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dacă cei care dezvoltă tehnologia sunt clari, atunci ar trebui să fim și noiCea mai înaltă oficialitate a blocului, președinta Comisiei Europene, Ursula von der Leyen, s-a alăturat apelurilor pentru o pauză, afirmând în cadrul discursului său anual de săptămâna trecută că „dacă cei care dezvoltă tehnologia sunt clari, atunci ar trebui să fim și noi”. #InteligențăArtificială #SondajInclusiv #Scepticism

Un sondaj recent a relevat că majoritatea respondenților din șase țări se tem de riscurile potențiale ale inteligenței artificiale și doresc suspendarea dezvoltării acesteia, subliniind o preocupare globală în creștere privind impactul tehnologiei asupra umanității. #InteligențăArtificială #SondajInclusiv #Scepticism

Russia’s fake African newsrooms – propaganda designed to look local A Facebook user in Nairobi, Accra, Johannesburg or Luanda encounters what appears to be a local news page. It publishes stories about African politics, Western influence and relations with Russia. The language is tailored to an African audience and the page presents itself not as a foreign broadcaster, but as part of the local information landscape. Behind some of these outlets, however, Meta found operators based in Russia. In its 2026 threat research, the company disclosed a Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour network targeting audiences in Angola, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Meta removed 37 Facebook accounts and 29 Pages connected to the operation. Around 30,000 users followed at least one of the Pages, while the operators spent approximately $7,000 on Facebook and Instagram advertising, mostly in euros and US dollars. The numbers are relatively modest. The method is considerably more important. Rather than openly distributing Russian state messaging, the network posed as local African news sources and grassroots organisations, promoting narratives about Western colonialism and political interference while presenting Russia as a credible economic and political alternative. It was an old geopolitical message delivered through a much more effective identity: not Moscow speaking to Africa, but Africans apparently speaking to one another. A news outlet that was actually an influence operation Meta's investigation found that the network attempted to conceal its Russian origin while creating media brands that appeared indigenous to the countries they targeted. Its content amplified historical grievances against former colonial powers, criticised Western involvement in Africa and promoted closer relations with Russia. One example helps illustrate how the infrastructure was assembled. A Facebook Page targeting Kenya was called Kenya Watchtower. According to OpenAI's subsequent investigation, Facebook transparency records showed that the Page had previously been named “Farmtown5”. It appears to have been acquired or repurposed rather than built from scratch as a Kenyan news organisation. Some Pages also exposed administrator locations in Russia and Ukraine. Other elements of the network had previously targeted audiences in Zambia and Namibia. This use of apparently local identities is particularly important in the African information environment. A story published by RT or another identifiable Russian outlet arrives with an obvious geopolitical provenance. The same narrative presented by something resembling an independent Kenyan, Ghanaian or South African newsroom carries a different kind of credibility. The source appears closer to the reader, and the geopolitical interest behind the message becomes less visible. Then investigators found Dr Manuel Godsin The Facebook operation was only one part of a broader information ecosystem. OpenAI investigated related activity after receiving information from Meta and subsequently banned a ChatGPT account it assessed as likely originating in Russia. OpenAI called the campaign Operation No Bell. The account was being used to generate long-form articles and social-media posts about African geopolitics. Prompts were primarily written in English, but OpenAI also observed Russian-language instructions that the user described as coming from a manager. The operator sometimes explicitly asked the model to make the material appear less AI-generated – including requests to avoid stylistic features associated with machine-generated text and to write more like a human journalist. Many articles appeared under the name “Dr Manuel Godsin”, presented as an academic with a PhD from the University of Bergen and an affiliation with an organisation called the International Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. OpenAI could find no credible evidence that Godsin existed. Searches of Norway's National Research Information Repository and the University of Bergen library produced no record of him. Investigators subsequently discovered that a photograph used to represent Godsin had appeared years earlier on a Russian professional networking site and apparently belonged to a law student in St Petersburg. The fabricated academic identity was nevertheless remarkably productive. OpenAI identified 53 online articles carrying the Godsin byline. The fiction had moved beyond fake social-media pages and into the real media ecosystem. When propaganda enters genuine newsrooms This is the most consequential aspect of the operation. The articles were not confined to websites controlled by the influence network. Some were published by genuine African news organisations, including established South African outlets. The content mixed local political issues with broader geopolitical narratives. Some pieces criticised the United States and Britain or defended Russia's role in Africa. One accused the British NGO Crisis Action of fomenting protests in South Africa. Another praised Russia's presence in the Central African Republic. Other material addressed Kenya, Angola and relations between African governments and Washington. The mechanism represents a significant evolution from the classic troll-farm model. Instead of building an audience entirely on its own platforms, an influence operator can manufacture an apparently credible expert, generate articles in his name and persuade genuine news organisations to publish them. Once this happens, the propaganda acquires something a fake Facebook Page cannot provide: the institutional credibility of a real newsroom. OpenAI assessed No Bell's social-media impact as limited. One Facebook Page had around 3,000 followers before Meta removed it, while several others had very small audiences. But the operation was more successful in placing material in established media. In OpenAI's impact framework, it approached the level at which an influence operation breaks into mainstream media. For information operators, a single article published by a recognised outlet can potentially be more valuable than thousands of impressions generated by an obviously artificial account. A much larger network of ghost journalists Subsequent research suggests that Manuel Godsin was not an isolated experiment. In August 2026, Graphika, working with Code for Africa and with support from Meta, published a much broader investigation into Russian ghostwriting operations across African media. Researchers identified 44 ghost writers and fake experts, 38 of them assessed as high-confidence fabricated personas, operating between 2021 and 2026. Their material appeared or was quoted across 138 websites and was subsequently republished through at least 113 Facebook accounts and Pages, including authentic users, coordinated inauthentic networks and official Russian communication channels. The narratives were strikingly consistent. They included criticism of France, Ukraine and the United States; attacks on organisations such as ECOWAS and the International Criminal Court; positive portrayals of Russian involvement in Africa; praise for Russian paramilitary forces; and support for sovereignty-oriented political projects such as the Alliance of Sahel States. The operation therefore extends beyond creating fake news websites. It attempts to insert Russian-aligned narratives into the legitimate African media ecosystem using identities that appear African, independent or academically authoritative. This also explains why measuring reach through the original Facebook network alone is misleading. A fabricated article may begin with an influence operator, appear in a genuine African publication, be republished elsewhere and eventually circulate without any visible connection to Russia. At that point, the provenance of the narrative has effectively been laundered. An old Russian strategy with increasingly local faces Russia's use of local intermediaries in Africa is not new. Meta documented Russian networks using African nationals as early as 2019. In 2020 it dismantled another operation involving people in Ghana and Nigeria working on behalf of individuals in Russia, with links to previous activity associated with the Internet Research Agency. More recent Meta investigations suggest that this model has continued to evolve. Networks have increasingly relied on local freelancers, social-media managers and authentic media outlets rather than exclusively operating armies of obviously fake Russian-controlled accounts. This decentralisation offers several advantages. Local operators understand language, political sensitivities and cultural references. Authentic accounts are harder to identify than newly created synthetic personas. Local media brands can also deliver narratives without immediately triggering the scepticism associated with Russian state outlets. There is no evidence that every African journalist, freelancer or publication carrying such material knowingly participates in Russian influence activity. Meta explicitly notes in its investigations that some local contractors may not know who ultimately commissioned their work. That distinction is essential. The operation's effectiveness partly depends on precisely this ambiguity between deliberate participation, commercial content placement and unwitting amplification. The objective is to make Russian narratives look African The significance of this network is therefore not its 30,000 Facebook followers or its $7,000 advertising budget. Those figures are small compared with the audiences of major African media organisations. What matters is the distribution model. Traditional foreign propaganda asks an audience to trust a foreign source. These operations attempt to remove the foreign source from the equation altogether. A Russian geopolitical narrative can be generated with AI, attributed to an expert who does not exist, published by a media organisation that does, amplified through a Facebook Page presenting itself as local, and then rediscovered elsewhere as apparently independent African analysis. By the time the reader encounters it, Moscow may have disappeared completely from the chain of attribution. The resulting information operation is therefore less about making Russian propaganda more persuasive than about making it look as though it is no longer Russian propaganda at all. In an increasingly fragmented African media environment, that may be the more important evolution to watch. SOURCES: Meta Threat Research https://threatresearch-team.github.io/indicators/meta-h1-2026-russia-based-cib-network-1/ OpenAI — Operation “No Bell” https://openai.com/index/disrupting-malicious-uses-of-ai-no-bell/ Graphika — Umbrae Ex Machina https://www.graphika.com/reports/umbrae-ex-machina News24 https://www.news24.com/southafrica/news/ai-expert-exposed-fake-kremlin-linked-analyst-planted-stories-in-african-media-20260318-0560 Vanguard https://www.vanguardngr.com/2026/03/ai-expert-exposed-fake-kremlin-linked-analyst-planted-stories-in-african-media/ Meta — Russian Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour, 2019 https://about.fb.com/news/2019/10/removing-more-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-from-russia/ Meta — Russian Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour, 2020 https://about.fb.com/news/2020/03/removing-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-from-russia/ Meta Threat Research — Russian Use of Authentic Operators in Sub-Saharan Africa https://threatresearch-team.github.io/indicators/meta-h2-2025-russia-based-cib-network-2/ KEYWORDS: #DISINFORMED #Episode7 #Russia #Africa #RussianDisinformation #RussianInfluence #Disinformation #InformationWarfare #InfluenceOperations #ForeignInterference #FIMI #CoordinatedInauthenticBehaviour #CIB #FakeNews #FakeMedia #FakeNewsrooms #MediaImpersonation #GrassrootsManipulation #Astroturfing #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #AIPropaganda #SyntheticMedia #FakeInfluencers #SocialMediaManipulation #Facebook #Meta #OperationNoBell #AfricanMedia #MediaManipulation #Propaganda #DigitalInfluence #Angola #Ghana #Kenya #SouthAfrica #OSINT #WRLD

Dans le contexte de la crise énergétique mondiale exacerbée par la guerre au Moyen-Orient, un motard exprime son scepticisme envers le gouvernement, ne s'attendant pas à de réelles solutions lors des discussions sur les prix des carburants à Matignon. #CriseCarburants #GuerreEnergie #GrognePopulaire

Emmanuel Macron a convoqué les chefs de partis représentés au Parlement pour discuter des conséquences de la dégradation rapide de la situation internationale sur la France, mais le député Benjamin Lucas-Lundy exprime son scepticisme quant à l'utilité de cette réunion. #Politique #Élysée #ConflitsInternationaux

👀 LISTE DES 30 MEILLEURS JOUEURS POUR LE BALLON D’OR - CLASSEMENT DE GERARD PIQUÉ « Jude Bellingham… Je pense qu’il mérite clairement d’être dans le Top 10. Pau Cubarsí. S’il n’était pas défenseur central, ce serait l’un des favoris. Le problème, c’est qu’en défense, c’est beaucoup plus compliqué. Top 5. Marc Cucurella, champion du monde… Je ne pense pas qu’il fera partie des favoris. Ousmane Dembélé, bien… Mais cette année, je ne sais pas trop. Luis Díaz, bonne année au Bayern Munich. Je ne sais pas, lui non plus… Bruno Fernandes sera dans les dix derniers. Gabriel Magalhães, c’est plus ou moins la même chose. Erling Haaland, Top 5. Il a fait une excellente année et une très bonne Coupe du monde. Achraf Hakimi, vainqueur de la Ligue des champions, au milieu du classement. Harry Kane, l’un des favoris, il peut le gagner. Le fameux Khvicha Kvaratskhelia… Grand joueur, je l’adore, champion de la Ligue des champions, il peut être dans le Top 10. ❗️Lamine Yamal, champion du monde, déjà tout proche de le gagner. L’un des favoris avec Harry Kane. Sadio Mané, pour moi, il sera plutôt dans les derniers. Marquinhos, champion de la Ligue des champions, dans les dix derniers. Lautaro Martínez, bien, mais pas très protagoniste à la Coupe du monde. Il sera dans les derniers. Kylian Mbappé, excellente Coupe du monde. Je ne pense pas qu’il puisse le gagner, mais il sera bien dans le Top 5. Nuno Mendes, un joueur que j’adore, champion de la Ligue des champions. Entre la 10e et la 20e place. Lionel Messi… Pour moi, il doit être dans le Top 5. Il a fait une Coupe du monde que personne n’attendait, à son âge, donc il doit être tout en haut. João Neves, champion de la Ligue des champions… Il sera là. Michael Olise, Top 10. William Pacho, grand défenseur central, entre la 10e et la 20e place, champion de la Ligue des champions. Julián Quiñones, entre la 20e et la 30e place. Declan Rice, champion de Premier League, demi-finaliste de la Coupe du monde, dans le Top 15. ❗️Rodri, autre favori. Il a été blessé pendant une partie de l’année, mais pour moi, il a été de loin le meilleur joueur de la Coupe du monde. Le champion du monde sera avec Harry Kane et Lamine Yamal. Fabián Ruiz, champion de la Ligue des champions et champion du monde. Au niveau des titres, il devrait être considéré comme un favori. Mais le Ballon d’Or doit revenir à un joueur qui marque l’histoire et qui a un impact très important dans son équipe. Fabián est un grand joueur collectif, mais je ne sais pas s’il est sur le point de gagner un Ballon d’Or. En revanche, il devrait être dans le Top 10. William Saliba, grand défenseur central, champion de Premier League. Entre la 20e et la 30e place. Ferran Torres, un homme de buts importants. Il ne mérite pas d’être dans les dix premiers, même s’il a marqué à la Coupe du monde, car il n’était pas titulaire avec la sélection. Au Barça, il y avait un peu de scepticisme autour de lui. Il a marqué le but le plus important de l’histoire de l’Espagne avec Andrés Iniesta, mais il devrait être entre la 20e et la 30e place. Dayot Upamecano, grand défenseur central du Bayern Munich, mais pas parmi les favoris. Vinícius Júnior, immense joueur et très important avec le Brésil. Top 10 assuré. Vitinha, grand joueur du PSG. Je ne pense pas qu’il puisse gagner le Ballon d’Or, mais il devrait être bien placé. ❗️Pour moi, les favoris sont Harry Kane, Lamine Yamal et Rodri. Ah, et au fait… Où est Pedri ? Et Raphinha dans tout ça ? » #BallonDor #Football #Joueurs

Donald Trump propose un dividende de 5.000 dollars pour chaque adulte américain afin de mobiliser les électeurs républicains avant les élections de mi-mandat, une mesure coûtant 1.300 milliards de dollars, qui suscite à la fois scepticisme et préoccupations budgétaires. #DonaldTrump #Dividende #Économie

Les récentes déclarations de Vladimir Poutine suscitent de plus en plus de scepticisme en Russie, notamment en raison de divergences entre ses assertions sur les succès militaires en Ukraine et la réalité sur le terrain, ce qui soulève des doutes quant à la fiabilité des informations qu'il reçoit. #Ukraine #Poutine #Guerre

Lors du rassemblement du Medef à Roland-Garros, des patrons expriment leur scepticisme et leurs inquiétudes concernant le programme économique du Rassemblement national, tout en reconnaissant l'importance croissante de ce parti dans le paysage politique français. #RassemblementNational #Elections2027 #Entreprises

Les sinistrés des incendies de 2022 en Gironde, comme Corinne et Christophe Videaud, expriment leur scepticisme face aux promesses de reconstruction rapide du gouvernement, rappelant la lenteur des procédures administratives qu'ils ont déjà expérimentées. #IncendieEnGironde #Environnement #Reconstruction

Le Syndicat de la magistrature exprime son scepticisme quant à la prise de conscience tardive de Gérald Darmanin sur les défaillances dans la lutte contre les violences sexuelles sur mineurs, soulignant que ces problèmes sont bien connus des professionnels de la justice et nécessitent des solutions durables et des moyens accrus. #ViolencesSexuelles #Enfance #Justice

La marque de vélos Van Rysel, lancée en 2019 par Decathlon, connaît une croissance rapide en se positionnant sur le marché haut de gamme, malgré un début difficile marqué par le scepticisme des concurrents, et tire parti de son partenariat avec l'équipe professionnelle Decathlon-CMA CGM, notamment grâce à l'engouement autour du jeune coureur Paul Seixas. #VanRysel #Decathlon #Cyclisme

🆕🕵️‍♂️ Après avoir été sous pression, Luis Campos décide de passer à l'étape suivante! 😶‍🌫️ Luis Enrique aimerait avoir rapidement des joueurs offensifs. ℹ️ Dans ce sens, Luis Campos a trouvé des accords de principe avec Mika Godts et Akliouche. 🕵️‍♂️ Luis Enrique veut un faux 9, donc Campos intensifie sa tentative de recruter Ferran Torres. 📃 Campos a fait savoir au joueur qu'il était prêt à surenchérir sur toute offre de prolongation que le Barça pourrait formuler, et il est convaincu de pouvoir le convaincre. 📈 Le PSG ne bluffe pas. Il lui propose un contrat de cinq ans assorti d'un salaire nettement supérieur à celui qu'il perçoit au Barça. 🤝 Il avait quelque peu ralenti la poursuite de l'attaquant en attendant d'y voir plus clair concernant les recrutements d'ailiers et, surtout, les départs de joueurs : pourrait transférer Kolo Muani à la Juventus ce week-end. 🔜 Une fois ce dossier réglé, Luis Campos va se consacrer au dossier Ferran Torres, qui semble bien engagé. 😶‍🌫️ L’offre du Barça qui, en principe, ne devrait pas intervenir avant la fin du mercato, un calendrier que le joueur et son entourage accueillent avec scepticisme, augmentant une arrivée au PSG. ℹ️ Luis Campos a fait de Ferran Torres sa priorité absolue pour le numéro 9 que recherche Luis Enrique, et il s'efforce de remporter la course pour s'attacher ses services. 🗞 Diario Sport #PSG #Transferts #FerranTorres