Disinformation similar to the pro-Russian "Matryoshka" campaign is emerging on Bluesky, using deepfakes and fake profiles to spread pro-Russian messages, prompting calls for more proactive action from the platform.
Disinformation similar to the pro-Russian "Matryoshka" campaign is emerging on Bluesky, using deepfakes and fake profiles to spread pro-Russian messages, prompting calls for more proactive action from the platform.
Just be very sure you trust the list owner, as some have already started doing shit like turning them into grudge lists once a bunch of people subscribe, using lists that are popular for leftist reasons to mass add trans people without subscribers knowing, etc. I think Bluesky has been cracking down on that sort of thing, but it’s also something they can only act on once they know about it.
The Feddiverse doesn't really protect against these kind of campaigns. That's up to the instances themselves.
And it's not about mimicking official accounts. It's about spreading and gaining traction to specific opinions. It's known that disinformation campaigns have been targeting posts from real politicians. They boost the opinion while also boosting a counter opinion. Not to mention spread hate in the comments below them.
Veracity of news is important though. Some random person claiming Gandi rapes kids would carry much less weight than @brandy@bbc.com saying so. "News" from some mastodon.social account would (hopefully) get more scrutiny.
BlueSky’s verification system lets you make your handle any URL you own (via DNS or a meta tag in your HTML). Like the Washington Post’s handle is just @washingtonpost.com
That seems like a pretty trivial thing for any institution to setup even if most users are just going to stick with the default (“whatever dot bsky dot social”), if only because a URL costs a few dollars a year.
Not that I disagree about institutions being on Mastodon. Important government agencies should be basically everywhere. (Like a local weather service that issues critical safety warnings should be on every service possible.)
People still think China isn't a democracy or Cuba is under a military dictatorship... The US is the undisputed master of disinformation and propaganda.