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Simfin

online safety and digital citizenship specialist

 Tagged with digital literacy


29 April 2024

On April 17, 2024, an account named StorieSpot posted images of a purported "cat's eye dazzle" flower in the Facebook group National Geographic Wild Planet. (The group, which has more than 1.4 million members, does not appear to have any official affiliation with National Geographic.) According to the pictures, the flower closely resembles a kitten's face.

The post read, "Amazing plants! Cat's eye dazzle." It received more than 80,000 likes and 36,000 shares, at the time of this writing.

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15 April 2024

For 14 hours over the weekend, Sydney university student Ben Cohen was one of the most reviled men on the internet after he was falsely accused of being the knifeman who went on a stabbing rampage in a Sydney shopping centre, killing six people.

The ABC has pieced together how anti-semitic and pro-Kremlin accounts turned Mr Cohen into an internet villain.

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28 March 2024

Louise Bruder never forgets a face. Which is not only a handy skill at parties, but it has helped her carve out a career.

She has the fabulous job title of super-recogniser, and her work at UK digital ID firm Yoti involves comparing the photos on an identity document with an uploaded selfie, to determine if it is the same person.

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15 March 2024

AI content farms are taking over the internet, and NewsGuard analysts track their spread. Read more about AI content farms, and how they are proliferating:

 

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16 February 2024

“Terms of Service; Didn't Read” (short: ToS;DR) is a project started in June 2012 to help fix the “biggest lie on the web”: almost no one really reads the terms of service we agree to all the time.

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08 February 2024

Users are exploiting TikTok’s Creativity Program by pumping out viral conspiracy theory content, using AI-generated images and voices for profit.

While scrolling the popular video-sharing platform, users may come across conspiracy theories seemingly read by an AI-generated voice and presented along with a series of apparently AI-generated images. These videos range from making various baseless and outrageous claims about the U.S. government capturing mythical or fictional creatures like vampires, wendigos, or King Kong, to conspiracy theories arguing that advanced ancient civilizations have been systematically erased from history.

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