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Reliability scores for media outlets cited in the summary are in parentheses for each, courtesy of the terrific folks at Ad Fontes Media.
Now, on to our top stories.
The forecast for 2024: confusing with 100% chance of AI deepfakes.
People who know, like billionaire former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, will tell you that the 2024 election is going to be a “mess” of AI and misinformation (CNBC, 44.71). This is accurate, from everything I’m seeing, and as you’ve read in this newsletter a few times now.
Though that train wreck is heading toward us in broad daylight, the government commission that regulates elections is not riding to the rescue (Voice of America, 46.50). Guardrails and norms are needed, but there are few in place (New York Times, 41.98).
People are easily duped by AI fakery (MIT Technology Review, 45.46) and AI-detecting AI does not appear likely to keep pace with AI-producing AI (New York Times). [Note: the American Information Integrity Alliance is working on this issue and seeking support and partners; reply and I will put you in touch!]
The Titanic tourist submersible tale inevitably became about Biden for many conspiracy theorists.
Yes, the Navy detected a sound consistent with the vessel’s implosion (CBS News, 41.17) days before the rest of us learned what happened. No, the Wall Street Journal () didn’t really say that the U.S. knew that sound was the sub (Reuters, 47.02).
Nevertheless, no small number of public figures including Senator Marsha Blackburn questioned whether the timing of it all wasn’t suspicious—because the media covered the sub instead of Congressional hearings on the alleged corrupt dealings of President Biden (via Twitter).
Some of the theories spun out even wilder (Newsweek, 35.10), for example anti-vaccine filmmaker Stew Peters claiming the OceanGate sub was sunk to hide truth ‘that it wasn't an iceberg that sank the Titanic’ (Media Matters, 26.44). Enough people were posting that the World Economic Forum’s vice chairman was aboard the Titan that the Associated Press (48.40) did a fact check on that canard.
Further in the category of things asserted to have been fabricated to distract from Hunter’s laptop, there was a brief military uprising in Russia.
Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group, citing dissatisfaction with the prosecution of the Ukraine war, launched an assault on his own side’s Ministry of Defense and even advanced to within a couple hundred miles of Moscow. Putin tried, as one does, to shut down information about the insurrection (Washington Post, 38.14). But Prigozhin has been around the block and waged an information war against the regime parallel to his kinetic maneuvers (The Intercept, 40.07), at least until he suddenly backed down and went into exile in Belarus.
Many Americans somehow made this about the U.S. (Insider, 41.89), spinning conspiracy theories that the mutiny was to distract from Biden’s troubles' (Forbes, 40.91); in the words of a Fox News host, an “excuse” not to talk about Hunter.
Fair warning: stuff circulating about the coup attempt being a U.S. "psyop" or orchestrated by the CIA or NATO or—you guessed it—an is generally a waste of your time to read or consider (National Review, 32.43).
Is it grab bag time ALREADY? Very cool psychology scholars unveil a new misinformation susceptibility test; a Senate report excoriates intelligence agencies for dropping the ball on January 6th chatter; the independent state legislature is dead; election deniers harass a woman to the point of quitting her job as a county elections director in Arizona; RFK Jr. divides tech platforms with vaccine misinformation; academics lose access to the Twitter API; deepfake pornography is being weaponized against women; the DoJ issues a report on why it was possible for Epstein to kill himself; and migrants in Mexico fall victim to rampant scams on their way to the US.
All that, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin