🥼 MPIB Berlin;
📚 computational social science, disinformation/polarization, crowdsourcing, OSINT;
🎓 #MIT #MediaLab, #DFRLab #DigitalSherlocks;
🦋;
🔥🧌🧑💻🕵️ I wrote an update-summary post about the European anti-immigrant/-Muslim disinformation grift operations that I have been investigating on X, including recent events in Ireland and Wales, and connecting it to the misinformation-targeted riots across the UK last summer.
📄 https://sohandsouza.substack.com/p/fakery-playing-with-fire
#Ireland #Wales #Europe #UK #Southport #xenophobia #bigotry #grift #Xitter #disinfo #misinfo #platforms #monetization #OSINT #SOCMINT #infoVoid
Also interviewed for the RTÉ piece was @marcowenjones, with whom I worked investigating the influence operation "The Qatar Plot".
He authored a post about a similar disinformation attempt by the same account in the wake of an arson attack in Wales.
📄 https://marcowenjones.substack.com/p/fueling-hate-disinformation-around
More about the account's inauthentic origins in the digital asset farming economy, and about my other investigations, can be found at my blog.
📄 https://sohandsouza.substack.com/p/radio-fake-europe-and-the-amazing
🧌🧑💻🇮🇪🔥 The European xenophobic grift X account I exposed as having been farmed+flipped was caught attempting to repeat an information void exploitation tactic to stoke anti-immigrant/-Muslim aggression in Ireland.
I was interviewed about this phenomenon for this RTÉ Clarity piece by Jack McCarron.
📰 https://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/2025/0511/1511993-fanning-flames-how-a-donegal-fire-was-used-to-stoke-hate-online/
#Ireland #Wales #UK #Europe #xenophobia #bigotry #grifters #Xitter #disinfo #misinfo #platforms #transparency #OSINT #SOCMINT
English version’s out.
▶️ https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/118582-006-A/data-sources/
As in the French version, my and @marcowenjones' report is featured in the section starting at timeline mark 13:37
📑 Read my and @marcowenjones' report on the influence operation at [ https://sites.google.com/view/theqatarplotreport/ ].
🕵️🧑💻👺🌏 My seminar at the @maxplanckgesellschaft Institute for Human Development's Center for Humans and Machines; on my investigation of a high-spend, months-long, cross-platform, international, merc-proxied influence operation; and on my investigation of patterns and infrastructure of misinformation spread fomenting the 2024 UK summer riots; has been published by the institute.
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMnA0uflj60
📄 https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/events/39890/59082
#UK #Europe #infops #disinfo #misinfo #platforms #OSINT #SOCMINT
Awesome work by Valentin Petit and team digging deep into how it all works.
Read here the full report on my and @marcowenjones ' investigation of the infop, which targeted the UK, EU, and other countries across platforms with over $1.2M spend to boost xenophobic/political propaganda.
📑 https://sites.google.com/view/theqatarplotreport/
🧑💻📲📲🧑💻 ARTE just released its documentary on the "phone farm" phenomenon in Vietnam: industrial-scale online astroturfing enabled by specialized software providers and a market in hacked/boilerplate accounts. It features my and @marcowenjones' findings from our investigation last year of an influence operation that employed one of these outfits.
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjW-jdKpsw8 (👀 13:37)
#infops #phoneFarms #Vietnam #inauthentic #astroturfing #OSINT #TheQatarPlot #Meta #Facebook #platforms #socialMedia
🕵️🗯🔁🧑💻 "Replycator" accounts rip content off other accounts and repost as their own while reply spamming, attempting to farm and agitate Western right-wing audiences, including in the UK, while originating in places like India. I present three examples among those I identified and analysed using OSINT.
📑 https://sohandsouza.substack.com/p/spammy-vibes-and-monetized-jibes
#OSINT #SOCMINT #replycator #rightWing #spamming #Xitter #platforms #socialMedia #propaganda #inauthentic #India #UK #grifters #farRight #rightWing #xenophobia
🧑💻🤖👹🕵️ About a month ago, I worked with Valent to extract and analyse engagement data on scheduled tweets by Rory Stewart, Alastair Campbell, and Anthony Scaramucci. They discuss some of our findings in this episode of The Rest is Politics, including the roles of inauthentic and monetised accounts.
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZWCIBAXY88
#bots #trolling #monetization #socialMedia #Twitter #Xitter #UK #USA #Trump
🗞🧑💻🕵️ I found another inauthentic grifter account on X, with familiar origins in Turkish digital asset farming, now pushing xenophobic nativist propaganda aimed at Europe, including pro-AfD messaging. Here's my report on "Radio Europe".
https://sohandsouza.substack.com/p/radio-fake-europe-and-the-amazing
#Europe #AfD #Germany #UK #EU #propaganda #grifters #Xitter #socialMedia #platforms #transparency
🗞🧑💻🕵️ I found another inauthentic grifter account on X, with familiar origins in Turkish digital asset farming, now pushing xenophobic nativist propaganda aimed at Europe, including pro-AfD messaging. Here's my report on "Radio Europe".
https://sohandsouza.substack.com/p/radio-fake-europe-and-the-amazing
#Europe #AfD #Germany #UK #EU #propaganda #grifters #Xitter #socialMedia #platforms #transparency
«We are also concerned about the fact that no one outside of Meta will know what effects this change in policy will have on the information users see.»
https://techpolicy.press/mark-zuckerbergs-immoderate-proposal
"The enemy of your enemy ? Still your enemy, @pluralistic dixit. Oh, America, you break m'y heart. https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113884896027559905
〝Unlike in America—where the government’s legislative body has largely been co-opted by the special interests it’s supposed to regulate—Europe has a relatively functional legislature that does, occasionally, prove responsive to the public’s interests.〞
https://gizmodo.com/trump-returns-big-techs-ass-kissing-at-davos-2000554158
#tech #Trump #corruption #America #Europe #USA #EU #regulation #law
〝Offering opinions as to news sites’ credibility, as NewsGuard does, “is emphatically speech […] For Carr to write to the platforms and basically threaten them that if they utilize this protected expression he’s going to go after them is just First Amendment problem upon First Amendment problem”〞
#freeSpeech #censorship #NewsGuard #media #advertising #antitrust #MAGA #misinformation #1A
〝Content is not the problem. The distribution and the rate of distribution is the problem. The design of the platform, none of which they have any power over. But yet they were able to get very credible people.〞
https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/the-death-of-truth-was-by-design/
🧑💻🕵️🧑🏫🇬🇧 The recording of my and @marcowenjones' webinar for the Central London Humanists, on our investigations of international cross-platform influence operation "The Qatar Plot", and of misinformation spread during the Southport-spinoff riots that followed in the UK, has been published.
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmmTWleCCXs
#misinformation #SouthportRiots #UK #infops #influenceOperations #disinformation #astroturfing #socialMedia #webinar
