Digital Threat Digest - 19 April 2022
PGI’s Digital Investigations Team brings you the Digital Threat Digest, daily SOCMINT and OSINT insights into disinformation, misinformation, and online harms.
After a leisurely long weekend we return to the immediate exhaustion of the speed of the information cycle in 2022.
Relentless speed
I spent much of the Easter long weekend walking around the beach, wandering through the city, and eating my bodyweight in a variety of animal-shaped foil-wrapped chocolates. I didn’t open Twitter for three days, I uninstalled Teams from my phone, I even managed to mute the TV in the corner that incessantly blasts CNN’s interpretation of minute by minute developments in Ukraine. Then on Monday I cracked, my thumb’s muscle memory took over and before I knew what was happening the Lindt rabbit had been discarded in favour of doomscrolling 72 hours’ worth of chaos that had passed me by. Taylor Lorenz is going to dox Libs of TikTok, Google has entered the theatre of war by allegedly unblurring sensitive map imagery, and somehow the US is still politicising mask mandates after more than two years of pandemic. Just hook it into my veins. Even Jacob Rees-Mogg—who I was fairly sure I’d killed in Elden Ring on Sunday—found time on Monday to tell all the civil servants to return to the office so that beatings could resume.
In all honesty it was a little overwhelming; what felt like a whole year of news seemed to have somehow happened in three days…and now I was behind. But then this morning I learned I sort of also wasn’t behind. Taylor Lorenz is instead once again being smeared by a MyPillow-funded website citing tweets from Jack Posobiec and various other sentient mould, Google found itself weaponised by a seemingly pointless false narrative it was then forced to deny, and the DoJ will likely appeal the mask mandate ban. I’m afraid I don’t have a link showing how to cheese JRM over a waterfall, but you get the gist.
The Google Maps arc in particular shows the speed at which the information cycle is moving at present, but it also shows that you don’t necessarily gain anything from following that cycle in real time. Half of Twitter accepted they had likely unblurred Russian military infrastructure because it would be logical to support Ukraine, without ever questioning the repercussions of such a move. Slow down, ignore the noise, treat everything with a little scepticism and cynicism, and don’t get drawn in to circling the drain of an information overload through Twitter.
The Washington Post plans to dox Libs of Tik Tok in new hit piece by Taylor Lorenz | PM.
US judge strikes down Biden mask mandate for planes and trains | The Guardian
More about Protection Group International's Digital Investigations
PGI’s Social Media Intelligence Analysts combine modern exploitative technology with deep human analytical expertise that covers the social media platforms themselves and the behaviours and the intents of those who use them. Our experienced analyst team have a deep understanding of how various threat groups use social media and follow a three-pronged approach focused on content, behaviour and infrastructure to assess and substantiate threat landscapes.
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