money.

As I went through two clinical trials of experimental treatments for my condition, I interacted with, by my rough estimate, more than a dozen medical professionals. Not one asked me if, faced with the specter of blindness, I was struggling emotionally and might want a referral to a counselor of some kind.

I recount all of that without grievance or grudge: I had excellent care, including, for the most part, from Dr. Oxygen-on-the-Plane. I recount it because its an important lesson. As I write in The Beauty of Dusk, which casts my medical odyssey as representative of the struggles that all people encounter, especially as we age:

Doctors are flawed. Theyre human. We want them to be gods, because we want that certainty, that salvation. We want clear roles: The doctor commands; the patient obeys. But, at times, in their imperfection and arrogance and haste, they make assumptions and mistakes. So its crucial to approach a relationship with a doctor, any doctor, as a partnership and to consider yourself an equal partner, respectful but not obsequious, receptive but skeptical.

Im most definitely not advocating the kind of disregard for expertise thats all too prevalent in this digital age, when too many people click their way to outright cynicism or kooky conspiracy theories because theyre after a certain emotional experience or psychological validation, not the truth. Im calling for nuance, for holding two slightly contradictory thoughts at once.

Its what the pandemic should have taught us. Experts proved their invaluable mastery by speeding us to lifesaving vaccines. But they also made some inaccurate guesses thats a necessary part of the scientific process and are still sorting through many Covid mysteries.

Similarly, your doctor knows more than you but not everything, and you can best take advantage of his or her considerable education by educating yourself by asking better questions, by providing the most comprehensive and relevant details about what youre going through, by pressing (within reason) and prodding (within courtesy). Again, from the book:

It became clear to me that most medical professionals, no matter how conscientious, are managing the task at hand, by which I mean the specific affliction that you present with, the pain or discomfort that youre trying to rid yourself of, the immediate juncture that you have to move past. Theyre not managing you certainly not all of you. That larger, longer, more panoramic task can be outsourced to exactly no one.

For as long as your mind remains intact and your energy endures, you are your own best case manager. You hold the levers for your moods, the switches for your feelings. You alone have all the information. You alone can update it by the second. You alone have no priority more urgent. You alone live fully with the consequences. Others may want or mean to come to the rescue and, in discrete instances, may try to. But theyre the guests, not the homeowner. They dont stay forever or know how to work the thermostat.

Published last week, The Beauty of Dusk made The Times Hardcover Nonfiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction Best Seller lists this week. I talked about the book with David Axelrod for this episode of The Axe Files podcast, and Ill appear on HBOs Real Time With Bill Maher tomorrow night.

Link:

Opinion | Russia, Where All the News Is Fake - The New York Times

The collective West continues to support the Kiev regime in fabricating facts about the Russian special operation in Ukraine. Humanity must know the truth, went a post on the official Twitter account of the Russian Embassy of Egypt, which was published on March 3rd.

The tweet included a video showing what appears to be lines of dead bodies covered by tarpaulins. The bodies are being filmed by someone in a yellow jacket. In the foreground, a reporter is talking on camera, when suddenly one of the bodies starts moving, and another person runs over to recover them.

The message to the viewer is clear: if the collective West is paying actors to pretend to be victims of the so-called Russian special military operation, can you trust anything they say?

Only, it isnt clear at all because the video which was also shared by the official account of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine. It is news footage of a climate change protest in Austria, which was broadcast by OE24.TV last February. For many observers, the fact that it was shared by an official, verified embassy account is a sign of how far-reaching, organised and unscrupulous the information war over Ukraine has become.

Razan Ibraheem, a senior editorial analyst with Kinzen, the Irish-based firm which uses humans and technology to track harmful content online as it emerges, cites this example when asked about the role misinformation and propaganda are playing in the war on Ukraine. She spotted the video for a fake immediately because shed seen it before: it was also recently used by anti-vaxxers to claim that the Covid-19 pandemic was a hoax.

Ibraheem, who has been involved in verifying footage from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen since 2015, is stunned by the scale of this information war. I cant believe the amount of misinformation on social media across all platforms. The videos are being watched millions of times, and being shared thousands of times on social media. It is across all social media, including TikTok.

If you dont want to be an unwitting part of disseminating Russian propaganda, there are a number of steps all social media users and news consumers can follow.

1. Pause before you share. Ibraheem points out the pro-Kremlin accounts are taking examples of (often well-meaning) misinformation in support of Ukraine and using it to back claims that the war is fake news. She cites the example of a video which claimed to show Ukrainian soldiers saying goodbye to their partners and wives and which is still being shared. It was on social media today. Its an emotional video that tells a story and fits perfectly with what is happening in Ukraine right now. But the video is from 2017, and it is taken from a trailer for a Ukrainian documentary.

Thats why, she adds, it is so important to pause. You dont want to be part of the disinformation phenomenon.

2. Look for the location, the date and the source of the video. Go back to the username or the Twitter handle. If you cant find the original source, dont share it, she says. Determining the location requires more patience, but it is possible, as a community of volunteers using Google Maps and open source technology to document the war in real time have shown. We do an exact match on Google Maps of what we can see in the video. But thats a complex process, says Ibraheem.

3. Pay close attention to the details in what youre looking at. Make sure this video is representing what it says and the caption matches what is happening in the video, she suggests. Are there street signs? Distinctive buildings? Shop names? Some videos are easily debunked just by looking at them she cites the example of videos supposedly coming from Ukraine in which people are dressed in short sleeves.

4. Do a reverse image search. You can do this with a video by taking multiple screenshots. You upload the images, and it will trawl the internet looking to see if it has appeared before. Ibraheem likes Tineye.com. Other tools include Googles own reverse image tool and the browser extension RevEye.

5. Trust your senses. Believe in yourself, believe in your ability to try to do your own research, says Ibraheem. Another clue may be videos that are extremely low resolution, which may mean they have been screengrabbed multiple times. Look for the hashtags associated with misinformation accounts #RussianTroopsForTruth

6. Know your sources. Share information coming from reliable news outlets, particularly those with journalists on the ground in Ukraine. Imposter accounts are common, so make sure the one youre retweeting or reposting is who they say they are. And if youre not, dont post it.

7. Check if someone else has already verified or debunked the post youre tempted to share. Associated Press and Reuters run highly regarded fact checking services. Ibraheem mentions voluntary groups such as Bellingcat.com who have become trusted sources for sorting the news from the noise. Another such group is the UK-based Centre for Information Resilience.

There are different kinds of false or misleading information, and not all is shared with malicious intent. Ibraheem makes a distinction between misinformation and the kind of disinformation being systematically perpetuated by pro-Kremlin forces. Misinformation, she says, is when people share content without realising that this content is misleading or false. They may share, she says, because they want to be part of a community or to show their support for the people of Ukraine. But while their intentions are good, it is misinformation. They are part of the phenomenon.

She gives another example of a viral image that purported to be of a Ukrainian girl injured in the Russian invasion. In reality, it was actually a Syrian girl. People share these videos because they have an emotional response to them or because they want to find more followers. They want to be part of a community experiencing collective emotional support for Ukraine.

Disinformation, by contrast, is the creation or sharing of fabricated content with the intention of having political influence, changing the political narrative, or spreading propaganda. Much of it is coming from pro-Kremlin forces, and while there is disinformation from the Ukrainian side too, in her experience it is not generally being shared by authorities or even people in Ukraine.

Both sides are not equal. What you see on the Ukrainian side is people sharing old content, but these people are not generally Ukrainians, they are often supporters in other countries What we are seeing from the Russian side is an orchestrated campaign, trying to downplay the Russian invasion, change the language around it, suppress information and manipulate their audience.

Despite all the negatives of the information war, social media and the internet has simultaneously been playing a crucial positive role in this invasion. A loose, global network of groups and individuals are using technology in real time to locate, analyse and verify acts of aggression and atrocities.

This is known as OSINT, or open-source intelligence. The work the OSINT community during the Russian war on Ukraine possible because it is being uploaded online almost as it happens rivals massive operations involving huge networks of spies in the past, observers say. It involves trawling social media posts and images to geolocate, analyse and classify them where it took place; when; who was involved; what kind of weapons were used. This information is stored online in maps and other resources where, many hope, it will be used in the future as a historical resource and to investigate war crimes.

The Centre for Information Resilience is mapping OSINT reports of military movements, gunfire, missile attacks, civilian casualties, and destroyed equipment at: maphub.net/Cen4infoRes/russian-ukraine-monitor

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Fake news from Ukraine: 7 steps to identify misinformation and disinformation - The Irish Times