Even 25 years later, the planes keep crashing. The towers keep falling. The experience can feel transportive, with viewers traveling back in time to an era of VHS tapes and landline phones. But it can also feel disorienting and deceptive, with very little context separating the harrowing historical record from inane conspiracy theories.
CNN
Online posts saying Japan has introduced “anti-Islam laws” that ban mosques, burqas, halal food and the Islamic call to prayer are false. The government has not brought in any such laws and Japan's constitution guarantees religious freedom.
Reuters
While Lindsay Clancy is fighting murder charges and the jury remains deadlocked in a Massachusetts courtroom, social media is exploding. Armchair lawyers have plenty to say on social media – and not all of it is accurate.
Scripps News
Last week a technology investor posed a question: “Your Favorite Creator Isn’t Real—Does it Matter?” Olivia Moore, who works at the venture fund Andreessen Horowitz, pitched this question to the internet after she virtually joined the viral “Bama Rush” TikTok trend.
Straight Arrow News
Shrimp Jesus plunged AI-generated viral images into the big mainstream sea two years ago with a full net of images of the Christian son of God mashed up with the crustacean that drove Red Lobster into bankruptcy. The images of a deep-sea prophet were nearly impossible to ignore when they washed up on our virtual shores.
UC Davis Letters & Science
Meta on Wednesday reached a landmark settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and make major changes to its products over claims it endangered children with addictive social media platforms.
The New York Times
An audit of seven leading Chinese AI chatbots whose underlying models are growing increasingly popular in the West found that the bots fail to debunk pro-China false claims 53 percent of the time, compared to 10 Western AI chatbots, which fail 24 percent of the time.
NewsGuard
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has revived a years-old inaccurate theory that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to higher rates of miscarriages. In a video posted Aug. 10 on Fox News Digital, Johnson said these texts showed Fauci knew about miscarriage risks that health officials weren’t publicly acknowledging at the time.
Politifact
The rush of migrants into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta last month began with a trickle. Encouraged by a handful of viral videos, including some posted by a Spanish news outlet intended to highlight the burden of migration pressures, the movement of a few dozen youths quickly turned into tens of thousands swimming en masse.
Reuters
Epidemiologist and science communicator Jessica Malaty Rivera believes we're navigating a serious outbreak: health misinformation. She explores why the public's trust in science is wavering — and the importance of winning it back.
TED Talks
A new poll by The Tarrance Group, a notable Virginia-based corporate and political research group, reveals that although Arizona voters have confidence in certain aspects of local elections, there remain lingering concerns stemming from misinformation about the 2020 election.
Democracy Defense Foundation
Disinformation, including artificial intelligence-generated material, has been circulating online in the aftermath of the July earthquake in Kumamoto, pushing political views and conspiracy theories.
The Japan Times
President Donald Trump travelled to Ohio last week to watch high school students compete in the Patriot Games, a sporting event set up by his administration to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America's founding. It also became the subject of memes and misinformation.
BBC
Fast food purveyor Shake Shack denies recent ‘shake-down’ accusations. The burger chain has addressed viral allegations that it imposed a “no tip” fee at self-checkout, claiming that the apparent surcharge was actually a glitch in the system.
California Post
Alongside the primary campaigns, false and misleading election claims are once again spreading across social media. These posts can include incorrect polling locations, inaccurate voting hours, manipulated images, AI-generated videos, or unofficial election results presented as fact.
The Associated Press
Finns rank among the world’s most media-literate people, in part because educators in the Nordic country of close to six million already teach students how to spot fake news. It’s all part of an effort to teach Finns to think critically, in hopes of strengthening Finland’s democracy and protecting the country from misinformation.
The New York Times
Sunday night marked the sixth islandwide blackout since Trump administration effectively cut Cuba off from oil — its main energy source — in January. The move plunged the disinformation and endemically crisis-stricken country into free-fall.
The Associated Press
For years, social media companies have faced pressure from users and government watchdogs to stop misinformation from distorting elections, deepening political divisions and undermining Americans’ trust in institutions.
University of California Berkeley
Misleading health claims online pose a ‘huge danger to public safety,’ experts have warned, after research has shown that AI-generated doctors are gaining millions of views on TikTok by spreading dubious health advice.
The Guardian
A new study reports the first digital tool for identifying online propaganda in Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda’s 15 million people — and possibly the first for any of the Bantu languages spoken by 350 million Africans.
Dartmouth College
