Vídeo: A proliferação de notícias falsas na Eslováquia serve de aviso à UE

🗣️ Transcrição automática de voz para texto.

in recent weeks and months the following news spread online in Spain the police violently repressed the farmers protest this year the French President announced the end of the Christmas holiday in Germany the greens trashed their own Party Conference venue across the EU toilet paper will be banned for environmental reasons and in Slovakia the main opposition party to prime minister Robert fito is behind his assassination attempt the problem is is all this information is false it’s disinformation disinformation is like a poison to the soul that is changing what humans are and it makes us less and less capable of holding such complex and free system as a liberal democracy thisinformation fake news and conspiracy theories are rampant in Slovakia especially during elections it’s very cheap to influence big masses especially now in society where a lot of people consume information from various social media platforms the dangerous part about uh spreading of this information is that it does not spread only information but especially emotions I’m here to meet those at the front line of the resistance against disinformation and understand the implications for the rest of the continent as Europeans head to the poll [Music] I’m constantly checking what is trending what are the new narratives being spread what are the repetitive ones so we can basically debunk debunk them trending is uh obviously the the Western influence like that there are through CIA and and uh non-government organizations in Slovakia they are some somehow connected and there are influencing the what is happening in the country and alltime Classics for example like the moonlanding didn’t happen Slovakia an EU member state in Central Europe of 5 a half million people grapples with a history of Soviet influence leaving its population strongly divided between pro-western and pro-russian sentiments this has made it a prime target for the kremlin’s propaganda especially since 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine according to this Analyst at that time we really saw that a lot of disinformation and information operations trying to undermine Slovakia’s EUR Atlantic orientation the membership of of uh Slovakia and EU and NATO were really driven by actors that uh had some were per Kremlin or had some uh connections to to Russia the covid-19 pandemic and media bashing by Slovak leaders fueled The Surge of lies and conspiracy theories but the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 propelled Slovakia’s disinformation Network to a whole new level thousands of news outlets Facebook pages and telegram channels now Echo pro-russian narratives sometimes directly at the behest of Russian officials there has been a video of former Russian military atache in Slovakia bribing basically a contributor of one of the main disinformation Outlets for providing them contacts providing them information interconnecting them with other people willing to cooperate with Russia for many slovaks disinformation and the resulting toxic political climate are largely to blame for the attempted assassination on May 15th 20124 against Pro Moscow prime minister Robert fito the effect of Russian disinformation running utterly unchallenged for the last 15 years has been devastating on social cohesion in Slovakia Victor is a former Slovak War reporter and Military adviser now specializing in countering foreign influence over time he says pro-russian narratives and media Outlets have moved from the fringes of the internet to the highest levels of the Slovak government the narratives from Russian mainstream media being parroted have been Norm formalized uh in a way that it not only stopped to be toxic for publicly known individuals politicians running for office to be associated with them it has become impossible to uh win elections without their [Music] help when I was in Slovakia in April the country was gearing up for the second round of the presidential elections Ivan kak a pro-western diplomat eventually lost to an ally of Robert fito Peter Pelini who will take office in June and the leadup to the vote a barrage of disinformation targeted corak fake images portrayed him as a US passport holder and someone close to billionaire George Soros while members of pelini’s party opposed to helping Ukraine shared the doctorate photo of an elderly woman embracing a soldier with the caption don’t let Slovak sons and grandsons die in the war ironically the original picture was taken in Ukraine it doesn’t matter uh to make people believe in a certain story but to Simply uh erode that trust in whether what they read and what they see and what they uh can see around themselves whether it is true or whether it is everything is a bit unreliable and you can trust no one Veronica runs a factchecking website and collaborates with meta to flag problematic content on Facebook the most popular social network in Slovakia however meta’s policy prohibits fact Checkers from labeling statements made by politicians it means that a lot of this information is allowed to spread precisely because we cannot uh label uh politician’s words as untrue false or with missing context I think that uh factchecking is still important its greatest disadvantage is that it is always a reaction to disinformation it often takes us days uh before we are able to um label it and by then it’s yesterday’s news that time gap between false and information and its debunking is causing alarm across Europe as the June European elections approach this information could flood in days or even hours before the vote French Security Services recently uncovered nearly 200 websites spreading Kremlin propaganda in the European Union another Russian Network mimics well-known news websites to spread fake articles and several EU far-right lawmakers are being investigated for allegedly accepting money to repeat pro-russian talking points many of the disinformation stories Stu on fear anger so of course many of these narrative stories tend to uh also implicitly help far ride narratives in Brussels I spoke to javani zagi who leads a task force on the European elections for an EU funded academic organization he has been warning against major trends of disinformation lately increasingly powered by new tool artificial intelligence you can produce pictures and po possibly in the near future even videos of things that are completely made up ahead of the EU elections we are seeing a few major disinformation Trends and narratives one has to do with the electoral process so uh the electoral process is unfair uh bels are tempered with people that shouldn’t vote are given the right to vote then there is for example the issue of climate so all the tools that are the legislative measures that are taken to counter uh the climate crisis for example are actually a way to controlling people and deeply change our way of life and another one is the issue of immigration the EU has taken measures to counter disinformation by trying to regulate artificial intelligence and social media companies but many experts stress that education remains Paramount in combating thisinformation in Bratislava Thomas is among those dedicated to this mission we can do something about the polarization in society by creating this culture where we to really care about how we communicate with each other there are many cases when young people are actually for instance radicalized through online platforms even like the Chinese platform Tik Tok which provides them with content that in the end turns them into people who are actually far more I would say far right or misogynist education should be the Bedrock of how we are engaging with this problem as a society I do believe that everyone benefits from courses like these because it gives you better preparation and adaptation for the reality of the current world in April Robert fito and his far-right culture Minister a well-known conspiracy theorist intensified their efforts to control information by pushing a law undermining the independence of the state broadcaster despite widespread opposition to the reform while both refused to be interviewed for this report they will likely have to continue answering to the people of Slovakia as well as to those fighting against the idea induced by this information that truth no longer exists one of the biggest challenges is making people believe that what I’m saying is true and the other part is making sure that uh they don’t think I’m part of the conspiracy