I need your help.

AI criminals have copied the face and appearance of excellent military commentator Ben Hodges.

If you have a YouTube account, please help by reporting this as spam — either using the report button or the three dot menu report item, depending on your device.

youtu.be/U6ZYrEzkoxc

#ai #disinformation

(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Back in March, I spoke with a researcher from Interfaced about Leave X, digital democracy, and the fight against disinformation.

interfaced.eu/leave-x-digital-…

I met an @edgeryders collaborator while trying to catch @bjoernsta at #FOSDEM to talk about #SaveSocial, and I was asked for an interview. Glad they published the transcript!

(Cc @alberto_cottica )

#LeaveX #Disinformation #Democracy #Fediverse #Mastodon

A Russian influence campaign hijacked hundreds of Bluesky accounts, many belonging to influential Americans, to spread propaganda, researchers said, in a striking disinformation tactic that weaponized authentic identities rather than relying on fake accounts.

The campaign, which the researchers at Clemson University linked to the Russian firm Social Design Agency, targeted journalists, academics, and filmmakers on the tech platform.

france24.com/en/live-news/2026…

#BlueSky #Disinformation #Russia

luma.com/19l5xgr9

"In an era defined by #democratic backsliding, #climate crisis, #disinformation, fear-mongering, and the normalization of cruelty, #speculative #climate #fiction plays an active and necessary role in countering #narratives that divide. Where #authoritarianism thrives on inevitability, fear, and historical amnesia, climate fiction can insist on adaptability, memory, and possibility."

#bookstodon #books #book #literature #solarpunk #hopepunk

Yours truly is speaking here today. 11:30 am IST. (UTC +5.5).

Registration link: zoom.us/meeting/register/XWj5-…

#gender #conflict #disinformation

One of the sessions where I was supposed to speak at Rightscon this month is scheduled as a webinar on 20 May.

#Rightscon #Rightscon2026 #gender #conflict #disinformation

Elon Musk faces a criminal probe in France as prosecutors escalate X’s AI Investigation.

French prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Elon Musk and his social platform X for child sexual abuse images on the platform, deepfakes, disinformation and complicity in denying crimes against humanity by the platform’s artificial intelligence system, Grok.

mediafaro.org/article/20260508…

#ElonMusk #France #CSAM #Deepfakes #Disinformation #X #Grok #AI #Tech

The EU’s hybrid threats sanctions list grows to 88 names. Two Russian information networks has been added.

The European Council has approved an expansion of restrictive measures and added two more entities to its sanctions list which, according to the EU, are directly involved in spreading pro-Kremlin narratives.

mediafaro.org/article/20260421…

#EU #HybridThreats #Sanctions #Russia #Disinformation

#NoKings

As early as 2 years ago, many people in #Germany and #Europe felt that #BigTech ’s internet platforms did not live up to the claim of being #socialmedia. Many were appalled by the #hatespeech, #incitement, #cyberbullying, and #disinformation being spread there.
Our action alliance first reached out to #universities to propose withdrawing from #X and adopting #Mastodon. We believe the #Fediverse platforms are much better suited for #SciComm or, more broadly, for substantive discourse aimed at protecting and preserving our #democracy. Other initiatives have since emerged, such as #ByeByeElon, #HelloQuitX, #LeaveX, and #SaveSocial.

We’ve already seen some initial success: around 150 #academic institutions in Germany are active on Mastodon and have +157k followers there
👉 mastodon-listen.playground.54g…
We believe this is an approach we can also recommend to the #research and #academic communities in the #US to fend off attacks from #autocrats .

Warning: #disinformation

Another fake post is spreading like wildfire on social media.

It sounds so authentic that Trump would write a post blaming his Iran war catastrophy on Barack Obama, but Trump never wrote this post, which anyone can verify by searching for it on Google.

The US midterm elections will be disinformation hell, but we can fight back by always verifying our sources.

#Mastodon on the #decentralized #fediverse is the only #place in the #world that will #protect you from:

#government #censorship

#age #verification

#privacy #rights #violations

#shadow #banns

#unlawful #targeting

#phishing

#data #mining

#identity #theft

#content #policing

#social #engineering

#tracking

#fingerprinting

#extortion

#cyber #crime

#digital #ID

#wrong #think

#thought #crimes

#state #surveillance

#criminal #activity

#hacking

#security #breaches

#scams

#spam

#mass #lies

#misinformation

#disinformation

#spying

#centralized #control

#algorithms

#ads

#ai #slop

#sensitive #media

#compromised #accounts

#political #domination

#geographic #restrictions

#doxing

#BigTech

It is the most important place to find #friends and talk to loved ones.

Never give up your rights for privacy, #free #speech and #right to live as you are and build a #legacy from that in turn.

Make fascism socially unacceptable again. Leave X.

#LeaveX #JohnOliver #fascim #FarRight #Disinformation #HateSpeech #Democracy

EN: Why the argument that you have to stay on social networks to provide opposition is complete nonsense

leavex.eu/posts/why-stay-on-so…

#X #LeaveX #Disinformation #Democracy

I wanted to track this down (no link in original post I can find)... and here it is.

Note original graphic was cropped, leaving out #WaPo and #FoxNews. Not sure why, maybe viewed on small screen? That would explain "swipe" mention.

Added: Also note that in the spirit of supporting the authors I'm not reproducing the graphic, but linking the entire article. The "auto website quote" feature of #Mastodon can't quite pick it up... I see only colored columns without text. If that's all you see... please click on the link and scroll down for the entire thing. My impressions for anyone who can't view it: death by #Terrorism is WAY over-represented (#NYTimes is the worst!), our old nemeses #HeartDisease & #Cancer (50% of deaths in the real world) are hardly covered. As Vonnegut would say "So it goes...". 🙄

👉 Reposting the full link because I think the information is important! 👈

#Misinformation #Disinformation Broken #MainstreamMedia #NYTimes

ourworldindata.org/does-the-ne…

Art: Matias de Brasi

#fascism #disinformation #USpol #SocialMedia #fediart #art

Safer Internet Day is a good reminder:
You can’t defend democracy on platforms that profit from spreading disinformation.

European politicians:
Ditch autocrats’ propaganda.
Leave X. Now.

leavex.eu

#SaferInternetDay #Democracy #Europe #EU #Disinformation #Autocracy #FarRight #LeaveX

> [Die] Neuen deutschen #Medienmacher*innen #NdM ¹ … fordern „#Community Management“, das Fakten checkt und Kommentare moderiert, als neues journalistisches Berufsfeld anzuerkennen. ²

cc @iftas

¹ neuemedienmacher.de
² 31.1.2026 #verdi #MMM, #Journalismus in Zeiten von #BigTech
mmm.verdi.de/aktuelle-meldunge…

#FactChecking #Disinformation #Desinformation #FakeNews #Medien #Presse #SocialMedia #Moderation #CommunityManagement

AI bot swarms threaten to undermine democracy

garymarcus.substack.com/p/ai-b…

> When AI Can Fake Majorities, Democracy Slips Away

#ai #democracy #disinformation

Ranking of MEPs by country and EU group still on X

leavex.eu/posts/ranking-of-mep…

Many members of the European Parliament (MEPs) still rely on X for public communication despite its moderation failures, disinformation risks, and instability. We compiled a dataset of all current MEPs to see which ones still maintain an active presence there.

#LeaveX #EU #ranking #democracy #disinformation #SaveSocial

The traitorous & xenophobic #TrumpRegime is fully fascist on NYE,🚨their leaders only care about making America, white & compliant.

“The entire U.S.🚨foreign-born population is only 45 million people, so this ridiculous edge-lord post by taxpayer-funded trolls is suggesting deporting 55 million native-born citizens.”
-A Reichlin-Melnick
#Racism #Fascism #WhiteNationalism #DHS #Deportations #Disinformation #Gaslighting #Lies #Propaganda #KristiNoem #StephenMiller #Uprising #Protest #USPol

AI-generated videos showing young and attractive women promote Poland’s EU exit

AI-generated videos promoting Poland’s exit from the European Union have appeared on Polish-language social media, featuring non-existent, attractive…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #ArtificialIntelligence #disinformation #EuropeanUnion #newtechnologies #World
newsbeep.com/342940/

Leave X was the right choice for this campaign.

Because here, "X" isn’t just X. It stands for TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and all the other Big Tech nonsense causing real harm.

#LeaveX #disinformation #BigTechs

Evolution of weapons. Today's cartoon by Asier Sanz. More cartoons: cartoonmovement.com/

#weapons #fakenews #lies #disinformation

bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/document…

#Genai #ai is increasingly a source of #news and it is NOT accurate. #openai released a new browser where there is no place to type the URL and every query NECESSARILY goes through #chatgpt which is already being used by 100s of millions. The damn thing will probably produce fake (but very real-looking) videos on the fly as it makes up stuff!

#democracy #justice #humanrights #misinformation #disinformation

Aaah finally a #Disinfo2025 panel that focuses on #FreeExpression and other human rights in the context of the work against #disinformation.

The brilliant @epirkova pushes back against the instrumentalisation of #FreeSpeech and the EU's #DSA to fuel far-right anti-democratic narratives. And she rightly calls out the incredible amount of #securitisation of the #disinfo debate. 👏

Day 1 of the #Disinfo2025 conference is over, so let me share some takeaways. As a #DigitalRights advocate I'm surprised about how large the gap between the #disinformation and digital rights communities seems to be:

1. The framing of conversations that I witnessed here were highly militarised, lots of talk about "the battlefield", the enemy, and various forms of (hybrid) #warfare.

2. There's was a strong "Us V Them" narrative across the conference, mostly as in the West V #Russia and #China.

3. There was a strong focus at #Disinfo2025 on foreign actors / #FIMI from #Russia, not so much on #disinfo attacks from internal actors, the far right, #Trump, or #BigTech billionaires.

4. There was hardly any discussion of the role of #BigTech social media's business models, algorithmic #amplification, and lack of due diligence in the spread of #disinformation. One ex-US #Army guy claimed "platforms are not the problem," information "is moving on its own." Does it though, does it? 🤦

This #Disinfo2025 afternoon was brightened by a brilliant talk by #ExxonMobil #whistleblower Lindsay Gulden about how the #fossilfuel lobby has lied to the public for decades about the #ClimateCrisis and which techniques the industry uses today to spread #disinformation and actively mislead our thinking about it.

If you haven't heard Lindsay speak yet, there are talks online.

youtube.com/watch?v=QonzyNL4XK…

(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

#Disinfo2025 is a very new environment for me despite having worked on online platform regulation for over 6 years.

The conference is sponsored by #Tiktok among others, an important spreader of #disinformation, and panel speakers include people from #defence tech firms and #AI companies... Let's see what this does to the conference content.

So for now I'm listening to what sounds like a sales pitch from a #defence tech firm called #gerulata that claims they have developed an #AI model that can "predict" if certain pieces of online content will be used for a #disinformation campaign plus do all kinds of awesome magic. 🧐

#disinfo2025 #fimi

theargumentmag.com/p/you-have-…

In an era where the #complexity is growing, the last thing humanity may want to not lose is #READING and #WRITING which are the twin pillars of DEEP #THINKING (paraphrased from Cal Newport).

#ai #democracy #humanrights #justice #climatechange #genai #education #misinformation #disinformation

Education Department employees surprised to find their email automatically changed to blame Democrats for shutdown

nbcnews.com/politics/trump-adm…

Five furloughed employees told NBC News they had put up nonpartisan out-of-office messages, only to see they were changed — without their permission — to partisan ones.

#GOP #hypocrites #education #propaganda #disinformation #Trump #press

Cartoon of the day: #NickAnderson

Shedding some light on the meaning of #authoritarianism and how the #disinformation spread by control over mass #media is a key tool.

Warnings signs of Fascism, are attached below (real, not a cartoon)

But to me this is a perfect metaphor for the millions of 'fish' swimming amid a sea of #propaganda, #Truth - free state-approved narrative, and the ongoing assault of #FreeSpeech rights, etc.

ft.com/content/7d6ed5de-d011-4…

More spread of #misinformation and #disinformation in #India on top of the existing crap dished out by social media (#Meta and #Google). The 1.4B population has long been reeling under #climatechange #unemployment #poverty and now this.

Absolutely in-fucking-sane

#RFKJr to link #Tylenol use in pregnancy to autism

Tylenol is the just about safest drug in the world

*Health* Secy RFKJr plans to announce that use of Kenvue's popular over-the-counter pain medication Tylenol in pregnant women is potentially linked to #autism, WSJ reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, WITHOUT including #EVIDENCE for the claims.

#MassHysteria #ConspiracyTheories #disinformation #Trump #science #medicine
reuters.com/business/healthcar…

"Hannah Arendt, in her Banality of Evil, argued that the World War II atrocities were not solely the work of monstrous individuals, but rather, were enabled by the actions of ordinary people who failed to think critically about the consequences of their actions."

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #literacy #CriticalThinking #lies #disinformation
/3

"If you want to know how democracy dies, don’t watch the tyrant. Watch your neighbor. Or better yet, watch yourself the moment you stop asking questions and start nodding along. ...

The question is not: 'What would I have done in 1933?' The question is: 'What am I doing now?'”

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #literacy #CriticalThinking #lies #disinformation
/3

"What all of the books [I've read recently] have in common is how victimhood, blaming the other and sheer manipulation can steer people into despicable, barbaric acts and take away people's ability to think for themselves.

I am particularly concerned about this, not because of any possible rise of a totalitarian state in the West, but because of declining literacy and the ability to think critically."

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #literacy #CriticalThinking #lies #disinformation
/2

I went to the U.S. Government site this morning that is supposed to be where you can order free at home COVID tests -- clicked through on a message that was in my inbox. It brought me to this *official* dreck (tranlation: 💩 ).

Just don't trust anything this administration says, does or publishes anymore. What a meteoric fall.

[NB: No alt text published here -- it's the Orange Menace's lies about origins of COVID. No need to repeat.]
#COVID19 #disinformation #USpol

@funkylab @martin_fff
to clarify this some more:

I said #Twitter is a #disinformation platform that can't be trusted

that doesn't mean that every account there is lying

but "because someone on twitter said so" is a non-argument for me

if the info of that "someone" proves to be correct I'm adjusting my opinion, twitter or not

if disinformation is spread on #Mastodon it is still disinformation & will be called out eventually

by a community

whereas in twitter there's a lying AI

While you say that the Digital Services Act keep elections free and fair, we would like to speak loud and clear to all European politicians:

STOP THE RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA IN EUROPE!
LEAVE X, NOW!

Please, protect democracy, sign, and share with your local representative this Open Letter to All European Politicians and Leaders to Abandon X/Twitter

leavex.eu

#LeaveX #EscapeX #disinformation #X #Russia #farright #fascism

Greetings from Muskau: Russian Propaganda Surges as Musk, Trump Jr. and AfD Align leavex.eu/posts/greetings-from…

*There are currently masses of Russian propaganda videos in circulation, ostensibly from the news media. Many are attacking the USAID. Elon Musk, Trump Junior and the AfD are happy to help. The closing of ranks is complete.*

Excellent article by @chrisstoecker. Share it.

#Russia #Musk #afd #USA #USPol #Europe #EU #disinformation #FakeNews #trump #USAID