Extensive research has consistently shown no link between vaccines and autism. In reality, our current understanding of autism suggests that there is a strong genetic component and that autism may start developing in utero during fetal development.
Unbiased Science
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday outlawed robocalls that contain voices generated by artificial intelligence, a decision that sends a clear message that exploiting the technology to scam people and mislead voters won’t be tolerated.
The Associated Press
Fika Juliana Putri, a 19-year-old shopkeeper in East Jakarta, plans to vote in Indonesia's presidential election next week for a once-feared former special forces commander. She likes him, she says, because he's cuddly.
Reuters
“Well over 300,000 Americans are in graveyards today because of the misinformation, the doubt, the suspicion, the distrust that caused them to say that vaccine is not safe for me. And it continues,” Dr. Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health said in September 2022, citing a KFF estimate.
Fortune Magazine
Rates of routine childhood vaccination hit a 10-year low in 2023. That, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, puts about 250,000 kindergartners at risk for measles, which often leads to hospitalization and can cause death. In recent weeks, an infant and two young children have been hospitalized amid an ongoing measles outbreak in Philadelphia that spread to a day care center.
KFF Health News
Meta announced earnings on Feb. 1, posting one of the most impressive quarters in business history. In the past year, Meta has added three Netflixes to its market cap. On Friday alone, it added the value of Shell Oil — the biggest one-day increase in market capitalization in history.
No Mercy/No Malice
Arizona legislators are hoping to pave the way for political candidates to take legal action against the rising threat of deepfakes in election campaigns. HB 2394, a measure proposed by state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, is designed to address the rise of digitally manipulated media created with an intent to mislead voters.
Arizona Capitol Times/Cronkite News
“You have blood on your hands.” “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through.” These quotes, the first from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaking to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the second from Zuckerberg to families of victims of online child abuse in the audience, are highlights from an extraordinary day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about protecting children online.
The Conversation
In 2017, Stuart McCormick survived the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history, while visiting Las Vegas. In the months that followed, his understanding of what happened that October night became twisted and distorted.
BBC
The survey was conducted online with 2,500 Canadians (including oversample of Gen Z) from Sept. 19-26, 2023.
Canadian Medical Association
Conspiracy theories have a long history. Humans have always speculated about secret motives and plots as a way to understand their world and avoid danger.
Associated Press
In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump wrote messages on Twitter warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, debunking his claims.
The New York Times
Days after Maui’s wildfires killed scores of people and destroyed thousands of homes last August, a shocking claim spread with alarming speed on YouTube and TikTok: The blaze on the Hawaiian island was set deliberately, using futuristic energy weapons developed by the U.S. military.
The Associated Press
A robocall created with artificial intelligence that impersonated President Joe Biden and targeted voters in New Hampshire earlier this month is just the latest example of how rapidly advancing AI tools are a growing threat to elections — and more broadly to society.
GeekWire
The 2024 election season is in full swing and with the race for the White House happening this cycle, we're already seeing misinformation appear online.
KNXV-TV ABC15 Arizona
Last year, the world experienced the hottest day ever recorded, as we endured the first year where temperatures were 1.5°C warmer than the pre-industrial era. The link between extreme events and climate change is clearer than ever. But that doesn’t mean climate misinformation has stopped. Far from it.
The Conversation
Earlier this year a friend of mine, who is a second-generation Vietnamese American, told me she stopped talking to her mother. She was becoming more and more frustrated because her mother, an immigrant from Vietnam, kept bringing up pro-Trump conspiracy theories and had adopted racist views on immigrants.
The Markup
With the 2024 U.S. Presidential election several months away, community groups, public officials and researchers predict an upsurge in misinformation.
The Dallas Morning News
TikTok last month joined the growing number of tech companies promising to protect “election integrity” this year as the U.S. and dozens of other countries go to the polls.
The Wrap
The rumors about vote fraud started swirling as the ballots in Taiwan’s closely watched presidential election were tallied on Jan. 13. There were baseless claims that people had fabricated votes and that officials had miscounted and skewed the results.
The Associated Press
