vendita limitata ai soli abbonati e noi tifosi a distanza di macchina siamo rimasti fregati. avevo giá guardato i parcheggi vicino allo stadio come per la trasferta con l'Ajax dell'Union...

Alessandro Accorsi: Disinformation Warfare in the Middle East Babel: Translating the Middle East · Episode

New on #Babel: Jon Alterman speaks with @aleaccorsi.bsky.social about the impact of disinformation and foreign influence operations in the MENA region and emerging trends in the Middle Eastern information space.

Listen to their full conversation here:

Behind the scenes, the company was also quietly dismantling a system to prevent the spread of misinformation. When the company announced on Jan. 7 that it would end its fact-checking partnerships, the company also instructed teams responsible for ranking content in the company’s apps to stop penalizing misinformation, according to sources and an internal document obtained by Platformer. The result is that the sort of viral hoaxes that ran roughshod over the platform during the 2016 US presidential election — “Pope Francis endorses Trump,” Pizzagate, and all the rest — are now just as eligible for free amplification on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads as true stories.

NEW: Meta has quietly dismantled the system that prevented misinformation from spreading in the United States. Machine-learning classifiers that once identified viral hoaxes and limited their reach have now been switched off, Platformer has learned www.platformer.news/meta-ends-mi...

This 👇
Fact-checking organisations will have less influence where it matters most, and less financial security. Their collapse in smaller countries with weak independent media and deep political divides will give further advantage to those weaponizing social media for political violence & conflicts

The move is tied to American politics (relocating teams from California to Texas is a clear signal).
But the consequences will be global, especially in conflict zones and politically unstable countries where Meta's platforms are THE internet.
Expect more cases like Myanmar and Ethiopia

Trump's win gives Zuckerberg an opportunity to sidestep global accountability and cut costs—moves he attempted before META faced backlash with the Gaza war.
Musk has normalized using platforms to wield ideological and political power, something Zuck would have never openly admitted or pursued.

In unsettled times, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House looks set to shake things up further. But how does a disrupter deal with an already disrupted world?

Welcome to an unpredictable 2025 in association with @foreignpolicy.com

www.crisisgroup.org/global/10-co...

i’ve mentioned this before but one of the facebook docs frances haugen leaked was a bunch of engineers debating whether a “meaningful social interaction” (a big metric for shareholders) should actually require two human beings. it was a ridiculous conversation among some truly ridiculous people.

Airwars Gaza Patterns of Harm Airwars monitors, assesses and preserves civilian casualty claims resulting from explosive weapons use in multiple conflicts.

NEW: How does the scale of harm in Gaza compare to other conflicts?

Our new report presents a unique analysis of where and how thousands of civilians were killed in the first 25 days in Gaza - and how these patterns are unprecedented in modern warfare.

gaza-patterns-harm.airwars.org

Together with other rebel groups, Hei'at Tahrir al-Sham #HTS has toppled the House of Assad and now holds central power in #Syria. Will notoriously meddling foreign powers give it the space it needs to steer the country toward a better future? @crisisgroup.org
www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-...

After the fall of a brutal dictatorship, the West needs a plan for sanctions relief. #Syria is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world. Leaving severe #sanctions in place will be like pulling the rug out from under Syria just as it tries to stand. 🧵1/

Syria’s al-Watan pro-regime newspaper: “We are facing a new page for Syria. We thank God for not shedding more blood. We believe and trust that Syria will be for all Syrians …We only carried out the instructions and published the news they sent us. It quickly became clear now that it was false”

Israeli settler violence in the West Bank YouTube video by International Crisis Group

My latest 📽️ for @crisisgroup.org. Since the Hamas attack last year, Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the #WestBank has reached record levels. Yet, this phenomenon is not new. Watch to understand the context.
w/ @mairavz.bsky.social
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VnO...

Uniting the Armed Opposition Abstract. Chapter 4 delves into the various efforts to unite and institutionalise the armed opposition (internally as well as externally, with other states

Some self-adverstisement, if you want to know how the Syrian opposition institutionalised its military forces and the role of foreign actors based on interviews with HTS and Ahrar leaders: academic.oup.com/book/57951/c... for the full book: fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/...

International Crisis Group Join the conversation

If you'd like to follow my @crisisgroup.org colleagues here on BlueSky, here's a lovely starter pack prepared by @paulfranz.bsky.social

While information warfare might have provided some tactical gains, spreading misinformation does not make any society safer. Misleading audiences only leads to more polarisation, and an increase in hatred and discrimination, including antisemitic and Islamophobic messages

There are many other cases. But misinformation was particularly effective at telling a one-dimensional story of a multi-dimensional conflict—one that left out decades of occupation, blockade of Gaza, and systematic violence against the Palestinians.

When on Feb. 29, Israeli troops fired at starving Palestinians trying to get food from an aid convoy in Gaza, the IDF released edited footage and pro-Israel accounts blamed civilians for threatening Israeli troops, trying to sow doubt about whether shots were fired.

An Israeli airstrike most probably hit a convoy of civilians fleeing on an evacuation route? Hundreds of pro-Israel accounts pretending to be OSINT shifted focus to an unrelated side-road explosion for which they blamed Hamas. One such tweet was viewed more than 1.1 million times

A lot of the misinformation has focused on 'operational events'. As the war raged, every fact has become contested. For every investigation into a firefight or a bombing, there is an alternative framing of events.

Gaza, one year on: The misinformation that has shaped a war Logically Facts investigates the hundreds of misinformation narratives that have surrounded the war.

Minutes into the 7 October attacks, and misinformation was already spreading.

Information warfare has shaped the war, with deadly consequences like never before.

LogicallyFacts put together a report, with a few of my comments and analysis here: www.logicallyfacts.com/en/analysis/...

How Israel Mastered Information Warfare in Gaza Pro-Israel misinformation aimed at dismissing and discrediting Palestinian narratives is the fruit of a decade-long effort.

How can Israel at the same time deflect criticism for the death toll in Gaza, dehumanise Palestinians and justify its actions?

I wrote an analysis of how Israel's information warfare aided the physical destruction of Gaza for @foreignpolicy.com

foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/11/i...

How Israel Mastered Information Warfare in Gaza Pro-Israel misinformation aimed at dismissing and discrediting Palestinian narratives is the fruit of a decade-long effort.

@crisisgroup.bsky.social's @aleaccorsi.bsky.social for @foreignpolicy.com on Israeli information warfare in support of the country's military campaign in Gaza: foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/11/i...

Here’s my answer: this framing misses the true shape of Musk’s project, which is best understood not as a money-making endeavor, but as an extended act of cultural vandalism. Just as he graffitis his 420s and 69s all over corporate filings; and just as he paints over corporate signage and office rooms with his little sex puns; so does he delight in erasing the Twitter that was. All of this has been clear since at least November, when Musk gleefully mocked a stack of Black Lives Matter T-shirts that he found in a company closet. Yes, Musk regularly issues grandiose pronouncements about how Twitter will someday become a WeChat-style “super app,” ensure the future of civilization, and so on. But at its core, Musk’s misadventure at Twitter has been reactionary: an ideological purge of the employees he saw as “woke” and entitled; a gleeful inversion of industry standards around content moderation; a hollowing out of the free product; and a redistribution of the company’s attention and wea

Let’s get clear on what Twitter’s rebranding to X really is: a political project from a right-wing reactionary. https://www.platformer.news/p/twitter-becomes-x

Dangerous Words: The Risky Rhetoric of U.S. War on Mexican Cartels As opioid overdose deaths rise in the U.S., members of Congress have broached the idea of using U.S. military force against the Mexican criminal networks that traffic in narcotics. Such notions are ir...

U.S. military intervention in Mexico would be a mistake on several levels, damaging both U.S. and regional interests and impeding the two governments’ ability to work together.
www.crisisgroup.org/united-states/dangerous-...

And you want to tell me that they are business savvy people...

What makes a social media site vibrant? It's not about the technology. It's about how the networks are nurtured into being. Here's some lessons from 20 years ago that Alt-Twitter designers need to consider: zephoria.medium.com/dear-alt-twitter-designe...