Notices by Renee DiResta (noupside@saturation.social)

kakistocracy, noun

The 2024 Freedom on the Net report is out. It includes analysis of generative AI in elections globally, and actual attempts at censorship around elections — ie, governments using their power to silence dissidents, or parties manipulating the info space

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2024/struggle-trust-online

“I saw people on television talking about it”

As RFK Jr prepares to “”address the nation”” today, I hope media who cover the pseudoevent note that he put out a 10 min video on Instagram yesterday articulating the long-standing anti-vax talking points that he downplayed for broader appeal: stuff about the “package inserts”, “no safe vaccines”, “the schedule”, & the “right to choose” whether to vaccinate your kids against polio. This is what his run has always been about. He is gunning for a Trump CDC or HHS appointee role to “fix” vaccines.

Anyone familiar with longstanding antivax tropes will recognize all this immediately. “Package inserts”, in antivax land, supposedly reveal all of the terrible side effects and evil ingredients. Doctors are keeping this from you because they are BOUGHT!!! Except all this info is available online, you can ask the doctor for it, and every medication on the market has disclosures like this. A possible side effect is not a frequent side or even a bad side effect. Just pure paranoid innumeracy.

I wrote a book about how this works! Buy it for your parents…

@wfryer thank you! I really don’t know what to do about Twitter at this point. It’s a tough call bc the attacks are vicious and impactful at times. Building up community elsewhere is also very important.

“Plaintiffs Lack Standing to Sue Over Government Jawboning When Their Evidence is Based on Vibes–Murthy v. Missouri”

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2024/06/plaintiffs-lack-standing-to-sue-over-government-jawboning-when-their-evidence-is-based-on-vibes-murthy-v-missouri.htm

“This anti-accountability movement brought to mind the horrible abuse heaped upon the Stanford Internet Observatory, which has had to retrench its research efforts because the MAGA movement branded it as part of the “censorship industrial complex.” Knocking SIO out of the accountability industry might cheer the MAGA base, but the House Republicans’ role in targeting SIO is actually a way worse form of censorship than anything the Biden Administration allegedly did in this case.”

My Wikipedia bio got locked down, so the next front is brigading Amazon. This Twitter Files superfan explicitly called for 1-⭐️ reviews - and his followers delivered. Some left bad reviews, others upvoted them 80+ times. “Dunk on DiResta" — her allies at Langley are controlling the narrative! (Also dunk on Fauci while you're at it.)

This is the asymmetry of passion in action... these groups enthusiastically brigade their enemies while it's v hard to get normal folks to counterspeak or act

Threat intelligence indicators also released by Meta suggest that not all companies are acting to intervene.

So in the above piece for MIT Technology Review, we point out why disclosures matter, and why data sharing is key.

I’m also going to re-up this one from earlier in the week, which was an SIO analysis of threat indicators from late last year - some platforms were slow to act.

https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/how-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-continues-social-platforms

“A SPECTER IS HAUNTING right-wing dissident Substackers—the specter of Renée DiResta.”

My book is reviewed in The Bulwark today — and it’s a very entertaining read! 😊

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/influencers-bullshitters-losing-shared-reality

Last week was the 1st disclosure from OpenAI confirming that state-linked actors were using their tools for influence operations —something that’s always been a question of when, not if, if it would happen.

But we also got a disclosure from Meta, incl some of the same ops — bc after you create content you have to spread it. Theirs showed that this time, it got no pickup…

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/08/1093356/propagandists-are-using-ai-too-and-companies-need-to-be-open-about-it/

New work on SIO blog: “How Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Continues on Social Platforms”

We looked at threat indicators that Meta posted in its Q3 2023 transparency report (attributed to 🇨🇳 , 🇷🇺 , & 🇮🇷 ), noticed that some platforms had not taken down attributed accounts, found more accounts that appeared to be linked, and followed to see what happened.

https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/how-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-continues-social-platforms

I feel like I hit some age, maybe 35, where forever after every minor cold has turned into some kind of long-lasting infection. My kids are better in two days, and I suffer for two weeks.

🧵 I wrote ab the “is Signal secure?” manufactroversy on X. The Guardian wanted an explainer on why Elon & Jack were “concerned” about Signal. The answer, though, has nothing to do w/Signal’s product. It was part of an extended fight over whether woke NPR should be defunded & the CEO fired. Why? Because the CEO of NPR is on the board of Signal; by the Transitive Property of Bad People, Signal is thus compromised.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/18/npr-elon-musk-signal

Last week Twitter Files substack blogger Paul Thacker was back in my inbox, wanting to speak to the manager. Paul, if you didn’t send me stupid emails, I wouldn’t post them to the internet.

Here are excerpts from the latest bad faith media inquiry from the Bullshit Industrial Complex, shared to explain how it works. This man -a notorious hack- claimed to have “whistleblower” docs showing that I secretly ran election interference ops, particularly for the U.S. Dept of Defense.

This is a lie.

Often it’s a waste of time to respond to bad faith inquiries, but the bullshit industrial complex relies on non-response to say “DiResta declined to respond!” &create impression of guilt. Then comes innuendo: Thacker claims a company I left in early 2019 had sketchy DoD contracts & is implying I did too. Whether they did, whether I had anything to do with it, is irrelevant – the MO is to state two things and let the audience intuit the connection they want to believe.

So here was my response

I used to reference chemtrails in 2015-era talks as one of those conspiracy theories that were prevalent in online fringe groups but which largely stayed confined to niche communities…and now these sorts of things are popping up *and passing* in state legislatures https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/04/05/minnesota-republicans-introduce-legislation-inspired-by-the-chemtrails-conspiracy-theory/

Apply! This is a really fun program (I gave a talk last summer, and really loved seeing all the participant projects) and prob right up the alley of a lot of people on Mastodon.

https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/cfa-summer-of-protocols-2024