#misinformation

#misinformation

The problem was: I had never given an interview to The Times. Yet here was a screenshot of the article along with a quote from "me" claiming that Mamdani's platform "doesn't add up." That's the opposite of what I believe and have said dozens of times publicly, including on national television and in this magazine. Yet, here was a major international media outlet, one of the most famous and oldest newspapers in the world, publishing a story stating that I had suddenly reversed myself.

Abortion rights group Reproaction notes that the "Baby Olivia" video claims that fetuses experience hiccups at seven weeks gestation, when scientists and medical professionals have repeatedly stated that fetal hiccups don't begin until 23 weeks. That kind of deception is a key tactic of Live Action, an anti-abortion group that produced the video. Lila Rose, the president of Live Action, has inaccurately said that abortion is " never medically necessary," and supports forcing rape and incest victims to bear their abusers' child. David Daleiden, who infamously released doctored videos smearing Planned Parenthood and was convicted for illegally recording protected communications between patients and reproductive health care providers, is a former Live Action staffer.

There are plenty of stories out there about how politicians, sales representatives, and influencers, will exaggerate or distort the facts in order to win votes, sales, or clicks, even when they know they shouldn't. It turns out that AI models, too, can suffer from these decidedly human failings. Two researchers at Stanford University suggest in a new preprint research paper that repeatedly optimizing large language models (LLMs) for such market-driven objectives can lead them to adopt bad behaviors as a side-effect of their training - even when they are instructed to stick to the rules.

While the ambition is admirable, the cost estimates reportedly exceeding $7bn annually rest on optimistic assumptions about eliminating waste and raising revenue through new taxes, De Blasio apparently said of Mamdani's plans to the UK newspaper the Times, in an article published on Tuesday. In my view, the math doesn't hold up under scrutiny, and the political hurdles are substantial.

When a rival lies or cheats, we demand justice. But when a friend does, we offer excuses. Equally, we believe our team plays by the rules while others bend them. Yet honesty depends on the messenger. When someone from our in-group bends the truth, we call it strategic, but when the out-group does it, we call it deceit. In a modern era of algorithmic bubbles, deep fakes, and partisan feeds, the cost of this bias grows.

PARIS -- It was shortly after the stunning heist of the crown jewels at the Louvre when Paris-based Associated Press photographer Thibault Camus caught in his frame a dapperly dressed young man walking by uniformed French police officers, their car blocking one of the museum gates. Instinctively, he took the shot. It wasn't a particularly great photo, with someone's shoulder obscuring part of the foreground, Camus told himself.

The rise of political influencers - content creators on social media who sway public opinion by endorsing political causes or candidates - has raised questions about how best to regulate them, a German media regulator said in a study published Monday. EU rules for political advertising, aimed at countering information manipulation and foreign interference in elections, and at increasing transparency about sponsors, but political influencers fall outside that scope, have entered into force this month.

The White House website has a timeline of "Major Events" that now includes several scandals - some real, some imagined by the right - likely as a way to justify the president's destruction of the East Wing this week. These scandals include former President Bill Clinton's affair, former President Barack Obama's supposed ties to Muslim terrorism (which was not a real story), Hunter Biden's drug use, and former President Joe Biden's support for trans rights.

It was quite the sight in general but especially unnerving at a moment when Canadian-American relations are so deep in the toilet that they're in the Pacific Ocean. Word on the street is that Aaron Sorkin is to blame. Reports were circulating online that his latest project, The Social Reckoning, began filming in the city on Monday, October 20, and he apparently kicked things off by reenacting the January 6 insurrection on Canadian soil.

In doing so, we went down a series of rabbit holes, finding site after site cross-quoting other sites with the same basic message. We finally found one reference to a French podcast that Gates might have been on as a guest, although we were never able to find the podcast itself. Because The Economic Times and MSN are both outlets with some credibility, all the other sites appear to have taken their Bill Gates quotes at face value.

THE BIDEN FBI PLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6.

The image purportedly captured an exchange between a user and what appeared to be a Campbell's customer service account. The comment read, "Your new commercial with the 2 dads makes me sick," and the response stated: "Hi Kim! If you're feeling sick, we suggest enjoying a delicious can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. Make sure to enjoy it hot, so that it can help warm up your cold, dead heart." The exchange was accompanied by a caption reading, "Campbell's doesn't f*** around."

Facts are becoming less sacred by the day in Donald Trump's US, where many of his supporters now deny the very existence of truths. To them, inconvenient evidence is by definition bias. His followers and those who fear his fist are falling into line: media, universities and that infamous regiment of tech zillionaires who stood right behind him on inauguration day.

"When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity," Bier posted on X. "This is critical to getting a pulse on important issues happening in the world."

The idea is that by exposing some of these details, users will be able to make a more informed decision about whether someone is operating an authentic account or if they're possibly a bot or bad actor attempting to sow misinformation. For instance, if an account's bio claims they're based in a U.S. state, but their account information shows it's based overseas, you may suspect the account has another agenda.

At issue is the envelope provided for ballots to be returned either by mail or at a drop box or vote center. Counties are in charge of printing the ballots and mail voting materials (including the return envelope), and some have opted to include small punched holes on the envelope to help visually impaired voters find where they need to sign in order for their ballot to be counted.

The small holes on ballot envelopes are an accessibility feature to allow sight-impaired voters to orient themselves to where they are required to sign the envelope," Weber said in a statement released Monday.

On October 7, 2023 Hamas attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages to the Gaza Strip. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (updated on June 22, 2025), a total of 57 deceased hostages have been brought back to Israel so far. Israel says that the bodies of at least 27 killed hostages who were abducted on October 7 are still being held by Hamas.

AI bots are everywhere now, filling everything from online stores to social media. But that sudden ubiquity could end up being a very bad thing, according to a new paper from Stanford University scientists who unleashedAI models into different environments - including social media - and found that when they were rewarded for success at tasks like boosting likes and other online engagement metrics,the bots increasingly engaged in unethical behavior like lyingand spreading hateful messages or misinformation.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said AI will change who can be creative, as the new tools and technology will give people who couldn't be creators before the ability to produce content at a certain quality and scale. However, he also admitted that bad actors will use the technology for "nefarious purposes" and that kids growing up today will have to be taught that you can't believe something just because you saw a video of it.

The move was announced following an investigation by Republican lawmakers into whether the Biden administration pressured tech companies to remove certain types of content. YouTube said that over the past couple of years, it did away with rules that had prohibited users from repeatedly posting misinformation about Covid-19 and the 2020 US election outcome. Now, users terminated for breaking those rules have the chance to return.

For months, Donald Trump has presented himself as the very incarnation of a global peacemaker, touting an ever-changing list of international conflicts that he claims to have settled. Sometimes it has been six, sometimes as many as ten. "I ended seven wars," the President told the U.N. General Assembly last month, "and in all cases they were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed," which was not true but has not stopped Trump from repeating it.

When President Donald Trump delivered a barrage of false statements about climate change during his September 23 speech to the UN General Assembly, he made headlines around the world. Mocking climate change as a "con job" promoted by "stupid people," Trump's remarks also illustrated a dilemma facing journalism's traditional approach to covering politics, where not appearing to take sides has long been a cardinal rule. As more and more political leaders and movements mirror Trump's habit of making factually inaccurate claims, a new report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism offers a fresh way to think about this dilemma, along with a host of practical tools for tackling it.