Alberto Fittarelli
Sr. Researcher @citizenlab.ca, Disinformation & Harassment. Fmr. Meta. Trainer: find & expose covert influence. I like doers. Opinions my own.
- Starting to think these weren’t really applied with the consideration required by law
- Most of the Washington Post’s tech reporters were laid off today, including me. I have loved my time at the paper, which is where I wanted to work from age 15. I take some consolation in not being among the survivors who will have to work harder with less for fewer readers. On to better things.
- I care more about the stories I’ve broken than about metrics, and eventually I will repost some of my greatest hits. But one stat I recently learned is that my stories got 2.6 million pageviews at the Post last year, which idk but seems like a lot for a paywalled publication?
- Nitasha understands AI better than the majority of AI executives.
- My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power
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- Having just returned from London 🇬🇧, I can recommend a few Lamborghinis and Ferraris to seize www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
- i continue to ask what people are still doing on the fascist white supremacy platform that generates child pornography
- Two Russian women detained in US after entering military base www.dagens.com/news/two-rus...
- The two Russian female tourists who mistakenly entered the Pendleton military base in the US.
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- Huge news out of the UK 🇬🇧 www.reuters.com/world/uk/sau...
- Wrong decision @hootsuite.com You're shameful. www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art...
- PM Carney 🇨🇦gave a courageous speech with a lot of real-talk about the "rupture" in the international order. But he left something out: the values that define us as a country & distinguish us from the fascist train wreck in the US 🇺🇸 My oped w Jason Stanley www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
- NEW 🚨 @citizenlab.ca report: Cellebrite forensic data extraction tool used against Jordanian civil society citizenlab.ca/research/fro...
- On its one-year anniversary, @rondeibert.bsky.social Chasing Shadows is now out in paperback with a new afterword + endorsement by @margaretatwood.bsky.social Order a copy here: chasingshadowsbook.ca
- This self-inflicted destruction will have a generational impact and make us all worse off.
- This is a stunning illustration of the national auto-lobotomy going on in the United States 🇺🇸 www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
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- This is a stunning illustration of the national auto-lobotomy going on in the United States 🇺🇸 www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
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- Citizen Lab sr. researcher @fittarelli.com speaks with the @tbij.bsky.social about ‘wikilaundering’ by bad actors intending to spread #disinformation. Read the article: www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...
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- Burning Data: the ecological shadow cast by AI 👇 nicely summarized by @bennjordan.bsky.social with Musk's GrokAI data center in Memphis.
- So thrilled to see the paperback edition of Chasing Shadows (chasingshadowsbook.ca) - including a lovely endorsement by the great @margaretatwood.bsky.social (thank you Margaret!) Includes a new afterword which picks up where I left off, focusing on the techno-fascist descent in the US🇺🇸
- Wikipedia was created 25 years ago, today – since then it’s become the largest collection of relatively reliable knowledge in history But how vulnerable is it to those willing to pay top dollar to polish their reputations? And how do British PR firms help them do it?
- A London UK 🇬🇧 private contractor rewrites Wikipedia entries for billionaire oligarchs and corrupt governments (w/ comments from @citizenlab.ca's @fittarelli.com ) www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...
- If you want to know about the future of AI, take a look at the kaleidoscope of disinfo and psychological operations underway in Iran 🇮🇷 This excellent piece by @mahsaalimardani.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com is a great start www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
- Ther have been so many norms violated routinely over the last year it may be possible to overlook just what a huge threshold has been crossed in the USA 🇺🇸 with the violent occupation of Minnesota by Trump's Praetorian fascist stormtroopers
- Colombia's 🇨🇴 Justice Minister Andres Idarraga claims his phone was hacked with Pegasus by his own govt's security agencies www.straitstimes.com/world/second...
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- Authoritarian laundering
- Hungary grants asylum to key former government official implicated in sprawling Polish spyware scandal therecord.media/hungary-asyl...
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- The Trump regime's withdrawal from international "cyber" orgs will weaken cybersecurity coordination and help spread authoritarianism. [precisely what they probably want to happen] My comments to @timstarks.bsky.social @cyberscoop.bsky.social cyberscoop.com/trump-pulls-...
- Forensic analysis of objective video evidence. This is how you serve readers searching for clarity.
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- Neat idea for sure, but too bad about the censorship on the backend b/c it uses China's 🇨🇳 DeepSeek
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- Bloomberg's X account has more than 800k followers. Their most recent post was shared five times It would basically come at close to zero cost for outlets like Bloomberg to delete their X accounts, and "We don't want to use a non-consensual deepfake abuse app as a comms platform" is a fine excuse
- It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this
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- Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition Of Concentration Camp Sign Of Healthy Society theonion.com/historians-quibblin…
- Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti, son of Italian immigrant Gaetano Crocetti Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants Antonino Sinatra and Natalina Garavanta Merry Christmas to everyone except Stephen Miller and his enablers and handlers
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- Abuses should be fought in court. Such actions are crucial to rebuke trust in the judicial branch, as a proper check and balance.
- MIT Technology Review profiles @rondeibert.bsky.social, who understood that civil society needed digital defense long before just about anyone else and has been doing it ever since. www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/24/1...
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- I’ll just note that the US didn’t do this to China, which outright bans US social media websites
- US bars former EU commissioner Breton and others over tech rules ft.trib.al/TgoG45B
- "There's basically an economy around disinformation now" Maybe now could be the right time to start asking politicians and your organisation's social teams why they're actively assisting monetised disinformation schemes by retaining their accounts at X and doing free volunteer work by posting there
- Wikipedia is under attack — from accusations of bias, from AI scrapers, from Elon Musk — but the encyclopedia’s founder believes that transparency is the key to survival. Read @joshdzieza.bsky.social's interview with Jimmy Wales: www.theverge.com/tech/846184/...
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- Just to be clear: if 'no one was ready' a lot of people fucked up, bc those of us who work on this laid out what was going to happen 8yrs ago. The twofold issue that 1)it's not just a tech problem, and 2) Big Tech allowed itself to be ref-worked into spinelessness. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/t...
