Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
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Last Updated: Jul 26, 2021, 10:02 AM IST
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Synopsis
Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies.
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In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal.
A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.
But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists.
Vowing loyalty to Trump, America First groups try to bring nativism into the mainstream
msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Vowing loyalty to Trump, America First groups try to bring nativism into the mainstream
msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
An anti-disinformation project at the think tank Atlantic Council revealed on Thursday how the Democratic Party has played into the hands of right-wing media organizations that aim to sow discord in the party and scapegoat its progressive wing, particularly Rep. Ilhan Omar.
At the Atlantic Council s Digital Forensic Research Lab, resident senior fellow Emerson T. Brooking and research intern Avani Yadav analyzed one of the most recent controversies centered on Omar, who has been a frequent target of Republicans and centrist Democrats for her condemnation of Israeli policy, statements about U.S.-Israel relations and the powerful pro-Israel lobby, and criticism of Islamophobic U.S. policies following September 11.