Parties using microtargeting to sway Australian voters | Nigerian social media accounts targeted in Ukraine conflict influence campaign | Google bans apps with hidden data-harvesting software
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When it comes to online advertising, Google and Facebook are the big fish in the pond. During an election, the platforms rake in millions in ad spending from political candidates in exchange for the promise of sophisticated tools to help them deliver their messages to voters. ABC News
Owonikoko, a Nigerian web designer and development artist, appears to have been one of many bystanders in the Global South caught in the online battle to control how people perceive Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In response to these content moderation challenges social media companies have ramped up bot and misinformation monitoring and the global media is investigating the scope of the problem. The Record
Google has yanked dozens of apps from its Google Play store after determining that they include a software element that surreptitiously harvests data. The Wall Street Journal
ICPC
What’s happened to Russia’s much-vaunted battlefield AI?
The Mandarin
Huon Curtis
So far, Russia’s deployment in Ukraine has been a demonstration of some of the limitations and vulnerabilities of AI-enabled systems. It has also exposed some longer-term strategic weaknesses in Russia’s development of AI for military and economic purposes. Russia’s use of AI-enabled technologies in the invasion reportedly includes disinformation operations, deep fakes and open-source intelligence gathering. But information operations are not the sum total of Russia’s AI capabilities. AI is embedded across the military spectrum, from information management, training, logistics, maintenance and manufacturing, to early warning and air-defence systems.
Ukraine - Russia
Who's behind #IStandWithPutin
The Atlantic
Carl Miller
My pro-Ukrainian online world was punctured on March 2, when I saw two hashtags trending on Twitter: #IStandWithPutin and #IStandWithRussia. Very quickly, disinformation researchers began to see suspicious patterns associated with the hashtags, arguing that both bots and “engagement farming” were being used. A deep dive on the profile picture used by one account propagating the hashtags led to a Polish Facebook group dedicated to dating scams. At least in part, the early signs indicated that a deliberate, if hidden, effort was under way to make these hashtags trend.
The myth of the missing cyberwar
Foreign Affairs
David Cattler & Daniel Black
All available evidence indicates that Russia has employed a coordinated cyber-campaign intended to provide its forces with an early advantage during its war in Ukraine. The apparent disconnect between these observed incidents, on the one hand, and the public analysis that Russian cyber-operations have been minimal, on the other, is jarring. Preconceived notions of the role of cyberattacks on the battlefield have made it hard for analysts to see cyber-operations in Ukraine for what they are and for the role they play within Russia’s military campaign.
Australia
How political parties are using microtargeting to sway voter choices ahead of the federal election
ABC News
Ariel Bogle & Casey Briggs
When it comes to online advertising, Google and Facebook are the big fish in the pond. During an election, the platforms rake in millions in ad spending from political candidates in exchange for the promise of sophisticated tools to help them deliver their messages to voters.
Artificial intelligence and policing in Australia
ASPI
Teagan Westendorf
Digital technologies, devices and the internet are producing huge amounts of data and greater capacity to store it, and those developments are likely to accelerate. For law enforcement, a critical capability lagging behind the pace of tech innovation is the ability and capacity to screen, analyse and render insights from the ever-increasing volume of data—and to do so in accordance with the constraints on access to and use of personal information within our democratic system.
Joint media statement - AUKUS leaders level statement
Prime Minister of Australia
Today, the leaders of the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) partnership – Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, and President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. of the United States – assessed progress under AUKUS...We also committed today to commence new trilateral cooperation on hypersonics and counter-hypersonics, and electronic warfare capabilities, as well as to expand information sharing and to deepen cooperation on defense innovation. These initiatives will add to our existing efforts to deepen cooperation on cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and additional undersea capabilities. As our work progresses on these and other critical defense and security capabilities, we will seek opportunities to engage allies and close partners.
China
What is China learning from the Ukraine war?
Defense One
Thomas Corbett, Ma Xiu & Peter Singer
Russia also allowed its adversary to dominate the information environment. Due to a combination of overly optimistic assumptions about the political weakness of its foe and logistical reliance on its target’s own communications networks, Russia never launched the long-feared effort to take down Ukrainian communications networks. Putin’s strategists wrongly believed that its own messaging and rapid military advances would go viral across these networks and aid in collapsing the Ukrainian state…Instead, the Zelenskyy regime turned the tables on Russia, winning the information war inside both Ukraine and the West, and in so doing, transforming the greater war.
Ukraine war: How Russian propaganda dominates Chinese social media
Deutsche Welle
William Yang
China may have wanted to present itself as a neutral party to the war in Ukraine, but dominant messages on its internet are portraying a different reality. As Russia continues to spread its propaganda about the war through different channels, a cyber monitoring group in Taiwan found that pro-Kremlin propaganda has also been spreading rapidly on Chinese social media.
USA
The FBI is spending millions on social media tracking software
The Washington Post
Aaron Schaffer
Social media users seemed to foreshadow the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and the FBI apparently missed it. Now, the FBI is doubling down on tracking social media posts, spending millions of dollars on thousands of licenses to powerful social media monitoring technology that privacy and civil liberties advocates say raise serious concerns.
Trump’s Truth Social in trouble as financial, technical woes mount
The Washington Post
Drew Harwell & Josh Dawsey
The former president has fumed about the app’s glacial rollout and has been reluctant to post there until it’s a proven success. Three top executives have resigned.
Pacific Islands & NZ
Africa
Nigerian social media accounts targeted in influence campaign centered on Ukraine invasion
The Record
Olatunji Olaigbe
Owonikoko, a Nigerian web designer and development artist, appears to have been one of many bystanders in the Global South caught in the online battle to control how people perceive Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In response to these content moderation challenges social media companies have ramped up bot and misinformation monitoring and the global media is investigating the scope of the problem.
Big tech
Google bans apps with hidden data-harvesting software
The Wall Street Journal
Bryon Tau & Robert McMillan
Google has yanked dozens of apps from its Google Play store after determining that they include a software element that surreptitiously harvests data.
Facebook owner Meta targets finance with ‘Zuck Bucks’ and creator coins
Financial Times
Hannah Murphy
Meta has drawn up plans to introduce virtual coins, tokens and lending services to its apps, as Facebook’s parent company pursues its finance ambitions despite the collapse of a project to launch a cryptocurrency. The company, led by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, is seeking alternative revenue streams and new features that can attract and retain users, as popularity falls for its main social networking products such as Facebook and Instagram — a trend that threatens its $118bn-a-year ad-based business model.
Gender & women in cyber
Some women shared the messages they get on Instagram. It’s not pretty.
The Washington Post
Taylor Lorenz and Elizabeth Dwoskin
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit focused on online hate and misinformation, worked with five high-profile women, including actor Amber Heard, to analyze more than 8,717 direct messages the women received. The report charges Instagram with failing to address reports of abuse and the fundamental struggles that high-profile women on the platform face when it comes to using Instagram’s safety tools.
Police records show women are being stalked with Apple AirTags across the country
VICE
Samantha Cole
Motherboard obtained reports of stalking, harassment, and abuse using Airtags, targeting victims of intimate partner violence.
Welcome to the girlbossification of crypto
The Washington Post
Nitasha Tiku
Gwyneth Paltrow, Mila Kunis and other celebs are pushing women to invest in NFTs, which some see a revival of self-serving feminism.
Misc
Cryptoverse: NFT bubble gets that shrinking feeling
Reuters
Elizabeth Howcroft
A year on from when a single non-fungible token sold for $69.3 million in crypto at Christie's auction house, with the buyer paying to be recorded on blockchain as the owner of a digital file that anyone can see online for free, this weird and wild market is showing some signs of slowing down.
Worldcoin promised free crypto if they scanned their eyeballs with “The Orb.” Now they feel robbed.
BuzzFeed
Richard Nieva & Aman Sethi
The Sam Altman–founded crypto startup has said it aims to alleviate global poverty, but so far it has angered the very people it claims to be helping.
Fake news about our fake news study spread faster than its truth… Just as we predicted.
Medium
Sinan Aral
Several prominent journalists recently spread misinformation about the science of misinformation… Having analyzed all of the verified true and false news that ever spread on Twitter from 2006 to 2017, we found that false news spread farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth in every category of information.
Can computers learn common sense?
The New Yorker
Matthew Hutson
A.I. researchers are making progress on a long-term goal: giving their programs the kind of knowledge we take for granted.
Events
Jobs
The Sydney Dialogue - Director
ASPI ICPC
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is currently recruiting for a Director to lead the second iteration of ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue - the world’s premier summit on emerging, critical and cyber technologies.
The Sydney Dialogue - Senior Events Coordinator
ASPI ICPC
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is currently recruiting for an experienced events professional to coordinate the planning and logistics of the second iteration of ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue - the world’s premier summit on emerging, critical and cyber technologies.
ICPC Senior Analyst or Analyst - China
ASPI ICPC
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has a unique opportunity for exceptional and experienced China-focused senior analysts or analysts to join its centre. This role will focus on original research and analysis centred around the (growing) range of topics which our ICPC China team work on. Our China team produces some of the most impactful and well-read policy-relevant research in the world, with our experts often being called upon by politicians, governments, corporates and civil society actors to provide briefings and advice.
Important disclaimer: This digest is a daily collation of material designed to provide authoritative information and commentary in relation to the subject matters covered. The views expressed in this material are those of the authors only. To provide feedback please contact: icpc@aspi.org.au