There were huge protests in #Israel this week - but how many people were in the crowds?

Knowing the answer to this is an important skill for #verification and fact checking.

New blog post showing how you can count crowd sizes at large protests 👇 #OSINT

https://nixintel.info/osint/counting-crowds-in-public-spaces/

One of the things I would miss here on Mastodon was all of the alerts from my local infrastructure and government twitter accounts. These will likely take a very long time to make the migration.

With https://bird.makeup, you can create bot accounts that put those tweets in your Mastodon timeline. For instance, I follow the Washington State Patrol account for regional weather related road closures and accident reports:

@wspd7pio@bird.makeup

EDIT: I Should have tagged the project's creator: @vincent

RT @dw_innovation
In case you missed it: Our series on #AI for #verification is complete – and still available on our (brandnew) #blog.

🤖
👇

Status quo: https://innovation.dw.com/articles/ai-for-content-verification-i-status-quo-and-current-limitations

Challenges: https://innovation.dw.com/articles/ai-for-content-verification-ii-research-challenges

Trends & Goals: https://innovation.dw.com/articles/ai-for-content-verification-iii-future-trends-and-ultimate-goals

2040 Scenario: https://innovation.dw.com/articles/ai-for-content-verification-iv-how-carmen-uses-cadi-to-tackle-disinfo-in-2040

🚨🚨🚨

7. You can read the whole speech here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/how-open-source-intelligence-has-shaped-the-russia-ukraine-war

6) Lifting the fog of war. [As]a career intelligence officer [...] it felt like I was responsible for making a jigsaw from the available information.

[...]

Whilst open source doesn’t provide the lid of the jigsaw box, it gives an almost infinite number of jigsaw pieces. The challenge now is that you can make an almost infinite number of pictures as a consequence of the available pieces.

5) Crowdsourcing and the use of standardised chatbots which has allowed these Ukrainian citizens to report Russian units and locations. The civilian sensor network has been a force multiplier but also, it’s been able to provide a variety of viewpoints around information.

4) Open source has also proved to be a force multiplier, and we’ve been able to move to an approach which militaries around the world have sought to do for some time. Through open source every platform and every service person is able to act as a sensor. Citizen involvement has meant that practically every citizen and every

3) Countering Russia’s Information Operations and countering Putin’s own narrative around the war. The pre-conflict deployment and highlighting intent has been important, but also open source has been incredibly important in being able to rebut false flag narratives from the Russians, and indeed, at times has provided the ability to even prebuttal.

UK's General Hockenhull has spoken about the importance of #OSINT in the war in Ukraine.

He identifies 6 key impacts that OSINT has made:

1) Adding to anticipatory intelligence. Understanding the posture of forces and the fusion of commercial imagery, tech data and social media analysis, provided significant insight into Russian deployments.

2) Shifting public confidence. We had the ability to share information around Russian activity widely [...] at the point of invasion and beyond. >

This is significant ...

The German office for data protection and freedom of information hosts the official #Mastodon server for government departments

They are now calling for all ministries on the server to put their focus on Mastodon

They are also asking ministries which are not yet on Mastodon to join as soon as possible

Hi everyone! We’re consolidating our other mastodon account onto the airwaves.social server. A server specifically designed for RF and aviation enthusiasts.

I used MovedToDon to migrate my Twitter following list over to Mastodon.

Nothing broke so all good. Looks like approx 10-15% of my Twitter contacts are here.

https://www.movetodon.org/

Thanks to @elisethomas for the tip.

Y’all, if you’re getting frustrated you’re not seeing the content you want to like news or intel you need on Mastodon, you really need to shift your thinking from algorithmic social media. Follower counts don’t matter much here. Likes do not matter to post reach. Without your interaction, you will just see a live FIFO firehose. Some quick fixes:

Hashtag your posts liberally and consistently, and follow key hashtags of interest to you. Hashtags matter a ton here to being seen.

Follow and also alert on accounts you always want to see content from.

Consider using the built in RSS feature for your feeds and for specific hashtags.

Consider switching to the more advanced UI in your preferences, so you can watch multiple filtered and unfiltered feeds. Or a different mobile app.

Use Fedifinder to follow all the accounts you followed on Twitter, and sync up your follow and block lists.

Avail yourself of the multiple public lists of hundreds of journalist accounts on Mastodon.

#mastodontips