The U.S. State Department wants to fight election interference from Russia, China, etc.—not by removing disinformation from social media, but by labeling it. He’s enlisting the help of friendly countries, such as the UK and Canada.

Sounds like a slippery slope. In today’s SB Blogwatch, if only we had a brain.

Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: RoadTrip.

“New civil war”
Using fake online accounts and bots, … the dissemination of attacks on Biden is part of a continuing effort by Moscow to undercut American military aid to Ukraine and U.S. support for and solidarity with NATO. … A similar effort is underway in Europe: … Russia has launched a barrage of propaganda to try to influence European parliamentary elections in June.
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Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said … there’s “plenty of reason to be concerned” about Russia’s trying to interfere in the 2024 election but that he couldn’t discuss evidence. … Experts are most concerned that Russia could try to interfere in the election through a “deepfake” audio or video using artificial intelligence tools or through a “hack and leak,” such as the politically damaging theft of internal Democratic Party emails by Russian … operatives in 2016.
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Moscow and its proxies have long sought to exploit divisions in American society. … Russia has amplified the political dispute between the Biden administration and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over security at the Texas border over the past month. Russian … bots have promoted the idea that America is headed to a new “civil war.” It was a quintessential move.

“People that believe crazy things”
A global coalition of democracies is being formed to protect their societies from disinformation campaigns by foreign governments, … said James Rubin, the special envoy for non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts at the US state department’s global engagement centre (GEC). … The GEC focuses solely on disinformation by foreign powers.
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In principle every government should be free to convey their views, but they should have to admit who they are,” he said. … “We are not asking for such covert disinformation to be taken down, but a way to be found for the source to be labeled. … There will always be people that believe crazy things, but at least they will have been told where the information came from.”

“You can’t believe anything”
With high-stakes elections taking place across the world this year, the experts I’ve spoken to are concerned that it’s only a matter of time before a clever, well-timed piece of disinformation has a calamitous impact, deciding the result of a close-run election. It might not involve a deepfake or another AI-generated visual image.
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Fast, relevant spin from lots of different sources, all pushing the same basic perspective, can create an overall impression that feels quite believable. And the fire hose of falsehood can also deliver results even if nobody believes a word of it. When it works, it floods social media (and sometimes the conventional media too) with distractions, toxicity, shitposting and obvious nonsense.
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It’s good to be sceptical, but if we are too sceptical then even the most straightforward truths are up for debate. … Deepfakes, like all fakes, raise the possibility that people will mistake a lie for the truth, but they also create space for us to mistake the truth for a lie. … The mere fact that deepfakes might exist creates a completely new kind of deniability. [The] subtext: You can’t believe your eyes; you can’t believe your ears; you can’t believe anything.

Anyone who’s read even a moderate amount of literature from history, old news filings, old political pamphlets and just about any amount of private and state propaganda, … or anyone who’s read accounts of the things so many … people believed throughout much of history would know how laughable it is to think that misinformation and disinformation … are anything new. Sure, AI lets them be grown to new scale, but even this has a saturation point.
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The problem was no less, and probably worse in some ways even [in] the recent past. Why? Because open access to honest and diverse information was much more restricted. It isn’t so much today, though you need to sift, as anyone has always had to. … That we should entrust “filtering” and even regulatory controls … to governments and their helpers in the major tech companies is downright grotesque—given the sources of so much of the most lethal misinformation and the outcomes of similar social control throughout history.

The problem is not new, but it is now way more amplified and internationalized. If I wanted to influence your population before, I had to found a newspaper in your country.
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Antisocial media are a godsend when it comes to destabilizing a country. … Launch desinformation campaigns where you simply spout some bull. It doesn’t matter if that bull has anything to do with reality. Just name it “suppressed” and “hushed up” truth by “da man.”

I’m so tired of the government not taking these attacks to US democracy as what they are. It’s not the first time Russia and China have tried to meddle with US elections and engage in cyber warfare and disinformation campaigns to destabilize the political and social consensus.
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Why is information warfare taken so lightly? … These are full-blown attacks and should be treated as such. … There is proof, so why is this not treated on the same level as them launching a missile strike on US soil?
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It’s a matter of intent: … It needs to be made clear that this sort of attacks will be met with force.

Only American disinformation should be allowed on the Internet, after all. “Cognitive hygiene” is an important public health issue. Wouldn’t want people thinking differently.
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Their behavior has been so upright and honest in the past. Surely we can trust them this time?

US has been running disinformation campaigns through the CIA for decades. Are they feeling jealous or remorseful now?

It’s not just about [the election], it’s about trying to end US support of Ukraine. Supporting Ukraine is in everyone’s best interest—both Republicans’ and Democrats’.

Those who worry about “disinformation” seem to only know one way to deal with it: … More control to the responsible people (them) and less to everyone else. … We are met with a flood of attempts to shape us and manipulate us … and our generation’s smartest are … working on … aligning the population with its leaders’ preferences.

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