In the 2020 presidential primary, leading candidates are not only subject to scrutiny from the media for any potential gaffes or slip-ups. On social media, they are also targets of misinformation attacks from trolls, bots, or even regular people who want to take down candidates they don't like.
As quickly as the problem grows, though, there are businesses looking to solve it.
VineSight, an AI-based start-up, is working to detect misinformation attacks early. The company has developed an algorithm to study how fake news campaigns spread, especially on social media platforms like Twitter.
"Consistently Joe Biden had the most attacks targeting him," following the first two Democratic debates, said CEO Gideon Blocq.
Kamala Harris was also a popular target of misinformation attacks on social media, he told Twitter. "In the July debates, she was actually targeted a lot more than in the June debates."
According to a recent report from VineSights, Biden was subject to 30 percent of the fake news attacks following his debate performance in July. Harris trailed not far behind at 27 percent.
The attacks seem to mirror what poll-watchers saw: Biden, the frontrunner, taking the brunt of the attacks, and Harris facing more after an impressive performance at the June debate.
VineSight looks beyond the 280 characters that Twitter users can type, with the AI able to scan images and videos as well, Blocq said.
As one example, VineSight identified this tweet from the verified Trump War Room Twitter account as a part of a misinformation campaign. The tweet shows a doctored video of Joe Biden stuttering during his CNN debate performance.
Misinformation doesn't always come in the form of doctored content, though. The problem can be more subtle, in the form of content that has been taken out of context.
At the Iowa State Fair over the weekend, Blocq flagged a video coming from Turning Point USA founder and Trump supporter, Charlie Kirk, that has been viewed over 1.6 million times. Kirk's tweet says that it shows Joe Biden "forcefully grab" a field staffer.
When watching a longer version of the clip play out in real time, it appears that Biden did grab the woman's arm as she walked away so that he could further answer her question, but the "grab" doesn't appear to be forceful, like Kirk contends.
When asked about videos like this, Blocq said, "It's not fabricated, but implies that something happened, which didn't happen and is taken out of context."
As for Sen. Harris, she's faced various misinformation attacks over her ethnicity, including claims that she was lying about being black.
Blocq said this is just the "tip of the iceberg" on misinformation attacks, a cautionary message with nearly 14 months to go before the general election.
Despite former special counsel Robert Mueller's lengthy investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Blocq says Americans should not be so quick to point to Russia in all of these misinformation campaigns.
Echoing Alex Stamos, a former chief security officer at Facebook, Blocq said, "If you think it's Russia, it's probably not Russia."
Rather, a majority of these targeted attacks are coming from "trolls and bots, but we also see actual human beings, verified human beings, competing campaigns, sharing this misinformation," he said.
So, what now?
Though Blocq told Cheddar the targeted attacks of misinformation are just going to get "bigger and bigger" as the election ramps up, "more solutions are also coming up."
The biggest fix, he said, is increasing news literacy, and therefore drawing a line between what is real, and what is fake.
"This is the first step. It's very complex to stop this entire world of misinformation, I think we'll get there, but it'll take a long time," Blocq stated.
As of March 2022, almost 200 Anti-LGBT+ bills have been introduced in state governments across the country — especially directed at the transgender community. Human Rights Campaign State Legislative Director and Senior Counsel Cathryn Oakley joined Cheddar News to discuss the deluge of legislation. "Unfortunately we are seeing these bills come at transgender youth from every conceivable direction," she said. "Every support that a trans kid has, whether that's their parents, whether that's their family, whether that's their teachers or their guidance counselors or their coaches, whether it's their teammates or the librarians and the books that they read, whether it's curriculum, whether it's even just the ability to acknowledge that LGBTQ people have existed throughout history and are important in the fabric of modern American society. The bills that we are seeing filed across the country are targeting all of those pieces."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week seemed to have put out a video that urged Ukrainians to put down their arms and surrender to Russia. It was later revealed that it was a “deepfake,” a computer-generated video to mimic the Ukrainian leader. Cheddar News speaks with security expert Morgan Wright about how the technology is being used in the war in Ukraine.
After scrutiny over the negative impact on the mental health of children, social media apps have begun adding stricter limitations to parental controls. Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization focusing on recommendations for entertainment platforms, joined Cheddar News to talk about the changes, why they might not be enough, and what parents can do to help. "It's almost that the companies — whether they're Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, or whatever — have to start the process from the beginning of designing the product," he said. "They have to be much more clear about age verification so that a 12-year-old and 11-year-old can't get on there." Steyer also pushed for federal legislation to reign in the issue.
As Big Tech companies from the U.S. like Google and Apple managed to build market dominance overseas, the European Union has decided to curb what it sees as monopolistic growth. Greg Martin, the co-founder of Rainmaker Securities, joined Cheddar News to talk about how the impact of the antitrust regulations being adopted. "I think there's a lot of great outcomes here, but those will be far down the road [because] I do think there's some interoperability things that need to be worked out technologically," he said. "But it's going to be really good ultimately for the consumer in my opinion."
Tenicka Boyd is a digital creator making content that reflects her two passions: activism and style. The TikTok star joined Cheddar News to talk about her platform and new looks this Spring. Boyd admitted that at first she wanted to remain anonymous on the social media platform before finding her passion. "I just joined TikTok hoping that no one would find me, and I started creating colorful content," she said. "I didn't know that you could monetize this and really do it full time, and I just followed my passion because I realized that you can have multiple different lives and do multiple different things."
Catching you up on what you need to know on March 25, 2022, with Ukrainian forces retaking Kyiv, 300 deaths reported from the bombing of a theater used as a shelter in Mariupol, U.S. regulators ditch a climate review of natural gas projects, the 94th Academy Awards, and more.
North Korea says it test-fired its biggest intercontinental ballistic missile under the orders of leader Kim Jong Un, who vowed to continue expanding his nuclear arsenal while preparing for a “long-standing confrontation” with the United States.
Ukrainian authorities in the besieged ruins of Mariupol say that about 300 people died when a Russian airstrike blew up a theater where hundreds of civilians were sheltering.
