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The Ministry of Made-Up Pages: Yemen-Based Actors Impersonate Government Agencies to Spread Anti-Houthi Content
Blog / August 6, 2020
We analyzed a now-suspended network of Facebook Pages, Groups, and profiles linked to individuals in Yemen. We found accounts that impersonated government ministries in Saudi Arabia, posts that...
Two Faces of Russian Information Operations: Coronavirus Coverage in Spanish
Blog / July 30, 2020
RT en Español leaves coronavirus-related disinformation to other sites in the Russia-aligned information space.
Announcing the Election Integrity Partnership
News / July 27, 2020
A new partnership with Stanford Internet Observatory, the Program on Democracy and the Internet, DFRLab, Graphika and the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public will tackle...
New White Paper on China's Full-Spectrum Information Operations
Blog / July 20, 2020
The white paper, in collaboration with the Hoover Institution, dives into China’s capabilities and raises an important question: how do states with full-spectrum propaganda capabilities put them to...
Suicide prevention content in multiple languages on major platforms
Blog / July 16, 2020
Google, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram feature suicide prevention resources on English language searches in the US, but are those resources available to a broader audience? Performance varies across...
Q&A: The Data Delusion
Q&A / July 13, 2020
Protecting Individual Isn't Enough When the Harm is Collective. A Q&A with Marietje Schaake and Martin Tisne on his new paper The Data Delusion.
Comparing Platform Hate Speech Policies: Reddit's Inevitable Evolution
Blog / July 8, 2020
On Monday, June 30, 2020, Reddit updated its policy on hate speech. As part of research for a forthcoming book based on the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Trust and Safety Engineering course, we...
Virality Project: Saudi Arabia State Media and COVID-19
Blog / June 24, 2020
COVID-19 has directly or indirectly affected every country, providing an opportunity for comparative analysis of the ways governments use the pandemic to pursue political objectives. SIO has been conducting case studies investigating how various state media apparatuses are responding to the crisis, and the political dimensions of coronavirus misinformation around the world. Here we focus on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, investigating how its state media (and media formally or informally linked to the ruling royal family) have discussed the pandemic.
Dispatches from the June 2020 Twitter Inauthentic Activity Takedown
Blog / June 18, 2020
On June 12, 2020, Twitter removed 1,152 accounts attributed to Current Policy, “a media website engaging in state-backed political propaganda within Russia.” These accounts were taken down because...
Mask Diplomacy: Chinese Narratives in the COVID Era
Blog / June 16, 2020
China has been shipping medical supplies to countries battling the coronavirus pandemic, an effort dubbed “mask diplomacy.” It remains to be seen if China will be able to tailor its messages...
Analysis of June 2020 Twitter takedowns linked to China, Russia and Turkey
Blog / June 11, 2020
On June 3, 2020 Twitter shared with the Stanford Internet Observatory three distinct takedown datasets from China, Turkey and Russia. In this post and in the attached white papers on the China and...
Governments Aren’t Yet Serious About AI’s Risk to Human Rights
Blog / June 11, 2020
In the rush to develop national strategies on artificial intelligence, a new report finds, most governments pay lip service to civil liberties.
Virality Project (Russia): Penguins and Protests
Blog / June 9, 2020
As the coronavirus pandemic spread around the world, RT’s English-language branches worked to undermine lockdown measures in Western countries while extolling the Russian and Chinese governments’...
Digital Street Conflict
Blog / June 3, 2020
A survey of spam, state and covert activities in the U.S. during domestic unrest.
Online Misinformation about Vaccines
News / June 3, 2020
In the June 2020 Sabin-Aspen Vaccine Science Policy Report, "Meeting the Challenge of Vaccination Hesitancy," Stanford Internet Observatory research manager Renée DiResta and First Draft...
An Investigation into Domestic Nigerian Social Media Financial Scams
Blog / June 2, 2020
We identify hundreds of scam social media accounts across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok targeting individuals in Nigeria. These accounts post on compromised accounts claiming to...
Broad Consequences of a Systemic Duty of Care for Platforms
Blog / June 1, 2020
Alex Feerst, one of the great thinkers about Internet content moderation, has a revealing metaphor about the real-world work involved. “You might go into it thinking that online information flows are...
The Executive Order on Platforms and Online Speech
Commentary / June 1, 2020
On May 28th, President Trump signed an executive order threatening to revoke CDA 230 protections, which would expose social media companies to increased liability for content that is posted on their...
Our Democracy Depends on a Safe Election in November
News / May 26, 2020
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the effects could be potentially devastating to global democracy and the upcoming U.S. election. On the World Class podcast, Larry Diamond and Nathaniel Persily...
Virality Project (US): Marketing meets Misinformation
Blog / May 26, 2020
Plandemic was one step in a larger process to raise the profile of its subject. SIO had begun to observe an increasing number of posts about Plandemic’s subject, Judy Mikovits, beginning on April 16. For two and a half weeks, we observed a series of cross-platform moments in which Judy Mikovits – a scientist whose work was retracted by journal editors – was recast as an expert whistleblower exposing a vast government cover-up.
Launching the SIO Virality Project
Blog / May 21, 2020
The Stanford Internet Observatory's Virality Project is a new global study aimed at understanding disinformation dynamics specific to the COVID-19 crisis. As the pandemic became the primary...
Poland Presidential Election 2020: Disinformation Strikes the Military
Blog / May 8, 2020
Amid increasing political turmoil and a potential constitutional crisis, Poland was recently targeted by an elaborate disinformation operation. We studied the tactics used by the attackers and...
Coordinated behavior across 18 pro-Saif Gaddafi Facebook Pages
Blog / April 27, 2020
A cluster of pro-Saif Gaddafi Facebook Pages suspended for inauthentic behavior worked to create the impression that Saif has broad support among Libyans, and tried to undermine the recognized...
Stanford Internet Observatory launches attribution.news with First Draft
Blog / April 20, 2020
Attribution.news provides journalists with tools to effectively cover the origins of both cyber incidents and information operations online. It unpacks some of these complexities through case studies...
Poland Presidential Election 2020: The Pandemic Sows Chaos
Blog / April 10, 2020
With a month to go until the planned election date, neither the final date of the election nor the mechanism for voting has been established. To comply with social distancing, the campaign has moved...