Renee DiResta - Opinion Here’s how Russia will attack the 2020 election. We’re still not ready. In 1983, an anonymous letter from an author claiming to be an American scientist appeared in an Indian newspaper, asserting that the HIV virus raging across the world was a bioweapon released by the United States. Over the next several years, similar claims appeared in leftist and alternative newspapers around the world and ended up becoming widely believed among those predisposed to distrust the Reagan administration. As late as 2005, a study showed that 27 percent of African Americans still believed that HIV was created in a government lab. We now know that these claims were part of a massive Soviet disinformation campaign. (more)

Vanessa Molter, Renee DiResta, and Alex Stamos - Opinion | As Chinese propaganda on covid-19 grows, U.S. social media must act. According to official infection figures, China’s battle with the novel coronavirus appears to be slowing, though there is skepticism on the reliability of those numbers. But the struggle to control the global narrative is just beginning. A key battlefield in that campaign will be the platforms operated by America’s still-dominant Internet companies. (more)

The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. According to U.S. intelligence agencies, the operation—code named Project Lakhta—was ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Special Counsel's report, made public in April 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections (more)

for the Presidential Election (more)

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory detailing a supposed secret plot by an alleged "deep state" against U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters. The theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous imageboard 4chan by someone using the name Q, who was presumably an American individual initially, but probably later became a group of people, claiming to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon (more)

a technique/practice of Attention Management for handling the Universal Inbox (more)

see Personalization

David Schmaltz connects the Pseudo-Science of Nutritionism (referring to Michael Pollan's new book) to Management Science and its pernicious BigWorld effects. parts 2 3 4 . (more)

She Warned of ‘Peer-to-Peer Misinformation.’ Congress Listened. Renee DiResta watched on her laptop screen as lawyers representing Facebook, Google and Twitter spoke at congressional hearings that focused on the role social media played in a Russian disinformation campaign ahead of the 2016 election. (Presidential Candidates 2016) (more)

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the transnational American non-profit educational organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to "promote scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims."[1] Paul Kurtz proposed the establishment of CSICOP in 1976 as an independent non-profit organization (before merging with CFI as one of its programs in 2015[2]), to counter what he regarded as an uncritical acceptance of, and support for, paranormal claims by both the media and society in general.[3] Its philosophical position is one of scientific skepticism. CSI's fellows have included notable scientists, Nobel laureates, philosophers, psychologists, educators and authors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_Skeptical_Inquiry (more)

Timothy Allen Caulfield (born 1963) is a Canadian professor of law at the University of Alberta,[1] the research director of its Health Law Institute,[2][3] and current Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy.[4][5][6] He specializes in legal, policy and ethical issues in medical research and its commercialization. In addition to professional publications, he is the author of several books aimed at the general reader, the host of a television documentary series debunking pseudoscientific (pseudoscience) myths and is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Caulfield

Mike Caulfield: Misinformation Is a Norovirus and the Web Is a Cruise Ship (more)

How Russia ‘Pushed Our Buttons’ With Fake Online Ads. Many Americans this week got their first looks at fake Facebook ads placed by Russian propagandists during the 2016 election campaign to sow discord in the US. The ads, made public during congressional hearings with social-media executives, targeted Americans on both sides of divisive issues such as Islam, gun rights, and the Black Lives Matter movement. (more)

Gloria Origgi: Say goodbye to the information age: it’s all about reputation now. There is an underappreciated paradox of knowledge that plays a pivotal role in our advanced hyper-connected liberal democracies: the greater the amount of information that circulates, the more we rely on so-called reputational devices to evaluate it. (more)

Craig Silverman: How Facebook Groups Are Being Exploited To Spread Misinformation, Plan Harassment, And Radicalize People. One week after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, those searching on Facebook for information about the upcoming March for Our Lives were likely to be shown an active group with more than 50,000 members. Called “March for Our Lives 2018 Official,” it appeared to be one of the best places to get details about the event and connect with others interested in gun control. But those who joined the group soon found themselves puzzled. The admins often posted pro-gun information and unrelated memes and mocked those who posted about gun control. (more)

Threatcast 2020: Our New Brainstorming Game To Explore Disinformation In The 2020 Election. As you may recall, a few years back, I helped design and run a large group election simulation game called “Machine Learning President.” The game explored what odd or surprising coalitions might form around a 2020 election, as well as the impact of both money and technology on the races. (more)

Crafting projects, Islam, and Russian propaganda – Data for Democracy. We spent last Friday night combing through Jonathan Albright’s dataset of posts from five Russian-linked Facebook pages, trying to track down related Instagram accounts. (more)

Targeted Advertising Is Ruining the Internet and Breaking the World. Contextual advertising had supported the print and broadcast media for decades, so this was the logical next step. What could possibly go wrong? (more)

Product Management/Customer Discovery coach https://www.producttalk.org/ https://twitter.com/ttorres (more)

cf Exponential Growth, NonLinear, Phase Change, Power Law (more)