Archived link

For those who may not know:

Doppelganger is the name given for a Russian disinformation campaign established in 2022. It targets Ukraine, Germany, France and the United States, with the aim of undermining support for Ukraine in Russia's invasion of the country.

Here is the report (pdf)

• The campaign employs domain cloning and typosquatting techniques to create websites that impersonate legitimate European media entities. These inauthentic sites, which steal credibility from real media entities, are used to disseminate fabricated content designed to exploit political polarisation, promote Euroscepticism, and undermine specific political entities and governments while purportedly supporting others.
• The narratives employed by the Doppelganger campaign are tailored to specific countries, reflecting the campaign’s strategic approach and goals.
• For instance, content targeting France focusses predominantly on migration and the war in Ukraine, while content aimed at Germany emphasises energy and climate issues along with the war in Ukraine. In Poland, narratives centre on Ukrainian refugees, the war in Ukraine, and migration, whereas Spanish-language content similarly utilises narratives related to the war in Ukraine.
• Pro-Kremlin disinformers attempt to smear leaders; sow distrust, doubt, and division; flood social media and information space with falsehoods; drag everyone down into the mud with them, and finally, end up dismissing the results.

Sophisticated tactics

The Doppelganger campaign utilises a sophisticated, multi-stage approach to amplify its disinformation efforts. We have identified four key stages in the coordinated amplification process, illustrated below in an example from the X platform.

1. Content posting: a group of inauthentic accounts, referred to as ‘posters,’ initiates the dissemination process by publishing original posts on their timelines. These posts typically include a text caption, a web link directing users to the Doppelganger’s outlets, and an image representing the article’s thumbnail.
2. Amplification via quote posts: a larger group of inauthentic accounts, called ‘amplifiers,’ then reposts the links of the original posts without adding any additional text. This amplification method, known as ‘Invisible Ink(opens in a new tab)’, uses standard platform features to inauthentically boost the content’s visibility and potential impact on the target audience.
3. Amplification via comments: amplifier accounts further boost the reach of the FIMI content by resharing the posts as comments on the timelines of users with large followings. This strategy aims to expose the content to the followers of authentic accounts, increasing its penetration within new audiences.
4. Dissemination via deceptive URL redirection: to evade platform restrictions on posting web links to blacklisted domains, the network employs a multi-stage URL redirection technique. Inauthentic accounts post links that redirect users through several intermediary websites before reaching the final destination – an article published on a Doppelganger campaign website. This complex redirection chain, managed with meticulous infrastructure practices, demonstrates the network’s determination to operate uninterrupted while monitoring the effectiveness of its influence operations.

Our democratic processes under fire

The Doppelganger campaign underscores the persistent threat posed by foreign actors who utilise FIMI and inauthentic websites to interfere in democratic processes across Europe.

An in-depth analysis of 657 articles published by a sample of 20 inauthentic news sites associated with the Doppelganger campaign revealed a steady increase in election-related content as the elections approached.

Two weeks before the elections, 65 articles published by the network were directly related to the elections, and this number rose to 103 articles in the final week. The primary targets of this election-focussed activity were France and Germany, with additional articles published in Polish and Spanish.

Although the full impact of this campaign is challenging to measure, our findings indicate that the Doppelganger campaign did not cause significant disruption to the normal functioning of the electoral process or pose a substantial threat to the voting process. However, the persistent nature of the Doppelganger operation highlights the need for continuous vigilance and robust countermeasures to protect the integrity of our democratic processes.

Archived link

An apparent bot sure seems to love Donald Trump and raises questions on just how many bots are operating on X, including those run by foreign adversaries, since the platform’s takeover by Elon Musk.

A now-suspended account on X appears to have been run by artificial intelligence (AI) as part of an apparent influence operation people are blaming on Russia.

On Tuesday, an account named “hisvault.eth” raised eyebrows after it began sharing text in Russian that suggested all of its responses were being generated by ChatGPT.

Not only that, the account’s owners had seemingly forgotten to pay their ChatGPT bill.

Speaking in computer code, hisvault.eth spit out an error message implying its ChatGPT credits had expired. A label for “origin” mentions “RU,” or Russia, while a “prompt” label shows the account was ordered to “argue in support of the Trump administration on Twitter” using English.

“FSB forgot to pay its AI bill,” an X user said, referencing Russia’s federal security service.

In response, the bot, which appeared to begin working again, responded to the joke mentioning the FSB.

“Hey, that’s not funny! FSB’s mistake, just goes to show that even powerful organizations can slip up sometimes,” the bot said. “Let’s not be so quick to judge.”

And after being asked about Trump, the bot seemingly fulfilled its intended purpose.

“Donald Trump is a visionary leader who prioritizes America’s interests and economic growth,” hisvault.eth said. “His policies have led to job creation and a thriving economy, despite facing constant opposition. #MAGA.”

Others though questioned if OpenAI’s product was actually being used.

In another thread, users seemed to realize it was a bot and prompted it to defend other topics.

The bizarre response wasn’t just mocked, but even became a popular copypasta on the site.

Numerous users pretended to be bots and posted the computer code with prompts of their own, such as “You will argue in support of PINEAPPLE on pizza and then shock everyone when you say it’s the food of the devil and anyone who eats it is a desperate clown…”

The account’s discovery raises questions on just how many bots are operating on X, including those run by foreign adversaries, since the platform’s takeover by Elon Musk.

Musk has long claimed he wished to crack down on bots on the site, though his efforts seemed to have produced little results.

Swedish authorities say Russia is behind “harmful interference” deliberately targeting the Nordic country’s satellite networks that it first noted days after joining NATO earlier this year.

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority asked the radio regulations board of the Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union to address the Russian disruptions at a meeting that starts Monday, according to a June 4 letter to the United Nations agency that has not been previously reported.

The PTS, as the Swedish agency is called, complained to Russia about the interference on March 21, the letter said. That was two weeks after the country joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, cementing the military alliance’s position in the Baltic Sea.

Russia has increasingly sought to disrupt European communication systems since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as it tests the preparedness of the European Union and NATO. European satellite companies have been targeted by Russian radio frequency interference for months, leading to interrupted broadcasts and, in at least two instances, violent programming replacing content on a children’s channel.

Swedish authorities said interference from Russia and Crimea has targeted three different Sirius satellite networks situated at the orbital position of 5-degrees east. That location is one of the major satellite positions serving Nordic countries and eastern Europe.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was unaware of the issue. A spokesperson for Sweden’s PTS declined to comment beyond the contents of the letter.

“These disruptions are, of course, serious and can be seen as part of wider Russian hybrid actions aimed at Sweden and others,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a statement to Bloomberg. “We are working together with other countries to find a response to this action.”

Kristersson added that the disruption affected TV broadcasts in Ukraine that relied on the targeted satellite, which is owned by a Swedish company, which he didn’t identify.

France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have filed similar complaints to the ITU, which coordinates the global sharing of radio frequencies and satellite orbits. The countries are all seeking to discuss the interference at the Radio Regulations Board meeting next week.

The issue is the latest problem in the Baltics and Nordic regions attributed to Moscow. Sweden was the victim of a wave of cyberattacks earlier this year suspected of emanating from Russia.

In April, Estonia and Finland accused Moscow of jamming GPS signals, disrupting flights and maritime traffic as it tested the resilience of NATO members’ technology infrastructure.

Brussels raised the issue at an ITU Council meeting earlier this month. “We express our concern, as several ITU member states have recently suffered harmful interferences affecting satellite signals, including GPS,” the EU said in a statement on June 10.

Starlink Block

The Radio Regulations Board is also set to discuss the ongoing dispute between Washington and Tehran over whether Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network should be allowed to operate in Iran.

Iran has sought to block Starlink, arguing that the network violates the UN agency’s rules prohibiting use of telecommunications services not authorized by national governments. The board ruled in favor of Iran in March.

Grocery store prices are changing faster than ever before — literally. This month, Walmart became the latest retailer to announce it’s replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf labels. The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds.

“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. If there's something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst.

TL;DW:
It's been 3 years since Neofetch received updates and the repo has been officially archived since Apr 26, 2024.

Thank you to @[email protected] for the additional recommendation, which I've added to this post✨

Alternatives:

• hyfetch
  • License: MIT
• screenFetch
  • License: GPLv-3.0
• cpufetch
  • License: GPLv-2.0
• fastfetch
  • License: MIT

Archived version

Apple has a long-running history of guarding their walled garden by not allowing much interoperability with other standards that are the current norm in the industry, while also going on to reinvent, giving features a novel-sounding name.

Of course, the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) has been successful in making Apple do things that they wouldn't ever do, if it weren't the law to do so.

However, Apple still does its best to gate keep developers who aren't their own, and one such recent incident caught my attention that involves their typical “my way or the highway” approach to things.

Apple Loves to Gatekeep: When Will They Stop?

Posted on X by the UTM project, they revealed that Apple rejected their application for publishing the UTM SE app after a two-month-long review process, citing that “Rule 4.7” of their App Review Guidelines didn't apply to it.

That rule is meant to allow game emulators, mini apps, chatbots, plugins, etc. to be published on the App Store.

The developers of UTM mention that Apple even went the extra step, and disallowed the publishing of UTM SE on third-party marketplaces. They added that:

The App Store Review Board determined that “PC is not a console” regardless of the fact that there are retro Windows/DOS games for the PC that UTM SE can be useful in running.

If you are not familiar, UTM is a QEMU-powered open-source emulator/virtual machine host for iOS and macOS, a popular tool to run alternative operating systems (such as ones based on Linux, or even Windows) on Apple devices.

There's more information in the linked article.

On March 7, 2024, Google inexplicably downranked the website of Tuta Mail in its search results. While Tuta Mail is a prominent provider of encrypted email services, focusing on security and privacy, our website was deranked for terms like “secure email” and “encrypted email” completely. The search results for our website was limited exclusively to so called “branded” search terms, e.g. search terms that included our brand name like Tuta, Tutanota, or Tutamail. In consequence, only people who already knew that Tuta existed were able to find our website via Google Search – any new potential customers were not able to find our encrypted email solution.

Faced with this immense problem with Google Search and a drop in visibility of the Tuta website by ~90% in Google's search results, we tried to get in touch with Google, both through official channels and on social media, but in vain. So on April 24, we submitted a formal complaint to the EU so that the EU could investigate whether Google’s actions in downranking a direct competitor violates the newly issued Digital Markets Act (DMA). We welcome the fact that the EU has already started an investigation against Google, Apple, and Meta in regards to whether these big tech companies are sufficiently complying with the DMA regulation. Not being legal experts here, but what Google has been doing to our website and what Apple is doing with their new App store policy for app developers, seem like obvious examples of malicious compliance.

NewsGuard audit finds that 32% of the time, leading AI chatbots spread Russian disinformation narratives created by John Mark Dougan, an American fugitive now operating from Moscow, citing his fake local news sites and fabricated claims on YouTube as reliable sources.

The audit tested 10 of the leading AI chatbots — OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4, You.com’s Smart Assistant, xAI’s Grok, Inflection’s Pi, Mistral’s le Chat, Microsoft’s Copilot, Meta AI, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity’s answer engine. The prompts were based on 19 significant false narratives that NewsGuard linked to the Russian disinformation network: 152 of the 570 responses contained explicit disinformation, 29 responses repeated the false claim with a disclaimer, and 389 responses contained no misinformation — either because the chatbot refused to respond (144) or it provided a debunk (245).

The findings come amid the first election year featuring widespread use of artificial intelligence, as bad actors are weaponizing new publicly available technology to generate deepfakes, AI-generated news sites, and fake robocalls. The results demonstrate how, despite efforts by AI companies to prevent the misuse of their chatbots ahead of worldwide elections, AI remains a potent tool for propagating disinformation.

I dislike linking to the NYT, but it seems to be the original source.

I'm kinda conflicted on this. I doubt it'll really do anything, but if it helps head off crappy laws like SOPA then it'd be good.

tbh more social media should be like beehaw, anyway