research group at Stanford shut down

research group at Stanford shut down - Printable Version

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research group at Stanford shut down - TrumpCard - 06-14-2024

There are political implications of this news, but I'm just posting to acknowledge events affecting a research group at Stanford: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/14/stanford-internet-observatory-disinformation-research-lawsuits-politics/

Edited to remove the disinformation about Kate Starbird being involved in this research group. Whoops!

RE: Kate Starbird's research group at Stanford shut down - Spiny_Norman - 06-14-2024

(06-14-2024, 11:52 AM)TrumpCard Wrote: There are political implications of this news, but I'm just posting to acknowledge events affecting a former star Stanford WBB player and her research group at Stanford: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/14/stanford-internet-observatory-disinformation-research-lawsuits-politics/

Kate Starbird is not directly affiliated with the Stanford Internet Observatory work. From what I can tell, her work at the University of Washington Center For An Informed Public continues.

RE: Kate Starbird's research group at Stanford shut down - TrumpCard - 06-14-2024

(06-14-2024, 01:27 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote:
(06-14-2024, 11:52 AM)TrumpCard Wrote: There are political implications of this news, but I'm just posting to acknowledge events affecting a former star Stanford WBB player and her research group at Stanford: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/14/stanford-internet-observatory-disinformation-research-lawsuits-politics/

Kate Starbird is not directly affiliated with the Stanford Internet Observatory work. From what I can tell, her work at the University of Washington Center For An Informed Public continues.

Apologies for the misinformation. The Stanford group would have caught that faster than you did, but still not bad.

RE: research group at Stanford shut down - Canalejas - 06-15-2024

Here's an NPR link for those without WP access.

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/14/g-s1-4570/a-major-disinformation-research-teams-future-is-uncertain-after-political-attacks

RE: research group at Stanford shut down - yvonne - 06-15-2024

The Kate Starbird connection is that the SIO ran a joint project called the Election Integrity Partnership with UW. Kate does internet misinformation research at uW.

Quote:The Election Integrity Partnership, a joint project SIO ran with the University of Washington to track false and misleading information about the 2020 and 2022 elections, became the focus of conspiracy theories that it was a front for the government to suppress speech it didn't like. (The EIP's website was updated in recent weeks to say it "will not be working on the 2024 or future elections.")
As a result, researchers at Stanford, UW, and other institutions have been hit with lawsuits, flooded with subpoenas and document requests, and subjected to online harassment and attacks.

From the NPR article.

RE: research group at Stanford shut down - M T - 06-23-2024

Correction to more basic misinformation here

June 17: https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/update-stanford-internet-observatory-sio

Quote:Stanford has not shut down or dismantled SIO as a result of outside pressure. SIO does, however, face funding challenges as its founding grants will soon be exhausted. As a result, SIO continues to actively seek support for its research and teaching programs under new leadership.

RE: research group at Stanford shut down - M T - 07-23-2024

Not really about Stanford, or even Russian disinformation campaign, but this does show how vulnerable we are to misinformation wildfires.

Many places on the Internet claimed Southwest Airlines avoided the CrowdStrike crash because they used Windows 3.1.
(Forbes, SFGate, Slashdot, DigitalNews)

What a wonderful example of how the public (including us) believes what they want to believe, without checking into it. Windows 3.1 ran on PCs. Do you think Southwest could possibly have enough old hardware that Win3.1 runs on so, say, each airport has them for the agents?

So, where did the whole Windows 3.1 story start? This blog points to a single tweet (just before 1AM PDT Friday) alleging that the tweet author later confessed to be trolling. Of course, I don’t know that the blog author was correct when he said that the stories can be traced back to this one tweet. [The Slashdot post points to Digital News which points to that tweet. This SFGate article does not attribute their source. Forbes references govtech.com, which makes no claim of a source.]

(As a result of the issues Southwest had in Dec. 2022, it was well publicized that Southwest uses a (updated version of a) mainframe app SkySolver (Trademark date of 2004) for rescheduling of planes and staff. Presumably they use other software that is critical to operations, but I don't know what that is.)

All of us need to be careful where we get our facts from.

RE: research group at Stanford shut down - BostonCard - 07-01-2026

A coda from Kate Starbird, the lawsuit has been dismissed:

https://bsky.app/profile/katestarbird.bsky.social/post/3mpmn47xy4s2q

BC

RE: research group at Stanford shut down - PVTree - 07-01-2026

(07-23-2024, 11:55 AM)M T Wrote: Not really about Stanford, or even Russian disinformation campaign, but this does show how vulnerable we are to misinformation wildfires.

Many places on the Internet claimed Southwest Airlines avoided the CrowdStrike crash because they used Windows 3.1.
(Forbes, SFGate, Slashdot, DigitalNews)

What a wonderful example of how the public (including us) believes what they want to believe, without checking into it. Windows 3.1 ran on PCs. Do you think Southwest could possibly have enough old hardware that Win3.1 runs on so, say, each airport has them for the agents?

So, where did the whole Windows 3.1 story start? This blog points to a single tweet (just before 1AM PDT Friday) alleging that the tweet author later confessed to be trolling. Of course, I don’t know that the blog author was correct when he said that the stories can be traced back to this one tweet. [The Slashdot post points to Digital News which points to that tweet. This SFGate article does not attribute their source. Forbes references govtech.com, which makes no claim of a source.]

(As a result of the issues Southwest had in Dec. 2022, it was well publicized that Southwest uses a (updated version of a) mainframe app SkySolver (Trademark date of 2004) for rescheduling of planes and staff. Presumably they use other software that is critical to operations, but I don't know what that is.)

All of us need to be careful where we get our facts from.

An elementary and high school buddy of mine is Southwest's VP of Technology Operations. Maybe I'll ask him for the true story at our next class reunion.