Category «Internet»

Rand Report – Hostile Social Manipulation

Hostile Social Manipulation – Present Realities and Emerging Trends: “The role of information warfare in global strategic competition has become much more apparent in recent years. Today’s practitioners of what this report’s authors term hostile social manipulation employ targeted social media campaigns, sophisticated forgeries, cyberbullying and harassment of individuals, distribution of rumors and conspiracy theories, …

Subjects: Defense, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Social Media

Guide to the people, books and sites that you should be following to keep ahead of the rise of white extremists

Zach D. Robert – “A woefully incomplete guide to the people, books and sites that you should be following to keep ahead of the rise of white extremists. “Everytime there is another white extremist-related incident, or arrest I am reminded that the major news publications and cable networks are out of their depth. CNN just …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Internet, Social Media

We’re in a Data Literacy Crisis. Could Librarians Be the Superheroes We Need?

Forbes – “In his work, Chapters from My Autobiography, Mark Twain famously complained (and attributed to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli), “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Imagine Twain’s frustration in today’s data-driven world. But he would have been in good company. Even as information, analytics, and statistics drive more decisions in our daily lives, we’re facing …

Subjects: Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries

Hundreds of millions of phone numbers linked to Facebook accounts have been found online

TechCrunch: “…The exposed server contained more than 419 million records over several databases on users across geographies, including 133 million records on U.S.-based Facebook users, 18 million records of users in the U.K., and another with more than 50 million records on users in Vietnam. But because the server wasn’t protected with a password, anyone …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Internet, Privacy, Social Media

Democratic Resilience

Center for American Progress –  A Comparative Review of Russian Interference in Democratic Elections and Lessons Learned for Securing Future Elections: “The upcoming U.S. presidential election will be the first since Russia’s extensive and systematic attack on the 2016 cycle. Unfortunately, the interference campaign did not end on November 8, 2016. Multiple law enforcement filings, …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Social Media

Source Hacking: Media Manipulation in Practice

Data & Society – “Online media manipulators often use specific techniques to hide the source of the false and problematic information they circulate. Joan Donovan and Brian Friedberg label this strategy “source hacking.” Typically used during breaking news events, source hacking targets journalists and other influential public figures to pick up falsehoods and unknowingly amplify …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Social Media

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Bot

“Brian Friedberg is an investigative ethnographer whose work focuses on the impacts that alternative media, anonymous communities and popular cultures have on political communication and organization. Brian works with Dr. Joan Donovan, who heads one of the world’s leading teams focused on understanding and combating online disinformation and extremism, based at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy, Social Media

Today’s Firefox Blocks Third-Party Tracking Cookies and Cryptomining by Default

Mozilla Blog: “Today, Firefox on desktop and Android will — by default — empower and protect all our users by blocking third-party tracking cookies and cryptominers. This milestone marks a major step in our multi-year effort to bring stronger, usable privacy protections to everyone using Firefox. Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection gives users more control – …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, Internet, Privacy

Disinformation and the 2020 Election: How Social Media Industry Should Prepare

NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights – The role of social media in a democracy. “In our fourth report on online disinformation, the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights explores risks to democracy and free speech posed by the expected spread of disinformation during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The report …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Legislation, Social Media

We analyzed 53 years of mass shooting data. Attacks aren’t just increasing, they’re getting deadlier

LA Times Opinion: If you look at mass shootings over time, two things are alarmingly clear: The attacks are becoming far more frequent, and they are getting deadlier. “We’ve studied every public mass shooting since 1966 for a project funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Social Media

Could footnotes be the key to winning the disinformation wars?

Washington Post – Armed with footnotes, we can save democracy  – “We are at a distinctive point in the relationship between information and democracy: As the volume of information dissemination has grown, so too have attempts by individuals and groups to weaponize disinformation for commercial and political purposes. This has contributed to fragmentation, political polarization, …

Subjects: Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research