What have cute cats got to do with misinformation? Two different stories this week, published within 24 hours of each other, looked at exactly that. 

In The New York Times, Davey Alba examined how well-known misinformation superspreaders intersperse their content on social media with animal videos to ramp up engagement. For Wired, Chris Stokel-Walker reported on how Reddit troll accounts post cute content in subreddits like r/aww to build a veneer of credibility, just as they post disinformation on other subreddits.

We’re all suckers for animal content online. And these folks know it. Sometimes they may try to hide their operation - in the case of Facebook, they may set up a shell page - often, they don’t bother hiding anything because it’s not toxic content anyway. But it helps them to either massively grow their audience or, in a case like Reddit, establish a veneer of credibility as an authentic account. 

Either way, it’s an example of the ABC framework for understanding misinformation. So often, we focus on the Actions or Content. But it’s critical to understand the Behaviours at work too. Studying behaviour reveals the tactics and strategies used by those who try to evade moderation and whose ultimate goal is to spread misinformation. In the long run, those cute cats might be part of a strategy to dangerously deceive.

For Your Headphones This Weekend

How to Fix The Internet, a podcast from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, featured an interview with Daphne Keller this week. Keller is one of the legal experts shaping the debate about regulation and disinformation, among other things. In this episode, she talks about the failures of automated content moderation and lots more. Listen to it here.

On a recent episode of the Tech Policy Press podcast The Sunday Show, Vivian Schiller spoke about the recent recommendations from the Aspen Institute’s report on solutions to misinformation. Also Karen Hao spoke about her recent story on the role of business models in spreading misinformation. Listen here.

Recommended Articles: From the Kinzen Slack channels this week

NBC News. 'Magic dirt': How the internet fueled, and defeated, the pandemic's weirdest MLM

A lack of trust in ‘Big Pharma’ leads various groups to seek out alternative cures for common ailments. In this article, Brandy Zadrozny documents how people were lulled into buying dirt online. The website has been shut down. 

Facebook and Twitter. Platforms release information on multiple takedowns of state-run information operations

This included, for example, over 2,000 Chinese Twitter accounts. Facebook’s report included details about a fake Swiss biologist named Wilson Edwards who tried to ramp up tensions between the US and China. Check out summaries from The Washington Post, The New York Times or The Guardian.

Foreign Affairs. How Disinformation Corrodes Democracy

As Joe Biden prepares for the first Summit For Democracy, Nina Jankowicz argues that, "Disinformation is not just a partisan issue; it strikes at the connective tissue of democracy and should headline a summit meant to bolster democracies in perilous times.

Columbia Journalism Review. Political misinformation, and a matter of scale

Matthew Ingram responds to a recent Ben Smith article about misinformation. Ingram points out that, while so much of the media focus is on the United States, this challenge is a global one and at a scale like never before. 

Graphika. Viral Vendetta

This detailed report looks at a conspiratorial movement originating in France and Italy spreading vaccine conspiracy theories and promoting harassment of vaccine advocates.

NBC News. Covid conspiracy theories born in the U.S. are having a deadly impact around the world.

Another story this week from Brandy Zadrozny, who looks at how the US is exporting misinformation to other countries. In this case, she reports on the case of Romania and its vaccine uptake.