Welcome to the information blender

From: POLITICO's Digital Future Daily - Wednesday Oct 11,2023 08:02 pm
How the next wave of technology is upending the global economy and its power structures
Oct 11, 2023 View in browser
 
POLITICO's Digital Future Daily newsletter logo

By Ben Schreckinger

With help from Derek Robertson

Palestinians inspect damage to their homes caused by Israeli airstrikes.

Palestinians inspect damage to their homes caused by Israeli airstrikes on October 10, 2023 in Gaza City, Gaza. | Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

Seemingly from the first moments that members of Hamas began their attacks over the weekend, murdering and kidnapping hundreds of Israeli civilians, the internet erupted into a state of informational chaos.

Different posts and platforms offered competing versions of what was happening on the ground. Horrific images and videos proliferated. Seemingly authoritative sources disagreed about what happened and who was responsible.

The CEO of one Israeli social media monitoring company told POLITICO’s Joseph Gedeon that the conflict has generated three to four times more online disinformation than any other event his firm has encountered.

Much of that content is proliferating on Elon Musk’s X, formerly called Twitter, which has loosened content restrictions and cut resources used to police the platform since the mogul took it over last year. In Europe, where expression is more tightly regulated than in the U.S. and where Musk could face fines of up to 6 percent of X's revenue, authorities have already sprung into action. Today, as POLITICO’s Mark Scott reports, The U.K.’s online content regulator is set to meet with social media companies about the conflict, while the European Commission has given Musk 24 hours to clean up graphic videos and disinformation linked to the attacks or face possible fines.

On Monday, the Information reported that the company had recently stopped using software it previously employed to track coordinated information campaigns being conducted on its platform.

Former employees panned the platform’s performance. “X has failed miserably at the basic job Twitter used to excel at — keeping people informed,” the platform’s former vice president for global communications, Brandon Borrman told DFD. “If they were looking to build the world's most efficient market for misinformation, it seems they succeeded.”

“All of these wounds are self-inflicted,” said Nu Wexler, who previously headed up policy communications for Twitter in Washington. Wexler said cuts to the platform’s trust and safety team and the advent of paid verification are contributing to the confusion on the platform and across the internet.

On Monday, the company touted its moderation approach in a post, saying it was taking additional steps to remove hateful content and encouraging users to add context to controversial posts through its "community notes" feature.

But the confusion of the past few days goes far beyond Twitter, and offers a glimpse of something bigger, and perhaps more unsettling, about how the most momentous and contentious global political events could play out from now on.

Though "truth is the first casualty of war” is a hoary maxim by now, the online media environment has gotten ever-more-freewheeling in recent years, giving more of the public more direct exposure to the rumors, lies and graphic violence that come with conflict.

Whatever its flaws, Twitter also now finds itself at the center of an ever-more-freewheeling information environment in which even authoritative sources can push out their own misinfo, whether on purpose or by mistake.

At the U.S. State Department, both the Office of Palestinian Affairs and Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued tweets that seemed to call on Israel not to retaliate, before deleting them. In Blinken’s case, he reissued a new tweet that removed language supporting a ceasefire.

Conflicting reports have also emerged about several details of the attack. Some sources, including Sen. Ted Cruz and President Joe Biden have referenced claims that Hamas members raped some of their victims; But questions about the veracity of the claim remain: the Los Angeles Times retracted a mention of the alleged rapes from a column yesterday, saying the reports were unsubstantiated.

The Israel Defense Forces, the country’s military, has relayed an account from one of its soldiers who reported finding babies decapitated by Hamas. That claim has spread widely and encountered skepticism, but an IDF spokesperson told Insider it does not plan to seek further corroboration for the claim.

The precise role of Iran’s government has also been a subject of debate and confusion. Many politicians freely blamed Iran or U.S. Iran policy in the immediate aftermath of the attack, and The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, a militant group backed by Iran, reported over the weekend that Iranian officials approved and helped plan Saturday’s attack. The Washington Post, citing unnamed former intelligence officials, reported Monday that “Iranian allies” provided support for the attack.

But ABC News reported that Israeli officials have “backtracked” from their own initial public statements implicating Iran in the attack, and the Times, citing unnamed American officials, has said the U.S. has intelligence indicating the attack took Iranian officials by surprise. At the moment, internet users can find reports, many of them seemingly conflicting with other reports, to support a range of stories about Iran's relationship to the attack.

As for threatening posts, look no further than the government of Turkey. Its deputy education minister, Nazif Yilmaz tweeted “You will die” at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday.

So, it comes as no surprise that there are calls for X and other platforms to impose more restrictions. But it's not at all clear how they will solve the larger problem.

When it comes to policing the most sensitive conflict-related content, Shannon Raj Singh, a former human rights counsel at Twitter, said platforms should look to existing legal frameworks that govern the ways governments deal with conflict-related media as guideposts for developing content policies. The Geneva Convention, for example, binds signatories to protect prisoners of war from “insults and public curiosity,” which is sometimes interpreted to prohibit the dissemination of most images of POWs. It also bans the “humiliating and degrading treatment” of hostages, a prohibition that’s become especially relevant in the middle of what is perhaps the biggest hostage crisis of the social media era.

“On the platform side, these are really tough decisions because some of the content is being shared to raise awareness of crisis situations,” Singh said. “When you have these tough decisions it's all the more reason for platforms to look to existing international legal frameworks to ground their content moderation policies.”

Rebecca Kern contributed to this report.

 

GO INSIDE THE CAPITOL DOME: From the outset, POLITICO has been your eyes and ears on Capitol Hill, providing the most thorough Congress coverage — from political characters and emerging leaders to leadership squabbles and policy nuggets during committee markups and hearings. We're stepping up our game to ensure you’re fully informed on every key detail inside the Capitol Dome, all day, every day. Start your day with Playbook AM, refuel at midday with our Playbook PM halftime report and enrich your evening discussions with Huddle. Plus, stay updated with real-time buzz all day through our brand new Inside Congress Live feature. Learn more and subscribe here.

 
 
the next wave of u.k. ai policy

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 22: A close-up image of a pin badge bearing the logo for the Labour Party for sale at the Labour Party Conference on September 22, 2014 in Manchester, England. The four-day annual Labour Party Conference takes place in Manchester and is expected to attract thousands of delegates with keynote speeches from influential politicians and over 500 fringe events. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

The Labour Party logo on a pin. | Getty Images

The United Kingdom’s current prime minister might be trying to stake his leadership on AI, but the likely successor government is waiting in the wings.

POLITICO’s Morning Tech UK reported this morning on the tightrope Labour Party leaders are walking as they establish an AI political platform, trying to protect workers while allowing enough room for the nascent industry to grow. Case in point: Just minutes after one Labour official gave pro-business remarks at the party’s conference Monday, that same conference passed a motion from a communication workers union that said AI might violate “basic human rights” and abet “rampant profiteering.”

Still, most are optimistic that there’s enough wiggle room to keep everybody happy. “It’s not worth worrying about that,” one policy officer told Morning Tech UK when asked if she worried Labour might sacrifice worker protections to gain support from the tech sector. “We don’t think there is as much opposition from industry to regulation as one might anticipate.” — Derek Robertson

today's politico tech

One digital policy expert is arguing that Hamas uses social media as a key tool for its terrorism.

On today’s POLITICO Tech podcast Steven Overly interviewed Graham Brookie, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and former White House aide on national security. He has been tracking the graphic documentation Hamas uploaded of its attacks and he warns that a flood of even more violent imagery might be coming.

“A group like Hamas has, unfortunately, a lot of experience in creating this content. And they know that it needs to be an important part of their strategy to produce, essentially, terror propaganda,” he said. — Derek Robertson

To listen to daily interviews with tech leaders, subscribe to POLITICO Tech on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tweet of the Day

Oh so being an e commerce hustle guy is illegal now???

THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS

Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger (bschreckinger@politico.com); Derek Robertson (drobertson@politico.com); Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@politico.com); Steve Heuser (sheuser@politico.com); Nate Robson (nrobson@politico.com) and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@politico.com).

If you’ve had this newsletter forwarded to you, you can sign up and read our mission statement at the links provided.

 

Enter the “room where it happens”, where global power players shape policy and politics, with Power Play. POLITICO’s brand-new podcast will host conversations with the leaders and power players shaping the biggest ideas and driving the global conversations, moderated by award-winning journalist Anne McElvoy. Sign up today to be notified of new episodes – click here.

 
 
 

Follow us on Twitter

Ben Schreckinger @SchreckReports

Derek Robertson @afternoondelete

Steve Heuser @sfheuser

 

Follow us

Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram Listen on Apple Podcast
 

To change your alert settings, please log in at https://www.politico.com/_login?base=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com/settings

This email was sent to by: POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA

Please click here and follow the steps to .

More emails from POLITICO's Digital Future Daily

Oct 10,2023 08:15 pm - Tuesday

We just saw the future of war

Oct 06,2023 08:02 pm - Friday

5 questions for Google's Yasmin Green

Oct 04,2023 08:02 pm - Wednesday

AI is now powering your snacks

Oct 03,2023 08:20 pm - Tuesday

Checking in on the quantum hype

Oct 02,2023 08:21 pm - Monday

Trust-busters come for AI's building blocks

Sep 29,2023 08:01 pm - Friday

5 Questions for James Pethokoukis