More Signal. Less Noise.

V3 | Issue 26 | 7.1.21

Trends in disinformation. Recognizing uncertainty in search results. Instrumental values in influence wars.

Summary

By the CyberWire staff

At a glance.

Trends in Iranian disinformation.
Beijing's presentation of Uyghur life.
Content farming as influencers grow in importance to advertising.
Civil liberties as an instrumental good in influence (metaphorical) wars.

Iranian disinformation operations: small, slow, and patient.

Recent Iranian disinformation operations targeting Israel took pains to remain small and stay patient. Tehran's operators concentrated on making quiet inroads into Telegram channels, WhatsApp groups, and messaging apps used by activists in Israel, the New York Times reports, the better to remain undetected. The payoff, such as it was, was to serve the entropic goal of sharing polarizing content, particularly in the wake of former Prime Minister Netanyahu's electoral defeat. The images and memes, traceable to Iranian sources, were distributed by inauthentic accounts. The operation seems not to have progressed much beyond trolling, but it represents an interesting shift in Tehran's influence campaigns, now at least as interested as inducing friction (in the familiar Russian manner) as in pushing a specific positive line (positive from Iran's point of view). The effort also showed an ability to work through the various safeguards and filters the platforms have in place.

China's rosy presentation of Uyghur life: "We are very free."

The New York Times has an account of how China's government has engaged in counter-propaganda in response to reporting that described the harsh, repressive treatment of the Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang. Videos distributed through various media represent a coordinated and large-scale astroturfing effort in which nominal Uyghyurs describe how good they have it. People in Xinjiang are "happy" and "very free," say the videos in what rhetoricians might call "unlikely insistence." The productions don't, of course, bear such marks of government media as logos, but they do have an awful lot of English subtitles. These, and other stigmata of state-organization, will move many viewers to skepticism.

Content farming for influencers.

State-nurtured content farming in China appears to have assumed an important role in influencer culture on TikTok, the Rest of World reports. A lot of the content shows industrial production, and a lot people seem to be watching.

SEO and content moderation.

We've seen that inauthenticity seems easier to detect and manage than falsehood. Google has undertaken a project, however, in which it will caution users when it doesn't really have a reliable result to report. How this works out, particularly with respect to rapidly evolving topics, will be interesting to see. It doesn't seem likely that this will amount to censorship, but rather to a kind of epistemic modesty.

Doxing as a tactic in influence wars.

Principled opposition to doxing seems as difficult to find, if this Washington Post piece or this Atlantic Council post are any reliable guides, as is principled free-speech absolutism. It's not Lenin's kto kogo, perhaps, but it does seem that privacy and other civil liberties have a more instrumental place in the culture war than some might hope. That there are indeed fringe and arguably dangerous theories out there about the 2020 US election (and, for that matter, UFOs) is undeniable. But many seem comfortable with quick movement to direct viewpoint censorship as a way of countering them.

Selected Reading

Attacks, Threats, and Vulnerabilities

Iranian Disinformation Effort Went Small to Stay Under Big Tech’s Radar (New York Times) The effort, targeting activists in Israel, was the latest indication that governments are trying new, harder-to-detect methods to sow discontent online.

‘We Are Very Free’: How China Spreads Its Propaganda Version of Life in Xinjiang (New York Times) Thousands of videos posted look like unfiltered glimpses of life for Uyghurs, but taken together, the videos begin to reveal clues of a broader influence campaign orchestrated by the Chinese government.

How China Spreads Its Propaganda Version of Life for Uyghurs (ProPublica) Thousands of videos of Uyghurs denying abuses against their community are showing up on Twitter and YouTube. They’re part of an elaborate influence campaign by Chinese officials to counter reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang.

Fighting online extremism in ‘the Klan den of the twenty-first century’ (Atlantic Council) A panel of experts at the Digital Forensic Research Lab's 360/Open Summit explores how civil society groups, law enforcement, and policymakers can respond.

Unmasking the far right: An extremist paid a price when his identity was exposed online after a violent clash in Washington (Washington Post) In a flash, Laura Jedeed was surrounded by screaming men. The freelance journalist was filming a group of Trump supporters walking the streets of the District after the “Million MAGA March” on Nov. 14 when a man wearing an American flag gaiter mask approached her, stepped on her toes and began yelling.

The Chinese content farms behind Factory TikTok (Rest of World) How workers manufacturing products like aloe jelly and gardening gloves also became the influencers selling them.

Trends

US just finished dead last among 46 countries in media trust. Here's why (TheHill) The U.S. is the least-trusted country of 46 when it comes to the way consumers view the news. If that isn't a wake-up call for the industry, I’m not sure what would be.

Marketplace

In Africa, Content Moderation Is a Dangerous Game (Wired) Platforms are finally taking action in African countries, but in Uganda and Nigeria's case, it’s led to an even worse outcome: citizens losing access.

Technologies, Techniques, and Standards

Inside Wikipedia's endless war over the coronavirus lab leak theory (CNET) Building a better encyclopedia requires consensus and neutrality, but behind the scenes, editors wrangle with the pandemic's most contentious question.

Design and Innovation

Google is starting to warn users when it doesn’t have a reliable answer (Vox) The company is notifying people when they search for rapidly evolving topics.

Research and Development

Measuring the Effects of Influence Operations: Key Findings and Gaps From Empirical Research (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) Influence operations can have measurable effects on people’s beliefs and behavior, but empirical research does not yet adequately answer the most pressing questions facing policymakers.

Why some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity (Vox) One challenge is how little we know about the dangers.

Stewardship of global collective behavior (PNAS) Collective behavior provides a framework for understanding how the actions and properties of groups emerge from the way individuals generate and share information. In humans, information flows were initially shaped by natural selection yet are increasingly structured by emerging communication technologies. Our larger, more complex social networks now transfer high-fidelity information over vast distances at low cost. The digital age and the rise of social media have accelerated changes to our social systems, with poorly understood functional consequences. This gap in our knowledge represents a principal challenge to scientific progress, democracy, and actions to address global crises.... There are no data underlying this work.

Meet the scientist teaching AI to police human speech (Washington Post) Alexis Conneau’s work has helped Facebook and Google build artificial intelligence systems that can understand dozens of languages with startling accuracy

Legislation, Policy, and Regulation

Digital Authoritarianism is a National Security Threat, Pentagon Cyber Leader Says (Defense One) The U.S. must fund the development of technology that can compete with the offerings of authoritarian countries, said Mieke Eoyang, deputy assistant defense secretary for cyber policy.

Moscow Is Using Memory Diplomacy to Export Its Narrative to the World (Foreign Policy) Putin is pushing Russian revisionist history to bolster the Kremlin’s influence abroad and its legitimacy at home.

Litigation, Investigation, and Law Enforcement

DHS raises alarm over potential for violence pegged to August conspiracy theory (CNN) Department of Homeland Security officials are warning that the same sort of rhetoric and false narratives that fueled the January 6 attack on the US Capitol could lead to more violence this summer by right-wing extremists.

They called it a conspiracy theory. But Alina Chan tweeted life into the idea that the virus came from a lab. (MIT Technology Review) The whistleblowing scientist who advanced the lab-leak theory plans to change her name and disappear, but only after a book deal.

Inside the risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan (MIT Technology Review) China emulated US techniques to construct novel coronaviruses in unsafe conditions.

The Lab Leak Theory Doesn’t Hold Up (Foreign Policy) The rush to find a conspiracy around the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins is driven by narrative, not evidence.

Amazon and Google face UK CMA probe over fake reviews (TechCrunch) The UK’s competition watchdog, the CMA, has opened another investigation into Big Tech — this one targeted at Amazon and Google over how well they handle (or, well, don’t) fake reviews. The Competition and Markets Authority has taken an interest in online reviews for several years…

DHS is concerned about Trump reinstatement conspiracy theory, top official says (POLITICO) DHS's top counterterrorism official told members of Congress about the department's concerns in a private briefing.

Inside the ‘shadow reality world’ promoting the lie that the presidential election was stolen (Washington Post) Wealthy allies of former president Donald Trump have spent millions on films, rallies and other efforts to tout falsehoods about the 2020 vote.

Why the Pentagon UFO report is deeply troubling for US security experts (the Guardian) ‘If something’s out there, let’s seek it out, and it is probably a foreign power,’ says chair of Senate foreign relations committee

What the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Reveals About Humankind (Wired) The document says less about the search for life in the universe, and more about our current cultural climate and distrust of expertise.

U.S. Has No Explanation for Unidentified Objects and Stops Short of Ruling Out Aliens (New York Times) A new government report is likely to fuel theories about unexplained aerial phenomena.

UFO sightings remain mysterious, US government report says (Space.com) The alien hypothesis isn't mentioned — but it isn't ruled out, either.

No ET, no answers: Intel report is inconclusive about UFOs (AP NEWS) A long-awaited U.S. government report on UFOs released Friday makes at least one thing clear: The truth is still out there. Investigators did not find extraterrestrial links in reviewing 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories.

Procure Space ETF (UFO) Adds Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Risk Disclosure to Prospectus (ProcureAM) Decision comes as Pentagon releases monumental “UAP” report to Congress