In the face of election season, the New York Times has pulled together and explained some of the biggest national and international disinformation campaigns from the past week.
CreditCreditMandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
As Election Day draws near, a growing amount of disinformation is getting published online to confuse, inflame or distract potential voters.
To help readers better understand the information landscape, journalists at The Times have collected five examples of active disinformation campaigns that were reported on or took place this week.
1) Twitter took down a bot network supporting the Saudi Arabian government.
On Thursday, Twitter suspended a network of suspected Twitter bots that were sending pro-Saudi Arabian government talking points about the disappearance of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
2) A Bangladeshi network promoted fake events on Facebook to sell T-shirts.
A CNN investigation identified a network of 1,700 separate Facebook pages designed to look as if they were run by local Women’s March organizers. In fact, they were a coordinated effort run out of Bangladesh to sell politically themed merchandise like T-shirts.
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Source: Election 2018 Digital Misinformation Roundup – The New York Times