Fascinating to hear @N_Henin speak at length about #propaganda, #hatespeech, and #cyberbullying after his release from #ISIS captivity almost entirely without mentioning the role of #socialmedia #platforms.

NB: he did advise folks to leave #X in favour of other platforms after a specific question from the audience.

Thank you Nicolas for the intervention and insights. 🙏

#disinfo2025

#Disinfo2025 is a very new environment for me despite having worked on online platform regulation for over 6 years.

The conference is sponsored by #Tiktok among others, an important spreader of #disinformation, and panel speakers include people from #defence tech firms and #AI companies... Let's see what this does to the conference content.

So for now I'm listening to what sounds like a sales pitch from a #defence tech firm called #gerulata that claims they have developed an #AI model that can "predict" if certain pieces of online content will be used for a #disinformation campaign plus do all kinds of awesome magic. 🧐

#disinfo2025 #fimi

OK on the upside, the #AI sales pitch is followed by an excellent presentation by German investigative news outlet @correctiv_org showing the data they found on coordinated disinformation targeting the German federal election 2024.

If you're in #Germany and haven't donated to #CORRECTIV yet, go here: https://correctiv.org/unterstuetzen/

#disinfo2025

This #Disinfo2025 afternoon was brightened by a brilliant talk by #ExxonMobil #whistleblower Lindsay Gulden about how the #fossilfuel lobby has lied to the public for decades about the #ClimateCrisis and which techniques the industry uses today to spread #disinformation and actively mislead our thinking about it.

If you haven't heard Lindsay speak yet, there are talks online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QonzyNL4XKs

Aaah finally a #Disinfo2025 panel that focuses on #FreeExpression and other human rights in the context of the work against #disinformation.

The brilliant @epirkova pushes back against the instrumentalisation of #FreeSpeech and the EU's #DSA to fuel far-right anti-democratic narratives. And she rightly calls out the incredible amount of #securitisation of the #disinfo debate. 👏

Day 1 of the #Disinfo2025 conference is over, so let me share some takeaways. As a #DigitalRights advocate I'm surprised about how large the gap between the #disinformation and digital rights communities seems to be:

1. The framing of conversations that I witnessed here were highly militarised, lots of talk about "the battlefield", the enemy, and various forms of (hybrid) #warfare.

2. There's was a strong "Us V Them" narrative across the conference, mostly as in the West V #Russia and #China.

3. There was a strong focus at #Disinfo2025 on foreign actors / #FIMI from #Russia, not so much on #disinfo attacks from internal actors, the far right, #Trump, or #BigTech billionaires.

4. There was hardly any discussion of the role of #BigTech social media's business models, algorithmic #amplification, and lack of due diligence in the spread of #disinformation. One ex-US #Army guy claimed "platforms are not the problem," information "is moving on its own." Does it though, does it? 🤦

5. Law enforcement agencies and the #military seem to be respected and trusted partners at the #Disinfo2025 conference, which is co-sponsored by defence tech firms. The level of collaboration and mutual platforming is not something I've ever seen in the #DigitalRights field.

6. With the notable exception of today's last panel with #AccessNow's @epirkova, I have heard hardly anyone discussing impacts on #FreeExpression and Access to Information rights or other human rights such as #privacy.

I don't know how representative my experience here at #Disinfo2025 is for the #disinfo community as a whole, and of course I was always only able to follow one panel track at the time, so I might have missed things.

But I'm curious to see if the tone shifts tomorrow on Day 2 and I plan to ask more participants about it.

Thanks all for reading along.

The Day 2's morning at #disinfo2025 starts pretty nicely with a fascinating talk by Shivika Sharma from @checkfirst presenting the #RADAR framework that's built to help standardise the collection of #evidence about #DSA infringements.

Something to look into for everyone working on #DigitalServicesAct non #compliance:

https://checkfirst.network/project/radar/

Ouch, super problematic comment by Stephane Duguin, ex #Europol now leading the CyberPeace Institute, arguing that to take down online speech that's classified as #disinformation they don't need to and cannot know if that content actually has had a harmful effect; as long as it's been published by an organisation labeled as "terrorist org", that's fine.

Think #PalestineAction, #Antifascists, and maybe #ClimateJustice orgs like @AufstandLastGen in the future... 😤