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Kinzen's Weekly Wrap - April 8, 2022

Mark, Áine and I are in Perugia this week for the International Journalism Festival, where we’ll be talking about the Gordian knot that is the information crisis.

The conference started on Wednesday and, from conversations that I’ve been part of so far, there seems to be a fresh emphasis on tackling misleading narratives earlier in their lifecycle. Journalists, fact-checkers, analysts and technologists are on the same page about the need for a better sense of provenance — of how and why narratives emerged — as well as the importance of identifying bad actors well in advance of them spreading falsehoods.

Staying ahead of emerging threats in this way will always be difficult and so traditional fact-checking will continue to have a key role to play. But this idea that we need to root out misinformation before it becomes visible feels different from even just a few years ago.

Our panels take place tomorrow (Saturday) so, if you can’t tune in, we’ll share insights in next week’s Weekly Wrap.

Now, onto what we’re reading and listening to this week.

For your headphones this weekend

It's possibly not very becoming to recommend your own work in this way but there’s a new episode of the Safety Tech Podcast about the real-life dangers of misinformation that I think Weekly Wrap readers will enjoy. In it, I speak to an American woman called Heather Simpson about how she fell down a rabbit hole of vaccination misinformation as well as experts who, like Kinzen, are trying to solve for this difficult problem. Have a listen and tell me what you think.

From the Kinzen Slack channels

Articles recommended by our uniquely experienced group of engineers, scientists, designers, developers and editorial experts.

The Guardian: How to win the fight against disinformation

Everyone is looking for a big idea that will help push back against the tide of misinformation and Eliot Higgins, the founder of OSINT-powered news site Bellingcat, makes a good case that the key is normal people. He writes that “internet users who are heavily engaged with particular topics are our strongest defence against disinformation” and says young people should be equipped with the investigative techniques that have made Bellingcat the force that it is. Not a bad idea if you ask me.

Business Insider: I spent a week on Trump's new social media app Truth Social. I felt like I was exploring a ghost town

Truth Social, the new social media app created by the Trump Media and Technology Group, was touted as a “free speech haven” but is so far failing to live up to the hype. A reporter spent weeks on the waiting list only to find a strange assortment of accounts and bots and little original content when they were let in. No wonder several Truth Social execs recently quit.

The Verge: A Facebook bug led to increased views of harmful content over six months

This story demonstrates that having oversight over the systems that govern how many users see content is incredibly difficult. This latest issue to come to light went undetected by Facebook engineers for around two years and then took five months to fix once it had been identified. Worrying on many levels.

Pinterest: Combating climate misinformation on Pinterest

The image-sharing social media platform announced this week that it will ban false and misleading claims about climate change. The new policy follows an increase in what it called “searches for a greener life” and follows the creation of public health misinformation guidelines back in 2017. In doing so, it becomes the first major platform to ban climate misinformation, which is a worthy accolade.

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