U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
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U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
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Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
#2>Russian-linked Doppelganger operations have systematically cloned major media infrastructure (Reuters, The Washington Post, Fox News) using lookalike domains that replicate visual design and URL structure closely enough to pass casual inspection. This purpose-built impersonation infrastructure is supported by fake personas, AI-assisted content, and paid amplification across mainstream social platforms.
Are there any live examples out there? Similar to how I like to look at scam/phishing emails to see how they work, I'm interested in seeing how sophisticated these are/are not.
Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
#3It's interesting to have a conversation with people over politics these days, sometimes it's like people don't live in the same reality anymore. It's probably not far from the truth.
To a first approximation, nothing is verified, people see a number on social media as a proxy for accuracy. Even if it's completely wrong, it doesn't matter because you're among friends.
Memes let insane ideas spread like a virus, the only criterion is whether they can survive against other memes. Grounding in reality is an idea's death sentence, because of the bullshit asymmetry principle.
And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet.
I shudder to think what this means for elections. At least I appreciate that the article attaches some numbers to it.
Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
#4>Russian-linked Doppelganger operations have systematically cloned major media infrastructure (Reuters, The Washington Post, Fox News) using lookalike domains that replicate visual design and URL structure closely enough to pass casual inspection. This purpose-built impersonation infrastructure is supported by fake personas, AI-assisted content, and paid amplification across mainstream social platforms. Are there any…
> Similar to how I like to look at scam/phishing emails to see how they work, I'm interested in seeing how sophisticated these are/are not.
https://edmo.eu/publications/ai-political-influencers-the-ne...
Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
#5It's interesting to have a conversation with people over politics these days, sometimes it's like people don't live in the same reality anymore. It's probably not far from the truth. To a first approximation, nothing is verified, people see a number on social media as a proxy for accuracy. Even if it's completely wrong, it doesn't matter because you're among friends. Memes let insane ideas spread like a virus, the on…
> And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet.
This was always true, right? With enough $, you can employ N writers. But the constant factor is smaller than it once was.
Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
#6>Russian-linked Doppelganger operations have systematically cloned major media infrastructure (Reuters, The Washington Post, Fox News) using lookalike domains that replicate visual design and URL structure closely enough to pass casual inspection. This purpose-built impersonation infrastructure is supported by fake personas, AI-assisted content, and paid amplification across mainstream social platforms. Are there any…
> Similar to how I like to look at scam/phishing emails to see how they work, I'm interested in seeing how sophisticated these are/are not. https://edmo.eu/publications/ai-political-influencers-the-ne...
Are there any links to any of these Russian doppelganger propaganda sites? That seemed to just be a story about "influencers" and their AI slop.
Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Similar to how I like to look at scam/phishing emails to see how they work, I'm interested in seeing how sophisticated these are/are not. https://edmo.eu/publications/ai-political-influencers-the-ne...
Are there any links to any of these Russian doppelganger propaganda sites? That seemed to just be a story about "influencers" and their AI slop.
It is the world wide web so yes there should be plenty of links to those, but I do not have them.
Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
#8It's interesting to have a conversation with people over politics these days, sometimes it's like people don't live in the same reality anymore. It's probably not far from the truth. To a first approximation, nothing is verified, people see a number on social media as a proxy for accuracy. Even if it's completely wrong, it doesn't matter because you're among friends. Memes let insane ideas spread like a virus, the on…
> And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet. This was always true, right? With enough $, you can employ N writers. But the constant factor is smaller than it once was.
Only for relatively low values of N. It’s really difficult to scale organizations up and down for election cycles.
Historically you’d quickly reach a point where each additional writer was more expensive than the last.
Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
#9It's interesting to have a conversation with people over politics these days, sometimes it's like people don't live in the same reality anymore. It's probably not far from the truth. To a first approximation, nothing is verified, people see a number on social media as a proxy for accuracy. Even if it's completely wrong, it doesn't matter because you're among friends. Memes let insane ideas spread like a virus, the on…
> And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet. This was always true, right? With enough $, you can employ N writers. But the constant factor is smaller than it once was.
There were times and places in history where truth was valued, respected, and rewarded.
You could not employ N writers even if you had the money, because there were not enough good writers. And they needed to care about remaining adjacent to reality, or their reputation would (rightfully) be ruined as a fraud. Things were slow enough that the average person could see that they were being bullshat. These were the golden ages of human progress.
It's not the world we live in today.
Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there any links to any of these Russian doppelganger propaganda sites? That seemed to just be a story about "influencers" and their AI slop.
It is the world wide web so yes there should be plenty of links to those, but I do not have them.
I did do some searching and any link I found was already dead (hence me asking here!), so it's not really helpful to say "there should be plenty of links".