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Climate Misinformation Is Rife on Social Media – and Poised to Get Worse
The decision by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to end its fact-checking program and otherwise reduce content moderation would open the floodgates to more climate misinformation on Meta’s apps, including misleading or out-of-context claims during disasters. Crowd-sourced debunking is no match for organized disinformation campaigns in the midst of information vacuums during a crisis. The conditions for the rapid and unchecked spread of misleading, and outright false, content could get worse with Meta’s content moderation policy and algorithmic changes.
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The World's Top Global Risk Is Misinformation and Disinformation: World Economic Forum
Mis- and disinformation have once again been named the top global risk of the immediate term in the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risks Report 2025. Disinformation is deeply insidious, destructive and rapidly evolving. It often comes hand-in-hand with its less malicious but equally destructive cousin, misinformation.
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The Dynamics That Polarize Us on Social Media Are About to Get Worse
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced Facebook, Instagram and Threads, instead of relying on independent third-party factcheckers, will now emulate Elon Musk’s X in using “community notes.”But research shows that political polarization prevents community fact-checking from even occurring – and, what is worse, community-notes systems are vulnerable to manipulation by well organized groups, and foreign governments, with political agendas.
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What Meta’s Move to Community Moderation Could Mean for Misinformation
Achieving the right balance between protecting free speech and ensuring the integrity of information is a complex challenge. Meta’s shift from professional factchecking to crowdsourced community moderation risks undermining this balance by amplifying the spread of disinformation and hateful speech. Free expression without proper safeguards can enable the unchecked proliferation of harmful content, including conspiracy theories, hate speech and medical misinformation.
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Meta to Move Content Moderators to Texas as Part of Plan to End Fact-Checking Program
The tech giant’s decision to end the program comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg seeks to mend ties with the incoming Trump administration.
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Cartels Turn to Social Media to Lure Americans into Human Smuggling as Texas Enforces Stricter Laws
Thousands of people have been arrested under Texas’ human smuggling law. Now they face at least a decade in prison under sentencing guidelines that took effect this year.
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AI Fact Checks Can Increase Belief in False Headlines
Many tech companies and start-ups have touted the potential of automated fact-checking services powered by artificial intelligence to stem the rising tide of online misinformation, but a new study has found that AI-fact checking can, in some cases, actually increase belief in false headlines.
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It’s Not Too Late to Regulate Persuasive Technologies
Prominent Chinese tech companies are developing and deploying powerful persuasive tools to work for the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda, military and public security services—and many of them have already become global leaders in their fields. TikTok is only the tip of the iceberg.
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How Does the Information Ecosystem Influence Politics?
A new course combines data and political science to understand some of the most vital phenomena of our time. “Persuasion is happening at scale on information platforms,” says an expert, “so we now have the chance to understand this question statistically.”
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Misinformation Really Does Spread Like a Virus, Suggest Mathematical Models Drawn from Epidemiology
When it comes to misinformation, “going viral” appears to be more than a simple catchphrase. Scientists have found a close analogy between the spread of misinformation and the spread of viruses: how misinformation gets around can be effectively described using mathematical models designed to simulate the spread of pathogens.
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University of Central Florida Students Secure Gold at the DOE’s 10th CyberForce Competition
Students gained hands-on practical cybersecurity experience and recognition by securing a wind energy generation plant against simulated cyberattacks.
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EFF to Court: Reject X’s Effort to Revive a Speech-Chilling Lawsuit Against a Nonprofit
X’s lawsuit against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate is intended to stifle criticism and punish the organization for its reports criticizing the platform’s content moderation practices, and a previous ruling dismissing the lawsuit should be affirmed.
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Russian Disinformation Campaign Creates 'Climate of Chaos,' Say Experts
In the last two years, Russian agents have created fake websites which are employed in a “persistent” disinformation campaign. The Russian agents are creating false news websites that mimic reputable sources and posting fake stories to those phony sites. The websites may look like trusted European media outlets but in fact mislead readers with malicious stories and propaganda.
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Exploiting Meta’s Weaknesses, Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook and Instagram in Run-Up to Election
Eight deceptive advertising networks have placed over 160,000 election and social issues ads across more than 340 Facebook pages in English and Spanish. Some of the people who clicked on ads were unwittingly signed up for monthly credit card charges or lost health coverage, among other consequences.
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False Narratives Around the 2024 Presidential Election
False and misleading narratives about the upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election are spreading widely among extremists and purveyors of hate and conspiracy theories.
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The long view
Terrorgram Block Is a Welcome Step Towards Countering Violent Extremism
Terrorgram has been linked to lone-actor attacks in Slovakia, Turkey, Brazil and the United States. Its listing places it among the likes of Hamas, Islamic State, and violent white supremacist groups such as Sonnenkrieg Division and The Base.
Grok’s ‘White Genocide’ Responses Show How Generative AI Can Be Weaponized
The AI chatbot Grok spent one day in May 2025 spreading debunked conspiracy theories about “white genocide” in South Africa, echoing views publicly voiced by Elon Musk. There has been substantial research on methods for keeping AI from causing harm by avoiding such damaging statements – called AI alignment – but this incident is particularly alarming because it shows how those same techniques can be deliberately abused to produce misleading or ideologically motivated content.