Posted on Categories News & Comment

PBC News & Comment: Growing Hysteria Over Propaganda, Fake News and Bots

Detailed but far-fetched Politico report says #releasethememo tweets were “fueled by, and likely originated from, computational propaganda” from Russia….–read the Politico story here

–Brendan Nyhan at NY Times offers compelling evidence that misinfo and disinfo don’t really change people’s minds

–and WashPost, big promoter of Russian online influence, reports that most of the tweets attributed to “Russian” accounts used American news sources

–my recent Facebook post about Schnauzers led to conflict that didn’t need or involve Russians

–The Intercept goes deep on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, exposing what we already knew about him https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/

–also at The Intercept, Ryan Grim explains why Trump refused to meet with Rep. Rohrabacher to get WikiLeaks’ info on 2016 emails it published

–in in-depth interview with reporter Darwin BondGraham, we learn the FBI playbook on domestic threats, at least Muslim ones

–school shooter in Florida was known to FBI after tip that would’ve gone ballistic if he’d been Muslim, white nationalists say Nikolas Cruz hung out with them

–other anomalies surface, like a practice drill at the school and widespread knowledge of shooter’s instability