Latest news with #Menczer
Bloomberg
08-05-2025
- Science
- Bloomberg
Maybe AI Slop Is Killing the Internet, After All
Fil Menczer caught his first whiff of what he calls 'social bots' in the early 2010s. He was mapping how information travels on Twitter when he stumbled onto a few clusters of accounts that looked a little suspicious. Some of them shared the same post thousands of times. Others reshared thousands of posts from each account. 'These are not human,' he remembers thinking. So began an extensive career in bot watching. As a distinguished professor of informatics at Indiana University at Bloomington, Menczer has studied the way bots proliferate, manipulate human beings and turn them against one another. In 2014 he was part of a team that developed the tool BotOrNot to help people spot fake accounts in the wild. He's now regarded as one of the internet's preeminent bot hunters.
Budapest Times
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Budapest Times
Menczer: Tisza Party is carrying out orders from Brussels
Hungary's government and ruling parties believe that a question as serious as Ukraine's EU membership should be decided by the Hungarian people. Tamás Menczer, the communications director of ruling Fidesz, said on Monday that the opposition Tisza Party is carrying out orders from Brussels 'to prove that Hungarians support Ukraine's accession to the European Union'. Menczer told a press conference on Monday that a pollster 'linked to Tisza and financed from Brussels' had published a survey showing that Hungarians supported Ukraine's EU accession. He said the party's ongoing signature drive was also about collecting 'enough signatures, if necessary, through forgery' to show that Hungarians were in favour of admitting Ukraine to the bloc. 'This is what [European People's Party leader] Manfred Weber and [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen have commanded them to do because they want to admit Ukraine to the European Union basically immediately,' he said. 'The first step would be bringing Ukraine into the bloc, and the second — as Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, the advisor to Tisza leader Peter Magyar, has said — would be to send Hungarian troops there…' Menczer said, adding that Brussels's offer to Ukraine was 'membership for war'. Hungary's government and ruling parties, on the other hand, believe that a question as serious as Ukraine's EU membership should be decided by the Hungarian people, he said, urging the public to participate in the upcoming referendum on the matter.
Budapest Times
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Budapest Times
Menczer: Tisza Party has launched signature drive that is in favor of Ukraine's EU membership
Voters are being given an opportunity to express their views on the subject thanks to the government's referendum, Tamás Menczer noted. Tamás Menczer, the communications director of the ruling parties, said on Monday that the opposition Tisza Party has launched a signature drive that is in favor of Ukraine's European Union membership. According to Menczer, Tisza started collecting signatures 'on the instruction of Manfred Weber, the most pro-Ukrainian politician in the whole of Europe … to prove that Hungarians support Ukraine's EU entry.' Menczer said he was 'convinced that Tisza won't shy away from falsifying the results' of its survey. Menczer quoted Tisza leader Peter Magyar as recently calling on the government 'to respect the voters' will if they express support for Ukraine's EU integration'. The Fidesz politician said that his party's position, on the other hand, was that 'Ukraine's membership must not be determined by Manfred Weber or even Ursula von der Leyen, Magyar's peers in the European People's Party, but by the Hungarian people.' Voters are being given an opportunity to express their views on the subject thanks to the government's referendum, he noted. 'It is quite obvious that Brussels … wants to integrate a country, Ukraine, which does not meet any accession criteria,' Menczer said, and insisted that Ukraine had not met the criteria for a candidate when awarded candidate status. 'Brussels and those politicians do not represent EU members, whereas that's their job,' Menczer said. Instead, 'they represent Ukraine, which is not a member of the community,' he added. Menczer warned of the dangers Ukraine's membership would pose for the bloc, saying it would 'destroy the whole European economy', while funds due to Hungarian farmers and Hungary's cohesion funding would go to Ukraine instead. Hungary would also be required to pay an annual 200 billion forints extra, 'also for Ukraine', he added. Menczer also pointed to the 'vast amount of weapons' amassed in Ukraine and the high level of organised crime in that country. Meanwhile, he said 'we cannot and would not create jobs for hundreds of thousands or millions of Ukrainians.'
