An American political activist has launched an organization to fight disinformation linked to the coronavirus pandemic, aimed at correcting the comments made by Donald Trump on Twitter or during his press conferences. Curtis Hougland, head of a tech company, wants to orchestrate a massive resistance campaign against "Trump's disinformation", in the media and on social media, "by and for the American people," said a statement.
His company has been mobilized in the past to counter propaganda operations led by Russians or extremists from the Islamic State (IS) group. The new organization, dubbed "Defeat Disinfo", intends to use "sophisticated tools that will detect false or misleading information when it goes viral on platforms."
“Visual and personal” stories
The organization also plans to promote "visual and personal", "truth" stories about the Covid-19 with responses to tweets identified as untrue, to limit their impact. The organization first tackled the controversy over the disinfectant, mentioned by Donald Trump as a potential means of combating the coronavirus.
For weeks, the Republican President has regularly made controversial comments about the health crisis. "President Donald Trump is the most important propagator of disinformation in the United States," argues Curtis Hougland. "People are dying because of his political agenda," he says, while the American president has long underestimated the danger of the virus.
The group seeks to self-finance
Defeat Disinfo's action plan is based on technological detection and human reaction. Artificial intelligence systems (capable of analyzing human languages and doing machine learning) will make it possible to "determine, in a predictive manner, the emotions, themes and messages that drive the conversation", as well as identify "who has been exposed to disinformation". To spread the word, Curtis Hougland does not want to use robots, but people.
His organization is working to build a network of some 3.4 million "creators of recognized content and social influencers". The activist remained unclear on funding issues, only explaining that the group was seeking to self-finance through donations.
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