Samantha Lai

@samlai.bsky.social

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Senior research analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Samantha Lai

This story is horrifying on multiple levels. (1) It very likely cost lives in Philippines and around the world, including here in the US due to diminished trust in vaccines. (2) When democratic govs employ this kind of info operation, they undermine the values and trust that sustain democracies.

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic www.reuters.com/investigates...

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to incite fear of China vaccineswww.reuters.com The covert effort began under Trump and continued into Biden’s presidency, Reuters found. Health experts say it endangered lives for possible geopolitical gain.

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Samantha Lai

Pleased to join my SAIS colleagues Thomas Rid, Olga Belogolova, and Lee Foster in imploring 🇺🇲 politicians, journalists, researchers, and tech companies to tone down their propaganda hype 👇

Don’t Hype the Disinformation Threatwww.foreignaffairs.com Underplaying the risk helps foreign propagandists—but so does exaggerating it.

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Samantha Lai

This is the beginning of something I've been working on for a while - if you read it, answer the question at the end. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure, except in this instance, I'll be deciding what to do next: lageneralista.com/the-informat...

The Information Animallageneralista.com

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Samantha Lai

Today's Lawfare Podcast is a live conversation from Verify 2024 between @benjaminwittes.bsky.social, @lageneralista.bsky.social, and Chinmayi Sharma, about information ecology and 19th-century naturalism.

The Lawfare Podcast: Information Ecology and 19th-Century Naturalism at Verify 2024www.lawfaremedia.org What does Prussian naturalist Alexander Von Humboldt have to do with cybersecurity?

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Samantha Lai

ICYMI: As the Senate considers a TikTok ban and major newspapers recycle hype about 🇨🇳/🇷🇺 influence ops, I argue that online manipulation is an overestimated threat. Treating "data" as the key to human suasion, and the public as an empty vessel, are likely far graver threats to democracy 👇

From Panic to Policy: The Limits of Foreign Propaganda and the Foundations of an Effective Response - Texas National Security Reviewtnsr.org American leaders and scholars have long feared the prospect that hostile foreign powers could subvert democracy by spreading false, misleading, and inflammatory information by using various media. Dra...

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Samantha Lai

In which I argue that fears of foreign subversion online are likely overblown--and that the damage to democracy is more likely to stem from the assumption that online manipulation is more prevalent, our neighbors more gullible, and human behavior more dependent on media than is likely the case. A🧵:

Policymakers from the White House to the United Nations have turned to “information integrity” as the approach for bettering their information ecosystems. But how can it be applied in the context of democracies? Read more here from @kamyayadav.bsky.social and me:

What Does Information Integrity Mean for Democracies?www.lawfaremedia.org Disinformation is only a symptom of a much larger problem.

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Samantha Lai

As democracies grapple with how to combat disinformation, Kamya Yadav and @samlai.bsky.social ask how policymakers can build secure and resilient information ecosystems:

What Does Information Integrity Mean for Democracies?www.lawfaremedia.org Disinformation is only a symptom of a much larger problem.

Decentralized social media platforms face significant challenges to robust and scalable governance. @yoyoel.com and I explore what it will take to change that: Out now in the Journal of Online Trust & Safety: tsjournal.org/index.php/jo...

View of Securing Federated Platforms | Journal of Online Trust and Safety tsjournal.org Journal of Online Trust and Safety

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Samantha Lai

New paper from me and @samlai.bsky.social out today in the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, looking at the moderation capabilities of federated and decentralized social media, and what needs to happen to make these platforms resilient to online harms. doi.org/10.54501/jot...

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Samantha Lai

How to counter disinformation, based on science: Jon Bateman and Dean Jackson produced a must-read report for the Carnegie Endowment that looks at ten interventions against disinformation. www.techpolicy.press/how-to-count...

How to Counter Disinformation Based on Science | TechPolicy.Presswww.techpolicy.press Jon Bateman and Dean Jackson produced a report for the Carnegie Endowment that looks at ten interventions against disinformation.

How can democracies fight disinformation? A new report by Jon Bateman and Dean Jackson assesses the effectiveness of 10 proposals, including supporting journalism, fact-checking and media literacy education. Read more here: carnegieendowment.org/2024/01/31/c...

Countering Disinformation Effectively: An Evidence-Based Policy Guidecarnegieendowment.org A high-level, evidence-informed guide to some of the major proposals for how democratic governments, platforms, and others can counter disinformation.

Companies have submitted two sets of reports for the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation. How can reporting be improved going forward? Had the absolute pleasure of working with @kamyayadav.bsky.social on this: carnegieendowment.org/2023/11/21/o...

Operational Reporting in Practice: The EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformationcarnegieendowment.org Companies have submitted two sets of reports for the new EU Code of Practice on Disinformation. To date, reports have only offered limited insight.

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Samantha Lai

Delighted to see this paper published at HKS Misinformation Review with Gillian Murphy (not yet on BlueSky!) and a fantastic group of post docs and RAs. This was a huge review examining all misinfo studies published since 2016 misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/what...

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Samantha Lai

We know way too little about mis- and disinformation from the Global South. Our studies are too US and Europe focused. Big shout out to @sumitra.bsky.social and @simonchauchard.bsky.social for this piece 👏 ⬇️ commsky polcomm polisky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Researching and Countering Misinformation in the Global Southwww.sciencedirect.com Scholarly literature on misinformation has insufficiently captured the experience of the majority of the world’s population: those in the Global South…

“Calls grow louder to regulate artificial intelligence, counter disinformation, and social media. But how can democracies govern the information environment if they don’t know how it affects people’s thinking and behavior?” More from @lageneralista.bsky.social: www.oecd-forum.org/amp/posts/se...

The OECD Forum Networkwww.oecd-forum.org

How can emergency management concepts help government policymakers combat efforts to undermine information integrity? Learn more from the latest publication by the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations: carnegieendowment.org/2023/11/09/e...

Emergency Management and Information Integrity: A Framework for Crisis Responsecarnegieendowment.org From COVID-19 misinformation to authoritarian crackdowns on democratic protests or hybrid warfare involving information manipulation, the negative impacts that crises have on the information environme...

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Samantha Lai

✨Do you study online safety in non-Western countries? Apply for up to $15,000 for your research. cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/call...

Call for Proposals: Expanding Online Trust & Safety Researchcyber.fsi.stanford.edu A new research initiative offers funding to researchers studying trust and safety in the majority world. Applications due January 30, 2024

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Samantha Lai

GW IDDP launched a new project tracking platform transparency globally and attempting to measure the Brussels effect of new EU transparency policies. We hope this will be a tool for advocates, and researchers. (Thanks techpolicypress and @justinhendrix.bsky.social)

Platform Researcher Access Tools & The Brussels Effecttechpolicy.press Anna Lenhart on the launch of a new Platform Researcher Access Tools & The Brussels Effect Tracker

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Samantha Lai

Do we pay too much attention to disinformation? On the latest Tech Policy Podcast, we're joined by @lageneralista.bsky.social of Carnegie Endowment to discuss how to study and better understand the overall information environment. Full episode below: podcast.techfreedom.org/episodes/358...

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Samantha Lai

It's impossible to condense over 3 decades of research and writing about trust and safety and internet governance into a 14 week class... but here's a first draft of the syllabus and reading list for my course next semester: docs.google.com/document/d/1... I'd love your feedback and suggestions.

As summer winds down, here is a recap of what the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations has been up to in 2023:

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Samantha Lai

Key findings: -Skewed evidence base: >80% of studies from Global North; 36% test debunking -Inoculation & debunking reduce misinfo belief; other evidence more limited/mixed -Interventions that experts rate highest — media literacy, journalist training, and platform alterations — among least studied

Our new literature review essay commissioned by USAID: Interventions to Counter Misinformation: Lessons From the Global North and Applications to the Global South https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA0215JW.pdf (joint with Rob Blair, Jessica Gottlieb, Laura Paler, Pablo Argote and Charlene Stainfield)

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Samantha Lai

This is a fascinating paper about a ChatGPT-based botnet for so many reasons, my favorite of which is: Fancy LLM/bot detectors all struggled to catch this, whereas human review and good old-fashioned social graph analysis revealed it quickly.

You have seen how powerful AI models like ChatGPT are. But what if they are used to supercharge malicious social bots? New paper: Anatomy of an AI-powered malicious social botnet Preprint: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.16336 Thread: https://twitter.com/yang3kc/status/1686751689078976512

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Samantha Lai

if you're interested in the legal background of what state medical boards can and can't do, I dug into it here:

This is a pretty devastating report by the Washington Post about the failure/inability of state medical boards to discipline doctors spreading dangerous falsehoods around the coronavirus https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/07/26/covid-misinformation-doctor-discipline/

www.washingtonpost.com

The Professional Price of Falsehoodsknightcolumbia.org

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Samantha Lai

"Of course, if Goodreads wanted to, it could fix the review-bombing problem overnight." Everything is a content moderation problem https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/goodreads-review-bombing-amazon-moderation/674811/

The Wrath of Goodreadswww.theatlantic.com Authors are at the mercy of people who don’t bother reading their work.

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Samantha Lai

This is the best explanation I've found of how terrible the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is. It's probably worse than you thought, even in its amended form. Please call your reps now! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/kids-online-safety-act-still-huge-danger-our-rights-online

The Kids Online Safety Act is Still A Huge Danger to Our Rights Onlinewww.eff.org Congress has resurrected the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill that would increase surveillance and restrict access to information in the name of protecting children online. KOSA was introduced

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Samantha Lai

A new report about child safety and decentralized social media. It's mostly about the Fediverse (see https://hachyderm.io/@det/110769470058276368 for discussion), but some of it applies to the Bluesky / ATproto ecosystem as well.

Addressing Child Exploitation on Federated Social Mediacyber.fsi.stanford.edu New report finds an increasingly decentralized social media landscape offers users more choice, but poses technical challenges for addressing child exploitation and other online abuse.

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Samantha Lai

New from me in @lawfare.bsky.social: What we can learn from Twitter's struggles with Chrissy Teigen calling Trump a "pussy ass bitch," and why rigid legalism has led content moderation to a harmful dead end. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/content-moderation-s-legalism-problem

Content Moderation’s Legalism Problemwww.lawfaremedia.org Could a public editor solve social media’s crisis of trust?

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Samantha Lai

this is an amazing paragraph