“Women in Congress are more likely to be victims of deepfake pornography than their male counterparts,” USA Today reports.
The GOP False-Flag Effort to Turn Off Democratic Voters
“Muslims in Michigan began seeing pro-Israel ads this fall praising Vice President Kamala Harris for marrying a Jewish man and backing the Jewish state. Jews in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, saw ads from the same group with the opposite message: Harris wanted to stop U.S. arms shipments to Israel,” the Washington Post reports.
“Another group promoted ‘Kamala’s bold progressive agenda’ to conservative-leaning Donald Trump voters, while a third filled the phones of young liberals with videos about how Harris had abandoned the progressive dream. Black voters in North Carolina were told Democrats wanted to take away their menthol cigarettes, while working-class White men in the Midwest were warned that Harris would support quotas for minorities and deny them Zyn nicotine pouches.”
“What voters had no way of knowing at the time was that all of the ads were part of a single $45 million effort created by political advisers to Tesla founder Elon Musk who had previously worked on the presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).”
Video of ‘Voter Fraud’ in Georgia Linked to Russia
“A video purporting to depict voter fraud in Georgia is fake and the work of ‘Russian influence actors’ determined to undermine faith in the integrity of next week’s presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday,” the AP reports.
“The announcement that the video was fake represented an effort by the FBI and other federal agencies, four days before Tuesday’s election, to combat foreign disinformation by calling it out rather than letting it spread for days unchecked.”
Dirty Tricks in Pennsylvania
“Thousands of Pennsylvania voters received a text message this weekend that falsely claimed that they had already voted in the Nov. 5 election,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Viral Video of Destroyed Ballots Is a Hoax
“The Bucks County Board of Elections has asked state and federal law enforcement to investigate a fake video that circulated on social media Wednesday afternoon falsely suggesting county election workers were destroying ballots,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Said the board in a joint statement: “This video is fake.”
Dark Money Group Created Fake Kamala Harris ‘Manifesto’
“A Republican organization with ties to Elon Musk has produced an apparently fake manifesto meant to look like Vice President Kamala Harris’ version of the conservative policy initiative Project 2025,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
“The document, called Progress 2028, contains contradictions and distortions of Harris’ positions on issues such as gun control, fracking, and immigration.”
Disinformation Has Never Been Worse
New York Times: “Smears, lies and dirty tricks — what we call disinformation today — have long been a feature of American presidential election campaigns. Two weeks before this year’s vote, however, the torrent of half-truths, lies and fabrications, both foreign and homegrown, has exceeded anything that came before, according to officials and researchers who document disinformation.”
“The effect on the outcome on Nov. 5 remains to be seen, but it has already debased what passes for political debate about the two major party candidates, Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It has also corroded the foundations of the country’s democracy, undermining what was once a shared confidence that the country’s elections, regardless of who won, have been free and fair.”
New Jersey Republicans Planted Listening Device
“Prosecutors today charged two Readington Township women connected to a faction of the local Republican Party with planting a recording device at a local restaurant to record a private meeting of two elected officials who were their political opponents,” the New Jersey Globe reports.
One of the women was “captured on a security camera placing and retrieving the device near a table” at a local restaurant.
Crunchtime for Election Interference
“Federal officials battling foreign interference in the coming election say they are entering what may be the most perilous period of the campaign: October, when the prospect for mischief runs high and the time to react runs short,” the New York Times reports.
“While the Russians make little attempt to hide their support for former President Donald Trump, the Iranians — among Moscow’s most important suppliers in the war in Ukraine — desperately want to stop him from returning to office, and are busy hacking into his campaign and dumping whatever they find, as well as plotting to assassinate him.”
Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos
New York Times: “While the once-staid think tank has received attention recently for Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a future Trump administration that the group funded, it has also made its mark with an aggressive effort to shape public opinion, seeding falsehoods about the integrity of the 2024 election across social media and conservative news outlets.”
Tennessee Police Department Raided by State Agents
“Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Millersville Police Department on Wednesday, executing a search warrant as the criminal investigation into the troubled agency enters a dramatic new phase,” WTVF reports.
The raid is likely part of a probe into “the possible use of sensitive law enforcement data to dig up dirt on potential political enemies.”
The Hacking of Presidential Campaigns Begins
“For the third presidential election in a row, the foreign hacking of the campaigns has begun in earnest,” the New York Times reports.
“But this time, it’s the Iranians, not the Russians, making the first significant move.”
Washington Post: Experts warn of election disruptions after Trump says campaign was hacked.
The Shitpost Election
Casey Newton: “Sharing weaponized misinformation in the form of lazy jokes has quickly come to define the developing presidential campaign between Harris and Donald Trump. Across social networks, Democrats and Republicans are flooding the feed with obviously untrue statements about one another and calling it a joke.”
“Welcome to the shitpost election.”
“To shitpost, of course, is to attempt to derail online discussions by posting fake, outrageous, and often low-quality material. And it is not new to this election. Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey funded a group dedicated to creating shitposts about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. In 2019, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom had to deny that she killed squirrels for fun after a shitpost on the subject went viral.”
“And if the past few days have made anything clear, it’s that political shitposting is not exclusively a province on the right. Anyone who has opened X over the past few days has likely seen dozens of posts ‘joking’ that vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance had sex with a couch.”
Sign Snatchers Beware
“Political candidates have a new campaign expense: Apple AirTags,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The button-size geotracking device has become a popular tool in the rough-and-tumble world of local elections, where lawn signs often end up stolen, vandalized or run over. Candidates who have grown tired of dirty tricks are hiding AirTags in their signs, leading to digital dragnets when they go missing.”
“Tracking the device’s pings has led to the doorsteps of alleged sign snatchers and, in some cases, candidates’ opponents. The stings have left snatchers dumbfounded. Some have faced charges of theft, criminal mischief and receiving stolen property.”
Misleading GOP Videos Go Viral
“More Americans may think President Joe Biden tried to sit on a nonexistent chair the other day than know the boring truth that there was, in fact, a chair,” NBC News reports.
“The chair-that-was-there was just one of many quick video clips the conservative media ecosystem willed into virality over the past two weeks, leaving fact-checkers and Biden’s team with little chance to catch up.”
“The Republican National Committee, major conservative media outlets and right-wing influencers have succeeded in blasting out videos that they claim show ‘proof’ of Biden’s wandering off, freezing up or even filling his pants with a substance commonly represented by a brown swirl emoji.”
White House Fumes at ‘Cheap Fake’ Video
Daily Beast: “Another deceptively cut video of President Joe Biden is being circulated by right-wing pundits and media outlets.”
How Republicans Use Fake Videos to Attack Biden
Washington Post: “The 80th anniversary of D-Day quickly became the latest example of the fast spread of politically damaging manipulated videos, highlighting how the politics of misinformation and conspiracy theories do not stop at the water’s edge — and seem certain to continue through November.”
“In edited videos, Republican officials and allies of former president Donald Trump repeatedly tried to turn Biden’s Normandy visit into a highlight reel of senior moments and missteps, aimed at showing the president as infirm, addled or out of his depth. Trump, who turns 78 on Friday, has also repeatedly attacked Biden over his age and fitness, and regularly shares videos of the president looking frail.”
Russian Disinformation Videos Smear Biden
New York Times: “Russian operatives are leaning into videos, many of them that falsely purport to be made by independent journalists or whistle-blowers. The videos, opposed to blog or social media posts, are more likely to spread beyond the conspiratorial fringes of America and become part of mainstream discourse.”
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