Combatting Online Harms Through Innovation
study showed that one can detect disinformation websites by looking not at perceptible content but at a website’s infrastructure features. 204 Besides trying to detect particular individuals and accounts that distribute election-related disinformation, AI can also be harnessed for related goals. For example, it can be used to map out communities responsible for such harm. The social media monitoring company Graphika engages in such efforts, 205 issuing multiple reports on foreign and domestic actors engaged in election-related disinformation campaigns across many platforms. 206 Looking beyond social media and big technology companies, the Wikimedia Foundation acted to support editors and community oversight of Wikipedia by investing in AI tools to counter election-related disinformation. 207 These tools included techniques to categorize and measure new content, identify unverified statements, and detect fake accounts. 208
G. Sale of counterfeit products In January 2020, DHS issued a report finding that private sector efforts, including those of e-commerce platforms, “have not been sufficient to prevent the importation and sale of a wide variety and large volume of counterfeit and pirated goods to the American public.” 209 The report describes the efforts of the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) to form the Anti-Counterfeiting Consortium to Identify Online Nefarious Actors (ACTION), which intends to increase “[s]haring of risk automation techniques allowing ACTION members to create and improve on proactive targeting systems that automatically monitor online platform sellers for counterfeits and pirated goods.” 210 Information collected later by the IPR Center indicated that some platforms use automated systems to verify third-party seller information and identify prohibited items. 211 Although the efficacy of these systems is unknown, platforms report undertaking some of the following efforts:
See Austin Hounsel, et al., Identifying Disinformation Websites Using Infrastructure Features, USENIX (Sep. 11, 2020), https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci20/presentation/hounsel. 205 See Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, Information Defense at 24, The Atlantic Council (Jul. 2021), https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Information-Defense-07.2021.pdf. 206 See, e.g., Graphika, Posing as Patriots (Jun. 2021), https://publicassets.graphika.com/reports/graphika report posing as patriots.pdf; Graphika, Ants in a Web (May 2021), https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika report ants in a web.pdf. 207 See https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2020/10/30/how-wikipedia-is-preparing-for-election/. 208 Id. 209 Department of Homeland Security, Combating Trafficking in Counterfeit and Pirated Goods at 5 (Jan. 24, 2020), https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/20 0124 plcy counterfeit-pirated-goods-report 01.pdf. 210 Id. at 31. 211 See Morgan Stevens, National IPR Center Report Highlights Industry Adoption of Anti-Counterfeit Measures, Center for Data Innovation (Oct. 13, 2021), https://datainnovation.org/2021/10/national-ipr-center-report-highlightsindustry-adoption-of-anti-counterfeit-measures/. The IPR Center report itself is not publicly available. 204
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