A building in rubble, and an accompanying narrative of genocidal hopelessness.
This was the pictorial support of an article related to the current middle eastern conflict, and was provided by a well established and respected anchor of US Journalism for several hundreds of years.
However, since the publication of that article, several other articles have come out to counter it, claiming that the photo had been taken at a completely different location, and several days earlier.
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When it comes to highly emotive issues, whether they be armed conflicts, pandemics perceived to have been mishandled, tales of historic oppression, or candidate bashing amidst electoral fever, an army of content appears ready to soak into anybody it perceives as a rhetoric sponge.
Now with the skills of Generative AI, everything has been turned upon its head.
It used to be the case, barely one century ago, 80% of anything printed, was accurate enough to be believed. A century earlier still, a well crafted hand written letter, with a wax seal on it, was, in of its very nature, believed to be true irrespective of origin.
In an age when an aristocrat only had a level of educational understanding that a secondary school leaver has today, those privileged enough to have a basic education, simply valued the repute that came with it, and avoided placing mistruths in communiques that might put it at risk.
Meanwhile, back to the present, and an Australian service veteran of the war in Afghanistan has been exonerated after a major network’s reporter portrayed a sources’ recorded statement incorrectly, placing the veteran in a ‘frame’ through some wild conjectures, and unsafe assumptions.
An award was made to Heston Russell of $390,000 and the network issued an apology.
There used to be a saying: ‘I wouldn’t believe it, until I see it with my own eyes’…
Well it seems now, trusting our senses has to be done in reverse order, and our eyes can be the biggest liars, or, to be more precise, they are the easiest sense to be cleverly manipulated.
One of the favourite means of spreading falsehoods, especially when they are emotively charged, is to port content, particularly visual content, from one platform to another, so chain of custody isn’t preserved, and end-viewer has no means of validating the source.
This crime is frequently committed by porting unverifiable content to LinkedIn from either Tik Tok or X.
I now block post authors that frequently do this. Very little of the content from those platforms is helpful to the aims of 9ja Cosmos anyway.
As I am writing this, new content is disrupting me, telling me that Vladimir Putin has suffered cardiac arrest, and is on some kind of life support, while a double is carrying out his official duties, including having a phone conversation with Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and meeting Kazbek Kokov, head of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic.
Some of this stuff, you just couldn’t make up. I will have to wait for corroborating evidence from independent sources.
The world of blockchain and Web 3 has been nowhere near immune from the phenomenon.
A spotlight has been shone on the world of web3 since the demise of Sam Bankman Fried who can’t even consistently tell the same lies to his own lawyers.
Cas Piancey of Protos reporting on the blatantly fraudulent reporting of Cointelegraph:
‘A couple of days ago crypto news outlet Cointelegraph put out a tweet that stated, “BREAKING: SEC APPROVES ISHARES BITCOIN SPOT ETF.” It followed this, 23 minutes later, with a slightly amended version that read, “BREAKING: SEC APPROVES ISHARES BITCOIN SPOT ETF, REPORTEDLY.”
What it failed to point out was that the “REPORTEDLY” part was reported by Cointelegraph.
The call was coming from inside the house.
Nine minutes after this, Cointelegraph reached out to BlackRock, confirmed that the Bitcoin ETF hadn’t been approved, and deleted the tweet.
One hour and one minute after the initial ETF message, Cointelegraph posted a tweet apologizing for the dissemination of inaccurate information and stated that an investigation was beginning.’
This isn’t the first rodeo on misleading content by Cointelegraph either.
Following the demise of the W3DA which 9ja Cosmos abandoned interest in last year, an article by Judith BannermanQuist claims it as an authority on Web 3 Domains and with 50+ members.
The reality is none of those represented are in the business of making Web 3 Top Level Domains available.
Web 3 top level domains have many use cases, of which, acting as a secondary domain generator is only one.
Top Web 3 Domain Guru ‘EngineUX’ who inhabits Discord and X, lists some of the many use cases of Web 3 top level domains.
It appears the list is merely one operator whose activities are solely confined to using a Web 3 TLD as a Secondary Domain Generator. The others mentioned appear to be service partners to the owners of these generated secondary domains.
There are no Web 3 Top Level Domain ecosystems in the group at all.
The largest Web 3 TLD ecosystem is the Handshake ecosystem, which has surpassed the issuance of 12 Million TLDs.
Be careful out there… eating Fake News can give you data indigestion, which can lead to ulceration of your perception of reality!
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All reference sites accessed between 24/10/2023
msn.com/en-gb/news/world/vladimir-putin-in-intensive-care-as-body-double-meets-brazil-leader-claims-telegram/
protos.com/cointelegraph-screwed-up-lets-talk-about-verifying-news/
nytimes.com/2023/10/17/world/middleeast/gaza-hospital-explosion-israel.html
voxmagazine.com/true-false/2013/reviews/panel-recap-every-cut-is-a-lie-editing-the-truth/article_525dcc23-dd20-51eb-8b65-56caaf9ad2ba.html
2gb.com/exclusive-abc-war-crime-witness-apologises-to-heston-russell/
fstoppers.com/opinion/when-your-photographic-edits-become-lie-640222
cointelegraph.com/news/web3-domain-alliance-expands-with-51-new-members