We are growing!

Dear Friends, we are grateful for the response that we have received on our reports so far. One of our objectives, beyond exposing the propaganda networks, is to make people in India (and elsewhere) aware of the menace of the global propaganda/ DisInfo; and how badly it affects the society at large.

As part of increasing awareness and expanding our good work as appreciated by our readers who have been connected with us for a while now, we are now looking forward to embarking on our expansion program. And so, we have a number of plans and projects lined up to articulate our works, engaging and collaborating with coming from the fields of journalism, Data analytics, and Researchers.

Creating and cultivating content dissemination channels to interact with a much diverse audience as a part of our awareness and expansion program.

• We would be releasing case studies documenting how social media is being weaponized by vested interests to target the fabric of society or for geo-political objectives. These case studies would be under licensing rules of ‘Wiki Commons’, and would be free to use for anyone for education, training, and distribution purposes .

• We understand that our reports are comprehensive in nature that can’t be read and comprehended in one go. A lot of efforts and research goes behind identifying and dissecting intricate networks which are so far published on our platforms. However, at the moment, we are bound to leave out certain aspects, stories and underlying networks that have the potential to make a story.

And so, we are planning to launch another platform (under our brand – @LabLite) so that our readers can get a better grasp and understanding of the stories served to them in a simpler and crispier form. And to cover the unexplored/ unraveled networks mentioned briefly in our reports.

• We have noticed that a new info-war tool has been found in the name of countering disinformation, with scores of fronts/ NGOs are peddling half-baked or outright propaganda, targeting India. Not surprisingly, a good number of such ventures are ‘Indian’, though the major players remain foreign entities. With the objective, “who will guard the guardians”, we intend to launch another platform – Meta. This will be dedicated to exposing the disinformation/ information warfare being pushed through legacy media – both national and foreign – as well as to expose other ‘experts’ and organizations, which has been peddling fake narratives through the gimmicks of OSINT. As always, our expose will be open to public scrutiny, and nothing we will say or show would be without concrete evidence, publicly available and independently verifiable.

WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT

We are a small group of people with a background in running political and digital marketing campaigns as our primary forte. And so far, we had been dedicating our time as on this project as an interest and a collective responsibility. However, we did not realize that disinformation machinery would be of this massive scale globally. And given the extent and severity of the situation, we are getting pulled in more and more, which is also affecting our day job, which earns us our bread and butter. We realize that if there is a basic sustenance achieved in this field, we could engage more people and be able to dedicate more persons for the task at hand.

Going forward, our plans, can be achieved through assistance and support from you in following format:

Content Contribution

As the DisInfo networks are massive, we need more helping hands to help dismantle the fake news industry. We had initially tried seeking a contribution, some of which worked, and some did not.  Therefore, we have come up with a set of Dos and Don’ts to demarcate the kind of content that we would be willing to entertain. Following some of the basic rules, which are not exhaustive but mainly indicative:

• Network/ Pattern: The content has to have the nature of a network or a pattern, and should not be individual incidences or evidence of fake handles or fake news.
• OSINT: The content should have the evidences which are publicly available and independently verifiable. We would not entertain documents or photographs that are available with people in their personal capacity.
• Privacy Policy: We would not engage in any report doxing anyone, particularly the personal details or family details of anyone, even if they happen to be at the core of the DisInfo network.
• Apolitical: The content should not have a political connotation or leanings. We also do not intend to get engaged with the domestic political discourse.
• Data Driven: We would be keen to engage data scientists or data experts, provided they are willing to share the data set from which they draw the conclusions and inferences which can be publicly, openly, and independently verified.

Contractual /Collaborative Efforts

As a part of our collaborative program, we are also looking forward to seeking collaboration in the following areas:

• Content Writing: We would like some help in formalizing our reports and editing the content. This can be done both off-site/online and onsite; on the condition that the content would not be made public before it gets published by DisInfo Lab.
• Video Content: We do realize that our reports at times are difficult to explain only in the written form due to the level of complexity and therefore, we would be happy to engage to either make an _{explanatory video on the report.}

• Anyone, who has a good following on YouTube/ Facebook and willing to do a Video-explainer on our report through their channels is welcome to engage with us. This, however, would be subject to our approval of the content and orientation of the video. The videos could be shared through our platforms as well with the due-credit to the respective video-creators.

• Language Translations: We believe that our reports should reach the maximum and diverse audience in as many languages as possible. Therefore, we are seeking people who could translate our reports into regional languages (they could also publish it through your platforms) to reach a larger and a diverse set audience.  We would also appreciate that for the aforementioned purpose, reports can be suitably edited or modified to suit the language and the audience.

LEGAL SUPPORT

We are a growing entity with a number of projects going forward as part of our expansion program. And for an organization like ours to thrive, we are looking for trusted law partners, who would accommodate our needs and help us make the right decisions in our journey.

Going forward, we will require the assistance of any practicing lawyer, or a Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) firm to help us with Legal filings, Trademark and Patent services, Take-Down of Infringing content, and litigation consulting among other legal requirements. These are some necessary measures to safeguard our interests and in smooth operations of our expansion program.

Parameters for being a content collaborator: 

Eligibility:

• The person should not be affiliated with a political party/ or actively engaged in promoting any political party’s agenda/ narrative.
• Should not be involved in hate-mongering, divisive politics, and abuse.
• Should have preferably a good track record in terms of disinformation, info war, social media discourse, etc.
• Should not have been involved in posting or spreading fake news in past.

Attributions: The contents inputs/ submissions would be the prerogative of DisInfo Lab and would be used and publicized as per editorial decisions. The entity submitting these reports should not have and would not have any claim over the content, though the person would be given due credit.

Full-fledged Reports: If there is a comprehensive report mapping the full network with publicly available and independently verifiable evidence, we would publish the report giving credit to the person/entity who contributed the report provided at least 50% of the final report has been published using the content.

• Advisory Board: Individuals contributing to the language translation as well as the regular contributors who help improve our work would be given a space on DisInfo Lab team, including on its advisory board.
• Financial 

Last but not the least, we are now available on Razorpay, and to help sustain our cause, you can make voluntary contributions to our Razorpay account by clicking on the button below.

Note: You have to provide your email address and name before donating on our Razorpay as it will only be used to generate invoice for your payment.

Or scan the QR code below

AND:

We also take Bitcoins: even if BTC do not have much value or potential left, we would still like to collect the tokens as a gesture of your goodwill. And as a testimony to our faith in BTC! Pls unload your valet here:

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