Social Media Lab

"Fake explosions, fake missiles, fake troops: AI videos and images of Iran war spread widely on social media" www.cnn.com/2026/03/11/p...

Deepfake Spotter – Deepfakes Tracker Deepfake Spotter: A Guide to Spotting Deepfakes in the Wild Practical Human Judgment – Your First Line of Defence Technical and Visual Signs of Deepfakes – Your Second Line of Defence Big Picture Rule...

Journalists have been asking us again and again about how to spot deepfakes.

Here’s our best advice for now, though it may evolve quickly, as AI advancements are happening in weeks and months rather than years. deepfakestracker.org/deepfake-spo...

While being public-facing is part of the job, we also recognize that knowledge mobilization comes w/risks. (Threats of job loss, bodily harm, sanctions by nation state, we have experienced it all.) We've also compiled a list of resources to mitigate some of the risks. km.socialmedialab.ca/resources

Our new KM Compass 🧭 tool is also useful for completing the KM/KT section of your future grant applications. Use it to let your funder know how you plan to share your future findings.

Researchers are you doing great research, but are the findings sitting quietly dying a quiet death? Our new KM Compass App might help. We reviewed the literature and mapped many of the ways you can translate knowledge into real-world impact.https://km.socialmedialab.ca/

Imagine if Obama or Biden had done something like this.

YouTube expands AI deepfake detection to politicians, government officials, and journalists | TechCrunch YouTube's AI deepfake detection tool is becoming available to politicians, journalists, and officials, letting them flag unauthorized likenesses for removal.

"YouTube is expanding its likeness detection technology, which identifies AI-generated deepfakes, to a pilot group of government officials, political candidates, and journalists, the company announced Tuesday." techcrunch.com/2026/03/10/y...

US sinks 16 mine-laying ships near Strait of Hormuz after Trump’s latest Iran threat The Strait of Hormuz is a waterway bordered in the north by Iran that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil supply

"US sinks 16 Iranian mine-laying ships after Trump ramps up threats over Strait of Hormuz" www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Wow... "Carney inches closer to majority, as fourth MP defects to Liberals"https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0e5jwz0703o #cdnpoli

Ukraine Reaches a Milestone: Making ‘China-Free’ Drones

"Ukraine Reaches a Milestone: Making 'China-Free' Drones. The country has prioritized self- sufficiency in producing a crucial battlefield weapon, though weaning itself fully off cheaper Chinese components is difficult." www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/w...

Cargo ship catches fire in Strait of Hormuz after three vessels hit by 'unknown projectiles' The reports of attacks on commercial ships came after the US said it

No end in sight. "Cargo ship catches fire in Strait of Hormuz after three vessels hit by 'unknown projectiles'" www.bbc.com/news/live/cd...

Rick Scott: "Is it gonna be easy to get the Strait or Hormuz open? It never was gonna be easy."

(The Strait was open just fine two weeks ago!)

To help prevent this, remember that your Signal SMS verification code is only ever needed when you are first signing up for the Signal app. To protect people from such phishing, Signal actively warns users against sharing their SMS code and PIN. 4/7

We are aware of recent reports regarding targeted phishing attacks that have resulted in account takeovers of some Signal users, including government officials and journalists. We take this very seriously. 1/7

YouTube needs to give this new AI deepfake-detection tool to every user, not just those who can regulate it.

Sorry, but Republican lawmakers claiming that Muslims don’t belong in the United States or comparing them to dogs is vile, not because of the “tone,” but because of the substance of what they’re saying. But Mike Johnson knows that.

Mike Johnson refuses to condemn anti-Muslim comments by Republican lawmakers Andy Ogles said Muslims do not belong in the US and Randy Fine made a comparison of Muslims to dogs

Mike Johnson refuses to condemn anti-Muslim comments by Republican lawmakers. His only issue is with their "tone." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

More often than not, women are the victims of deepfakes.

YouTube really, really needs to make this new deepfakes detection tool available for everyone, not just a select few.

The Heritage Foundation: Only 99 Cases of Noncitizen Voting Since 1982 Action Item: Stop the SAVE Act—Ask Your Senator to Reject Trump and MAGA's Attack on Women’s Voting Rights

Voter fraud is a non problem in the US. "The Heritage Foundation (A conservative think tank): Only 99 Cases of Noncitizen Voting Since 1982"

99 ... That is ~2.3 cases per year since 1982." thiswillhold.substack.com/p/only-99-ca...

Americans are split on wanting the National Guard to monitor voting, a new poll finds Nearly half of Americans support the National Guard monitoring November's elections, potentially signaling an openness to the sort of nationalizing of elections that President Trump says he wants.

Yikes! How naive can Americans be? Nearly half of them say they support deploying the National Guard to polling places to monitor this November’s midterm elections, even though that would be illegal if ordered by the federal government. www.npr.org/2026/03/11/n...

👀 Reuters reports "A foreign hacker compromised files relating to the FBI’s investigation of the late ⁠sex ⁠offender Jeffrey Epstein during a break-in at the bureau’s New ⁠York Field Office three years ago, according to a source familiar with the matter ..." www.usnews.com/news/world/a...

Police in Britain Repeatedly Declined to Investigate Epstein. Why?

Exclusive: The Metropolitan Police interviewed Virginia Giuffre 3 times after her lawyers handed them a dossier of evidence saying that she was trafficked to UK by Epstein and Maxwell, and made her have sex with Prince Andrew

But they did not launch an investigation
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/w...

Middle East crisis live: Claims new Iranian supreme leader ‘safe’ despite war injuries; ships hit in strait of Hormuz Comments come amid speculation over the health and whereabouts of Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since he succeeded his father

"An unknown projectile has hit a second ship in the strategic Strait of Hormuz abutting Iran, causing a fire and forcing the crew to evacuate, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said on Wednesday." www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Two-thirds of Canadians have experimented with generative AI, but most don’t understand its impacts - Social Media Lab When ChatGPT entered the public imagination in 2022, Canadians were curious, hopeful, anxious and had plenty of questions. Just three years later, our new report, The State of Generative AI Use in Can...

What our 2025 AI study reveals about Canadians and AI. socialmedialab.ca/2025/04/25/t...

That's de Adder's take: #cdnpoli

www.hilltimes.com/cartoon-dead...

Exclusive: U.S. dismissed Ukraine deal for anti-Iran drone tech last year Snubbing Ukraine's offer ranks as one of the U.S.'s biggest tactical miscalculations before the war, officials say.

"Nearly seven months ago, Ukrainian officials tried to sell the U.S. their battle-proven technology for downing Iranian-made attack drones. They even made a PowerPoint presentation."

The Trump administration (of course )dismissed the Ukrainians' offers. www.axios.com/2026/03/10/u...

The biggest challenge is adoption, not engineering
Social networks succeed because of network effects. People join where everyone else already is.

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X have billions of users, so convincing people to move is extremely difficult.

Technically, Europe already hosts major decentralized platforms built by Europeans:
- Mastodon (Germany)
- PeerTube (France)
- Pixelfed
All operate on the ActivityPub protocol, the same system used by Threads to connect w/the fediverse. So from a technology standpoint, the foundation already exists.

After socialist backlash, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday reaffirmed the EU’s commitment to the rules-based international order, days after drawing criticism for saying the bloc’s foreign policy should be more “interest-driven”. www.euractiv.com/news/von-der...

HE sector staggers under 61% drop in overseas students Canadian federal government cuts to the number of international student visas it will issue have precipitated a 61% decline in international student e...

"The number of new international students studying in Canada declined by 61% in 2025, as Canada issued 177,600 fewer study visas than it had in 2024, says a new report from Statistics Canada (Stats Can)." www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?sto...