Took a couple of motobike rides to find a "share taxi" — an overloaded van — to journey towards the Togolese border. Halfway there, it broke down. I was impressed with the driver who arranged a replacement taxi — probably better treatment than we get during UK train delays.

At the border, immigration officers processed passports with one hand while scrolling "doomscroll video social media" with the other. They were watching the Iran conflict through slick, AI-translated videos appearing just hours after the events.

🧠 Some observations on this shifting "information frontier"*:

• Contrary to traditional news where the publisher is displayed prominently, scroll video puts minimal focus on the publisher (it's a tiny icon). Since a "publisher's brand/reputation" is not in focus, this makes it a cheap and scalable influence campaign tactic.

• "First-to-Market" premium. For fast moving global events, speed beats accuracy (in terms of influence). Establishing a narrative early offers a high "bang for buck" in shaping perceptions, regardless of the facts.

• The opaqueness of content curation algorithms (what you're served up) offers significant control to algorithm architects.

📶 Now that AI can produce and translate conflict footage almost instantly, information warfare has reached a new level of "efficiency".

Last year I came to the (scary) realisation that I can't reliably recognise AI generated content. Since the dawn of photography, we've used photos as "evidence of truth". AI labeling is a bit of a cat & mouse game.