MC Weekly Update 11/28: Alex the Demon Overlord
Evelyn and Alex discuss how China’s censors are struggling to contain information about the ongoing protests, how they are going on the offensive, and why that offensive includes an image of Alex with horns.They also, of course, check in on Twitter with the weekly Elon Musk segment, and discuss US-backed information operations.
Moderated Content · evelyn douek, Alex Stamos
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Show Notes
Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:
- As protestors against China’s zero-Covid policy fill the streets, images of them fill the internet and China’s censors are struggling to contain them. – Liza Lin, Karen Hao / Wall Street Journal
- This is partly because the Chinese people have had years of practice at evading censors and know a trick or two. – Paul Mozur / Twitter
- So China is trying to bury that content with its own spam about escorts, porn and gambling. – Jon Porter / The Verge
- Some of that spam includes … an AI-generated image of Alex with horns? – Alex Stamos / Twitter
- Elon doesn’t seem too concerned though. He’s too busy picking a fight with Apple. – Elon Musk / Twitter
- And maybe drawing up plans for his own phone if Apple kicks Twitter out of the app store? – Elon Musk / Twitter
- Meta published its quarterly adversarial threat report this week, which included information about accounts it took down conducting information operations that had links to the US government. – Meta
- Alex walks us through the report Stanford Internet Observatory wrote with Graphika on these operations and what they found. – Graphika, Stanford Internet Observatory
- As a result of this report, the Pentagon ordered a review of information operations conducted by the US military. – Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post
- Alex gives Evelyn an apparently now-weekly update on Stanford football news.
Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.
Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.
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