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Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

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Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#101

Post by the_why_of_y »

modo_mario wrote: post #27
uniqueuid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tongue in cheek but: I really like their activist products such as container tabs, privacy enhancing technologies and reduced tracking (compared to Chrome, Safari etc).

I think he might be talking about other kinds of activism They also do things like give a quarter million to black artists to make art about the effects of AI on systems of oppression. Half a million to broadband towers in the american south. Money for wetland restoration. This may all seem neat and fine to do if they have that kind of money to hand out but these things come around the same time of having had a large…

These 2 points are quite unrelated. The developers were laid off by Mozilla Corporation, while the projects you find questionable were funded by Mozilla Foundation, and for tax reasons it's very difficult for Mozilla Foundation to give money to Mozilla Corporation.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#103

Post by modo_mario »

the_why_of_y wrote: post #101
modo_mario wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he might be talking about other kinds of activism They also do things like give a quarter million to black artists to make art about the effects of AI on systems of oppression. Half a million to broadband towers in the american south. Money for wetland restoration. This may all seem neat and fine to do if they have that kind of money to hand out but these things come around the same time of having had a large…

These 2 points are quite unrelated. The developers were laid off by Mozilla Corporation, while the projects you find questionable were funded by Mozilla Foundation, and for tax reasons it's very difficult for Mozilla Foundation to give money to Mozilla Corporation.

>and for tax reasons it's very difficult for Mozilla Foundation to give money to Mozilla Corporation.

I'm aware but as far as I know it's the other way around. The foundation extracts revenue from it's subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation. When in a state of decline and faced with the option of axing development that might hamper or reverse this decline i'd expect there to be an option for the foundation to reduce the amount of revenue it extracts. Especially since what it actually gives away seems so little when compared (which makes me look weird at the mentioned compensation again)

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#104

Post by _djo_ »

gorwell wrote: post #95
fnimick wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you highlighting Glenn Greenwald as an example of someone pushing false information, or do you seriously think he is a reliable source and the "dem main stream media" is the problem?

I'm referring to the content of that specific tweet which collates the most recent example on twitter.

Greenwald's tweet in itself is disinformation. The Rolling Stone article quoted Dr McElyea as telling KFOR that multiple hospitals in rural Oklahoma were being overwhelmed with cases of Ivermectin poisoning.

One of the hospitals, at which McElyea has not recently worked, denied that it had treated any Ivermectin patients or turned any away. That doesn't mean there aren't other hospitals in the area that have been handling or even overwhelmed by those cases. It casts some doubt on the story, it's not a slam dunk debunking.

Rolling Stone was wrong to print the story uncritically without conducting its own independent verification of what KFOR reported. There's a damaging trend where news outlets will report on what other news outlets have reported without adding additional verification, sometimes giving flimsy stories more apparent weight.

But Greenwald is trying to pretend that the single hospital's denial is enough to render the entire story, and indeed the entire claim of Ivermectin overdosing, as false. That's dishonest too.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#105

Post by _djo_ »

dexen wrote: post #74
harikb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is blaming Twitter for being callous with its trending algorithms being abused with some coordination between larger number of folks. I think this is very much Mozilla’s business, just as much as any campaign in the West. The researchers are based in Kenya, writing about Kenyans. They just happen to be employed by Mozilla. Sorry I don’t get why that is a problem?

>callous with trending algorithms >abuse with some coordination I take umbrage with those characterizations. The practices described (pre-arranged release of information, voicing mutual support in coordinated manner, agreed-upon language and form) have for decades been the hallmark of professional marketing and journalism. Back when print and broadcast media were the top game, those methods were used by the small gro…

Your characterisation assumes that all those involved are real people, when there is blatant evidence of bot activity. Not only that, but in both Kenya and South Africa various official and media investigations have uncovered paid disinformation by political actors that is quite clearly not legitimate, authentic, or 'grassroots' in any way.

At best it's astroturfing, but in most cases it's gone beyond that.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#106

Post by _djo_ »

orangepurple wrote: post #41
uniqueuid wrote: post #15

Having read the report, I think this is an interesting but rather weak analysis. Detection of inauthentic behavior is very hard and fraught with false positives, so it's really important to be very transparent in the methods. That said, the numbers are not too small, they do have some interviews with participants and Twitter seems to have removed some accounts - all these lend the report some credibility.

Twitter removes accounts at the whim of specious evidence. The removal does not make the evidence more credible.

Source? In all our experience monitoring disinformation accounts in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria we have found Twitter to be extraordinarily slow and reluctant to remove accounts. It certainly isn't doing any proactive monitoring that I can see.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#107

Post by _djo_ »

bunnernana wrote: post #50

Am reading through the comments and I have to say westerners really think all news is about them. People who don't understand the context of a story arguing out the ethics of a story they have no idea about. PS: I am a Kenyan. That being said, any Kenyan here who uses Twitter regularly will agree with the article. Go to Twitter right now and you will see the disinformation in action. Trend number 1 (Nyonga) Trend num…

Well put. Too many of those commenting here are unable to view political issues in other countries through anything other than (mostly) American political paradigms.

The debate around freedom of speech, for instance, is different for those of us in Kenya and South Africa than it is in the US, just by virtue of having different legal frameworks, recent histories, and other factors. The same is true for the debate in European countries.

The media, too, is a complex phenomenon with the interplay between the big international media companies like the BBC, Reuters, CNN, etc and local media. There's also a difference between local news outlets that publish in English and those that publish in one or more local language. The CNN vs Fox News tribalism that grips so much American political discourse about the news is completely irrelevant.

These disinformation campaigns also have real impact. One campaign orchestrated by the Bell Pottinger PR company on behalf of South Africa's corrupt then president and a family of benefactors helped provide the cover to dismiss key incorruptible individuals in government and paved the way for the capture of key departments, institutions, and state-owned enterprises by private interests. The country has still not recovered from the damage caused.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#108

Post by didibus »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #99
didibus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two wrongs don't make a right. I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, what is happening on Twitter is fraud and disinformation for-hire. That seems factually true. We can talk about traditional media on an article that discuss traditional media maybe?

The entire premise of “misinformation” is that a true media exists which gives accurate information, as opposed to the army of people out to nefariously influence the public. I’m simply suggesting that there is fundamentally no difference.

Ah, I can see why you'd think that, unfortunately it's not the right understanding in this context.

The definition of disinformation is:

> False information which is intended to mislead, especially propaganda issued by a government organization to a rival power or the media.

And the definition of misinformation is:

> False or inaccurate information, especially that which is deliberately intended to deceive.

As you can see, the definitions aren't relative to some other piece of information. It doesn't mean that some information is incorrect based on some other source of acknowledged correct information.

It means that the intent of the information you were given was to deceive and mislead you, and that the information was thus specifically crafted in a way to do so, generally by being false, inaccurate, cherry picked, fabricated, or manipulated in some way.

In this case, you can see that there are some wealthy people who want to propagate some information in order to mislead people, the deceiving part is that they are not transparent about who they are, and they want to make it look like the information is coming from influencers as part of their own volition, and that the belief is held by a lot of people through trying to manipulate the Twitter recommendations and trending algorithms, making it look like the content is more popular than it really is.

The validity of the content of the tweets doesn't even matter, the misinformation is in the misleading lineage of who is really behind the tweets and what their agenda is, and the false representation of how popular the content is.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#109

Post by ceilingcorner »

sudosysgen wrote: post #94
ceilingcorner wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a good example. Japan is famously insular and large enough to support a domestic audience. Virtually every smaller country in Europe and Latin America consume American media voraciously.

You just cited Western countries. I think you may have missed the point of the GP

Eastern Europe isn’t included with in “Western countries.” Hence the name, Eastern.

I really wouldn’t consider Latin America to be in the West either.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#110

Post by sudosysgen »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #109
sudosysgen wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just cited Western countries. I think you may have missed the point of the GP

Eastern Europe isn’t included with in “Western countries.” Hence the name, Eastern. I really wouldn’t consider Latin America to be in the West either.

Eastern Europe and Latin America is generally considered to be part of the West. Your argument is unconvincing because I could say the same about Eastern Canada.

Generally the dividing line between West and East is the Ural mountains.

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