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#influenceoperations

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Continued thread

🔎 FIMI is both narrower and broader than traditional disinfo concepts.

❌ Narrower: It only applies to foreign actors—domestic disinformation is excluded.
✅ Broader: It doesn’t require false information—manipulative tactics alone are enough.

This behavior-based focus aligns with EU strategic needs, but makes it harder for science to systematically study what qualifies as FIMI and how to measure it.

Continued thread

3/10 📌 FIMI, Cognitive Warfare & Hybrid Threats—how do they differ?

🛰️ FIMI: Tactical manipulation of the information space—often used by foreign actors (e.g., Russia, China) to mislead, polarize, or destabilize.

🧠 Cognitive Warfare: Long-term strategy targeting how people think, process info & form beliefs.

⚔️ Hybrid Threats: Disinfo is one tool in a broader toolkit—including cyber, military, economic coercion.

I think there's a general need for education regarding influence operations (and my focus is on those by Russia) here on the fediverse.

1) No, Russia isn't just pushing right-wing agendas/topics. The _stated_ purpose, from 1997 IIRC, is to sow division in the west. That means that there's roughly an equal chance that a raging leftwing lunatic is on Russia's payroll as your average Tate-Musk-Trump-Orban-Fico fanatic.

2) "Doomism" is a goal. The more we are complaining on how bad things are - the more successful they are. A great way to counter these influence operations is to talk about how _good_ things are. Because there's plenty of awesomeness in our society (I'm not from the US - that's a global perspective) to share.

3) These operations are _long term_. The troll factories aren't just newly created accounts spamming out the same message everywhere. That online magazine that has published for 10 years could be a sleeper influence operation. A person _living in Germany_ spending time online just as anybody else could too.

4) You're getting influenced. Basic psychology says you cannot avoid it (the anchoring effect). The only thing you can do is to be aware of it, and actively working against the very goals of the influence operations.

Remember what those were now again?

It's important to remember—or learn and teach—our history and ongoing practice of creating terrible conditions that result in people fleeing north to the US in the name of wealth and global domination. Unfortunately, history and reality are as likely to be banned as taught. Global domination comes at a price.

Twenty websites found to be posing as major #Japanese #mediaoutlets
"the #boguswebsites might have been systematically created to lay the ground for “ #influenceoperations”.. The 20 #websites are believed to use the same #ISP based in #Singapore.. These sites were likely to have been created using the same #template. Advertisements do not appear on these sites, and #Chinese is used in certain parts of the #sourcecodes. Some categories were also written in Chinese" #PRC ⚠️🧐
straitstimes.com/asia/east-asi

The Straits Times · Twenty websites found to be posing as major Japanese media outletsThese websites bore names similar to local media companies. Read more at straitstimes.com.

First reader reviews coming in: Routledge Handbook of the Influence Industry get's ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐️ praising its insights into the business behind #influenceoperations, global reach of the case studies & our new concept. The reader said it's "clearly a book that belongs on any university-level course that touches on the nature of online influence" but "You don't have to be at a university to enjoy it" 😃 - read more: amzn.eu/d/apJZLBK #propaganda #socialmedis #disinformation @potemkinvillage

amzn.euCheck out this Amazon review of Routledge Handbook of the Influence IndustryThe who, what, when, where, how and why of the Influence Industry

Very good paper from the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence showcasing the use of AI models for targeted persuasion campaigns on social media. The paper is split in interconnected 2 parts:

1)
Research focusing on real use cases of AI-Generated persuasion campaigns in the German and Russian languages (AI-generated text in less common languages has been more difficult to detect by current AI detection tools).

The use cases include politically oriented content in German, pro-Kremlin messages, conspiracy theories aiming to cause unrest, and disinformation.

2) (most interesting!)
A red team experiment that looks into an adversary’s potential decision making when it comes to crafting, coordinating and launching a precision persuasion campaign.
The researchers used AI models to:

🔹 Define the "right" target profiles based on topics of interest.
🔹 Identify their demonstrated sentiment & behavioral tendencies (based on a clustered analysis of their posts) on those topics of interest.
🔹 Perform psychometric, behavioral, and opinion-based analysis in order to segment those social media accounts into different groups.
The goal of this segmentation was to dig deeper into discovering certain traits about users that would be used in tailoring the targeting content in accordance with those psychometric characteristics.
🔹 Frame and phrase the message (the content) based on the user profile and the analysis performed in the previous steps, with the help of generative AI.

The results of the output - the "tailored" messages - are very interesting.

Keep in mind that this is the reality that we will be called to face in the near future. A higher scale of well-tailored information & influence campaigns that will not only come accross our own social media profiles, but also the ones of everyday people that may NOT possess the level of awareness that you potentially do, but still have a vote to cast on important topics.

In any case, this is a highly recommended read.
The annex includes some of the prompts along with other interesting details. Enjoy!

Link:

stratcomcoe.org/publications/a

Via the #BBC @ 10:08 pm EDT Sept 16, 2024

#Facebook owner #Meta says it is banning several #Russian state #media networks, alleging they use deceptive tactics to carry out #InfluenceOperations & evade detection on its platforms
"After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against #RussianStateMedia outlets. #RossiyaSegodnya, #RT & other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity," Meta said

#SocialMedia

bbc.com/news/articles/c4gllnx0

An RT van close to St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow's Red Square
www.bbc.comFacebook owner Meta bans Russian state media networksRussian state media outlets have come under increased scrutiny in Western countries.