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      Meta Calls for Industry Effort to Label A.I.-Generated Content

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      The social network wants to promote standardized labels to help detect artificially created photo, video and audio material across its platforms.Last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, called a nascent effort to detect artificially generated content “the most urgent task” facing the tech industry today.On Tuesday, Mr. Clegg proposed a solution. Meta said it would promote technological standards that companies across the industry could use to recognize markers in photo, video and audio material that would signal that the content was generated using artificial intelligence.The standards could allow social media companies to quickly identify content generated with A.I. that has been posted to their platforms and allow them to add a label to that material. If adopted widely, the standards could help identify A.I.-generated content from companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney and others that offer tools that allow people to quickly and easily create artificial posts.“While this is not a perfect answer, we did not want to let perfect be the enemy of the good,” Mr. Clegg said in an interview.He added that he hoped this effort would be a rallying cry for companies across the industry to adopt standards for detecting and signaling that content was artificial so that it would be simpler for all of them to recognize it.As the United States enters a presidential election year, industry watchers believe that A.I. tools will be widely used to post fake content to misinform voters. Over the past year, people have used A.I to create and spread fake videos of President Biden making false or inflammatory statements. The attorney general’s office in New Hampshire is also investigating a series of robocalls that appeared to employ an A.I.-generated voice of Mr. Biden that urged people not to vote in a recent primary.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Millennials Flock to Instagram to Share Pictures of Themselves at 21

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      The generation that rose with smartphones and social media had a chance to look back this week.Most of the photos are slightly faded. The hairlines fuller. Some feature braces. Old friends. Sorority squats and college sweethearts. Caps and gowns. Laments about skinny jeans and other long lost trends.This week, Instagram stories the world over have been awash with nostalgic snapshots of youthful idealism — there have been at least 3.6 million shares, according a representative for Meta — as people post photos of themselves based on the prompt: “Everyone tap in. Let’s see you at 21.”The first post came from Damian Ruff, a 43-year-old Whole Foods employee based out of Mesa, Ariz. On Jan. 23, Mr. Ruff shared an image from a family trip to Mexico, wearing a tiny sombrero and drinking a Dos Equis. His mother sent him the photo, Mr. Ruff said in an interview. It was the first time they shared a beer together after he turned 21.“Not much has changed other than my gray hair. I see that person and go, ‘Ugh, you are such a child and have no idea,’” he said.Mr. Ruff created the shareable story template with the picture — a feature that Instagram introduced in 2021 but expanded in December — and watched it take off.“The amount of people that have been messaging me and adding me on Instagram out of nowhere, like people from around the world, has been crazy,” Mr. Ruff said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Does Information Affect Our Beliefs?

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      New studies on social media’s influence tell a complicated story.It was the social-science equivalent of Barbenheimer weekend: four blockbuster academic papers, published in two of the world’s leading journals on the same day. Written by elite researchers from universities across the United States, the papers in Nature and Science each examined different aspects of one of the most compelling public-policy issues of our time: how social media is shaping our knowledge, beliefs and behaviors.Relying on data collected from hundreds of millions of Facebook users over several months, the researchers found that, unsurprisingly, the platform and its algorithms wielded considerable influence over what information people saw, how much time they spent scrolling and tapping online, and their knowledge about news events. Facebook also tended to show users information from sources they already agreed with, creating political “filter bubbles” that reinforced people’s worldviews, and was a vector for misinformation, primarily for politically conservative users.But the biggest news came from what the studies didn’t find: despite Facebook’s influence on the spread of information, there was no evidence that the platform had a significant effect on people’s underlying beliefs, or on levels of political polarization.These are just the latest findings to suggest that the relationship between the information we consume and the beliefs we hold is far more complex than is commonly understood. ‘Filter bubbles’ and democracySometimes the dangerous effects of social media are clear. In 2018, when I went to Sri Lanka to report on anti-Muslim pogroms, I found that Facebook’s newsfeed had been a vector for the rumors that formed a pretext for vigilante violence, and that WhatsApp groups had become platforms for organizing and carrying out the actual attacks. In Brazil last January, supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro used social media to spread false claims that fraud had cost him the election, and then turned to WhatsApp and Telegram groups to plan a mob attack on federal buildings in the capital, Brasília. It was a similar playbook to that used in the United States on Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol.But aside from discrete events like these, there have also been concerns that social media, and particularly the algorithms used to suggest content to users, might be contributing to the more general spread of misinformation and polarization.The theory, roughly, goes something like this: unlike in the past, when most people got their information from the same few mainstream sources, social media now makes it possible for people to filter news around their own interests and biases. As a result, they mostly share and see stories from people on their own side of the political spectrum. That “filter bubble” of information supposedly exposes users to increasingly skewed versions of reality, undermining consensus and reducing their understanding of people on the opposing side. The theory gained mainstream attention after Trump was elected in 2016. “The ‘Filter Bubble’ Explains Why Trump Won and You Didn’t See It Coming,” announced a New York Magazine article a few days after the election. “Your Echo Chamber is Destroying Democracy,” Wired Magazine claimed a few weeks later.Changing information doesn’t change mindsBut without rigorous testing, it’s been hard to figure out whether the filter bubble effect was real. The four new studies are the first in a series of 16 peer-reviewed papers that arose from a collaboration between Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, and a group of researchers from universities including Princeton, Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford and others.Meta gave unprecedented access to the researchers during the three-month period before the 2020 U.S. election, allowing them to analyze data from more than 200 million users and also conduct randomized controlled experiments on large groups of users who agreed to participate. It’s worth noting that the social media giant spent $20 million on work from NORC at the University of Chicago (previously the National Opinion Research Center), a nonpartisan research organization that helped collect some of the data. And while Meta did not pay the researchers itself, some of its employees worked with the academics, and a few of the authors had received funding from the company in the past. But the researchers took steps to protect the independence of their work, including pre-registering their research questions in advance, and Meta was only able to veto requests that would violate users’ privacy.The studies, taken together, suggest that there is evidence for the first part of the “filter bubble” theory: Facebook users did tend to see posts from like-minded sources, and there were high degrees of “ideological segregation” with little overlap between what liberal and conservative users saw, clicked and shared. Most misinformation was concentrated in a conservative corner of the social network, making right-wing users far more likely to encounter political lies on the platform.“I think it’s a matter of supply and demand,” said Sandra González-Bailón, the lead author on the paper that studied misinformation. Facebook users skew conservative, making the potential market for partisan misinformation larger on the right. And online curation, amplified by algorithms that prioritize the most emotive content, could reinforce those market effects, she added.When it came to the second part of the theory — that this filtered content would shape people’s beliefs and worldviews, often in harmful ways — the papers found little support. One experiment deliberately reduced content from like-minded sources, so that users saw more varied information, but found no effect on polarization or political attitudes. Removing the algorithm’s influence on people’s feeds, so that they just saw content in chronological order, “did not significantly alter levels of issue polarization, affective polarization, political knowledge, or other key attitudes,” the researchers found. Nor did removing content shared by other users.Algorithms have been in lawmakers’ cross hairs for years, but many of the arguments for regulating them have presumed that they have real-world influence. This research complicates that narrative.But it also has implications that are far broader than social media itself, reaching some of the core assumptions around how we form our beliefs and political views. Brendan Nyhan, who researches political misperceptions and was a lead author of one of the studies, said the results were striking because they suggested an even looser link between information and beliefs than had been shown in previous research. “From the area that I do my research in, the finding that has emerged as the field has developed is that factual information often changes people’s factual views, but those changes don’t always translate into different attitudes,” he said. But the new studies suggested an even weaker relationship. “We’re seeing null effects on both factual views and attitudes.”As a journalist, I confess a certain personal investment in the idea that presenting people with information will affect their beliefs and decisions. But if that is not true, then the potential effects would reach beyond my own profession. If new information does not change beliefs or political support, for instance, then that will affect not just voters’ view of the world, but their ability to hold democratic leaders to account.Thank you for being a subscriberRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.I’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to interpreter@nytimes.com. You can also follow me on Twitter. More

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      These 2024 Candidates Have Signed Up For Threads, Meta’s Twitter Alternative

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      The bulk of the G.O.P. field is there, with some notable holdouts: Donald J. Trump, the front-runner, and his top rival, Ron DeSantis.While the front-runners in the 2024 presidential race have yet to show up on Threads, the new Instagram app aimed at rivaling Twitter, many of the long-shot candidates were quick to take advantage of the platform’s rapidly growing audience.“Buckle up and join me on Threads!” Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, wrote in a caption accompanying a selfie of himself and others in a car that he posted on Thursday — by that morning, the app had already been downloaded more than 30 million times, putting it on track to be the most rapidly downloaded app ever.But President Biden, former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida remain absent from the platform so far.And that may be just fine with Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, who told The Times’s “Hard Fork” podcast on Thursday that he does not expect Threads to become a destination for news or politics, arenas where Twitter has dominated the public discourse.“I don’t want to lean into hard news at all. I don’t think there’s much that we can or should do to discourage it on Instagram or in Threads, but I don’t think we’ll do anything to encourage it,” Mr. Mosseri said.The app, released on Wednesday, was presented as an alternative to Twitter, with which many users became disillusioned after it was purchased by Elon Musk in October.Lawyers for Twitter threatened legal action against Meta, the company that owns Instagram, Facebook and Threads, accusing it of using trade secrets from former Twitter employees to build the new platform. Mr. Musk tweeted on Thursday, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”Mr. Trump has not been active on Twitter recently either, despite Mr. Musk’s lifting the ban that was put on Mr. Trump’s account after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The former president has instead kept his focus on Truth Social, the right-wing social network he launched in 2021.But many of the G.O.P. candidates have begun making their pitches on Threads.Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and former governor of South Carolina, made a video compilation of her campaign events her first post on the app. “Strong and proud. Not weak and woke,” she wrote on Thursday. “That is the America I see.”Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota posted footage of his July 4 campaign appearances in New Hampshire, alongside a message on Wednesday that said he and his wife were “looking forward to continuing our time here.”And Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman, made a fund-raising pitch to viewers on Wednesday.“Welcome to Threads,” he said in a video posted on the app. “I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation here with you on the issues, my candidacy, where I’ll be and everything our campaign has going on.”Francis Suarez, the Republican mayor of Miami, and Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host, also shared their campaign pitches on the platform, as did two candidates running in the Democratic primary: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading vaccine skeptic, and Marianne Williamson, a self-help author. Even Cornel West, a professor and progressive activist running as a third-party candidate, has posted.Former Vice President Mike Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur, also established accounts — but have yet to post.Among the holdouts: Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, both Republicans.The White House has not said whether Mr. Biden will join Threads. Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said on Thursday that the administration would “keep you all posted if we do.” More

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      Campaign Press Aides Move From the Shadows to Social Media Stardom

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      MINDEN, Nev. — As Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, ambled along a throng of Trump supporters at a recent rally and posed for pictures, it was his campaign’s communications director, Courtney Holland, who was really working the crowd.With an iPhone in her left hand, Ms. Holland used her right one to whip up more enthusiasm from the red-capped Republicans gathered behind her boss. As the crowd took the cue, Ms. Holland framed her shot and blasted the footage out onto the campaign’s various social media channels — as well as her own.With more than 100,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 70,000 others on Instagram, Ms. Holland reflects a new breed of campaign aides — those whose online profiles more closely resemble social media influencers than traditional behind-the-scenes press operatives.The shift seizes on the transformation in how American voters receive information about their candidates, and is changing the way campaign press shops function. Both parties are increasingly using social media to build loyalty to a particular political brand, and targeting critics and journalists to energize supporters and drive online contributions. Instead of drafting political positions for their candidates, these staff members take to social media to make their own statements.Working her first political campaign, Ms. Holland has shown little interest in dealing with mainstream reporters to shape stories about Nevada’s closely watched Senate race — and she didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article. She has used her Twitter account, however, to repeatedly post negative information about Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, and criticize Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic incumbent in the race, for not participating in more TV interviews.Ms. Holland’s posts on Instagram — posing with fellow conservatives or modeling Republican merchandise — have regularly drawn hundreds or even thousands of likes. Several of her memes attacking Mr. Biden have been viewed more than 100,000 times.“Influencers are being subsumed into the political apparatus on the right and the left,” said Samuel C. Woolley, who has studied social media and politics as the project director of the propaganda research team at the University of Texas at Austin. “There has been a blurring of the line between influencers and their positions as staffers that has historically been behind the camera.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.In Florida, Christina Pushaw had about 2,000 Twitter followers before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her as his press secretary in May 2021. She now has more than 220,000 followers — far more than Lt. Gov Jeanette Nuñez and nearly as many as Casey DeSantis, Florida’s first lady.Ms. Pushaw built her following with an aggressive social media persona that sometimes includes five or six dozen postings a day, often attacking Democrats and the mainstream media. She has called the president a “seemingly senile 79-year-old aspiring dictator” and suggested that a neo-Nazi rally in Orlando had been staged by Democrats, although she later deleted that tweet.Last summer, Twitter locked her account for 12 hours for violating rules on “abusive behavior” after The Associated Press said her conduct led to a reporter receiving threats and other online abuse.Ms. Pushaw, who is now the DeSantis campaign’s rapid response director, has recently urged her fellow Republicans to stop engaging at all with the mainstream media, which she often refers to as “liberal,” “corporate” or “legacy media.”“My working theory is that if ALL conservatives simply stop talking to them, the legacy media will lose any shred of credibility or interest to Americans who follow politics,” Ms. Pushaw wrote in August.In Florida, Christina Pushaw had about 2,000 Twitter followers before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her as his press secretary in May 2021.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesMs. Pushaw didn’t respond to a request for comment. But Mr. DeSantis has defended his aide, saying he views the criticism of her as a sign of her success.“You can try to smear me or anyone in my administration all you want to,” he told reporters in June. “All that’s going to do is embolden us to continue moving forward for the people of Florida.”The pugnacity from Ms. Pushaw and other Republicans has been deeply influenced by former President Donald J. Trump, whose combative political style has been defined by both his aggressiveness on social media and his sparring with the media. Mr. Trump bestowed his top social media aide in the White House, Dan Scavino, with the title of “assistant to the president,” while former President Barack Obama’s digital director, Jason Goldman, was a deputy assistant.Still, Mr. Obama and his team helped pave the way for turning press teams into content creators. The Obama White House regularly produced photos and videos packaged specifically for direct consumption among their own followers on social media.More recently, some of the 2020 Democratic presidential campaigns were loosely linked to armies of fanatical social media followers who teamed up to bully critics, fellow Democrats and reporters.During that race, a relentless group of superfans for Vice President Kamala Harris, known as #KHive, targeted Senator Bernie Sanders, her rival in that campaign, and numerous reporters.Reecie Colbert, one of the group’s more outspoken members, issued a warning during the campaign to Ms. Harris’s critics in a podcast about the group, saying, “I wanted them to know I will stomp a hole in you if you come for Kamala.” She later told The Los Angeles Times that she was speaking for herself, not the group.Ms. Harris has thanked KHive for its support of her on Twitter, and her husband, Doug Emhoff, regularly interacts with them.Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist, has long maintained an active social media profile. In 2012, when she was working on Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign as the rapid response director, Twitter temporarily locked her profile after she sent so many tweets during a presidential debate that she set off an internal alarm at the company designed to identify bots.But Ms. Smith warned that campaigns can go too far in letting their social media presence define them.“Social media is an increasingly big part of the job, but not in a good way,” she said. “Candidates who use social media in an authentic way can reinforce their strengths. But if you let Twitter supplant the hard work of dealing with reporters, you’re essentially breaking down a legitimate line of communications with the public.”Ryan James Girdusky, a conservative activist with over 110,000 followers on Twitter, said having staff members whose agility on social media could drive attention to a candidate’s message could be a significant advantage during a campaign.“When you have a new social media account, you have to build followers,” said Mr. Girdusky, a co-author of the book, “They’re Not Listening: How the Elites Created the National Populist Revolution.”“When you’re behind the eight ball, it’s definitely a major plus to have people who are known in the conservative movement and bring that level of credibility,” he added. More

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      La desinformación es más difícil de combatir en EE. UU.

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      La proliferación de redes sociales alternativas ha ayudado a afianzar la información falsa y engañosa como elemento clave de la política estadounidense.La mañana del 8 de julio, el expresidente Donald Trump recurrió a Truth Social, la plataforma de redes sociales que fundó con gente cercana a él, para afirmar que había ganado las elecciones presidenciales del 2020 en el estado de Wisconsin, a pesar de todas las pruebas que evidenciaban lo contrario.Alrededor de 8000 personas compartieron esa misiva en Truth Social, cifra que distó mucho de los cientos de miles de respuestas que sus publicaciones en Facebook y Twitter solían generar antes de que esas plataformas le apagaran el micrófono tras los mortíferos disturbios en el Capitolio el 6 de enero de 2021.A pesar de ello, la afirmación infundada de Trump pululó en la conciencia pública. Saltó de su aplicación a otras plataformas de redes sociales, por no hablar de pódcast, la radio y la televisión.Al cabo de 48 horas de publicado su mensaje, más de un millón de personas lo habían visto en al menos una decena de otros lugares. Apareció en Facebook y Twitter, de donde fue eliminado, pero también en YouTube, Gab, Parler y Telegram, según un análisis de The New York Times.La difusión de la afirmación de Trump ilustra cómo la desinformación ha hecho metástasis desde que los expertos comenzaron a sonar la alarma sobre la amenaza que supone y todo esto ocurre justo antes de las elecciones de mitad de mandato de este año. A pesar de los años de esfuerzos de los medios de comunicación, de los académicos e incluso de las propias empresas de redes sociales para hacer frente al problema, se puede decir que hoy en día está más generalizado y extendido.“Para ser honesta, me parece que el problema está peor que nunca”, comentó Nina Jankowicz, experta en desinformación que condujo durante un periodo breve un consejo consultivo dentro del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional dedicado a combatir la desinformación. La creación del panel desató furor y provocó su renuncia y la disolución del consejo consultivo.No hace mucho, la lucha contra la desinformación se centraba en las principales plataformas de redes sociales, como Facebook y Twitter. Cuando se les presionaba, solían eliminar los contenidos problemáticos, incluida la información errónea y la desinformación intencionada sobre la pandemia de COVID-19.Sin embargo, ahora hay decenas de plataformas nuevas, incluidas algunas que se enorgullecen de no moderar —censurar, como lo denominan— las declaraciones falsas en nombre de la libertad de expresión.Otras personalidades siguieron los pasos de Trump y se cambiaron a estas nuevas plataformas tras ser “censuradas” por Facebook, YouTube o Twitter. Entre ellos, Michael Flynn, el general retirado que sirvió brevemente como principal asesor de Seguridad Nacional de Trump; L. Lin Wood, una abogada pro-Trump; Naomi Wolf, una autora feminista y escéptica de las vacunas, así como diversos seguidores de QAnon y los Oath Keepers, un grupo de militantes de extrema derecha.Al menos 69 millones de personas se han unido a plataformas como Parler, Gab, Truth Social, Gettr y Rumble, que se promueven como alternativas conservadoras a las grandes empresas tecnológicas, según declaraciones de las empresas mismas. Aunque muchos de esos usuarios ya no tienen cabida en las plataformas más grandes, siguen difundiendo sus opiniones, que a menudo aparecen en capturas de pantalla publicadas en los sitios que les prohibieron la entrada.“Nada en internet existe de manera aislada”, afirmó Jared Holt, gestor principal en la investigación sobre odio y extremismo del Instituto para el Diálogo Estratégico. “Lo que ocurre en plataformas alternas como Gab o Telegram o Truth tarde o temprano llega a Facebook, Twitter y otras”, agregó.Los usuarios han migrado a aplicaciones como Truth Social luego de haber sido “censuradas” por Facebook, YouTube o Twitter.Leon Neal/Getty ImagesEl discurso político se ha radicalizado por la difusión de las personas que propagan desinformación, indicó Nora Benavidez, abogada sénior en Free Press, un grupo de defensa de los derechos digitales y la transparencia.“Nuestro lenguaje y nuestros ecosistemas en línea se están volviendo cada vez más corrosivos”, dijo.Los cambios en el paisaje de la desinformación se están haciendo más evidentes con el ciclo electoral en Estados Unidos. En 2016, la campaña encubierta de Rusia para difundir mensajes falsos y divisorios parecía una aberración en el sistema político estadounidense. Hoy la desinformación, procedente de enemigos extranjeros y nacionales, se ha convertido en una característica del mismo.La idea infundada de que el presidente Joe Biden no fue electo de manera legítima se generalizó entre los miembros del Partido Republicano, e hizo que funcionarios de los estados y los condados impusieran nuevas restricciones para votar, a menudo solo con base en teorías de la conspiración que se cuelan en los medios de comunicación de derecha.Los votantes no solo deben filtrar un torrente cada vez mayor de mentiras y falsedades sobre los candidatos y sus políticas, sino también información sobre cuándo y dónde votar. Los funcionarios nombrados o elegidos en nombre de la lucha contra el fraude electoral han adoptado una postura que implica que se negarán a certificar los resultados que no sean de su agrado.Los proveedores de desinformación también se han vuelto cada vez más sofisticados a la hora de eludir las normas de las principales plataformas, mientras que el uso del video para difundir afirmaciones falsas en YouTube, TikTok e Instagram ha hecho que los sistemas automatizados tengan más dificultades para identificarlos que los mensajes de texto.TikTok, propiedad del gigante chino de la tecnología ByteDance, se ha vuelto uno de los principales campos de batalla en la lucha actual contra la desinformación. Un informe del mes pasado de NewsGuard, una organización que da seguimiento al problema en línea, mostró que casi el 20 por ciento de los videos que aparecían como resultados de búsqueda en TikTok contenían información falsa o tendenciosa sobre temas como los tiroteos en las escuelas y la guerra de Rusia en Ucrania.Katie Harbath en el “sala de operaciones” de Facebook, donde se monitoreaba el contenido relacionado con las elecciones en la plataforma, en 2018Jeff Chiu/Associated Press“La gente que hace esto sabe cómo aprovechar los vacíos”, explicó Katie Harbath, exdirectora de políticas públicas de Facebook que ahora dirige Anchor Change, una consultora estratégica.A pocas semanas de las elecciones de mitad de mandato, las principales plataformas se han comprometido a bloquear, etiquetar o marginar todo lo que infrinja las políticas de la empresa, incluida la desinformación, la incitación al odio o los llamados a la violencia.Sin embargo, la industria artesanal de expertos dedicados a contrarrestar la desinformación —los grupos de expertos, las universidades y las organizaciones no gubernamentales— mencionan que la industria no está haciendo suficiente. El mes pasado, por ejemplo, el Centro Stern para los Negocios y los Derechos Humanos de la Universidad de Nueva York advirtió que las principales plataformas seguían amplificando el “negacionismo electoral” de maneras que debilitaban la confianza en el sistema democrático.Otro desafío es la proliferación de plataformas alternativas para esas falsedades y opiniones aún más extremas.Muchas de esas nuevas plataformas florecieron tras la derrota de Trump en 2020, aunque todavía no han alcanzado el tamaño o el alcance de Facebook y Twitter. Estas plataformas afirman que las grandes empresas tecnológicas están en deuda con el gobierno, el Estado profundo o la élite liberal.Parler, una red social fundada en 2018, era uno de los sitios que más crecía, hasta que las tiendas de aplicaciones de Apple y Google lo expulsaron tras los disturbios mortales del 6 de enero, alimentados por la desinformación y los llamados a la violencia en línea. Desde entonces ha vuelto a ambas tiendas y ha empezado a reconstruir su audiencia apelando a quienes sienten que sus voces han sido silenciadas.“En Parler creemos que el individuo es quien debe decidir lo que cree que es la verdad”, dijo en una entrevista, Amy Peikoff, la directora de políticas de la plataforma.Argumentó que el problema con la desinformación o las teorías de la conspiración se derivaba de los algoritmos que las plataformas usan para mantener a la gente pegada a internet y no del debate sin moderar que fomentan sitios como Parler.El lunes, Parler anunció que Kanye West había, en principio, accedido a comprar la plataforma en un acuerdo que el rapero y el diseñador de moda, ahora conocido como Ye, formuló en términos políticos.“En un mundo en que las opiniones conservadoras se consideran controversiales, debemos de asegurarnos de tener el derecho a expresarnos libremente”, dijo, según el comunicado de la compañía.Los competidores de Parler son ahora BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Telegram y Truth Social, y cada uno de ellos se presenta como un santuario frente a las políticas de moderación de las principales plataformas en todo tipo de temas, desde la política hasta la salud.Una nueva encuesta del Centro de Investigaciones Pew descubrió que el 15 por ciento de las cuentas destacadas en esas siete plataformas habían sido desterradas previamente de otras como Twitter y Facebook.Las aplicaciones como Gettr se publicitan como alternativas a los gigantes tecnológicosElijah Nouvelage/Getty ImagesSegún la encuesta, casi dos terceras partes de los usuarios de esas plataformas dijeron que habían encontrado una comunidad de personas que compartían sus opiniones. La mayoría son republicanos o se inclinan por ese partido.Una consecuencia de esta atomización de las fuentes de las redes sociales es que se refuerzan las burbujas de información partidista en las que viven millones de estadounidenses.Según el Centro Pew, al menos el seis por ciento de los estadounidenses se informa de manera habitual en al menos uno de estos sitios relativamente nuevos, que a menudo “ponen de relieve puntos de vista del mundo que no pertenecen a la corriente dominante y, a veces, utilizan un lenguaje ofensivo”. La encuesta encontró que una de cada 10 publicaciones en estas plataformas que mencionaban cuestiones relacionadas con la comunidad LGBTQ incluían alegatos peyorativos.Estos nuevos sitios siguen siendo marginales comparados con las plataformas más grandes; por ejemplo, Trump tiene 4 millones de seguidores en Truth Social, en comparación con los 88 millones que tenía cuando Twitter cerró su cuenta en 2021.Aun así, Trump ha retomado cada vez más sus publicaciones con el ímpetu que antes mostraba en Twitter. El allanamiento del FBI en Mar-a-Lago volvió a poner sus últimos pronunciamientos en el ojo del huracán político.Para las principales plataformas, el incentivo financiero para atraer usuarios, y sus clics, sigue siendo poderoso y podría hacer que den marcha atrás a las medidas que tomaron en 2021. También hay un componente ideológico. El llamado a la libertad individual, con tintes emocionales, impulsó en parte la oferta de Elon Musk para comprar Twitter, que parece haberse reactivado tras meses de maniobras legales.Nick Clegg, el presidente de asuntos globales de Meta, la empresa matriz de Facebook, incluso sugirió hace poco que la plataforma podría restablecer la cuenta de Trump en 2023, antes de la que podría ser otra carrera presidencial. Facebook había dicho previamente que solo lo haría “si el riesgo para la seguridad pública ha disminuido”.Nick Clegga, el presidente de asuntos globales de MetaPatrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesUn estudio de Truth Social realizado por Media Matters for America, un grupo de monitoreo de medios con tendencia de izquierda, examinó la forma en que la plataforma se ha convertido en hogar de algunas de las teorías de conspiración más marginales. Trump, que empezó a publicar en la plataforma en el mes de abril, ha amplificado cada vez más el contenido de QAnon, la teoría de conspiración en línea.Ha compartido publicaciones de QAnon más de 130 veces. Los seguidores de QAnon promueven una falsedad amplia y compleja centrada en Trump como líder que se enfrenta a una conspiración de una camarilla de pedófilos del Partido Demócrata. Dichas opiniones han hallado cabida durante las primarias de este año en las campañas electorales de los republicanos.Jankowicz, la experta en desinformación, mencionó que las divisiones sociales y políticas habían agitado las olas de la desinformación.Las controversias sobre la mejor manera de responder a la pandemia de COVID-19 profundizaron la desconfianza en el gobierno y los expertos médicos, sobre todo entre los conservadores. La negativa de Trump a aceptar el resultado de las elecciones de 2020 condujo a la violencia en el Capitolio, pero no terminó con ella.“Deberían habernos unido”, dijo Jankowicz, refiriéndose a la pandemia y a los disturbios. “Pensé que quizás podrían servir como una especie de poder de convocatoria, pero no lo fueron”Steven Lee Myers cubre desinformación para el Times. Ha trabajado en Washington, Moscú, Bagdad y Pekín, donde contribuyó a los artículos que ganaron el Premio Pulitzer al servicio público en 2021. También es el autor de The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin. @stevenleemyers • FacebookSheera Frenkel es una reportera de tecnología premiada que tiene su sede en San Francisco. En 2021, ella y Cecilia Kang publicaron Manipulados. La batalla de Facebook por la dominación mundial. @sheeraf More

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      Ahead of Midterms, Disinformation Is Even More Intractable

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      On the morning of July 8, former President Donald J. Trump took to Truth Social, a social media platform he founded with people close to him, to claim that he had in fact won the 2020 presidential vote in Wisconsin, despite all evidence to the contrary.Barely 8,000 people shared that missive on Truth Social, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of responses his posts on Facebook and Twitter had regularly generated before those services suspended his megaphones after the deadly riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.And yet Mr. Trump’s baseless claim pulsed through the public consciousness anyway. It jumped from his app to other social media platforms — not to mention podcasts, talk radio or television.Within 48 hours of Mr. Trump’s post, more than one million people saw his claim on at least dozen other sites. It appeared on Facebook and Twitter, from which he has been banished, but also YouTube, Gab, Parler and Telegram, according to an analysis by The New York Times.The spread of Mr. Trump’s claim illustrates how, ahead of this year’s midterm elections, disinformation has metastasized since experts began raising alarms about the threat. Despite years of efforts by the media, by academics and even by social media companies themselves to address the problem, it is arguably more pervasive and widespread today.“I think the problem is worse than it’s ever been, frankly,” said Nina Jankowicz, an expert on disinformation who briefly led an advisory board within the Department of Homeland Security dedicated to combating misinformation. The creation of the panel set off a furor, prompting her to resign and the group to be dismantled.Not long ago, the fight against disinformation focused on the major social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. When pressed, they often removed troubling content, including misinformation and intentional disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic.Today, however, there are dozens of new platforms, including some that pride themselves on not moderating — censoring, as they put it — untrue statements in the name of free speech.Other figures followed Mr. Trump in migrating to these new platforms after being “censored” by Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. They included Michael Flynn, the retired general who served briefly as Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser; L. Lin Wood, a pro-Trump lawyer; Naomi Wolf, a feminist author and vaccine skeptic; and assorted adherents of QAnon and the Oath Keepers, the far-right militia.At least 69 million people have joined platforms, like Parler, Gab, Truth Social, Gettr and Rumble, that advertise themselves as conservative alternatives to Big Tech, according to statements by the companies. Though many of those users are ostracized from larger platforms, they continue to spread their views, which often appear in screen shots posted on the sites that barred them.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.Debates Dwindle: Direct political engagement with voters is waning as candidates surround themselves with their supporters. Nowhere is the trend clearer than on the shrinking debate stage.“Nothing on the internet exists in a silo,” said Jared Holt, a senior manager on hate and extremism research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “Whatever happens in alt platforms like Gab or Telegram or Truth makes its way back to Facebook and Twitter and others.”Users have migrated to apps like Truth Social after being “censored” by Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.Leon Neal/Getty ImagesThe diffusion of the people who spread disinformation has radicalized political discourse, said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, an advocacy group for digital rights and accountability.“Our language and our ecosystems are becoming more caustic online,” she said. The shifts in the disinformation landscape are becoming clear with the new cycle of American elections. In 2016, Russia’s covert campaign to spread false and divisive posts seemed like an aberration in the American political system. Today disinformation, from enemies, foreign and domestic, has become a feature of it.The baseless idea that President Biden was not legitimately elected has gone mainstream among Republican Party members, driving state and county officials to impose new restrictions on casting ballots, often based on mere conspiracy theories percolating in right-wing media.Voters must now sift through not only an ever-growing torrent of lies and falsehoods about candidates and their policies, but also information on when and where to vote. Officials appointed or elected in the name of fighting voter fraud have put themselves in the position to refuse to certify outcomes that are not to their liking.The purveyors of disinformation have also become increasingly sophisticated at sidestepping the major platforms’ rules, while the use of video to spread false claims on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram has made them harder for automated systems to track than text.TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, has become a primary battleground in today’s fight against disinformation. A report last month by NewsGuard, an organization that tracks the problem online, showed that nearly 20 percent of videos presented as search results on TikTok contained false or misleading information on topics such as school shootings and Russia’s war in Ukraine.Katie Harbath in Facebook’s “war room,” where election-related content was monitored on the platform, in 2018.Jeff Chiu/Associated Press“People who do this know how to exploit the loopholes,” said Katie Harbath, a former director of public policy at Facebook who now leads Anchor Change, a strategic consultancy.With the midterm elections only weeks away, the major platforms have all pledged to block, label or marginalize anything that violates company policies, including disinformation, hate speech or calls to violence.Still, the cottage industry of experts dedicated to countering disinformation — think tanks, universities and nongovernment organizations — say the industry is not doing enough. The Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University warned last month, for example, that the major platforms continued to amplify “election denialism” in ways that undermined trust in the democratic system.Another challenge is the proliferation of alternative platforms for those falsehoods and even more extreme views.Many of those new platforms have flourished in the wake of Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020, though they have not yet reached the size or reach of Facebook and Twitter. They portray Big Tech as beholden to the government, the deep state or the liberal elite.Parler, a social network founded in 2018, was one of the fastest-growing sites — until Apple’s and Google’s app stores kicked it off after the deadly riot on Jan. 6, which was fueled by disinformation and calls for violence online. It has since returned to both stores and begun to rebuild its audience by appealing to those who feel their voices have been silenced.“We believe at Parler that it is up to the individual to decide what he or she thinks is the truth,” Amy Peikoff, the platform’s chief policy officer, said in an interview.She argued that the problem with disinformation or conspiracy theories stemmed from the algorithms that platforms use to keep people glued online — not from the unfettered debate that sites like Parler foster.On Monday, Parler announced that Kanye West had agreed in principle to purchase the platform, a deal that the rapper and fashion designer, now known as Ye, cast in political terms.“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” he said, according to the company’s statement.Parler’s competitors now are BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social, with each offering itself as sanctuary from the moderating policies of the major platforms on everything from politics to health policy.A new survey by the Pew Research Center found that 15 percent of prominent accounts on those seven platforms had previously been banished from others like Twitter and Facebook.Apps like Gettr market themselves as alternatives to Big Tech.Elijah Nouvelage/Getty ImagesNearly two-thirds of the users of those platforms said they had found a community of people who share their views, according to the survey. A majority are Republicans or lean Republican.A result of this atomization of social media sources is to reinforce the partisan information bubbles within which millions of Americans live.At least 6 percent of Americans now regularly get news from at least one of these relatively new sites, which often “highlight non-mainstream world views and sometimes offensive language,” according to Pew. One in 10 posts on these platforms that mentioned L.G.B.T.Q. issues involved derisive allegations, the survey found.These new sites are still marginal compared with the bigger platforms; Mr. Trump, for example, has four million followers on Truth Social, compared with 88 million when Twitter kicked him off in 2021.Even so, Mr. Trump has increasingly resumed posting with the vigor he once showed on Twitter. The F.B.I. raid on Mar-a-Lago thrust his latest pronouncements into the eye of the political storm once again.For the major platforms, the financial incentive to attract users — and their clicks — remains powerful and could undo the steps they took in 2021. There is also an ideological component. The emotionally laced appeal to individual liberty in part drove Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter, which appears to have been revived after months of legal maneuvering.Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, even suggested recently that the platform might reinstate Mr. Trump’s account in 2023 — ahead of what could be another presidential run. Facebook had previously said it would do so only “if the risk to public safety has receded.”Nick Clegg, Meta’s president for global affairs.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA study of Truth Social by Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media monitoring group, examined how the platform had become a home for some of the most fringe conspiracy theories. Mr. Trump, who began posting on the platform in April, has increasingly amplified content from QAnon, the online conspiracy theory.He has shared posts from QAnon accounts more than 130 times. QAnon believers promote a vast and complex falsehood that centers on Mr. Trump as a leader battling a cabal of Democratic Party pedophiles. Echoes of such views reverberated through Republican election campaigns across the country during this year’s primaries.Ms. Jankowicz, the disinformation expert, said the nation’s social and political divisions had churned the waves of disinformation.The controversies over how best to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic deepened distrust of government and medical experts, especially among conservatives. Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election led to, but did not end with, the Capitol Hill violence.“They should have brought us together,” Ms. Jankowicz said, referring to the pandemic and the riots. “I thought perhaps they could be kind of this convening power, but they were not.” More

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      Twitter and TikTok Lead in Amplifying Misinformation, Report Finds

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      A new analysis found that algorithms and some features of social media sites help false posts go viral.It is well known that social media amplifies misinformation and other harmful content. The Integrity Institute, an advocacy group, is now trying to measure exactly how much — and on Thursday it began publishing results that it plans to update each week through the midterm elections on Nov. 8.The institute’s initial report, posted online, found that a “well-crafted lie” will get more engagements than typical, truthful content and that some features of social media sites and their algorithms contribute to the spread of misinformation.Twitter, the analysis showed, has what the institute called the great misinformation amplification factor, in large part because of its feature allowing people to share, or “retweet,” posts easily. It was followed by TikTok, the Chinese-owned video site, which uses machine-learning models to predict engagement and make recommendations to users.“We see a difference for each platform because each platform has different mechanisms for virality on it,” said Jeff Allen, a former integrity officer at Facebook and a founder and the chief research officer at the Integrity Institute. “The more mechanisms there are for virality on the platform, the more we see misinformation getting additional distribution.”The institute calculated its findings by comparing posts that members of the International Fact-Checking Network have identified as false with the engagement of previous posts that were not flagged from the same accounts. It analyzed nearly 600 fact-checked posts in September on a variety of subjects, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the upcoming elections.Facebook, according to the sample that the institute has studied so far, had the most instances of misinformation but amplified such claims to a lesser degree, in part because sharing posts requires more steps. But some of its newer features are more prone to amplify misinformation, the institute found.Facebook’s amplification factor of video content alone is closer to TikTok’s, the institute found. That’s because the platform’s Reels and Facebook Watch, which are video features, “both rely heavily on algorithmic content recommendations” based on engagements, according to the institute’s calculations.Instagram, which like Facebook is owned by Meta, had the lowest amplification rate. There was not yet sufficient data to make a statistically significant estimate for YouTube, according to the institute.The institute plans to update its findings to track how the amplification fluctuates, especially as the midterm elections near. Misinformation, the institute’s report said, is much more likely to be shared than merely factual content.“Amplification of misinformation can rise around critical events if misinformation narratives take hold,” the report said. “It can also fall, if platforms implement design changes around the event that reduce the spread of misinformation.” More