No, the Muslims praying in this video aren’t ignoring the coronavirus lockdown. It’s far-right fake news

March 26, 2020 Article

A viral and misleading tweet which attempted to portray a group of Muslims in Wembley, north-west London, ignoring government advice on social distancing during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, has drawn wide condemnation and reports concerning its breach of Twitter’s hateful conduct policies.

The tweet, which appeared on the platform at 9:43 am on March 25 from a far-right account (which also promotes antisemitic and Islamophobic conspiracies, including the far-right obsessive interest in the obscure concept of taqiyya) has gained over sixteen-hundred retweets as of writing.

The tweet tried to claim that the Muslims were ‘arrogantly’ ignoring medical advice. But after researching the origins of the video, after several members of the public reported the tweet to our service, Tell MAMA can confirm, with a high degree of confidence, that the video is several weeks old, a version of which appeared on Facebook on March 3. Photographs, however, uploaded to the platform on February 28, shared in a negative review of Wembley Central Masjid, from a Muslim man, had lamented how the mosque had been closed for six weeks (over an internal dispute), adding that Friday (Jummah) prayers had to take place on a pavement in the rain.

Six days before the viral anti-Muslim and Islamophobic tweet from the @FormerWorshiper account, the mosque had announced on Facebook that it had suspended all congregational services and activities, reflecting the updated governmental advice regarding the coronavirus pandemic.

Credit:Facebook/WembleyCentralMasjidOfficial

Tell MAMA urged users to report the inflammatory tweet yesterday afternoon.

Others have done the same, writing, “FAKE. It hasn’t rained in London in days. Also, look at this racist’s timeline and report it.”

Various Twitter users also highlighted the lack of rain in London (as the video was filmed during in rainy conditions), and condemned its deliberate stoking of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic tensions.

Some were taken in or emboldened by the propaganda, writing, “How about they are arrested & deported for breaking the curfew!!! Remind me, who rules Britain?!!!”. Others called for the police to disperse an event which had occurred weeks prior, as one user even responded that the army should intervene. More ideologically motivated accounts added that Islam should be banned.

Several far-right channels on the encrypted messaging app Telegram would share a GIF of the video, including Britain First, hours later, gaining several thousand views.

We have urged Twitter to revise its policies and allow users to report tweets designed to mislead that stoke racial and religious hatred. And make that request again.

In an effort to promote social media and internet research skills, we have released an educational video for communities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Categories: Fake News, News

Katie Hopkins: the viral power of an anti-Muslim falsehood on Twitter

February 24, 2020 Article

A viral tweet from the far-right commentator Katie Hopkins further demonstrates the need for Twitter to allow users to report content designed to deceive and pass as news.

Hopkins, was, for a brief time, suspended from Twitter for breaching its hateful conduct policies, but the ban was temporary.

The tweet, posted at 9:31 pm on February 23, begins, “Beautiful Indian lady punched in the face by Muslim man in racist attack in Birmingham.”

Credit: Twitter.

Hopkins then offers a partial unattributed quote from Meera Solanki (the woman assaulted), who described how the man, described as Asian in police reports, approached them during dinner, as he “seemed to have a problem with me being an Indian girl with a multi-racial group of friends”.

Ms Solanki was punched and briefly knocked unconscious after attempting to stop the same man from directing his anti-Chinese racism towards her friend Mandy Huang. This individual had followed the women after they had left the restaurant and made comments towards Ms Huang like “take your f****** Coronavirus and take it back home“ and referred to her as a “dirty c***k”.

Katie Hopkins, of course, provides no evidence to show this perpetrator is Muslim, but her use of the hashtag ‘#LittePakistan’ serves two distinct and revealing functions: it racialises and stereotypes that Muslims in Birmingham are Pakistani (despite 8,681 British-Indians in Birmingham self-identifying as Muslim in the 2011 Census); and, from an ideological position, seeks to foster divisions between Indian and Pakistani communities, given her pro-Modi posturings last year regarding Kashmir. She appeared outside of the United Nations in Geneva with David Vance according to an interview with ANI News last September. Some, however, have questioned the veracity of Hopkins claim of speaking inside of the UN building.

Academics have documented, more broadly, how at around the same time, the European far-right had made solidarity visits to Kashmir, even after foreign journalists and politicians had been denied entry, following the scrapping of Article 370, which stripped the state of Jammu and Kashmir of its relative political autonomy, forcing it to abide by the Indian constitution.

This example of racialising Muslims, functions through the deliberate blurring of Asian and Pakistani communities, despite not all Pakistanis identifying as Muslim. In Birmingham alone, just over 6 per cent of British-Pakistanis self-identified with other religions (as 7,177 chose not to state their religion), including 597 Christians, 441 Sikhs, and 213 Hindus in the 2011 Census.

Credit: Nomis.

Racialisation, for other academics, concerns the process of identifying and stereotyping groups through cultural identifiers like religion and comes with spatial and geographic significance for discriminated groups. The idea of racialisation also “relies upon asserted inherentisms, and it reinforces cultural hierarchies and privilege.” Others argue that racialisation impacts Muslim men and women in gendered ways, as “Men are more likely to be viewed as if they are disloyal and a threat to national security.” Whereas for Muslim women, they argue, the hijab is ‘othered’ as a cultural oddity or threat, raising questions about national identity and loyalty. Discrimination in housing in education creates the racialisation of geographical space

Other examples of anti-Chinese and anti-East Asian racism following the coronavirus outbreak have included physical acts of violence, racial bullying in schools, discrimination (on public transport and in places of work), and microaggressions where individuals have moved away from them on public transport. Several universities have issued press releases condemning racism against their students.

A spokesperson for the Birmingham Chinese society has stated that abuse has always existed but some were using the virus as a pretext for racial harassment, abuse, and violence.

She explained: “We wear masks to protect others from our coughs and sneezes. Some wear them as protection against pollution. Some women wear them because they don’t want to be seen without make-up. We do it to protect others, not ourselves.”

Anyone with information about this ssault is urged to contact West Midlands Police by quoting the crime reference number 20BW/39330Q/20 if you have information about the assault by calling 101 anytime, or by using their Live Chat function (8 am to midnight).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Categories: Fake News, Katie Hopkins, News

Why Tommy Robinson and others on the far-right seek out celebrity ‘endorsements’

May 7, 2019 Article

Ederson Moraes, the Manchester City goalkeeper, rejection of the views of the far-right extremist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) points to a wider and odd cultural phenomenon: how far-right figures seek out and exploit the legitimacy from mainstream celebrity figures, in opposition to the “corrupt” political establishment, in the hope of boosting their “authenticity” to an imagined and homogeneous view of working-class communities.

Some academics have diagnosed this phenomenon as a form of “entrepreneurial populism”, which, exists in a paradox: where a person running in opposition to the establishment, does not need to be trustworthy, or even demonstrate a strong moral core, due to the apparent “corruption” of their political opposition.

To “play a system whose institutions one does not trust but whose ideals and intentions are still trusted,” the untrustworthy are granted a degree of trust.

It’s within this framework that Yaxley-Lennon has morphed from a “journalist” into an Independent candidate in the upcoming European Elections.

But the tactic is nothing new.

In the embryonic months of the English Defence League, Yaxley-Lennon posed for a photograph with the media personality, Katie Price in 2010. In October 2010, in response to the photo circulating on social media, Ms Price tweeted: “that’s the trouble when I do pics I don’t know where they end up NO I don’t support such group report it.”

A year later, the disgraced former footballer, Joey Barton, then of Queens Park Rangers, was photographed with Yaxley-Lennon, and the photo soon appeared on the EDL’s Facebook page, with the caption, “Joey Barton joins the EDL”. Barton, like Price, used social media to deny any links to the group.

The EDL did enjoy some broad sympathy and support, but a clear majority were put off by their propensity for street violence. Its appeal, therefore, had hit a glass ceiling, given how many saw it as an innately Islamophobic, racist, and violent movement.

This decline, which owes to the mainstreaming of such ideological talking points, is also a product of what academics argue is the “reputational shields hypothesis.” In a broader sense, within this framework, political parties like the British National Party, could not reject accusations of racism and extremism, since their history provided “no evidence to support such a contention.” It’s why the EDL tried and often failed to appeal to religious minorities, like the Jewish and Sikh communities.

Its leadership, however, had bigger aspirations. Hence Robinson’s “rejection” of the movement he founded via the Quilliam Foundation, to his pivot towards the leadership of Pegida UK, demonstrate how Robinson, who remained unapologetic, never considered himself in need of ‘de-radicalisation’, as he saw himself as “correct” all along.

Yaxley-Lennon has even used his Telegram account to suggest that he has a “Muslim supporter” under the hashtag “#VoteTommy”, which runs counter to his history of Islamophobia and criminal convictions.

Credit: Telegram

In a further example of abstract “authenticity”, Yaxley-Lennon shared a meme of a milkshake with a burnt rasher of bacon inside, captioned with a lyric from the Kelis song “Milkshake”.

Credit: Telegram

A Muslim man who dowsed Yaxley-Lennon with one such milkshake has spoken of the death threats he has been sent since the video of the incident went viral.

Britain First, the street defence movement and far-right political party, has borrowed a similar tactic. In 2016, a photograph of the group’s leadership, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen with the BBC presenter Evan Davis, with the caption: “Paul and Jayda out campaigning today in London with Evan Davis, Britain First supporter and Dragons’ Den/Newsnight presenter!”.

Davis clarified on Twitter that he was asked to pose for a photograph with the individuals, unaware of their intentions or extreme political views.

The BBC’s former political editor, Nick Robinson, had posed for a photograph with Jayda Fransen, during the Rochester and Strood by-election in 2014, where she had gained just 56 votes, used the photograph to mask this failure and present a false example of mainstream credibility.

Robinson denied any affiliation to the group, writing: “I had no idea who this was. Asked for a selfie by someone I wrongly assumed was a worker at the count. My mistake,” despite Ms Fransen wearing a visible candidate badge.

Britain First gained its biggest endorsement (and free media attention) when Donald Trump retweeted their Twitter accounts in 2017.

 

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Categories: celebrity endorsements, Far Right groups, News, Tommy Robinson

Amazon “declines to comment” on Islamophobic t-shirt sold online

April 4, 2019 Article

The online retail giant Amazon has “declined to comment” to Tell MAMA after members of the public raised concerns about an Islamophobic t-shirt listed for sale on the website.

The custom t-shirt has the text “Religion of Peace My Ass” printed on the front and the description claims that the product is not Islamophobic in nature, and targets all religions, despite referring to religion as a singular, not plural.

Amazon first listed the product on February 19, 2019, and is “dispatched from and sold by Amazon.”

Amazon

Credit: Amazon.co.uk

The product also appears on custom t-shirt websites in the United States and Canada.

A product listing on the website Desert Cart, however, was more explicit: listing the product as an “Anti Islam” t-shirt.

The phraseology “Religion of Peace” has appeared several times in Tell MAMA data sets, with notable examples of hateful, snarling, and ironic forms of speech occurred on social media. For example, following the Islamophobic terror attack which killed 50 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, a Twitter user attempted to blame Muslims for the tragedy, “NZ was an answer to the massacre of an innocent Swedish girl and the raping of so many at Rotherham by members of the Religion of Peace.” Twitter removed this content following a report from Tell MAMA.

Credit: Twitter.

In more liberal spaces, however, the phraseology of this term finds acceptance in mainstream circles. Richard Dawkins, the famed evolutionary biologist, author, and atheist, is one such example of this. Between 2012 and 2015, he tweeted the phrase “Religion of Peace” fourteen times. The final example was of an image taken from a protest against the Islamophobic film “The Innocence of Muslims” which took place in Kolkata, India in October 2012, but Dawkins tweet captioned the decontextualised image: “Good to see young children taught the religion of peace. And look at those little faces, shining with sincerity” on July 22, 2015. This tweet alone gained over one thousand retweets.

Despite the degrees of difference in language, both examples are guilty of perpetuating harmful and dehumanising stereotypes about Islam and Muslims, with the latter gaining far more mainstream credence.

Nor are algorithms immune from such problems, as searches for terms like ‘Sharia’ took Google users to websites like thereligionofpeace.com, which purport to be neutral sources of information, but promote anti-Muslim conspiracy theories like ‘taqiyya’.

Amazon prohibits the sale of items “that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance” and reserves the right to remove such items from sale. Hence why Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) has his co-authored book on Islam removed from sale.

The company has removed other examples of Islamophobic items, but when Tell MAMA cited the above policy in its correspondence, Amazon’s press office declined to comment.

 

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Categories: Amazon, News, online

Opinion: Conspiracy Theories and the Pied Pipers of Hate

September 3, 2018 Article

The slide into a bizarre world of believing conspiracy theories and voicing openly toxic and bigoted views took place slowly over the last decade whilst many of us were not able to fathom how quickly and extensively social media had taken charge of our lives. As the Founder and previous Director of Tell MAMA, which supports victims of anti-Muslim hate, the world that I know of today, as someone reaching his fifties, is virtually unrecognisable to the one in which I worked just a decade ago and where there was real hope that levels of racism, prejudice and intolerance were finally on a downward slope.

Today’s world is also a far cry from that in which I grew up. As a refugee from Amin’s Uganda in 1972, and having fled a second time from Africa in 1983 because of military instability in Kenya, I suffered at first hand the openly racist abuse meted out to Asians and African-Caribbean communities in Kent where I was schooled. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, that open racism existed, flourished and led to the murder of young black men such as Stephen Lawrence. Such open hatred impacted on many young men and women from BME communities, though the economic boom of that period helped to also temper some of the racist anger and bigotry. Anti-racism work, equality marches and work-based equal opportunity schemes seem to have turned the tide against division that many of us assumed would mean a country more at ease with its diversity.

Whilst the UK is in a far better place than the ’80s, the reality is that, as a country, we have slid backwards towards openly aggressive far-right marches rallying thousands of people, national political instability and a rising sense of mistrust which is acutely felt between BME communities and the two main parties. This, mixed with a recent economic crisis, has created the perfect storm for social insecurity and it is this insecurity that some have played upon in fomenting divisive and openly hostile views toward groups of people in our society. It is also within this environment of insecurity that people have sought comfort within narratives of division that blame others and which provide a sense of meaning to them, however twisted that may be.

For such individuals, conspiracy theories become reality since the world around them is unstable and frightening. Grasping onto something almost tangible, that explains the complexity of life in a simplistic fashion, fills the void that many of us currently feel in an increasingly frightening world. This is why, for example, conspiracy merchants who peddle views of an ‘Islamic takeover’ or of hordes of Muslims outbreeding other communities, manage to find a receptive audience. With less money in people’s pockets, communities aggressively vying for resources in austerity, and a sense of confusion as to where we are heading as a nation, you can see how easy it is for people to believe that there are hidden factors at play. The culprits, in their opinion, are more than likely Muslims, Jews or migrants.

Both Muslims and Jews have felt a sharp rise in hostility towards them and hate crime figures show such a rise over the last five years. Much of this is due to hate online and, furthermore, since 2012, when I founded Tell MAMA, it was clear to me that social media companies would not remove hateful and criminal material, nor would they take down far-right, neo-Nazi or Islamist extremist accounts. Their business model was based on getting traction for their technological revolutions through more accounts opening up. In doing so, they helped create the fog and smoke of disinformation and gave an amplified voice to extremist groups masquerading as ‘free speech’ martyrs. These companies, whilst levelling the playing field for more voices to be heard, also exposed people to views and opinions that would have been marginalised for a reason. Yet their platforms also legitimised toxic views by placing those views into a worldwide market of ideas where extremist groups were better equipped to promote them.

Let me explain. Marginalised, divisive and racist groups by their very nature had to be far more energetic and driven to try to win supporters. Before the advent of social media these people had to host events, print leaflets and remain active at a street level. That all took time and money and, to make it worse, they also looked pretty scary. However, such groups were always driven; they had to be to survive.

Now post their divisive messages on social media with a ‘friendly face’, remove the racist insignia and blame migrants, Muslims and foreigners, and strangely there was a more receptive audience as people’s fears and insecurities rose over the last decade. Additionally, as many of us played catch-up to try to challenge extremist and divisive views, these individuals and groups already had a head start since they were naturally driven and could see the power of the new platforms. It was a toxic, heady mix that was to have a severe impact on our society, as we are now seeing today.

This is why we must mobilise and defend the social values we enjoy in our country, and which are under threat. It is not just those, as this paper has highlighted, who try and divide local communities, who we must challenge; it is also those beyond our shores, who support extremist groups and seek to destabilise our democracy by fomenting instability, whom we must remain vigilant against. If we take our eye off the ball in these crucial years, it is not only our values which may change – it could be our very understanding of reality. Now that truly is frightening.

The post Opinion: Conspiracy Theories and the Pied Pipers of Hate appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: anti-Muslim hate, conspiracy theories, democracy, division, hate, hatred, hostility, incitement to violence, instability, integration, intolerance, Islamism, marginalisation, News, offline, online, Opinions, prejudice

UK: Foreign minister attacks Google over ‘child abuse content’

August 31, 2018 Article

British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt accused Google on Thursday of abandoning its moral values by failing to remove child abuse content while launching a version of its search engine in China that will block some websites.

The British government has repeatedly criticized online platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for failing to remove abusive material or sexual content posted online even after they were notified.

“Seems extraordinary that Google is considering censoring its content to get into China but won’t cooperate with UK, US … in removing child abuse content,” Hunt said on Twitter. “They used to be so proud of being values-driven.”

Alphabet’s Google plans a search engine in China that will block some search terms and websites, two sources told Reuters earlier this month, in a move that could mark its return to a market it abandoned eight years ago on censorship concerns.

Google said in a statement they agreed with Hunt that child sexual abuse was “abhorrent and must be removed, that’s why we co-operate with governments to fight child sexual abuse online”.

Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand invited major technology companies to attend a meeting on tackling child abuse and extremism on their websites, but the firms declined to attend, the Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

Google said they did offer to send an executive to the conference.

In January, Prime Minister Theresa May used an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos to say investors should use their financial power to force internet firms into taking more responsibility for stopping militants and paedophiles using their platforms.

Google, which quit China’s search engine market in 2010, has been actively seeking ways to re-enter China where many of its products are blocked by regulators.

Leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have urged Google not to bow to censorship demands in China because by doing so, they allege, the company would be complicit in the repression of freedom of speech.

Search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protests will be among the words blacklisted in the search engine app, which The Intercept website said had already been demonstrated to the Chinese government.

The project, code-named “Dragonfly”, has been under way since the spring of 2017, the news website said.

The post UK: Foreign minister attacks Google over ‘child abuse content’ appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: abuse, Amnesty International, censorship, child abuse, China, Dragonfly, Google, human rights, Internet, Jeremy Hunt, morality, News, online platforms, sex abuse, UK, United Kingdom, YouTube and Facebook

U.N.: Social media must clamp down on hate speech

August 30, 2018 Article

Social media, including Facebook, must proactively block content inciting hatred and prevent online campaigns which target minorities, such as those undertaken in Myanmar, the United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, was speaking after U.N. experts accused Myanmar generals of “genocidal intent” and said Facebook had allowed its platform to be used to incite violence against Rohingya.

Facebook said on Monday it was removing several Myanmar military officials from the social media website and an Instagram account to prevent the spread of “hate and misinformation” after reviewing the content.

Zeid, whose spokesman said he has met with major tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Facebook and Google, in recent months, was speaking to a news conference before his four-year term ends on Aug. 31.

Zeid said he didn’t feel Facebook took the issue seriously at first but that the company’s attitude began to change after Yanghee Lee, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told a Geneva press conference in March that Facebook was being used in the country to spread hate speech.

“But it shouldn’t be because the press or the human rights community highlights the problem for them then suddenly to respond. They should be aware of it ahead of time,” he said.

“So I don’t think they should wait until the crisis begins. They should be thinking proactively about what steps they will take to mitigate that,” he added.

Facebook said on Monday that while it was too slow to act in the case of Myanmar, it was now making progress, with better technology to identify hate speech and improved reporting tools.

However, Zeid said there was a danger that social media could be over-regulated in a way that breaches human rights law including the right to freedom of expression.

Tech giants should “keep the broadest space available and open to the exercise of freedom of expression”, relying on international human rights law for regulation, he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday accused Google’s search engine of promoting negative news articles and hiding “fair media” coverage of him, vowing to address the situation without providing evidence or giving details of action he might take.

Trump’s attack against the Alphabet Inc. unit follows a string of grievances against technology companies, including Twitter Inc and Facebook, which he has accused of silencing conservative voices.

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Categories: Alphabet Inc., Donald Trump, free speech, freedom of expression, Genocide, Google, hate, Hate Speech, human rights, Instagram, Minorities, misinformation, Myanmar, News, online content, Rohingya, Twitter Inc., U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.S., Yanghee Lee, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein

US: Social media platforms dismantle disinformation campaigns

August 22, 2018 Article

Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc. collectively removed hundreds of accounts tied to an alleged Iranian propaganda operation on Tuesday, while Facebook took down a second campaign it said was linked to Russia.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the accounts identified on his company’s platform were part of two separate campaigns, the first from Iran with some ties to state-owned media, the second linked to sources which Washington has previously named as Russian military intelligence services.

Officials in Iran, where it is a holiday to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival, were not immediately available to comment. Moscow has repeatedly denied using hacking or fake social media accounts to influence foreign elections. The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move by Facebook and others is the latest attempt by global social media giants to guard against political interference on their platforms. It comes as concerns are rising about foreign attempts to disrupt the U.S. midterm elections in November.

The United States earlier this year indicted 13 Russians for alleged attempts to meddle in U.S. politics, but the latest alleged Iranian activity, exposed by cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. suggests the problem may be more widespread.

“It really shows it’s not just Russia that engages in this type of activity,” Lee Foster, an information operations analyst with FireEye, told Reuters.

FireEye said the Iranian campaign used a network of fake news websites and fraudulent social media personas spread across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Plus and YouTube, to push narratives in line with Tehran’s interests.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.

The activity was aimed at users in the United States, Britain, Latin America and Middle East up through this month, FireEye said, and included “anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes” as well as advocacy of policies favorable to Iran such as the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal.

FireEye said the Iranian activity did not appear “dedicated” to influencing the upcoming election, though some of the posts aimed at U.S. users did adopt “left-leaning identities” and took stances against President Donald Trump.

That activity “could suggest a more active attempt to influence domestic U.S. political discourse” is forthcoming, Foster said, but “we just haven’t seen that yet.”

‘DISTINCT CAMPAIGNS’

Facebook said the Russia-linked accounts it removed were engaged in “inauthentic behavior” related to politics in Syria and Ukraine. It said that activity did not appear to be linked to the Iranian campaign.

“These were distinct campaigns and we have not identified any link or coordination between them. However, they used similar tactics by creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing,” the company said in a statement.

Facebook last month removed 32 pages and accounts tied to another misinformation campaign without describing its origins, but which U.S. lawmakers said likely had Russian involvement.

Microsoft said this week that hackers linked to the Russian government sought to steal email login credentials from U.S. politicians and think tanks, allegations the Russian foreign ministry described as a “witch-hunt.”

FireEye said the U.S.-focused Iranian activity ramped up last year, just months after Trump took office, with websites and social media accounts posting memes and articles, some of which were apparently copied from legitimate U.S. and Iranian news outlets.

In some cases, the domains for the fake websites like “US Journal” and “Liberty Free Press” were originally registered years before the 2016 election, in 2014 and 2013, but most remained inactive until last year, FireEye said.

Arabic-language, Middle East-focused websites appear to be part of the same campaign, the company added.

The technology companies variously said they linked the accounts to Iran based on user phone numbers, email addresses, website registration records and the timing of account activity matching Iranian business hours.

FireEye expressed “moderate confidence” about the Iranian origins, but said it has not been able to tie the accounts back to a specific organization or individuals.

Hundreds of thousands of people followed one or more of the Facebook pages implicated in the campaign, Facebook said.

It shared examples of removed posts, including a cartoon depicting an Israeli soldier executing a Palestinian and a fake movie poster showing President Trump embracing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Postings cited by FireEye expressed praise for U.S. politicians and other Twitter users who criticized the Trump administration’s decision in May to abandon the Iranian nuclear pact, under which Iran had agreed to curb its nuclear weapons program in exchange for loosening of sanctions.

Some Twitter and Facebook accounts were designed to appear as if they were real people in the U.S., Britain and Canada, according to FireEye. The accounts used a combination of different hashtags to engage in U.S. culture, including “#lockhimup,” “#impeachtrump” and “notmypresident.”

Twitter, which called the effort “coordinated manipulation,” said it removed 284 accounts.

Facebook said it removed 254 pages and 392 accounts across its flagship platform as well as its Instagram service. Some of the accounts had events and groups associated with them.

The accounts spent about $12,000 to advertise through Facebook and Instagram using a variety of currencies, Facebook said. The company said it had notified the U.S. Treasury and State departments of the purchases, which may potentially violate sanctions.

Alphabet, which includes Google and YouTube, did not respond to a request to comment.

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Categories: bots, cybersecurity, fake news websites, FireEye, Google, hacking, Instagram, Iran, Mark Zuckerberg, military intelligence, News, Politics, propaganda, Russia, Syria, U.S., Ukraine, Washington, Youtube

Twitter Seeks to Address – ‘Dehumanizing Speech’

August 9, 2018 Article

We within Tell MAMA have repeatedly challenged Twitter on dehumanizing hate speech on their platforms and a release by the Founder of Twitter, has highlighted a possible shift in their policies. Obviously, we have to watch and see what this means and how it will impact accounts that promote the dehumanization of individuals and the subsequent impact on wider communities. This though, is a significant development.

The key to the statement is this:

“Our initial proposal for implementing this, which we were slated to present to staff at the end of the month, focuses on addressing dehumanizing speech – that is, speech that treats or describes others as less than human. We’re focusing on this first for a few reasons, including: academic research has consistently linked dehumanization with violence, (Boris beware after your recent comments about Niqab wearing women being ‘letterboxes’.

“In the history of mass violence, dehumanization consistently precedes acts of violence; dehumanizing hate speech affects not only the direct targets of the speech, but also the wider society that witnesses the speech”.

We will watching developments on this, though this looks like a positive move after the years of advocating that other agencies and Tell MAMA have done on this area.

The post Twitter Seeks to Address – ‘Dehumanizing Speech’ appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Categories: Dehumanization, hate, Jack, News, Opinions

Facebook identifies new campaign to meddle in 2018 U.S. elections

August 1, 2018 Article

Facebook Inc. said on Tuesday it had identified a new coordinated political influence campaign to mislead its users and sow dissension among voters ahead of November’s U.S. congressional elections.

It said it had removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram, part of an effort to combat foreign meddling in U.S. elections.

The company stopped short of identifying the source of the misinformation. But members of Congress who had been briefed by Facebook on the matter said the methodology of the influence campaign suggested Russian involvement.

“I can say I think with pretty high confidence I think this is Russian-related,” Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol.

Two U.S. intelligence officials told Reuters there was not sufficient evidence to conclude that Russia was behind the Facebook campaign, but one noted that “the similarities, aims and methodology relative to the 2016 Russian campaign are quite striking.”

A Russian propaganda arm tried to tamper in the 2016 U.S. election by posting and buying ads on Facebook, according to the company and U.S. intelligence agencies. In February, the U.S. Justice Department indicted 13 Russian nationals, and the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.

Moscow has denied involvement.

Facebook has been on the defensive about influence activity on its site and concerns over user privacy tied to long-standing agreements with developers that allowed them access to private user data.

‘ARMS RACE’

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, which was shown the suspended pages ahead of the takedown, said they showed similarities in language and approach to previously fake accounts from the Internet Research Agency, which is known as the “troll factory” because it stirs up public opinion on social media sites.

The lab cited “consistent mistranslation, as well as an overwhelming focus on polarizing issues at the top of any given news cycle.” It said, for example, the posts on the year-old, feminist Resisters page “took a liberal or left-wing stance on issues around gender, race, immigration, and human rights.” Other pages promoted racial pride among minority groups.

The group said the Resisters page was alarming because it was pushing for confrontation at multiple protests, including against “Unite the Right 2,” with a potential for violence.

A man who identified himself as an administrator of Resisters, Washington activist Brendan Orsinger, said on a video call with Reuters that he had been invited to help operate the page by someone he knew only through Facebook messages.

“I definitely had concerns, because people don’t usually invite me to accounts unless they know me,” Orsinger said. “But at the same time, this was an account we could use.”

He said that more than a dozen legitimate activist groups were still supporting the counter-rally and would now have to work harder to reconnect with people who had been following it through the Resisters page.

Orsinger said he was not yet sure that the account that had involved him was Russian, but that if it was, he was concerned about he and fellow activists being infiltrated and influenced.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said on a call with reporters that the attempts to manipulate public opinion would likely become more sophisticated to evade Facebook’s scrutiny, calling it an “arms race.”

The White House said the administration was supportive of Facebook’s actions.

“We applaud efforts by our private-sector partners to combat an array of threats that occur in cyberspace, including malign influence,” said Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

U.S. President Donald Trump has come under fire for discounting the threat of interference in the congressional elections.

During his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki earlier this month, Trump appeared to state that he believed Russia was no longer trying to influence the U.S. election process.

Trump later amended that, saying he was “very concerned” about Russian interference in the election. On Friday, Trump held a meeting with his national security advisers on election security.

DIVISIVE ISSUES

Facebook identified influence activity around at least two issues, including the counter-protest to the Unite the Right 2 rally set next week in Washington. The other was the #AbolishICE social media campaign aimed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

In an online post, Facebook said it was disclosing the influence effort now in part because of the rally. A previous event last year in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to violence by white supremacists.

“This kind of behavior is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing,” the company said.

More than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the pages and about $11,000 had been spent on about 150 ads, Facebook said. The pages had created about 30 events since May 2017.

Facebook officials on a call with reporters said one known account from Russia’s Internet Research Agency was a co-administrator of one of the fake pages for seven minutes, but the company did not believe that was enough evidence to attribute the campaign to the Russian government.

The company previously said 126 million Americans may have seen Russian-backed political content on Facebook over a two-year period, and that 16 million may have been exposed to Russian information on the Instagram photo-sharing app.

Over the past several months, the company has taken steps meant to reassure U.S. and European lawmakers that further regulation is unnecessary. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg says the company has 20,000 people working to police and protect the site.

The post Facebook identifies new campaign to meddle in 2018 U.S. elections appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: elections campaigns, meddling, News, Russia, undue influence, United States