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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum
, 3 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
"Influence operations exploit divisions in our society using vulnerabilities in our information ecosystem. We have to move away from treating this as a problem of giving people better facts, or stopping some Russian bots..." ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the…
"and move towards thinking about it as an ongoing battle for the integrity of our information infrastructure – easily as critical as the integrity of our financial markets."
"If algorithmic amplification continues to privilege the propagandists most effective at gaming the system...if hostile state intelligence services remain able to recruit millions of Americans into fake “communities”, the norms that have protected democratic societies will fail."
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Missed this: Renowned curator, respected art historian and the brains behind a series of popular exhibitions was fired from the Polish National Museum before Christmas. Reason? He is more talented than the new director, a political appointee.... warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/7,544…
Joins the ranks of excellent Polish ambassadors and patriotic civil servants who have lost jobs because the far-right Polish ruling party prefers spineless loyalists, fears talent, and cares more about party than country.
and yes, if you want to see this as an allusion to what is going on in Washington, I won't stop you
Read 3 tweets
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Significant victory for the European Union, and for European values. The Polish government has been forced to obey Poland's constitution nyti.ms/2Goyqek
Important to note that the majority of Poles supported the EU on this issue too
Also important to note that there is a lot more damage to undo
Read 3 tweets
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Note to headline writers: It is incorrect to describe the Central European University as "Soros's University," just as it would be incorrect to talk about "Eli Yale's University." Soros donated the original founding money, but the university is independent
Viktor Orban has focused on the CEU's Soros connection because this is a political game, in which he can symbolically win a victory against a foreign, Jewish banker. There is no other purpose to this entire incident.
Or rather: the only other purpose is to intimidate other Hungarian academics and intellectuals. Now they know that if they don't toe the government line, they risk expulsion too.
Read 3 tweets

Related threads

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1) Excellent to see more MPs starting to see sense and listening to women. @MariaMillerUK has been a staunch proponent of Sex Self-ID and is now recommending a move away from GRA reform to refocus on services for people with gender dysphoria. huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/transgen…
2) It was Millers own select committee that pushed GRA reform back in 2015. She is now realising what a hugely unpopular and unworkable policy idea this has been. It's bad law that's bad for women & does nothing to make the lives of trans people better. thetimes.co.uk/article/how-do…
3) This crack pot idea should have been squashed back in 2015. It was not thought through and women's concerns were actively ignored by the @WomenEqualities committee. Lessons must be learned from the mishandling of trans issues by the government.
Read 12 tweets
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i want to tell a story about @Yelp. this will be a thread.
so, i am the owner of a small gift boutique in a tourist town in california. the business has been there for almost 20 years; it's historically been part of a cluster of different businesses (restaurant, gas station, shops) on the same property that all share the same address.
the town where i live is subject to periodic road closures due to landslides. there is only one road in and out of town, highway 1. in february 2017, earth movement undermined a small bridge & forced the complete closure of the road there to demolish and rebuild the bridge.
Read 28 tweets
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The purpose of deliberate misinformation is to exploit existing divisions in a society, to confuse the public so that it cannot tell who’s good and who’s bad. When that happens people believe almost anything as much as they can believe nothing, and eventually believe in nothing.
A deeply divided society destroys itself. Firstly through an inability to hold an ethical centre on public matters to eventually having no consensus on accountability. The result is chaos, anarchy where those who are best able to charm the masses, often with...
Bold lies told repeatedly, whataboutism when matters of ethics and values arise - rise and rule. Secondly it is by deepening divisions, pointing fingers at “enemies of the people ”, often without evidence. The purpose is always to keep society in a state of disequilibrium
Read 5 tweets
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1. Okay going to debunk some of the talking points and bubblethink in the media today about the blue wave being real. For this, I'm going to use this article from Breitbart which lists the 5 biggest groupthink ideas.

breitbart.com/big-government…
2. First, the writer gets it wrong right out of the box by calling OH12 a primary election. It wasn't. It was a special election. There were primary elections in 4 other states last night but OH12 wasn't one of them.
3. This may seem like nitpicking but it isn't. There is a big difference between primaries and special elections and both gives different lessons about the current thinking of voters.
Read 30 tweets
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1/ I had the opportunity to participate in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on social media influence operations today, in which social media researchers spoke to the SSCI about the ongoing, evolving threat of computational propaganda. c-span.org/video/?449088-…
2/ This is one of the defining threats of our generation. Influence Operations exploit divisions in our society using vulnerabilities in our information ecosystem. They take advantage of our belief in free speech and free flow of ideas. This is not a partisan issue.
3/ Hearing had remarkable timing, coming after @Facebook’s announcement yest that they'd uncovered more IRA pages in cooperation w/@DFRLab. That spoke to both the necessity of collaboration, and the persistent, ongoing nature of the threat. Also, to the evolution of the threat…
Read 13 tweets
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hearing—"#China's Worldwide #Military Expansion" is a dramatic bellwether of growing concerns in Washington & beyond.

Now online—hard-hitting arguments + many data points, some deeply-analyzed yet hard to find elsewhere in public domain:
bit.ly/HouseIC
CAPT Jim Fanell, USN Ret, former @USPacificFleet N2:

"today, the PLA Navy consists of over 330 surface ships & 66 submarines, nearly 400 combatants. As of 4 May 2018, the @USNavy consists of 283 battle force ships: 211 surface ships and 72 submarines."
bit.ly/HouseIC
"By 2030, it is estimated [by Fanell & @SCheneyPeters in their chapter in @NavalWarCollege @ChinaMaritime Studies Institute's Chinese Naval Shipbuilding volume amazon.com/Chinese-Naval-… @USNIBooks that] the PLANavy will consist of some 550 ships: 450 surface ships & 99 submarines."
Read 71 tweets

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