Day: October 25, 2023

The message, contained in a letter to the New York-headquartered National Committee on United States-China Relations on Tuesday, came amid expectations of a meeting between Xi and U.S. President Joe Biden in San Francisco at the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

In the letter, Xi said, “As two major countries in the world, whether China and the United States can find a right way to get along with each other, bears on world peace and development and the future of humanity.”

“China is ready to work with the United States in the three principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation to advance mutually beneficial cooperation, properly manage differences, jointly address global challenges, and to help each other succeed and prosper together to the benefits of both countries, as well as the world,” he said.

At the NCUSCR’s annual conference, Biden, also through a letter, said, “Both China and the U.S. have a duty to address transnational challenges that affect the lives of our peoples, including strengthening global food and health security, combating the climate crisis and countering narcotics trafficking.”

“America will also continue to responsibly manage the competition between our countries as we advance our mutual vision for a free, open, secure and prosperous world, and we remain committed to partnering with any nation that shares our devotion to protecting the international institutions and rules of the road that have helped safeguard global security and prosperity for decades,” he said.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said at the event, “I am convinced … the two countries have a unique ability to bring peace and progress to the world.”

“And they also have a unique ability to destroy the world If they’re not together,” he added.

The conference came just before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is expected to visit Washington for talks which, among other things, are likely to involve planning for the Xi-Biden meeting.

From Thursday to Saturday, Wang is expected to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan. President Biden is also likely to meet with him.

Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, told VOA Mandarin the conversations would involve a full spectrum of issues, “including Israel and Gaza, Ukraine, Taiwan, the South China Sea, US-China military interaction, AI, and fentanyl.”

Senator John Cornyn said he would like to see the Biden administration be more assertive toward China.

“Unfortunately, the administration seems to be all too willing to kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party, and they perceive that as weakness. So, I’d like to see a little bit of strength,” he said.

With the exchange of letters at NCUSCR, and Wang’s visit, the two superpowers appear to be warming up for a possible Biden-Xi meeting on the APEC sideline.

However, Beijing has not officially accepted the U.S. invitation to attend the APEC summit in San Francisco. Some analysts told VOA Mandarin they believe the delay in confirming Xi’s attendance is strategic: Beijing is hoping to seize the initiative and force the U.S. to make concessions on issues such as the new chip export ban to China.

Beijing may also hope Washington will change its decision and allow Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee, who is sanctioned by the U.S., to attend the APEC summit.

Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA Mandarin, “The underlying expectation from Beijing seems to be for Washington to soften its critical stance – an unlikely move from the Biden administration.”

Timothy Heath, a senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, told VOA Mandarin, “Wang Yi is likely to seek to set the conditions for a possible Xi-Biden meeting on the sidelines of the APC summit in November. Wang also will also aim to ease tensions by having an exchange of views on regional and international issues.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.

(NewsNation) — Bryan Kohberger, the man charged with the murder of four University of Idaho students, will be back in court Thursday as his legal team argues to dismiss his grand jury indictment.

His legal team filed the motion to dismiss the indictment in July, arguing the grand jury was misled to the standard of proof required for an indictment and emphasizing the meaning of “beyond a reasonable doubt” that attorneys allege was not properly given to the grand jury.

Kohberger was initially scheduled to appear in court for two separate hearings to dismiss indictments against him in September, but the hearings were postponed “due to illness.”

The motion is scheduled for 1 p.m. PT on Thursday, Oct. 26, in Latah County, Idaho.

Attorneys are also scheduled to discuss a second motion to dismiss filed by Kohberger in August.

This motion seeks to dismiss the indictment “on grounds of a biased grand jury, inadmissible evidence, lack of sufficient evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct by withholding exculpatory evidence,” according to a motion by Kootenai County Chief Public Defender Anne Taylor.

Kohberger is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20. They were found stabbed to death in November 2022.

He has maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings and stood silent when the charges against him were read, causing the judge to enter a “not guilty” plea on his behalf.

Just yesterday, the doomsday pundits in the media were telling us that we were doomed because there wasn’t going to be a Speaker. Today these same folks are telling us that we’re doomed because there is going to be a Speaker. At some point you realize these kinds of narratives are all about emotionally manipulating you into staying tuned in, and are not based in reality.

Yet the doomsday hysteria narratives persist. In fact a reporter asked President Biden today if he’s worried about the scenario where he wins reelection in 2024 but then House Republicans simply decide to magically take it away from him by not certifying the results.

In response, Biden said he’s not worried about it because it’s not even a real scenario. This is the correct answer. It’s not a real scenario, things don’t even work that way, and it’s all just empty doomsday hype aimed at driving ratings. Biden is correct to swat this nonsense away.

As I’ve said before, it’s really dangerous when the worry warts on our side start hyping these kinds of cartoonishly hyperbolic, laughably simplistic, imaginary doomsday scenarios as if they were real things that could actually happen. When the media sees people on our side melting down over this kind of imaginary scenario, the media takes that as a sign to start hyping that scenario even more loudly. That in turn gives leverage to House Republicans, who can then make the empty threat of magically non-certifying the election, in order to get their way on other things.

Worst of all, when folks on our side start hyping imaginary scenarios where we’re going to win the election but have it stolen from us anyway, all that does is tell everyone else on our side not to bother putting in the work required to win. No one wants to go out and fight if they’re being told they’re going to lose anyway.

There is nothing – NOTHING – more toxic to our side’s chances of winning than these imaginary doomsday scenarios about Republicans just magic wanding their way to getting whatever they want. We have to be vigilant about not letting the doomsday hysteria types on our side sabotage us with their “we’re gonna lose no matter what” messaging. President Biden is absolutely correct to laugh in the face of the media’s imaginary doomsday scenarios. His supporters all need to do the same.

The post President Biden shoots down imaginary scenario about House Republicans being able to steal 2024 from him appeared first on Palmer Report.

Ford Motor (F.N) and the negotiators of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union have reached a tentative labor deal, pending union leadership approval, three sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

A deal would be the first settlement of strikes against Ford, General Motors (GM.N) and Chrysler-parent Stellantis (STLAM.MI).

The deal is expected to provide a 25% wage hike through the life of the contract, including 11% to start, one of the sources said. Including compounding and cost of living, workers will get more than 30% under the tentative deal.

UAW President Shawn Fain has not issued a statement confirming an agreement.

Getting the deal ratified will be up to Fain and UAW leaders, and it is not assured. UAW workers at Mack Truck earlier this month rejected a proposed contract agreed to by Fain. UAW workers at the company now called Stellantis rejected a proposal endorsed by UAW leaders in 2015.

More than 45,000 union members working at the Detroit Three automakers have joined walkouts that began on Sept. 15.

The UAW’s most recent move was to strike against each company’s most profitable plants – GM’s Arlington, Texas assembly plant, Ford’s Kentucky Truck heavy-duty pickup factory and Stellantis’ Ram pickup plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Total economic losses from the UAW strike have reached $9.3 billon, the Anderson Economic Group said earlier this week.

If the contract is ratified by Ford-UAW workers, it would set the standard for bargaining at General Motors and Stellantis and expire on April 30, 2028.

“This lays the groundwork for the next two contracts and they should fall in line fairly quickly because all three were within a narrow gap of each other,” Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions.

“The strike so far has been painful for everybody and knowing what it takes to get a signed contract should bring them to the table much quicker,” he said.

The three companies had no immediate comment.

The union has waged an unusual campaign of simultaneous strikes against the Detroit Three automakers, demanding a 40% wage hike, including a 20% immediate increase, improvements in benefits, as well as covering EV battery plant workers under union agreements.

The automakers have argued that the UAW’s demands will significantly raise costs and hobble their electric vehicle ambitions, putting them at a disadvantage when compared to EV leader Tesla (TSLA.O) and foreign brands such as Toyota (7203.T), who are non-unionized.

Rather than the hammer blow of a mass walkout it has wielded historically, the UAW has played the companies against each other, using reprieves from expansion of work stoppages as encouragement.

CNBC earlier reported the tentative deal.

DETROIT (AP) — The United Auto Workers union is expected to announce a tentative contract agreement with Ford Wednesday night that could be a breakthrough toward ending the nearly 6-week-old strikes against Detroit automakers.

Two people with knowledge of the bargaining said the company and union are working on the final details of the contract and could announce it Wednesday evening in a video appearance with UAW President Shawn Fain. The people asked not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak publicly about the bargaining.

Terms of the deal weren’t immediately available, but both sides have been discussing a four-year contract. It would have to be approved by 57,000 union members at Ford.

The Ford deal could set the pattern for agreements with the other two automakers.

The people said the union made a counter-offer to Ford that proposes a 25% general wage increase over the life of a new contract and said that negotiations on Tuesday extended well into Wednesday. Previously Ford, Stellantis and General Motors had all offered 23% pay increases.

A Ford deal would include cost-of-living pay increases that could lift the total pay raises above 30%, said the people. In addition, workers would still receive annual profit-sharing checks.

Typically, during past auto strikes, a UAW deal with one automaker has led the other companies to match it with their own settlements.

One of the people said there also was progress in the union’s talks with GM. But it was unclear whether any of the automakers had accepted the UAW’s counter-offer of 25% pay increases over four years.

The progress in the negotiations came after the union this week walked out at three factories that produce highly profitable pickup trucks and SUVs, adding them to the list of plants already on strike in a strategy to intensify pressure on the companies.

On Tuesday, about 5,000 workers at GM’s assembly plant in Arlington, Texas, walked out, halting production of truck-based SUVs that are huge profit makers for the company. A day earlier, the UAW’s president, Shawn Fain, had added 6,800 employees at Stellantis’ Ram pickup plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Two weeks ago the union struck Ford’s largest and most profitable factory, the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, where 8,700 workers make heavy-duty F-Series pickups and two large SUVs.

In all, about 46,000 workers have walked out at factories owned by the three companies in a series of targeted strikes that began Sept. 15. About 32% of the union’s 146,000 members at the automakers are now on strike and getting by on $500 per week in strike pay. The automakers have been laying off workers at other plants as parts shortages have cascaded through their manufacturing systems.

Todd Dunn, president of the UAW local at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant, said he was told by people within the union’s leadership that the company is nearing an agreement.

“I’ve heard they are moving the needle as aggressively as possible,” Dunn said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s very positive.”

The prospect of a breakthrough, he said, has raised the spirits of workers who are willing to stay out on strike to reach a deal despite hardships for some.

Dunn said he thinks the strike at his plant had nudged Ford along in the talks and could help yield the best contract he’s seen in 29 years with the company.

Neither the companies nor the union would comment on the talks Wednesday. The union’s counter-offer of a 25% wage increase over four years was reported earlier by Bloomberg News and the trade publication Automotive News.

One key issue is whether to extend the national UAW contract to 11 U.S. electric vehicle battery factories. This would essentially ensure that workers there would be represented by the union.

All but one of these plants are joint ventures with South Korean battery makers. GM has agreed to this, but the other companies have balked, saying their joint venture partners must also agree.

GM CEO Mary Barra said Tuesday that the offer to bring the battery plants into the master union agreement was still open but that they would have to meet what she called “benchmark economics and also operating flexibility.”

Having union representation at the battery factories is a vital issue for the union because these plants will house many of the jobs of the future as the industry transitions away from gasoline vehicles. Workers who now make engines and transmissions at all three companies will need places to work as their plants are phased out.

All three companies have said they don’t want to absorb labor costs that are so high that they would force price increases and make their vehicles more expensive than those made by nonunion companies such as Tesla and Toyota.

A study this month by Moody’s Investor Service found that annual labor costs could rise by $1.1 billion for Stellantis, $1.2 billion for GM and $1.4 billion for Ford in the fourth year of the contract. The study assumed a 20% increase in hourly labor costs.

(NewsNation) — As mortgage rates continue to surge, it’s never been more expensive to buy instead of rent.

The typical monthly new mortgage payment is now 52% higher than the average apartment rent, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a CBRE analysis.

That’s the widest cost gap between owning and renting since at least 1996, the Journal found.

The disparity has grown since the first quarter of 2022, when the premium for buying a home shot up to 20%, up from -1% just one quarter prior.

From 1996 to mid-2003, the average cost to buy or rent was more or less equal, per the Journal.

That changed in the lead to the Great Recession, when the home-buying premium surged, peaking at 33% in the second quarter of 2006.

But after the global financial crisis, low interest rates and a plentiful housing supply meant it was cheaper to buy a house than rent throughout the 2010s.

Now, mortgage rates are at their highest level in over two decades, and demand has fallen to its lowest point since 1995.

Today, someone taking out a 30-year mortgage on a $430,000 home with a 10% down payment would pay around $3,200 in monthly repayments, according to the Journal. That’s 60% more than just three years ago, whereas rents have risen by 22% over the same period.

To afford a median-priced U.S. home now, Redfin says buyers must earn $114,627. That’s up 15% ($15,285) from a year ago and up more than 50% since the pandemic.

In a city like San Francisco, where the median home sale price is nearly $1.5 million, you’ll need more than $400,000 in annual income.

#DOJ DOJ #FBI FBI #CIA CIA #DIA DIA #ODNI ODNI https://t.co/PH3LtsdUTH #News #Times #NewsAndTimes #NT #TNT Putin Russia #Putin #Russia #GRU GRU #Israel Israel

The Informational Component (Cyber Attacks and Social Media Misinformation, etc.) of the Gaza War 2023 is the… pic.twitter.com/1rgv5HVfgS

— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) October 25, 2023

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Michael Novakhov’s favorite articles 

Social media is awash in misinformation about Israel-Gaza war, but Musk’s X is the most egregious

posted at 22:02:25 UTC via abcnews.go.com

While Twitter has always struggled with combating misinformation about major news events, it was still the go-to place to find out what’s happening in the world. But the Israel-Hamas war has underscored how the platform now transformed into X has become not only unreliable but is actively promoting falsehoods.

Experts say that under Elon Musk the platform has deteriorated to the point that it’s not just failing to clamp down on misinformation but is favoring posts by accounts that pay for its blue-check subscription service, regardless of who runs them.

If such posts go viral, their blue-checked creators can be eligible for payments from X, creating a financial incentive to post whatever gets the most reaction — including misinformation.

Ian Bremmer, a prominent foreign policy expert, posted on X that the level of disinformation on the Israel-Hamas war “being algorithmically promoted” on the platform “is unlike anything I’ve ever been exposed to in my career as a political scientist.”

And the European Union’s digital enforcer wrote to Musk about misinformation and “potentially illegal content” on X, in what’s shaping up to be one of the first major tests for the 27-nation bloc’s new digital rules aimed at cleaning up social media platforms. He later sent a similar, though toned-down, version of the letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

While Musk’s social media site is awash in chaos, rivals such as TikTok, YouTube and Facebook are also coping with a flood of unsubstantiated rumors and falsehoods about the conflict, playing the usual whack-a-mole that emerges every time a news event captivates the world’s attention.

“People are desperate for information and social media context may actively interfere with people’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction,” said Gordon Pennycook, an associate professor of psychology at Cornell University who studies misinformation.

For instance, instead of asking whether something is true, people might focus on whether something is surprising, interesting or even likely to make people angry — the sorts of posts more likely to elicit strong reactions and go viral.

The liberal advocacy group Media Matters found that since Saturday, subscribers to X’s premium service shared at least six misleading videos about the war. This included out-of-context videos and old ones purporting to be recent — that earned millions of views.

TikTok, meanwhile, is “almost as bad” as X, said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the investigative collective Bellingcat. She previously worked at Twitter on Community Notes, its crowd-sourced fact-checking service.

But unlike X, TikTok has never been known as the No. 1 source for real-time information about current events.

“I think everyone knows to take TikTok with a grain of salt,” Koltai said. But on X “you see people actively profiteering off of misinformation because of the incentives they have to spread the content that goes viral — and misinformation tends to go viral.”

Emerging platforms, meanwhile, are still finding their footing in the global information ecosystem, so while they might not yet be targets for large-scale disinformation campaigns, they also don’t have the sway of larger, more established rivals.

Meta’s Threads, for instance, is gaining traction among users fleeing X, but the company has so far tried to de-emphasize news and politics in favor of more “friendly” topics.

“One of the reasons why you’re not hearing a lot about Facebook is because they have something called demotions,” said Alexis Crews, a resident fellow at the Integrity Institute who worked at Meta until this spring. If something is labeled as misinformation, the system will demote it and send it to independent fact-checkers for assessment. Crews cautioned that if Meta — which has been cutting costs and laid off thousands of workers — deprioritizes its fact-checking program, misinformation could flood its platforms once again. The Associated Press is part of Meta’s fact-checking program.

Meta and X did not immediately respond to AP requests for comment. TikTok said in a statement that it has dedicated resources to help prevent violent, hateful or misleading content, “including increased moderation resources in Hebrew and Arabic.” The company said it also works with independent fact-checkers to help assess the accuracy of material posted to its platform.

A post late Monday from X’s safety team said: “In the past couple of days, we’ve seen an increase in daily active users on @X in the conflict area, plus there have been more than 50 million posts globally focusing on the weekend’s terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. As the events continue to unfold rapidly, a cross-company leadership group has assessed this moment as a crisis requiring the highest level of response.”

While plenty of real imagery and accounts of the carnage have emerged, they have been intermingled with social media users pushing false claims and misrepresenting videos from other events.

Among the fabrications are false claims that a top Israeli commander was kidnapped, a doctored White House memo purporting to show U.S. President Joe Biden announcing billions in aid for Israel, and old unrelated videos of Russian President Vladimir Putin with inaccurate English captions. Even a clip from a video game was passed on as footage from the conflict.

“Every time there is some major event and information is at a premium, we see misinformation spread like wildfire,” Pennycook said. “There is now a very consistent pattern, but every time it happens there’s a sudden surge of concern about misinformation that tends to fade away once the moment passes.”

“We need tools that help build resistance toward misinformation prior to events such as this,” he said.

For now, those looking for a central hub to find reliable, real time information online might be out of luck. Imperfect as Twitter was, there’s no clear replacement for it. This means anyone looking for accurate information online needs to exercise vigilance.

In times of big breaking news such as the current conflict, Koltai recommended, “going to your traditional name brands and news media outlets like AP, Reuters, who are doing things like fact checking” and active reporting on the ground.

Meanwhile, in Europe, major social media platforms are facing stricter scrutiny over the war.

Britain’s Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan summoned the U.K. bosses of X, TikTok, Snapchat Google and Meta for a meeting Wednesday to discuss “the proliferation of antisemitism and extremely violent content” following the Hamas attack.

She demanded they outline the actions they’re taking to quickly remove content that breaches the U.K.’s online safety law or their terms and conditions.

European Commissioner Thierry Breton warned in his letter to Musk of penalties for not complying with the EU’s new Digital Services Act, which puts the biggest online platforms like X, under extra scrutiny and requires them to make it easier for users to flag illegal content and take steps to reduce disinformation — or face fines up to 6% of annual global revenue.

Musk responded by touting the platform’s approach using crowdsourced factchecking labels, an apparent reference to Community Notes.

“Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports,” Musk wrote on X. “Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them.”

Breton replied that Musk is “well aware” of the reports on “fake content and glorification of violence.”

“Up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk,” he said.

___

Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.

Who’s behind Israel-Gaza disinformation and hate online?

posted at 22:01:32 UTC via bbc.co.uk

Reuters

Social media has been awash with false claims, conspiracy theories and hateful content surrounding what’s happening in Israel and Gaza – and questions over whether inauthentic accounts are being used to manipulate the conversation.

As violence unfolds on the ground, I’ve been looking into who is behind this.

When I opened up my TikTok For You Page earlier this week, I was met with a video showing a young Israeli woman being taken hostage by Hamas fighters on 7 October. The footage was shocking.

When I scrolled through the comments, the reaction was not what I expected.

While some were distressed by the post, other users falsely suggested this footage was not what it seemed.

They said the woman in it is “not a civilian” but a soldier, or that the clips had been staged to frame Hamas.

Some claimed there’s no evidence the group have acted violently towards hostages.

The clip, which has been verified by the BBC, shows a young woman covered in blood being pushed into a car by armed men. It was filmed on the outskirts of Gaza City in Sheijia.

I scrolled through several more videos and posts about hostages on other social media sites and spotted similar comments.

Israeli people are subject to compulsory national service – but evidence suggests many of those taken hostage by Hamas are civilians, like the people featured in these videos. The hostages include festival-goers and children.

Disinformation is not limited to accounts seeking to undermine violence against hostages, either. Profiles supporting the actions of the Israeli government have also shared misleading and hateful content.

Israeli soldiers patrol the area of an attack that killed more than 260 people at a music festival

One account I came across this weekend shared a video falsely suggesting Palestinian people were faking their injuries in Gaza. The footage was actually from a 2017 report about a makeup artist working on Palestinian films and with charities.

All of these claims were not just shocking to me – they affect the wider understanding of what’s happening.

Successful attempts to distort and confuse the online conversation make it a lot harder to get to the truth of what’s unfolding on the ground if you’re relying on social media for updates.

That can have serious implications for the international community when it comes to investigating allegations of war crimes, providing aid and figuring out what’s happening where.

Sometimes, the source of these misleading posts is easier to identify.

Take, for example, celebrities, like popstar Justin Bieber, who inadvertently shared a post on Instagram asking people to “pray for Israel’ – but used images showing the destruction of Gaza by Israeli forces.

Several accounts on X (formerly known as Twitter) with a track record of pushing conspiracy theories about crises have amplified misleading posts in what seems to be a bid to either downplay or exaggerate what’s happening on the ground.

That includes sharing old videos from different wars and footage from video games, which the accounts claim is from the current situation in Israel and Gaza.

Some very active accounts on X sharing pro-Israel content and anti-Muslim posts appear to be based in India and express support for the country’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

I want to try to get to the bottom of the profiles whose identities and locations are less obvious.

Several of the accounts suggesting that hostages were soldiers rather than civilians seem to belong to real, younger people. They have otherwise shared funny memes or football clips to their profiles.

Some have posted pictures with slogans like “Free Palestine”. When I message them they tell me they are based in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

For some profiles, whether they’re real people is less obvious.

A handful have posted about an eclectic mix of political topics; in support of Russian President Putin and the war in Ukraine, as well as about former US President Donald Trump. Several of these accounts are newly set up or have recently become active.

In the past, both the Israeli government and Hamas militants have faced accusations of trying to distort online narratives with “bot” networks – inauthentic accounts used to repeatedly push divisive or misleading ideas.

According to Cyabra, a company based in Israel that analyses social media, one in five accounts taking part in conversations about the attacks committed by Hamas since 7 October are fake.

“Fake” in this context can mean they are automatically operated – but others could also be run by real people posing under false identities.

The company says they’ve found approximately 40,000 fake accounts, including on X and TikTok.

It says some of these profiles have been spreading misleading claims in support of Hamas and suggesting – for example – that militants were compassionate to hostages in situations where evidence suggests otherwise. That does not rule out the existence of inauthentic pro-Israel accounts, too.

There are clues we can use to identify an account as inauthentic. For example, if a profile is newly set up and is suddenly sharing a large amount of divisive, misleading and at times conflicting content.

Ultimately, though, determining whether a profile is actually fake and who exactly is behind it is a very difficult task. It requires information from the social media companies that journalists don’t often have access to.

Ray Serrato, who tackled state-sanctioned campaigns at the social media company, told me how his former team was “decimated” after the takeover.

According to him, that means a number of key experts who “covered special regions” – including in the Middle East – and whose job it was to deal with specific co-ordinated disinformation operations, are no longer at the company.

X has not responded to the BBC’s request for comment. The social media site this week said it had removed hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts from the platform.

In TikTok’s Community Guidelines, the company says it has “increased dedicated resources to help prevent violent, hateful, or misleading content on TikTok” in relation to the current situation.

The way that disinformation spreads on X, TikTok and other platforms can shape the general public’s view of the situation in both Gaza and Israel.

That in turn could also put pressure on the politicians making big decisions about what’s unfolding.

Social media is awash in misinformation about Israel-Gaza war, but Musk’s X is the most egregious – ABC News

posted at 21:44:20 UTC via “IS PUTIN BEHIND THE GAZA WAR?” – Google News

Social media is awash in misinformation about Israel-Gaza war, but Musk’s X is the most egregious  ABC News

Who’s behind Israel-Gaza disinformation and hate online? – bbc.co.uk

posted at 21:44:20 UTC via “IS PUTIN BEHIND THE GAZA WAR?” – Google News

Who’s behind Israel-Gaza disinformation and hate online?  bbc.co.uk

Hamas leader Haniyeh says Israel can’t provide protection for Arab countries

posted at 21:55:14 UTC via reuters.com

Palestinian group Hamas’ top leader, Ismail Haniyeh meets with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (not pictured), in Tehran, Iran June 21, 2023. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS/File photo Acquire Licensing Rights

Oct 7 (Reuters) – Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, told fellow Arab countries on Saturday that Israel cannot provide them with any protection despite recent diplomatic rapprochements.

Hamas launched the biggest attack on Israelin years on Saturday, killing dozens of people and taking hostages in a surprise assault that combined gunmen crossing into Israel with a barrage of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.

Israel said the Iran-backed group had declared war as its army confirmed fighting with militants in several Israeli towns and military bases near Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate.

In a televised speech, Haniyeh addressed the Arab countries that have normalised ties with Israel in recent years.

“We say to all countries, including our Arab brothers, that this entity, which cannot protect itself in the face of resistors, cannot provide you with any protection,” he said.

“All the normalization agreements that you signed with that entity cannot resolve this (Palestinian) conflict.”

In 2020, Israel reached normalisation with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and upgraded ties with Morocco and Sudan, despite talks with the Palestinians being frozen for years.

Regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Israel are also engaged in U.S.-mediated talks to normalise relations, a prospect that drew condemnation from some Palestinian factions.

Haniyeh also said armed Palestinian factions intend to expand the ongoing battle in Gaza to the West Bank and Jerusalem. “The battle moved into the heart of the ‘zionist entity’” he said.

Reporting by Hatem Maher and Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Nick Macfie

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Hamas leader Haniyeh says Israel can’t provide protection for Arab … – Reuters

posted at 21:50:16 UTC via “israel palestine war 2023, Russia, and Iran” – Google News

Hamas leader Haniyeh says Israel can’t provide protection for Arab …  Reuters

Ukraine war daily update: Putin’s private army is heading back to the front-line – what we know – Yahoo News UK

posted at 21:50:46 UTC via “Putin and Gaza War” – Google News

Ukraine war daily update: Putin’s private army is heading back to the front-line – what we know  Yahoo News UK

While Twitter has always struggled with combating misinformation about major news events, it was still the go-to place to find out what’s happening in the world. But the Israel-Hamas war has underscored how the platform now transformed into X has become not only unreliable but is actively promoting falsehoods.

Experts say that under Elon Musk the platform has deteriorated to the point that it’s not just failing to clamp down on misinformation but is favoring posts by accounts that pay for its blue-check subscription service, regardless of who runs them.

If such posts go viral, their blue-checked creators can be eligible for payments from X, creating a financial incentive to post whatever gets the most reaction — including misinformation.

Ian Bremmer, a prominent foreign policy expert, posted on X that the level of disinformation on the Israel-Hamas war “being algorithmically promoted” on the platform “is unlike anything I’ve ever been exposed to in my career as a political scientist.”

And the European Union’s digital enforcer wrote to Musk about misinformation and “potentially illegal content” on X, in what’s shaping up to be one of the first major tests for the 27-nation bloc’s new digital rules aimed at cleaning up social media platforms. He later sent a similar, though toned-down, version of the letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

While Musk’s social media site is awash in chaos, rivals such as TikTok, YouTube and Facebook are also coping with a flood of unsubstantiated rumors and falsehoods about the conflict, playing the usual whack-a-mole that emerges every time a news event captivates the world’s attention.

“People are desperate for information and social media context may actively interfere with people’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction,” said Gordon Pennycook, an associate professor of psychology at Cornell University who studies misinformation.

For instance, instead of asking whether something is true, people might focus on whether something is surprising, interesting or even likely to make people angry — the sorts of posts more likely to elicit strong reactions and go viral.

The liberal advocacy group Media Matters found that since Saturday, subscribers to X’s premium service shared at least six misleading videos about the war. This included out-of-context videos and old ones purporting to be recent — that earned millions of views.

TikTok, meanwhile, is “almost as bad” as X, said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the investigative collective Bellingcat. She previously worked at Twitter on Community Notes, its crowd-sourced fact-checking service.

But unlike X, TikTok has never been known as the No. 1 source for real-time information about current events.

“I think everyone knows to take TikTok with a grain of salt,” Koltai said. But on X “you see people actively profiteering off of misinformation because of the incentives they have to spread the content that goes viral — and misinformation tends to go viral.”

Emerging platforms, meanwhile, are still finding their footing in the global information ecosystem, so while they might not yet be targets for large-scale disinformation campaigns, they also don’t have the sway of larger, more established rivals.

Meta’s Threads, for instance, is gaining traction among users fleeing X, but the company has so far tried to de-emphasize news and politics in favor of more “friendly” topics.

“One of the reasons why you’re not hearing a lot about Facebook is because they have something called demotions,” said Alexis Crews, a resident fellow at the Integrity Institute who worked at Meta until this spring. If something is labeled as misinformation, the system will demote it and send it to independent fact-checkers for assessment. Crews cautioned that if Meta — which has been cutting costs and laid off thousands of workers — deprioritizes its fact-checking program, misinformation could flood its platforms once again. The Associated Press is part of Meta’s fact-checking program.

Meta and X did not immediately respond to AP requests for comment. TikTok said in a statement that it has dedicated resources to help prevent violent, hateful or misleading content, “including increased moderation resources in Hebrew and Arabic.” The company said it also works with independent fact-checkers to help assess the accuracy of material posted to its platform.

A post late Monday from X’s safety team said: “In the past couple of days, we’ve seen an increase in daily active users on @X in the conflict area, plus there have been more than 50 million posts globally focusing on the weekend’s terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. As the events continue to unfold rapidly, a cross-company leadership group has assessed this moment as a crisis requiring the highest level of response.”

While plenty of real imagery and accounts of the carnage have emerged, they have been intermingled with social media users pushing false claims and misrepresenting videos from other events.

Among the fabrications are false claims that a top Israeli commander was kidnapped, a doctored White House memo purporting to show U.S. President Joe Biden announcing billions in aid for Israel, and old unrelated videos of Russian President Vladimir Putin with inaccurate English captions. Even a clip from a video game was passed on as footage from the conflict.

“Every time there is some major event and information is at a premium, we see misinformation spread like wildfire,” Pennycook said. “There is now a very consistent pattern, but every time it happens there’s a sudden surge of concern about misinformation that tends to fade away once the moment passes.”

“We need tools that help build resistance toward misinformation prior to events such as this,” he said.

For now, those looking for a central hub to find reliable, real time information online might be out of luck. Imperfect as Twitter was, there’s no clear replacement for it. This means anyone looking for accurate information online needs to exercise vigilance.

In times of big breaking news such as the current conflict, Koltai recommended, “going to your traditional name brands and news media outlets like AP, Reuters, who are doing things like fact checking” and active reporting on the ground.

Meanwhile, in Europe, major social media platforms are facing stricter scrutiny over the war.

Britain’s Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan summoned the U.K. bosses of X, TikTok, Snapchat Google and Meta for a meeting Wednesday to discuss “the proliferation of antisemitism and extremely violent content” following the Hamas attack.

She demanded they outline the actions they’re taking to quickly remove content that breaches the U.K.’s online safety law or their terms and conditions.

European Commissioner Thierry Breton warned in his letter to Musk of penalties for not complying with the EU’s new Digital Services Act, which puts the biggest online platforms like X, under extra scrutiny and requires them to make it easier for users to flag illegal content and take steps to reduce disinformation — or face fines up to 6% of annual global revenue.

Musk responded by touting the platform’s approach using crowdsourced factchecking labels, an apparent reference to Community Notes.

“Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports,” Musk wrote on X. “Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them.”

Breton replied that Musk is “well aware” of the reports on “fake content and glorification of violence.”

“Up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk,” he said.

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Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.