"Since late April, an infectious diseases specialist at Stanford University and his colleagues have been volunteering their time on a project they hope will help educate the public, and combat misinformation, about the safety and efficacy vaccines.
The project, led by Jake Scott, MD, is a spreadsheet of all the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that have ever been conducted for licensed vaccines."
#PublicHealth #vaccines #immunizations #research #data #misinformation
#AI #misinformation #Grok #WhiteGenocide
"The AI chatbot Grok spent one day in May 2025 spreading debunked conspiracy theories about 'white genocide' in South Africa, echoing views publicly voiced by Elon Musk, the founder of its parent company, xAI.
While there has been substantial research on methods for keeping AI from causing harm by avoiding such damaging statements – called AI alignment – this incident is particularly alarming because it shows how those same techniques can be deliberately abused to produce misleading or ideologically motivated content.
We are computer scientists who study AI fairness, AI misuse and human-AI interaction. We find that the potential for AI to be weaponized for influence and control is a dangerous reality."
#media #misinformation #clickbait
"With clickbait no longer confined to tabloids, legacy media outlets have joined the race for views in an increasingly competitive industry. 'If it bleeds, it leads' is no longer a cliché—it’s an understatement. A new study, led by Arash Amini, introduces a mathematical model that explores how the pursuit of clicks and attention may drive news organizations toward misinformation as a survival tactic.
The findings describe a troubling, escalating 'arms race' in which mainstream media outlets struggle to stand out amid a flood of content. This pressure can incentivize sacrificing accuracy for traffic. Amini and his team developed the study to help researchers better understand the trade-off between short-term rewards—like more clicks or views—and the long-term costs, such as a loss of public trust."
https://thedebrief.org/clickbait-nation-study-finds-media-may-spread-misinformation-to-survive/
There's been a lot of academic research on misinformation propagating through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, but is there anything out there about fediverse platforms?
If there are, I'd like to see that research, if anyone has links.
A Harvard Commencement Speaker Mentioned Gaza. The School Refused to Publish Her Speech. https://theintercept.com/2025/06/20/harvard-divinity-gaza-israel-palestine-censorship/ #uspoli #MinnesotaKillings #MelissaHortman #trump #ToxicElonMusk #MikeLee #misinformation #lies #media #VancBoelter #MAGAHate #HateCrime
'I think youtube's turning me into a flat earther': Social media's role in ex-conspiracy theorists entering and exiting anti-scientific communities.
Should #climate #misinformation be criminalized? What would be the effects of that? Are there studies on how this would play out? I agree with the article in that we need better #education. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/19/climate-misinformation-turning-crisis-into-catastrophe-ipie-report
Easy next step for the #australia government
- join international ban on fossil fuel misinformation.
#media #politics #climate #misinformation #lies #fossilfuels
When #CNN becomes part of the problem with #misinformation and #hate:
Here the CNN headline: #Israel says #Iran was racing toward a bomb. #USintelligence says it was years away
So, CNN blasts out an unverified statement just to put the Israeli government/#netanyahu into miscredit knowing the kind of reaction that kind of a headline will invoke in the #USA, but also worldwide. That is blund #antisemitism.
MyBroadband: The fake news website that fooled Google in South Africa. “The Rise Up WV website has published numerous articles since late May 2025 that spread across social media after being served to South Africans through Google’s news article aggregation service. Among these stories was one that falsely claimed the Adjudication of Administrative Road Traffic Offences Act (Aarto) would […]
"Climate misinformation turning crisis into catastrophe, report says
False claims obstructing climate action, say researchers, amid calls for climate lies to be criminalised.
Rampant climate misinformation is turning the crisis into a catastrophe, according to the authors of a new report.
It found climate action was being obstructed and delayed by false and misleading information stemming from fossil fuel companies, rightwing politicians and some nation states. The report, from the International Panel on the Information Environment (Ipie), systematically reviewed 300 studies.
The researchers found climate denialism has evolved into campaigns focused on discrediting solutions, such as the false claims that renewable energy caused the recent massive blackout in Spain."
Is anyone working on using #blockchain to fight #disinformation / #misinformation?
Guardian: Climate misinformation turning crisis into catastrophe, report says
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/19/climate-misinformation-turning-crisis-into-catastrophe-ipie-report
“Alliances of industry and conservative thinktanks actually target misinformation at the key people who will be making decisions. Those links are particularly worrisome because it’s something approaching a conspiracy.”
Report: https://www.ipie.info/research/sr2025-1
#Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateMastodon #Misinformation
sequential game, where news sources decide whether to share #factualinformation or #misinformation. Each source influences individuals based on their #credibility, the #veracity of the article, and the individual’s characteristics. We analyze this game through the concept of quantal response equilibrium, which accounts for the bounded rationality of human decision-making. The analysis shows that the resulting equilibria reproduce the credibility-opinion distribution of real-world news sources,
How media competition fuels the spread of #misinformation | Science Advances
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu7743
Competition among news sources over public opinion can incentivize them to resort to misinformation. Sharing misinformation may lead to a short-term gain in audience engagement but ultimately damages the #credibility of the source, resulting in a loss of audience. To understand the rationale behind news sources sharing misinformation, we model the competition between sources as a zero-sum
Measures to fight #climatemisinformation include regulation to improve the moderation of content by social media companies, as with the EU Digital Services Act, and requiring fossil fuel companies to make standardised declarations of their emissions. Jensen said some legal cases against purveyors of climate #misinformation were already under way. In the longer term, improved climate education would enable citizens to identify misinformation.
Modern concepts used in fake old-timey quotes that get passed around.
1. Time Travel
There are no ancient stories involving backward time travel.
There is no time traveling goat fish in greek myth.
2. Hell as a hot place
Stop misquoting Dante, I'm begging you.
There are plenty others. What's your favorite?
