Community voting for the 2021 SXSW conference ends this Friday! Here’s the panel Shireen Mitchell, Safiya Umoja Noble, Ph.D. and I are proposing. You can vote for the panel at https://bit.ly/DisinfoSXSW. Please help get the word out! There’s information about how to vote and other ways to support this panel at the end of this post.
How Disinformation Destroyed Democracy
Building on their successes in 2016, foreign and domestic actors ramped up disinformation and digital voter suppression for the 2020 election. All too often tech platforms took no meaningful action to stop disinformation. As the election grew closer, grassroots groups…
Part 1 of 5 Ways You can Fight Disinformation this Election Season
As we move on to the next stage of “Election Season”, it’s more important than ever to guard against disinformation. False information can prevent people from voting, cast doubt on the credibility of the election process, and potentially even be used as the basis for a coup attempt.
So it’s up to all of us to fight back against disinformation.
As Shireen Mitchell says, if you have an immediate reaction to share a link without verifying or fact-checking…
Part 2 of 5 Ways to Fight Disinformation this Election Season
As we move on to the next stage of “Election Season”, it’s more important than ever to guard against disinformation. False information can prevent people from voting, cast doubt on the credibility of the election process, and potentially even be used as the basis for a coup attempt.
So it’s up to all of us to fight back against disinformation.
This short video from PEN America, Shireen Mitchell’s All of us have been targeted by disinformation, and Jen Soriano’s Disinformation is like a virus, are all great two-minute…
Part 3 of 5 Ways You can Fight Disinformation this Election Season
As we move on to the next stage of “Election Season”, it’s more important than ever to guard against disinformation. False information can prevent people from voting, cast doubt on the credibility of the election process, and potentially even be used as the basis for a coup attempt.
So it’s up to all of us to fight back against disinformation.
Part 4 of 5 Ways You can Fight Disinformation this Election Season
One of the biggest challenges about disinformation is that it often flies below the radar — making it hard to respond. So when you see disinformation, report it! Here’s a few ways:
ReportDisinfo.org is an easy-to-use site to report disinformation, run by Common Cause Election Fund. You can include a link to the web page, or upload an image.
Stop Digital Voter Suppression is the place to report digital voter suppression. Also consider reporting voting-related disinformation to your state and local election officials.
Part 5of 5 Ways You can Fight Disinformation this Election Season
As we move on to the next stage of “Election Season”, it’s more important than ever to guard against disinformation. False information can prevent people from voting, cast doubt on the credibility of the election process, and potentially even be used as the basis for a coup attempt.
So it’s up to all of us to fight back against disinformation.
As Kate Starbird and her research team at University of Washington pointed out a few years ago, producing disinformation is a collaborative process. And so is fighting back!
Fortunately…
As we move on to the next stage of “Election Season”, it’s more important than ever to guard against disinformation. False information can prevent people from voting, cast doubt on the credibility of the election process, and potentially even be used as the basis for a coup attempt.
So it’s up to all of us to fight back against disinformation.
Here’s five things you can do.
- THINK before you engage or share
- EDUCATE yourself — and your friends and family
- SHARE accurate information about the election
- REPORT disinformation when you see it
- JOIN a grassroots disinfo-fighting campaign
Each of the…
MediaJustice and the Disinfo Defense League are kicking off their Week of Action Against Disinformation with the #DisruptDisinfo Twitter Block Party Monday October 26 at 1 PM Pacific, 4PM Eastern. It’s a great chance to learn how to respond when people share disinformation — and how to avoid sharing disinformation yourself.
Whether or not you’re on Twitter, you can follow along here.
The Disinfo Defense League is a group of non-partisan non-profits and researchers, and they’ve got a lot of other great events planned as part of the week of action. A few highlights:
Summary: In the early 2000s, Microsoft faced challenges similar to the ones Zoom’s looking at today, and successfully turned things around. Some of the key lessons from Microsoft’s experiences include
- Think broadly about “trust”
- Make trust the product teams’ responsibility
- Fix your privacy practices and policies
- Do threat modeling
- Use the tools — and develop new ones
- Learn from your experiences
- It’s a social problem, not just “technical”
- It may take a while to address — but there’s a big potential upside
The Twitter thread includes a longer summary and some discussion.
A tough time for Zoom
After a great start to the year, with…
Last updated: August 30. Originally published April 2.
Zoombombing remains a problem; see Prof. Anima Anandkumar’s thread about her KDD keynote from late August. If you’re using Zoom, the Global Forum for Media Development’s “Zoom-bombing” prevention & resources guide has some solid recommendations, and so does How to Keep Uninvited Guests Out of Your Zoom Event on Zoom’s blog. Zoom continues to fix security problems, so please make sure you have the latest software — but be careful of malware.
With online organizing as the only short-term option, Zoom has become increasingly popular for activism groups. There’s a lot to…
Jon Pincus
strategist, software engineer, entrepreneur, activist ...
