Digital Threat Digest - 26 January 2022
PGI’s Digital Investigations Team brings you the Digital Threat Digest, a daily review of what we think you need to know about disinformation, misinformation, and online harms.
Minecraft, psyops, and Fight Club make for a solid Friday evening, but they’re all here and unconnected of a Wednesday morning as emergent digital threats.
The conspiracy pipeline
The more time an individual spends in a conspiracy echo chamber the more ingrained their conspiratorial views are likely to become. This piece from the Southern Poverty Law Center outlines the progression of James Delingpole’s career which has ended up with him hanging out on livestreams with overt white nationalists arguing that Brexit was a psyop. Delingpole’s presence on the livestream is particularly noteworthy because he remains the executive editor of Breitbart UK, and has been regularly featured in the likes of the Times, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, and the Spectator – he retains an audience and a platform. As long as publications like Breitbart continue to flirt with white nationalists and conspiracists in order to generate content, conspiracy theories both harmless and dangerous will continue to be pushed to wide audiences.
Former Breitbart London Boss Streamed With White Nationalist | Southern Poverty Law Centre
Digital authoritarianism
Digitally authoritarian states are those which exert significant control over the information environment, primarily with a view to promoting a façade of stability or prosperity to their citizens. The flipside of digitally authoritarian capability – digital repression – is the crux of this piece from Rest of World, which looks at the increasing use of tech to repress dissenting voices in Southeast Asia. There are a variety of examples within the article showing the range of tactics used – from sending an inciteful message from a detainee’s phone and then prosecuting them for incitement, to red-tagging in the Philippines where armies of pro-government users will label their opponents as communists to discredit them. Research into emergent digital threats and disinformation will often focus on the broadcasting of a particular perspective through influence operations, but it’s important to remember that the same sphere concerns the silencing of dissent.
Internet shutdowns
A last minute tactic of many authoritarian regimes is the internet shutdown; pulling the plug on connectivity in a country in order to prevent the organisation of protests or spread of anti-government messaging. But, sometimes those outages aren’t what they seem. Take Andorra, for example; while it isn’t the model of an authoritarian regime, a recent series of outages caused disruption. Turns out, The Record explains, that these were the result of a series of DDoS attacks designed to prevent prominent Andorran players competing in a USD 100,000 Minecraft tournament. It’s not always Russia…
DDoS attacks on Andorra’s internet linked to Squid Game Minecraft tournament | The Record
Beijing’s first rule
Vice News have reported that Fight Club is being released in China, but with the ending altered to show that the security services foil the bomb plot. In a time when many are concerned about the use of deepfakes in order to manipulate content or narratives insidiously, overt censorship and adaption remain much larger threats.
Cult Classic ‘Fight Club’ Gets a Very Different Ending in China | Vice
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.
Disclaimer: Protection Group International does not endorse any of the linked content.