Peter Adams

Research & design @NewsLitProject. Resources: mostly here these days:

[Peter Adams @PeterD_Adams]

Followers: If you're also flying the blue skies, you can find me here:

https://t.co/9TXNQ4bUnj

[Simon Maechling @simonmaechling]

Science didn’t lose because evidence failed.

It lost because scientists stayed cautious while nonsense went viral.

Fear became entertainment.
Confidence replaced expertise.

Scientists write careful paragraphs, influencers get millions of views with one emotional lie.

[Shayan Sardarizadeh @Shayan86]

Have a look at the first row of top videos that come up on TikTok when I simply search for "hantavirus" on the platform.

[Peter Adams @PeterD_Adams]

@JoelleAdler @nytimes Can you share a few examples of provable falsehoods published by The New York Times from, say, the past week?

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: The FDA has blocked publication of research that found widely used Covid-19 and shingles vaccines were safe. https://t.co/P4ZNeIfvPV

[Simon Maechling @simonmaechling]

The collapse of trust in science is going to go down in history as one of the most sad, bizarre, and destructive social contagions of modern times.

We fed billions, cured diseases and powered nations - yet people ran toward conspiracies instead.

[Katie Robertson @katie_robertson]

New: McClatchy journalists at newspapers in 4 states are now withholding their bylines from A.I.-generated content as tensions grow over a "content scaling agent" tool that the company rolled out https://t.co/lObSuAlMBc

[Seung Min Kim @seungminkim]

Please read our incredible media writer @dbauder's final piece in his illustrious career at the @AP:

A photographer has captured some 50 newsrooms to document places and lives endangered by the industry’s collapse https://t.co/m3BMELtZl9

[julie k. brown @jkbjournalist]

I am among the McClatchy journalists withholding my byline from AI-generated content. I cover sensitive stories that should never be repackaged or altered in any way by artificial intelligence. Whether the story is about sexual abuse or immigrants caged at Alligator Alcatraz, our journalists take great care to ensure that their material is accurate, fair and conveys invaluable aspects of humanity that AI simply can't do.

[Peter Adams @PeterD_Adams]

@BKforreal1989 @NYMag What makes you say that journalists rush instead of verify now? In legitimate newsrooms, verification is still the essence of the discipline, and errors of fact are taken extremely seriously.

[Peter Adams @PeterD_Adams]

@MainStUSAFan @NYMag Are you lumping social media/tech companies in as "the media"?

[Internet Archive @internetarchive]

The web is disappearing 🕳️

According to a Pew Research Center report, 26% of pages from 2013-2023 are no longer accessible.

But that’s not the whole story.

In a new study published in Internet Archive's book, VANISHING CULTURE, data scientists working with the Wayback Machine have found:
16% have been restored through the Wayback Machine.
56% are preserved before they disappear.

Preservation is the remedy for cultural loss.

📚 Read VANISHING CULTURE free from the Internet Archive

📖 Download & read: https://t.co/BrawXOwMBr
🛒 Purchase in print: https://t.co/EB58IliqDm

#VanishingCulture #DigitalMemory #InternetArchive #BookTwitter

[Peter Adams @PeterD_Adams]

@scruffyeng @MikeThomasATL @charlesornstein @propublica Along with a clear explanation of why it's biased (compared with what?) and how it could have been more impartial?

[Poynter @Poynter]

“In the longer term, the greatest danger posed by AI isn’t fake images themselves, it’s the collapse of trust in real evidence,” writes Poynter contributor Adam Rose. “Seeing is no longer believing — and our institutions are unprepared for it.”

Here’s why journalism needs to prove which images are authentic — not just label deepfakes: https://t.co/etMmStEapi

[Sara Fischer @sarafischer]

New data suggests small publishers (10k daily pageviews or less) are hit hardest by search traffic declines
—Chatbots only drive 1% of all traffic referrals, so they can't make up the gap
—News sites get most page views from AI platforms, but the lowest engagement
@axios
https://t.co/08gSeDpwgG

[Deepa Seetharaman @dseetharaman]

This is the work that can’t be replicated by AI or pursued by a reporter with a Substack. It requires time - during which a reporter isn’t producing a lot of copy. Building trust with sources so you can tell sensitive stories, that’s a process that doesn’t scale.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is totally insane.

A war correspondent just received death threats from online gamblers who wanted him to change his reporting on an Iranian missile strike so they could collect a payout. One bettor had $900,000 riding on the outcome.

He told the journalist he knew where he lived and who his family members were. 

This is what prediction markets on life and death actually look like in practice.
This is exactly why I introduced the DEATH BETS Act with Senator @AdamSchiff.

The DEATH BETS Act would ban contracts on assassinations, deaths of world leaders, and acts of war on platforms like Polymarket. This story shows exactly why that matters. 

When you let people place million-dollar bets on whether a missile kills someone, you create a financial incentive to threaten journalists, manipulate information, and profit from human suffering.
https://t.co/V8rQt5vMc3

[Shayan Sardarizadeh @Shayan86]

This video posted by the official Persian account of the Israeli government claims to show a member of the Basij paramilitary force on the streets of Tehran being targeted by a strike.

But it's AI-generated. Follow this thread to find out how we can verify that it's AI.

[Shayan Sardarizadeh @Shayan86]

THREAD: Misinformation in the Iran/US/Israel war - 18 March

This video, viewed over 3 million times, claims to show USS Abraham Lincoln on fire after being struck by Iranian missiles.

The video is AI-generated. It's not real.

[Shayan Sardarizadeh @Shayan86]

It's day 16 of the US and Israel war with Iran.

Here are today's threads of verified videos of the war and misinformation, both of which will be updated throughout the day.

Thread of verified videos
https://t.co/oBxXs5jMcH

Thread of misinformation
https://t.co/lGQFq9zgvt

[Shayan Sardarizadeh @Shayan86]

Baseless claims that this video is AI-generated (it isn't) because in it Benjamin Netanyahu "has six fingers" (he doesn't), and that he is actually dead (he isn't), have racked up millions upon millions of views on this platform.

None of those claims are true.