Wie kam es zum Projekt #Storykillers, das jetzt zur Aufdeckung des #TeamJorge-Skandals führte?
Die Geschichte geht ein paar Jahre zurück - zu der 2017 in #Bengaluru (#Indien) ermordeten Journalistin Gauri #Lankesh, die über Desinformation recherchierte./MS
https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2023-02/story-killers-gauri-lankesh-mord/komplettansicht

"“Team Jorge”: In the heart of a global #disinformation machine - In Part 2 of the “Story Killers” project, which continues the work of assassinated Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh on disinformation, the Forbidden Stories consortium investigated an ultra-secret Israeli company involved in manipulating elections and hacking African politicians. We took an unprecedented dive into a world where troll armies, cyber espionage and influencers are intertwined."

"In 2022, Jorge had a catalog of more than 30,000 automated profiles of virtual people with real accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, and Bitcoin. Jorge used these fake accounts to post a flurry of comments on social networks, stir up controversy and even purchase sex toys on Amazon. Jorge recounted how one pretty, blond-haired avatar named Shannon Aiken used an Amazon account to order sex toys to the house of a political rival of one of his clients, leaving the rival candidate’s wife to believe he had been unfaithful. “After that, the story was leaked, and he couldn’t go home. The campaign turned around,” Jorge said."
...
"The AIMS tool doesn’t just offer avatar creation. The latest version, shown to the undercover journalists, can also create and disseminate automated content. Using keywords, the tool can create posts, articles, comments or tweets in any language with a “positive,” “negative,” or “neutral” tone. After entering the words “Chad,” “president,” “brother,” and “Déby,” for instance, Jorge commanded the tool to produce 10 negative tweets about the Chadian government. Twelve seconds later, they appeared. “Enough is enough, we need to put an end to incompetence and nepotism of president of Chad brother Déby,” one read. “The Chad people have suffered enough under the rule of President Brother Déby,” read another. “One operator can hold 300 profiles, so in two hours, all the country will speak the messages or the narrative [we] want,”one of Jorge’s associates said."

#AIMS #Disinformation #DisinformationIndustry #FakeNews #StoryKillers #India #Chad #Israel #Lankesh #GauriLankesh

In the age of false news: A journalist, a murder, and the pursuit of an unfinished investigation in #India - In 2017, journalist Gauri Lankesh was assassinated in #Bangalore days before she planned to publish an article about #disinformation. Over five years later, Forbidden Stories pursued Lankesh’s work on fake news and explored new leads in her murder case.

Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to continue the work of threatened, imprisoned or assassinated journalists, pursued Lankesh’s unfinished work. Starting from Lankesh’s premise – that disinformation has become both industrial and weaponized – Forbidden Stories gathered a consortium of 100 journalists from 30 media outlets to investigate the global disinformation-for-hire market as part of the “Story Killers” project. From India to South America to the heart of Europe, journalists peeled back the layers of a growing and unregulated market, ranging from small-time fake news peddlers to multinational mercenaries selling disinformation campaigns aimed at subverting democracies."

https://forbiddenstories.org/story-killers/gauri-lankesh-in-the-age-of-false-news/

#Disinformation #FakeNews #StoryKillers #Lankesh #GauriLankesh #Politics