Christopher Blair, a renowned “liberal troll” who posts falsehoods to Facebook, is having a banner year despite crackdowns by Facebook and growing competition from A.I.
BNN Breaking had millions of readers, an international team of journalists and a publishing deal with Microsoft. But it was full of error-ridden content.
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs ordered the operation, which used fake social media accounts urging U.S. lawmakers to fund Israel’s military, according to officials and documents about the effort.
It was the latest example of journalists having to weigh the news value of a major political moment against the challenges of reporting on a candidate who regularly speaks in falsehoods.
A study found that hundreds of sites, many without obvious Kremlin links, copied Russian propaganda and spread it to unsuspecting audiences ahead of the E.U. election.
In 2016, Russia used an army of trolls to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. This year, an American given asylum in Moscow may be accomplishing much the same thing all by himself.
The platform will keep state-affiliated media accounts out of users’ feeds if they “attempt to reach communities outside their home country on current global events and affairs.”
The island democracy was early to ban TikTok on government phones, and the ruling party refuses to use it. But a U.S.-style ban is not under consideration.
The inquiry is intended to pressure the tech giant to more aggressively police Facebook and Instagram ahead of the European Union’s closely watched elections in June.