Category Archives: Fake News

Was this the smoking gun? Chinese military scientists discussed weaponising SARS coronaviruses was the headline of a report in The Australian, which flashed on my WhatsApp one morning this week. Before noon, Id received the report from half a dozen people with the familiar prescription: Must read!

The report said it had unearthed a leaked document written by Chinese military scientists speaking of weaponising coronaviruses, confirming what has for long been suspected by conspiracy theorists ever since the pandemic began in Wuhan, China.

But there was a small catch. The secret document cited in the report was from a not-so-secret book published in China in 2015, which is still available in Chinese bookstores. It also turned out that the authors, including Xu Dezhong, formerly a professor at the Air Force Medical University, were speaking of the first SARS epidemic being weaponised not by China, but by foreign powers unleashing a virus on the Chinese population. Not that these two details made much of a difference as the story continued to go, well, viral.

The belated publicity was not entirely bad news for Mr. Xu. On one online Chinese bookstore, Dangdang, there was a 10-fold increase in the price of the book, observed Pan Chengxin, a professor at Deakin University in Australia. The book, by most accounts, wasnt taken very seriously in China perhaps until this week.

Shortly before The Australian report, another article on the origins of COVID-19 evoked discussion. A 10,000-word essay by Nicholas Wade, previously a science reporter for The New York Times, made a strong case for why a laboratory accident couldnt be ruled out, citing, among other things, the outbreak beginning in Wuhan, home to the premier Chinese lab studying coronaviruses; the absence of a natural bat population there; and the inability to find an intermediate animal host, as was found after the first SARS epidemic, establishing its natural origins. Mr. Wade went a step further, suggesting there were scientific reasons to suggest this virus was not natural. That claim was, however, rebutted by many virologists including Kristian Andersen, who pointed out that his argument of an unusual furin cleavage site being a smoking gun was the only specific argument put forward to support a lab leak and was false.

If you are confused at this point, you are not alone. For news reporters trying to separate fact from fiction, furin cleavage sites and codons might as well be Latin or Greek.

What Mr. Wade did, however, get right is his conclusion that there is no clear evidence either to support or rule out whether the virus came from nature or a lab. Indeed, a lab accident and natural origins are not mutually exclusive possibilities, considering we may never know if the natural source was in a cave or in a cage.

Further muddying the search for origins is the politics. If the Trump administration in the U.S. prematurely wanted to claim the virus was lab-made despite thin evidence, China has spread its own conspiracy theories, with one Foreign Ministry spokesperson claiming that the virus was brought by the U.S. army to Wuhan. China has also been far from forthcoming, delaying access to Wuhan and not providing a WHO team with raw data. And forget about foreign researchers ever getting unrestricted access to the insides of Wuhans labs, all of which will only lead to more doubts.

Ultimately, only science, free from politics, can give us a clear answer. But good science takes time, which is in short supply in an age where we demand immediate answers.

Link:

Fact and fiction in a fake news epidemic - The Hindu

Issued on: 11/05/2021 - 16:01

Disinformation online has led to a sluggish vaccine roll-out in Ivory Coast. Ivorian and international health authorities have told FRANCE 24 that they are concerned about the pandemic of fake news. While this problem is not unique to Ivory Coast, the West African state is lagging behind a number of other countries in the region when it comes to vaccination rates.

When you get vaccinated, you become sick, said Anderson Dago, an unemployed 25-year-old standing in a potholed street in Abidjans Yopougon neighborhood. I read on social media that people who are vaccinated get controlled by 5G."His view is typical of people living in the area.

I dont believe Covid-19 exists, said Camara Djaka Sissoko who runs a small boutique. White people cannot even handle a bit of malaria. We are tougher. We can resist Covid-19.

Ivory Coast is facing a pandemic of disinformation. The country has received 504,000 doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine under the Covax scheme an initiative coordinated by the World Health Organization and others, to ensure that less developed countries have access to Covid-19 vaccines.They arrived in Ivory Coast in late February and will expire in September. So far, just over half the vaccines (252,317)have been used. Ivory Coast also has 50,000 vaccines donated by the Indian embassy, which currently lie dormant in a refrigerator these will expire in October. The roll-out here has been slower than in neighbouring countries such as Ghana.

'There is so much fake news'

At the INHP vaccination center in Yopougon, Estelle Yapi cuts a lonely figure.The 47-year-old social worker, retrained as a nurse to help deliver jabs during this crisis, sits under a white tarpaulin as the afternoon sun beats down. Rows of chairs, set up for those waiting to receive inoculation, sit empty.

It is normally busier in the morning, she concedes.

Yapi estimates that at full capacity, this centre could deliver 200-300 doses a day.While demand has been picking up, on one day in March,soon after the vaccination programme had begun, just 14 shots were delivered.

The centres logistic director offered a direct explanation. People inform themselves online. There is so much fake news, said Jean-Baptists Yat Ell.

In April 2020, residents of the area destroyed a Covid-19 testing centre that was being built close by.The protesters were at least in part triggered by a Facebook post from a pro-opposition cyberactivist, known online as Serge Koffi Le Drne, who suggested that the site would be used to house sick Covid-19 patients and was a government conspiracy to kill people in the area.

Yat said the link is clear.There was a communications problem. There was disinformation that made people revolt, he said.

A wave of scepticism

Astudyreleased by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in March surveyed 15 African countries, including Ivory Coast, interviewing close to 16,000 people. It noted that online channels, particularly on social media, tend to be the most trusted source of information among vaccine-sceptic groups.

>> Suspicion mars Ivory Coast's vaccine drive

In fact, 54 per cent of Ivorians surveyed said they had seen disinformation online more than the 41 percent average across the 15 countries. Two-in-three Ivorians believe that the threat of coronavirus is exaggerated; two-in-five believe that Covid-19 is a planned event by foreign actors; and 38 percent believe that Africans are being used as guinea pigs in vaccine trials, according to the study.

Dr Richard Mihigo, coordinator of immunisation and vaccine development for the WHOs Africa arm said that disinformation was higher in countries where there is higher penetration of internet usage.

This is not a phenomenon that is only a problem for Africa. Unfortunately, with Covid-19, weve seen a global scepticism around vaccination for Covid-19 in general, he said.

When you put that in our contexts when we didnt go through the first waves in a severe situation like was witnessed in the West, people started to think about why they [governments and international health authorities] are insisting so much on something which is not really a problem for us.

'We dont give a damn about Corona!'

In 2020, a number of high-profile incidents saw the Ivorian authorities receive backlash online for alleged hypocrisy over Covid-19 policy.

In March that year a number of public figures close to the government were exempted from a stay in a quarantine centre after a personal intervention from the Prime Minister. The banning of public protests in the run up to the presidential election, under the Covid-19-induced state of emergency, was seen as political manipulation of the crisis. This sentiment deepened in August when a clip of President Alassane Ouattara went viral where he was seen saying We dont give a damn about Corona! during his swearing-in as the candidate for the ruling RHDP party.

The influence of French media should also not be understated according to Professor Daniel Ekra, head of the countrys vaccination programme.

This vaccination campaign was preceded by lots of rumours and disinformation.In Africa and especially in Ivory Coast, this was triggered in April or May [2020] by someone during a TV debate in France saying that we should test the vaccine in Africa, he said, referring to thisincident.

In Ivory Coast, the government is scrambling to boost interest in vaccination with social media campaigns and Facebook Live events. Patrick Achi, the current PM, was the first person to get vaccinated in the country in an event covered by the media. But it may be some time before the tide of fake news can be turned.

People make up their own minds. It is a question of communication, said Ekra.

Link:

Covid-19: How fake news is hampering Ivory Coasts vaccination efforts - FRANCE 24 English

Al-Rawi started his academic journey after first working in media as a communications officer and radio correspondent. He was driven to research by curiosity and the desire to explore controversial issues such as fake news discourses in social media or how bots influence or interfere with elections. He sees research as a foundation from which to engage the wider public on new ideas. He shares his research publicly to inform the public and encourage them to think and reflect yet not to get them to think in a particular way.

This goal aligns well with his primary knowledge mobilization strategy, media engagement. As an academic engaging with the media, Al-Rawi relies on both his previous experience which has taught him to cultivate relationships with members of the media, respond quickly to requests, prepare key points prior to interviews and avoid responding to trolls.

He is also learning as he goes on how best to share research findings through this channel. Currently he is exploring if peer review publication prior to media engagement provides a more solid basis from which to engage a public audience.

Al-Rawi shared that the benefits of doing knowledge mobilization is seeing people engage with ideas in new ways, seeing that he has sometimes inspired critical thinking. He believes we need to use our knowledge in order to be as useful as possible to the public and students. Its good for us, its good for our students, its good for our university and its good for the province.

He also acknowledges that there are many ways to do knowledge mobilization other than through the media. The media is a familiar method for him, but others might be more comfortable using art, sound, dialogue, or video. An interesting challenge in knowledge mobilization is using evidence-informed approaches while also working within ones own skilled sets, values, capacities and available resources.

Al-Rawi in the media:

To learn more about how to strike a good balance in your knowledge mobilization work connect with the SFU Knowledge Mobilization Hub. And to learn more about engaging with the media and responding effectively to the opportunities and challenges reach out to your faculty communicators, SFU media relations, and read this LSE blog post for practical tips.

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Knowledge Mobilizers: Dispelling the power of fake news through mainstream media - SFU News - Simon Fraser University News

Facebook today said that it removed 12 million pieces of misinformation on the Covid-19 pandemic globally from its family of apps, which includes Facebook and Instagram.

The company also said that it put warning labels on over 167 million posts marked as false by third-party fact-checkers. The social media giant said that when people see warning labels, about 95% of the time they do not go on to view the original content.

In addition to this, Facebook said that in the coming weeks it would be rolling out a new campaign in India in a bid to educate and inform its users in India on ways to detect misinformation pertaining to the pandemic. The social media giant said that this endeavour will enable users to make qualified decisions about the information that they get online.

As a part of this campaign, the company will show tips and tricks to users via creative advertisements and link to a dedicated microsite, http://www.fightcovidmisinfo.com/india/ to get verified information. Facebook said that this campaign and the website will be rolled out in English and nine Indian languages, which includes Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati and Bengali.

Lastly, Facebook said that it has also initiated a campaign in association with some of the leading doctors in the country. This campaign includes a series of 12 videos wherein doctors will address the most commonly asked questions on Covid-19. The video series titled #DoctorKiSuno will be available on https://www.facebook.com/FacebookIndia and it will cover various topics like Covid-19 in children, diabetes and Covid-19, the mental health impacts of Covid-19 among other things.

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Facebook says it removed 12 million pieces of fake news on Covid-19 globally - HT Tech

(Credit: Unsplash)

This article was exclusively written forThe European Stingby Ms, Danielle Gonalves de Assis, a medical student from So Paulo, Brazil. She is affiliated with the International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA), cordial partner of The Sting. The opinions expressed in this piece belong strictly to the writer and do not necessarily reflect IFMSAs view on the topic, nor The European Stings one.

Human beings crave for information, either to increase their social-cultural repertoire or, simply, out of pure curiosity. The problem with the information on the technological era is that even if the news is false, it still can circulate and reach people all over the world. In the coronavirus pandemic this situation can generate even more damage, any information that preaches disbelief in science in such a delicate moment has the power to become a dangerous weapon. In 2020, society and, especially, the scientific community were cover by a countless number of information, whether in scientific articles, reports or discoveries about the new coronavirus, despite this, fake news were also widely disseminated and often threatened the maintenance of disease prevention and containment in Brazil. Among some of most absurd and largely publicized in the country was that the vaccine against covid-19 would be able to alter human DNA- something that obviously has no scientific basis- or even that there would be a microchip that would be implanted in the vaccinees.

It is evident that headlines like this aim to discourage the mass vaccination of the population, however, any vaccination is a collective act aimed at protecting yourself, but mainly protecting others around you. Covid-19 still is in circulation, so, the more people are vaccinated, more lives will be spared, therefore, any fallacious news about the vaccine go beyond any political, religious or personal excuse and simply can be defined as pure ignorance. Although, for some it is easy to identify that these news are fake, it is necessary to know that 70% of Brazilians with internet have already believed in a fake news about coronavirus and that with the advent of social networks people hardly check the source of the news they just read, because they think that if it is on the internet, it must be true.

Often, these misleading headlines are disseminated in social media and Whatsapp is the leader when it comes to spreading fake news, in addition, it also is the second most used social network by Brazilians in 2020. Given this tragic scenario, it is clear that no country can afford to have misleading information going around to the population, thus, even the world health organization has already shown concern with this phenomenon and created the term infodemia to designate rumors, conspiracy theories and fake news disseminated in the pandemic and that have directly contributed to the increase in cases and deaths by covid-19, Brazil also created in 2021 a sort of channel, monitored by the Ministry of health, to report and investigate the veracity(or lack of veracity) of the facts. Some platforms such as Google and Facebook have also adopted measures to combat fake news, something very important, giving that digital platforms have a very wide reach and on them the untrue content can be disseminated quickly.

References

About the author

Danielle Gonalves de Assis, 18 years old, Brazilian, lives in Ferraz de Vasconcelos, in the state of So Paulo, where she is a first year medical student at the Mogi das Cruzes University(UMC), located in the city of Mogi das Cruzes, So Paulo, Brazil. Currently, she is a junior member of a few medical leagues in her college and she ambitious to become a permanent member in the future.

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How fake news still makes it difficult to cope with coronavirus - The European Sting

At the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, China'sglobal media influence was in full swing, using social media to discredit Western media outlets and spread propaganda, a new report finds.

As the pandemic started to spread in 2020, Beijing used its media infrastructure globally to seed positive narratives about China in national media, as well as mobilisingdisinformation, a report by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) found.

The report, based on an original survey that polled 54 journalist unions from 50 different countries and territories, foundthat China had been usingthe pandemic to boost its image in global media coverage.

"The types of things that [Beijing] ispushing, it's not just messages on China but exploiting messages on the west," one of the authors of the report, researcher Julia Berginsaid during a roundtable discussion.

She said China has used free social media platforms such as YouTube and Twitter as a "reverse tactic" to discredit Western media, like the BBC when it reportson themistreatment of Uyghur peoplein theXinjiang region.

Reuters: Thomas Peter

Twitter is banned in Chinabut many Chinese nationalistsuse the platform to entice heated discussion in support of China's detention camps in Xinjiang or use propaganda videos to switch thenarrative.

China denies they are detention camps and describes them as boarding schools.

Data from the report shows growing concerns over the use of both disinformation and misinformation as tactics, not just in China but across South and North America,with an overall 82 per centrise indisinformation reported.

Fake news arrives even more rapidly than the virus itself,"Italian journalistLuca RIgion said to the discussion panel.

Michael Keane, an academic from the Queensland University of Technology, saidthere is a "negative light"in which Chinese media is often portrayed in Western democracies such as Australia.

"At least in [Australia] we have pluralistic media but in China you don't have a pluralistic media and that's a fact," he told thepanel.

Beijing hasstepped up its news offerings, providing domestic and international content tailored for each country in "non-Anglophone languages", the report found.

The China Cables leak of highly classified documents reveals the scale of Beijing's repressive control over Xinjiang, where more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups are detained.

"At the same time, Beijing has weaponised foreign journalist visas, forcing resident journalists out of China."

"The vacuum in coverage is increasingly being filled by state-approved content, which is sometimes offered for free, to these countries," the report read.

Many journalists and media companiesaround the world have been censored or arrested by China, including many of Hong Kong's pro-democracy activists and influencers.

Australian Cheng Lei,ahigh-profiletelevision anchor for the Chinese government's English news channel, CGTN, was detained in Beijing in 2020.

Ms Cheng was thesecond Australian to be detained in Beijing in recent years. Writer and former Chinese government employee Yang Hengjun was taken by authorities in January 2019.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokespersonHua Chunying responded to comments made in the report and defended China's media strategy, saying itdeserves a place in the international media landscape.

"In the face of lies and rumours to smear and attack China, it is only natural to make our own voices heard," Ms Hua said.

"China explained truth and facts on many important issues including COVID-19 to leave an objective and right collective narrative and memory for mankind. This is what we call a responsible attitude from a responsible country."

China's mass internment of its ethnic Uyghur population appears to be the largest imprisonment of people on the basis of religion since the Holocaust.

This report, whichbuilds on the IFJ's previous report The China Story: Reshaping the World's Media found that globally, 56 per cent of all countries surveyed reported that coverage of China in their country had become more positive overall since the COVID-19 outbreak, while only 24 per cent said coverage of China had become more negative.

China uses the lack of Western media coverage in the region to its advantage, pushing out digestible content that's available to major news organisations who don't have eyes in the region, the report suggests.

"China is using a multi-pronged approach to redraw the information landscape to benefit its own global image, " it read.

In a panicked phone call from China's far-western region of Xinjiang, this qualified nurse reveals how she has been arrested and forced to work in a factory.

In 2020, Beijing effectively shut down journalistic access to Chinathrough visa denials and freezes, partly driven by international border closures.

The shutdown createda vacuum in China coverage, where there was a high demand for stories from China, which China filled with state-sponsored content already available through content-sharing agreements, it found.

The research found that content offered to global journalists hasbecomemore tailoredwith efforts being made to translate Chinese propaganda into different languages, even those that are not widely spoken such as Italian and Serbian.

"The media is quite robust but we need to think about the vulnerability of Western media. [Their]vulnerability is economic," report researcherLouisa Lim said.

The IFJ recommends more engagement in the region, with a strategy to reach out to and create relationships with Chinese journalists inside and outside China.

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China used social media to spread misinformation to discredit Western media during pandemic, report finds - ABC News

Karl Marx is one of the most seminal thinkers of the modern age. His radical thoughts have influenced all spheres of human life in innumerable ways. The impact of his thoughts on modern epistemology and civilisation can be best gauged from the fact that, without reference to his writings, no thinker, in contemporary times, can profoundly think about society, economy, politics, or culture.

Indeed, Marx was not considered a philosopher by traditional philosophers as they did not find him philosophical enough! Similarly, he was not considered a sociologist by traditional sociologists, since, in their view, he was not a pure sociologist!

Nevertheless, over the decades, his writings have attracted the renewed interest of scholars of all hues and are now read and celebrated across the streams of social sciences. For instance, nowadays, in sociology, he is taught as one of the classical sociological thinkers, alongside pure sociologists like Emile Durkheim and Max Weber.

However, Marx is still not widely celebrated as a journalist by journalists and media scholars. This is perhaps because of the prevalence of a certain pronounced and bias and myopia in the mainstream corporate media, which is accustomed to deal with the superficial, and not with complex and meticulous research in subjects like history, political economy and sociology. It is presumed that Marx is too scholarly and political to be a journalist!

Indeed, the indifference meted out to Marx, the journalist, is best exemplified by the fact that his journalistic works and legacy per se are generally not taught in journalism schools and newsrooms in any part of the world. In some institutions of higher learning dealing with journalism and mass communication, it is almost blasphemous to introduce a Marxist critique, or rethink concepts such as media and society, media and conflict zones, or media and peoples movements, from within a radical framework. For instance, Marxs various important theories (including the labour theory of value) are deliberately avoided in graduate and post-graduate studies in several mass communication and journalism institutions, including in India.

Also read: Karl Marx: Of Obituaries, Epitaphs and Sundry Mix-Ups

It is true that journalism was not Marxs original calling. Marx was essentially a scholar. He was compelled to choose journalism as a profession out of sheer compulsion that of economic necessity for survival since he was socially ostracised by the mainstream German academic community of his time because of his progressive, radical and non-dogmatic stance.

Indeed, Marx, as a career journalist, doggedly practiced journalism during the prime of his life, from 1842 to 1865. During this period, he went on to edit two progressive and anti-establishment newspapers, namely Rheinische Zeitung and Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and served as the chief of bureau (of Europe) for The New York Tribune, one of the leading newspapers of the 19th century, widely respected for its analytical journalism and opposition to the then prevailing hegemony of the penny press.

Besides, Marx contributed hundreds of articles on wide-ranging political, social and economic subjects for several newspapers and magazines, including The Peoples Press, Die Revolution and Die Presse. Indeed, his politically-charged and historically-informed text, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte which chronicled the French coup of 1851 that was followed by the arrival of the dictatorship of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte remains one of the most profound journalistic works of all time.

The Marx memorial at Highgate Cemetery in north London. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Similarly, Marx wrote several seminal, incisive articles on colonial India. Some of the well-known articles are: The British Rule in India, The British Cotton Trade and The Future Results of British in India.

The fact remains that Karl Marx, during his entire formative intellectual career, was largely targeted, hounded and punished by the power elite of his time due to his journalistic activism. Most notably, he was forced to flee multiple times and live in exile for many years.

Indeed, Marx, as a journalist, championed the cause of the free press. He not only unremittingly wrote radical articles on every pressing issue of his time, but also journalistically advocated for a free press. He, unfalteringly, believed that the existence of the press in society is sacrosanct and hence it must remain absolutely free.

In this context, it is important to note that at that juncture, his stance on free press was quite similar to the libertarian schools view of the free press. Surely, this stands in sharp contrast to the status of the press being totally subservient to the state in the communist countries of the 20th century. He advocated the cause of free press in the following words:

The free Press is the ubiquitous vigilant eye of a peoples soul, the embodiment of a peoples faith in itself, the eloquent link that connects the individual with the State and the world, the embodied culture that transforms material struggles into intellectual struggles and idealises their crude material form. It is a peoples frank confession to itself It is the spiritual mirror in which a people can see itself It is the spirit of the State, which can be delivered into every cottage, cheaper than coal gas. It is all-sided, ubiquitous, omniscient.

Also read: What Can Karl Marx Offer to the 21st Century?

Also, while being a journalist, Marx fervently campaigned for a press law. He unwaveringly believed that having a mechanism of press law is the best defence against the oppressive regime of censorship. He argued:

In the press law, freedom punishes. In the censorship law, freedom is punished. The censorship law is a law of suspicion against freedom. The press law is a vote of confidence which freedom gives itself. The press law punishes the abuse of freedom. The censorship law punishes freedom as an abuse. It treats freedom as a criminal, or is it not regarded in every sphere as a degrading punishment to be under police supervision? The censorship law has only the form of a law. The press law is a real law.

Indeed, the journalist in Marx, in myriad ways, shaped the political activist in him and vice-versa. For instance, during his editorship of the committed newspapers like Rheinische Zeitung and Neue Rheinische Zeitung, he untiringly strived to educate the working class in the run-up to the ensuing revolutions (the revolutions of 1848 also known as the Springtime of the Peoples).

In this sense, it can be argued that, through his journalistic activism, Marx, the philosopher, slogged hard to practice his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Surely, in the contemporary times of churnalism wherein the majority of the corporate-run, mainstream news media perennially churn information (and disinformation) through round-the-clock, instant reporting (and misreporting), fake news and propaganda in support of the ruling establishment, as in India the journalistic legacy of Marx, that is, pursuing analytical journalism which goes beyond the immediate and superficial, and exposes the complex and transformative subtext of political, social and cultural events with painstaking and meticulous intellectual rigour and honesty holds great significance.

Indeed, it is high time when Karl Marx, the erudite, objective and analytical journalist is revived and celebrated, and his tradition of journalism is practiced in spirit far and wide.

Naren Singh Rao is a Delhi-based media educator and social commentator.

Link:

In the Era of Fake News, We Must Celebrate the Journalist in Karl Marx - The Wire

On Tuesday The New York Times, The White House and other media sources claimed that there had been no gas shortages, no long lines at gas stations, no major hikes in gas prices since the shutdown of theColonial Pipeline and that the country was not in a shortage of fuel. Yet papers like the dailymail.com were stating the truth and now the hidden truths have come out.

President Biden stated that the government did not pay the $5 Million dollar ransom in untraceable cryptocurrency, yet today it has been confirmed the DarkSide did receive the $5 million ransom to regain control. The ransom was paid just hours after the attack last week, yet the pipeline remained offline for another six days, triggering severe gas shortages, panic buying and chaos across the South.

John Catsimatidis, told Fox Business Network that he heard Colonial paid a ransom of $4 million.

Analysts have stated paying off ransomware gangs will lead to more attacks on critical infrastructure.

Colonial began a system restart, on Thursday morning, with 71 percent of gas stations across North Carolina still without gas, and half of the stations in Florida, Washington DC, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia running dry, according to GasBuddy.

The outages spread from New Jersey to Mississippi with more than 10,000 gas stations offline, and the national average price of gas rising to $3.28, the highest level since 2014, according to the AAA Gas Price Index.

Expect gas prices to go through the roof now that we know they paid this ransom. As it is since Biden become President gas went from under $2 to $3.59.

See the article here:

Fake News The New York Times, Biden and More Times Square Chronicles - Times Square Chronicles

After the declaration of results of the state assembly election in West Bengal, news of violence from various parts of the state began to be reported.

The re-elected Trinamool Congress government acknowledged that 16 people had died in the post-poll violence. However, other parties, including the BJP, have alleged that the numbers are higher and that at least 20 people have died.

According to the families of the deceased, nine from BJP and eight from the TMC have claimed to have lost kin in the violence. A member of the CPI(M) and a supporter of the Indian Secular Front have also been reportedly dead.

As the violence erupted, images and videos began to be circulated on social media platforms, depicting the violence in West Bengal.Many of these visuals were shared by leaders of the BJP.

However, AltNews, an independent fact-checking website, has debunked several of these images and videos as fake.

In this interview with Himadri Ghosh, a journalist based in West Bengal, The Wires Seraj Ali discusses the repeated instances of post-poll violence in the state, the fake news ecosystem that surrounds such violence, among other issues.

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Watch | Post-Poll Violence in West Bengal and Fake News Ecosystem - The Wire

More than eight in ten people in Canada use online private messaging apps, like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp; and over half are receiving messages about the news or current events at least weekly. Without greater transparency from the private platforms themselves and investment in digital literacy efforts, this growing vector for online news will continue to spread disinformation and other online harms.

The Cybersecure Policy Exchange at Ryerson University analyzed the role of private messaging in Canada, including user exposure to disinformation, hate speech and spam, and recommended potential policy and technical approaches to mitigate harms.

Their new report, Private Messages, Public Harms, used results from a representative survey conducted in March 2021 of 2,500 people in Canada and found that:

The spread of disinformation and other online harms poses risks to social cohesion, public safety and democracy; and, as a result experts and policymakers have raised calls for technical and regulatory changes. At the same time, concerns have also been raised regarding over-censorship of content and that such regulatory changes may negatively impact freedoms and rights, particularly the right to free expression.

This paper analyzes steps that governments and platforms around the world have taken to mitigate online harms, including adding labels and limits on message forwarding to decrease 'viralality', limits on group size; mechanisms to enable users to report harmful content to moderators; and features to encourage users to verify information they receive.

"To date, Canadian regulatory proposals to regulate big tech have focused on social media content that remains publicly accessible, but disinformation spreading on private messaging apps is a growing threat to our democracy. The federal government should join other international jurisdictions in regulating greater transparency into how online private messaging apps can manifest in public harms," says Sam Andrey, Director of Policy and Research, Ryerson Leadership Lab.

To better understand and mitigate these complex challenges they offer three recommendations for the Government of Canada:

The full findings from Private Messages, Public Harms are available at: https://www.cybersecurepolicy.ca/

Abacus Data administered an online survey on behalf of the Cybersecure Policy Exchange to 2,500 residents of Canada over the age of 16 between March 17 and 22, 2021. The margin of error for a comparable probability-based sample of the same size would be 2%, 19 times out of 20.

The Cybersecure Policy Exchange is an initiative from Ryerson University, dedicated to advancing effective and innovative public policy in cybersecurity and digital privacy. The through Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst and the Ryerson Leadership Lab.

Ryerson University

https://www.ryerson.ca/

https://www.ryersonleadlab.com/

AB

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Half of Canadians regularly receive fake news through private messaging apps - The Suburban Newspaper