iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Hijacking Trusted Media Brands: Russia’s Favorite Disinformation Tactic Against the West Surged by 850 Percent in the Last Year www.newsguardtech.com/special-repo...

newsguardtech.com

Hijacking Trusted Media Brands: Russia’s Favorite Disinformation Tactic Against the West Surged by 850 Percent in the Last Year

042

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 28/09/2026

This is the city Turkey deserves, but not the one it needs right now.

000

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 28/09/2026

This is the city Turkey deserves, but not the one it needs right now.

010

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 08/02/2026

Hate-filled fake videos about London are everywhere. We've obtained a recording of a TikToker confessing to secretly filming Londoners in their homes for clicks. He says it's not political. He just wants to make money from far-right anger. Read what he says: www.londoncentric.media/p/london-tik...

791719834

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 28/09/2026

🇪🇺🗞🧑‍💻🧑‍🏫 "The Plots Against Europe: When a Covert Online Influence Operation Just Won't Quit" Presenting this at @disinfo.eu's #Disinfo2026 conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, in the "Still Watching: Platforms Under Investigation" session. Come watch, and reach out to meet. 🔗 www.disinfo.eu/conference/

041

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 27/09/2026

That's an American state I'd never thought I'd see on a chicken shop sign board.

000

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 27/09/2026

Dotting my eyes and crossing my teas.

011

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Trump is raging at news orgs for refusing to cover his reception of Xi after he banned three from the White House. The real lesson here: When institutions join together to resist his abuses of power it actually works, sending him into a helpless fury. New from me: newrepublic.com/article/2158...

newrepublic.com

Trump’s Angry Tirade Over Failing Press Ban Reveals His Achilles’ Heel

Trump is furious that news organizations are fighting back against his vile efforts to punish their colleagues—because collective resistance to his authoritarianism actually works.

792239639

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 26/09/2026

The fawning notes of thanks from click-farming grifters to the Zuckster for facilitating their transnational monetised AI slop ragebait is the cherry on top. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCvP... #Meta #Facebook #platforms #transparency #grifters #monetization #UK #USA #EU #clickFarms

youtube.com

How to rage bait Americans

YouTube video by Christophe

010

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Prof Jenny Rohn @jennyrohn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Insect starting out as a PhD student and ending up a full professor #AcademicSky

37914

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Luke Harding @lukeharding1968.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A wonderful conversation with the great @carolecadwalla.bsky.social about a possible Russian attack on Europe beyond Ukraine, why Trump defers to Putin, and Moscow's shadowy ties to the Reform Party. We were on stage at a sell-out event at the the Frontline Club www.thenerve.news/p/russia-war...

thenerve.news

‘The UK has been promoted to Russia’s main opponent’: Luke Harding on Putin, Trump and the potential for a new European war

The Guardian foreign correspondent, who was expelled from Moscow in 2011, tells Carole Cadwalladr he thinks the Kremlin, struggling to make headway with its invasion, will attempt a provocation agains...

2309

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 25/09/2026

“From this point forward, all of the Qin empire's documents, and hopefully the world’s, will be changed to use the much more accurate term, "horse" as opposed to "deer". So it’s a horse. In other words, welcome to the new world of horse shit — HS.”

100

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Brandy Zadrozny @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Got to guest co-host one of my favorite pods with one of my favorite thinkers and people! Thanks @eringloriaryan.bsky.social <3 <3 <3 www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HTe...

youtube.com

Russian Trolls Are ATTACKING Dems in INSANE Celeb AI Videos

YouTube video by Hysteria

312424

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Cyan Worlds @cyan.com · 25/09/2026

33 years ago today, the Stranger stepped onto the dock of Myst Island for the first time. We can still hear the water splashing against the pilings.

The dock of Myst Island from the original version of the game. A wooden dock ends at a spiral staircase that leads up to giant gears on a hillside. A ship is sunk in the water on the right, and parts of buildings are visible on the left.

361601457

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The scale, speed and coordination of AI-assisted disinformation are outpacing the mechanisms designed to counter them. Pei-Chi Jao writes that Taiwan's year-end elections make that gap more urgent to close.

techpolicy.press

China’s Disinformation Operations in Taiwan Are Changing with AI

AI-driven Chinese influence operations are targeting Taiwan with coordinated content, deepfakes, and social media campaigns, writes Pei-Chi Jao.

0125

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 24/09/2026

Just a step away from the ragebait tabloid headline version "Activist Arrested for Posting Video Online".

041

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 24/09/2026

«Payments for “suppliers and external services” amounted to €657,333.15. […] The vast majority of these expenses, €593,995.91, was spent on services provided by entities outside the EU. […] just €21,504.07 went to entities in Portugal.» #TommyTenNames #UK #Portugal #shellery #funding

000

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 23/09/2026

New GIF dropped. 🔗 giphy.com/gifs/preside...

040

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

WHAT TO FIX @whattofix.tech · 21/09/2026

📣 BIG NEWS: We have filed a #DSA complaint against #Meta with the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) for potential non-compliance with Articles 12, 14, 16 and 20 of the DSA.

11410

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 23/09/2026

Would've been nice to additionally mention the threat from monetised ragebait click farms, and to have a companion clarification campaign to counter disinformation about the initiative itself. But this is a good start.

041

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 22/09/2026

FFS, "British chap", Starmer's not even an MP anymore, let alone PM.

https://x.com/i/user/1947713325514600449/

030

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 21/09/2026

📚🎙️ Juicy and worrying observations from Ukraine field reporting, about Kremlin assets in the UK and US, on information disorder, where and how Putin might escalate, and what we can do about it. @lukeharding1968.bsky.social and @carolecadwalla.bsky.social at Frontline Club London, on Betrayal.

020

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 21/09/2026

This is because Meta has decided to ban all "social issue" advertising in the EU ("Ending Political, Electoral and Social Issue Advertising in the EU in Response to Incoming European Regulation", 2025 July 25) in response to the EU’s Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) rules.

theguardian.com

Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain because they relate to feminism

Meta tells theatre that Facebook and Instagram filter out ads mentioning ‘social topics’ such as civil rights or feminism

051

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Liam Byrne MP @liambyrnemp.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Elon Musk fired off 40 tweets about British politics in January 2025. The entire UK media talked about almost nothing else for six days. That's not an accident. It's a business model. New piece: the US influencer network that's captured Reform UK's information world tinyurl.com/3hzsfjus

tinyurl.com

Take Back Control?

Britain's Populist Right Has Surrendered Its Mind to America

31912

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 20/09/2026

Robin: "Holy matzo, Batman! We're going to be late to the coming-of-age ceremony of Rabbi Edelstein's daughter!" Batman: "Quick, Robin, to the bat mitzvah!"

static.klipy.com

Batman and Robin Running

ALT: Batman and Robin Running

0211

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Maggie Harrison Dupré @mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

BBM's operation looks an awful lot like Google's exact definition of scaled content abuse. But the tech giant hasn't taken any lasting action against BBM, as far as we can tell:

Google’s response to BBM’s empire of schlock doesn’t inspire confidence for its future as a steward of the media ecosystem.

In theory, the tech giant prohibits site owners from engaging in what it calls “scaled content abuse,” which it describes as “when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users.”

Examples of scaled content abuse, according to Google’s guidelines, include “using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users,” as well as “creating multiple sites with the intent of hiding the scaled nature of the content” and “creating many pages where the content makes little or no sense to a reader but contains search keywords.”

In other words, if what BBM is doing — using the corpses of reliable publications to create a twisted, AI-powered imitation of a conventional media company, built on fake writers and redundant or incoherent content that appears to be garnering more traffic than many actual journalism enterprises — doesn’t count as scaled content abuse, it’s hard to imagine what would.

“Based on what I’ve seen, many of the websites acquired by Brown Brothers Media can rank on Google Discover and Google News,” Navarro told us. “This, combined with their capacity to quickly generate and publish dozens of pages about trendy topics, has allowed them to drive thousands of people to their AI-generated, ad-packed articles. They have now scaled this operation across multiple websites, some of which have been seen to publish hundreds of articles per week.”

“If this isn’t scaled content abuse,” she added, “I don’t know what is.”

But Google hasn’t taken any lasting action against BBM. After we sent detailed questions about this story, the tech giant initially deindexed several BBM sites, including VegOut and Silicon Canals. Weeks later, they appeared back in its search results.

“Our policies for Google Search and News are clear: we prohibit producing low-value content at scale to game ranking,” Google told us in a statement back in May. “While we generally don’t comment on individual sites, we act on policy violations to keep 99 percent of Search visits spam-free.”

As of when we published this story, articles by BBM are still appearing prominently on Google’s platforms. Reached with multiple followup questions about BBM’s vast scale, its presence in Google News and Discover, and the manipulative tactics it continues to employ, Google didn’t respond.

1339

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Maggie Harrison Dupré @mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The new content was still full of continuity flubs (including in articles attributed to the brothers' father.) We also noticed that the general staff bylines were publishing gloomy first-person essays. And in a one-week span, a single writer produced at least 85 articles -- more than 90k words:

Even more egregiously than the general bylines, BBM has also started publishing large numbers of articles under the names of contributors who, as far as we can tell, are actual living humans. As with the general bylines, Pangram indicates that this material is entirely AI-generated. The implication is bleak: BBM appears to now be using these real people as the publishing version of “meat proxies” — affixing their names to fully AI-spun pieces not because they actually wrote them, but instead as a deceitful attempt at plausible deniability, presumably intended to bamboozle Google and other online platforms that discourage the scaled production of inauthentic content.

One such person who now publishes across multiple BBM sites does so under the name “Daniel Moran,” though a LinkedIn account previously linked in his BBM bio suggests that his actual name is Daniel Mabanta.

Regardless of his real name, Daniel is spectacularly prolific, grinding out articles for BBM publications ranging from Space News to the Scandinavian Standard, a publication formerly dedicated to news and culture in Northern Europe. In a single week, we counted, his name appeared on at least 85 separate articles published on BBM sites — a total of more than 90,000 words, which is longer than George Orwell’s “1984,” and nearly twice the length of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” (The actual amount of material Daniel published that week was likely even higher, because large amounts of his work were inexplicably deleted from several BBM publications including VegOut before we could tally it.)

This isn’t just an inhuman number of words to produce, needless to say, but an impossible amount to effectively quality-control given BBM’s skeletal remaining staff.

Further undermining the notion that BBM is now conducting any type of meaningful scrutiny of its work, its “real” employees like Daniel have continued to publish articles with the same baffling continuity errors that the fake ones did. Back in May, Daniel claimed in a Silicon Canals piece that he was 11 years old in 1995, which would make him about 42 years old today. Yet he’s consistently claimed in other articles published this year that he’s currently 38. In another piece, he inexplicably referred to himself as a “daughter.”

Another writer whose name has frequently appeared on BBM articles since the mass deletion is Graeme Brown, the father of the Brown brothers. (Graeme is currently listed as the editor-in-chief of multiple BBM publications.)

Content bearing Graeme’s name has also contained BBM’s hallmark continuity flubs. On May 8, for example, Graeme bylined an article for Expert Editor — a BBM site pulling in an estimated 5.8 million page views per month — in which he declared that he was 77 years old. By May 11, however, he’d aged in reverse, repeatedly stating in another piece for the same site that he was 75. (These have since been deleted.)

Sometimes it appears that BBM has been so sloppy that it’s affixed the wrong name to a piece generated for a different author. Though Lachlan has written extensively about being married to a woman and having a young daughter, for example, the BBM cofounder recently bylined a May Expert Editor article — titled “10 Signs a Man Is Trustworthy and Has Good Intentions” — in which he mused that “in my personal experience, I knew my now-husband was a keeper when he bravely voiced his insecurities and fears about his career early into our relationship.”

1326

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Maggie Harrison Dupré @mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

In May, after we started contacting BBM insiders, the company embarked on its sudden mass deletion spree. Over 50 fake writers disappeared, as did troves of content. Entire websites were put behind passwords -- including "Bible Scripture," where BBM used a fake Franciscan scholar to sell e-books:

In early May, shortly after we started reaching out to people connected to BBM to report this story, the company abruptly embarked on an awe-inspiring deletion spree, in what seemed like a clear effort to cover up evidence and avoid penalties from Google.

We watched as it suddenly scrubbed what appeared to be many thousands of articles, as well as the fake authors that had bylined them — including Katherine Chen, James Whitfield, Rachel Vaughn, Marlene Martin, Sarah Mitchell, and Adam Kelton.

In some cases, it even pulled down entire publications. Bible Scriptures, a site where BBM had published content attributed to a roster of fake Christian theologians, hosted an AI-powered Jesus, and sold a $97 e-book supposedly penned by a made-up Franciscan scholar clad in a traditional robe — a curious choice, given that Franciscans famously take vows of poverty — has been locked behind a password since May. (BBM sold several other e-books attributed to fake writers on its site Hack Spirit; those volumes are still being sold, but they’ve now been altered so that the author is listed as Lachlan.)

BibleScripture.net showcasing an AI Jesus

Fake religious scholar "Dominic Alon" seen on BibleScripture.net

1356

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Maggie Harrison Dupré @mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

...but shortly after we started asking about the company, it suddenly moved to delete massive troves of content and scrub fake writers from its pages. Over 50 fake writers were deleted in the purge, as were scores of articles published across the network of 25+ sites

15614

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Maggie Harrison Dupré @mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

BBM even had its fake writers bylining essays about deeply serious and personal topics like grief and death. But the fake writers would sometimes forget whether a parent or loved one was actually dead or not, as in this conflicting account from another fake VegOut writer:

Martin wasn’t the only fake BBM writer whose confused narratives extended to deeply sensitive topics like grief and death.

This past February, for instance, a VegOut author identified as “Adam Kelton” — his bio claimed he was a “writer and culinary professional with deep experience in luxury food and beverage” — published an essay complaining about his mother’s passive aggressive behavior regarding his vegan diet when they eat out at restaurants. In it, he writes about his mom in the present tense, describing a lunch with her as recently as the previous week.

Then, just two days later, Kelton bylined a piece about joining a “grief support group” to help him talk about his mother — who by then, he wrote, had been dead for nearly a year.

“My mother died eleven months ago. Pancreatic cancer. The last year and a half was a slow unraveling — her energy going first, then her independence, then her,” Kelton mourned. Later in the essay, Kelton adds: “I am thirty-six years old. I am a son who lost his mother. I am a former hospitality professional. I am a minimalist living in a bungalow in Austin who hosts dinner parties and reads novels and is still — somehow, after everything — the guy who once stood in front of a painting and forgot to check the time.”

1546

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 19/09/2026

Brilliant investigation in "pursuit hunt" mode. The fake personal stories, meat proxies, scrubbing, recycling, anon bylines, developing-world creators replaced with AI slop engines, repurposing of established assets—all indictments of today's information environment. #PotemkinNews #AI #slop #media

0116

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 19/09/2026

When we talk about the costs that LLMs impose on society we should not forget the fact that nothing works anymore because everyone is so scared of getting their shit scraped. I can't even use google scholar from my university or starlink because they send too much traffic.

Google
Sorry...
We're sorry...

... but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.
See Google Help for more information.

984454963

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 19/09/2026

"Truth Needs Allies" Westminster discussion of AI at-scale campaigns intimidating, impersonating, and spamming platform copyright violation reports against journalists; Chinese government hiring of propaganda influencers; and trust blowback threats from proposed prominence regimes.

021

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 19/09/2026

Apart from @doctorow.pluralistic.net's #enshittification theory having been one of the most impactful on my understanding of tech and platforms recently, one of his case studies inspired me years ago to make an early try of OSINT. Chuffed to meet him in person, and looking forward to the reading.

1322

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 19/09/2026

Filmmaker Liz Smith answering questions after a screening of The Conspiracists (2024), a must-see J6er road tripe (spelling intentional) documentary she filmed with eponymous book author and pseudonymous sidekick @noellecook.com.

252

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Alliance4Europe @alliance4europe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Our latest investigation into suspicious accounts interfering in Sweden's election discourse made headlines with @euronews.com this week. More than 8,500 suspicious accounts identified ahead of last weekend's vote. Read the full coverage 👇

043

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 18/09/2026

Panel on AI and OSINT at City St George’s, University of London "Future of Investigative Journalism" symposium. Especially interesting discussion of closed-loop systems, AI-enabled verification, circumventing guardrails, comparative advantage, and labour ownership.

100

Reposted by Sohan Dsouza

Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A new report from the UK's Social Platforms Data Access Taskforce concludes there is unlikely to be one mechanism capable of meeting the range of research needs into online harms. Alexandra Boutopoulou on what a layered approach would require.

techpolicy.press

Why the UK Needs Better Social Media Data Access to Research Online Harms

Alexandra Boutopoulou argues that the UK needs better access to social media data so researchers can independently assess platform policies on online harms.

064

Sohan Dsouza @sohandsouza.info · 17/09/2026

💼🚨 12 month Fixed-term Contract @ BBC News Nigeria «Using data-driven research, OSINT, forensic techniques, and traditional reporting methods, the role investigates how and why disinformation spreads, who is behind it, and its real-world impact.»

careers.bbc.co.uk

Senior Journalist

000