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Bonifacio Castellane argued that expanding welfare would fuel social conflict, because it would never be enough and would leave an increasing number of people excluded, ready to ask why others received help and they did not. He also stated that the "Gramscian Parastate" was killing the organism that hosted it and that we had now reached that point. #welfare #conflittoSociale #esclusione (translated)

Giulia Pastorella, a member of parliament and vice president of Azione, stated to Sky Economia that, in her opinion, pitting defense spending against welfare spending is misleading. She added that the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes it necessary to invest in security as well, and that, given the limited resources, spending should be efficient and productive. #politica #sicurezza #welfare (translated)

Bonifacio Castellane wondered why, in his opinion, it was considered necessary to expand welfare to prevent second-generation immigrants from burning down schools, while at the same time wanting to contain social costs by introducing euthanasia for the elderly and depressed people. #Welfare #Immigrazione #Società (translated)

The author wrote that France was “burning again” and drawing attention from around the world. They accused people involved in the unrest of damaging the country despite having received asylum, education, housing, healthcare and welfare support for their parents. https://t.co/qFof79QJoT #France #Protests #Solidarité #FR (translated)

Let's meet. Chiara had announced the return to Milan of her event dedicated to women's health, welfare, and social responsibility. The meeting was scheduled for October 24 from 3:30 PM at the Hotel dei Cavalieri, in Piazza Missori, with an afternoon of multidisciplinary insights on women's health, prevention, and well-being in menopause. The organization had previewed a program with scientific interventions and interactive moments. https://t.co/heKny6GgfX #SaluteDonne #Welfare #Benessere (translated)

Brazil’s synthetic voters – when AI manufactures public opinion They look like ordinary street interviews. A reporter approaches a passer-by in a Brazilian square and asks a simple question: who will you vote for? A young voter explains why Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva deserves another term. An elderly woman says Brazil needs Flávio Bolsonaro because he represents political renewal and greater security. The locations look plausible, the microphones are visible and the answers sound much like the brief political opinions heard in television vox pops around the world. None of the people are real. Ahead of Brazil’s presidential election on 4 October, fact-checking organisation Aos Fatos identified at least 50 TikTok videos in which artificial intelligence was used to manufacture voters, reporters and apparently spontaneous political interviews. Together, the videos had accumulated around 7.4 million views by mid-August. Some promoted Lula, others Flávio Bolsonaro, while another group used synthetic characters to ridicule or stereotype supporters of one side. Aos Fatos found no apparent evidence linking the accounts producing the videos to either presidential campaign. The opinion poll that never took place The format is important. These were not conventional deepfakes in which a recognisable politician is made to say something he never said. Instead, the creators reproduced the visual language of the vox pop – the short street interview used by broadcasters and social-media creators to illustrate what ordinary people supposedly think. In pro-Lula videos, synthetic voters described themselves as beneficiaries of social programmes or credited the president with improving their lives. In videos supporting Flávio Bolsonaro, artificial interviewees associated him with political renewal, public security and fighting corruption. Other clips were openly hostile: AI-generated characters presented as poor or living in parts of Brazil’s north-east were shown in dirty clothes or run-down surroundings, declaring support for Lula because they supposedly preferred welfare payments to work. The deception is therefore subtler than fabricating a candidate’s statement. It manufactures something that political communication normally treats as evidence of public sentiment. A real vox pop may be unscientific, but the people interviewed at least exist. These videos created the appearance that identifiable social groups – young people, pensioners, welfare recipients or residents of particular regions – were spontaneously expressing political preferences when no such encounters had taken place. An electoral-law specialist interviewed by Aos Fatos described the technique as the fabrication of a “social fact that never occurred”. That captures the central innovation: AI is being used not merely to falsify political speech, but to manufacture the impression of grassroots opinion. Fifty videos, but not one proven network The available evidence does not support describing the 50 posts as a centrally controlled influence operation. Aos Fatos located them through TikTok searches and recommendations produced by the platform itself, then examined the accounts responsible for publication. Most had relatively small individual audiences, although their combined reach was substantial. The first examples identified by the investigation appeared as early as March 2026. Activity increased in June and was concentrated particularly in July and the first half of August as Brazil’s election calendar intensified. Some accounts specialised in AI-generated videos generally, including fabricated podcast-style material. Others were explicitly political or supportive of a candidate, but Aos Fatos found no apparent links between those profiles and the official Lula or Bolsonaro campaigns. That distinction is essential. The evidence demonstrates a common technique and a shared political environment, not a single command structure. Some creators may have been motivated by ideology, others by engagement or monetisation. Publicly available evidence does not establish who commissioned the individual videos or whether any coordination existed between the accounts. This decentralised model also creates a different enforcement problem from a traditional bot network. There may be no headquarters to expose and no infrastructure whose removal disables the entire operation. The format itself can be copied by anyone with access to inexpensive generative-video tools. When the algorithm mixes real and synthetic citizens Aos Fatos documented another important feature of the phenomenon: TikTok’s recommendation system placed AI-generated interviews alongside genuine street interviews. For a user scrolling quickly through the platform, the transition between an authentic citizen and an entirely fabricated one could therefore be almost invisible. In 18 per cent of the 50 videos analysed, there was no indication that the people shown had been generated using AI. After Aos Fatos provided TikTok with the videos, the company said it had removed all of them for violating its rules on edited and AI-generated media. TikTok said its policies require creators to identify synthetic content and prohibit manipulated media capable of misleading users about matters of public importance or impersonating genuine journalistic material. The issue extends beyond one platform. Factchequeado’s review of Brazil’s 2026 election campaign found that synthetic endorsements and other deepfakes had become one of the most visible forms of AI-assisted electoral misinformation, alongside fabricated candidate statements and invented scenes. Brazil already had rules for synthetic politics Brazil entered the campaign with unusually detailed electoral rules governing artificial intelligence. The Superior Electoral Court, the TSE, requires electoral propaganda using synthetic multimedia to disclose clearly that AI was used. More importantly for the fake-voter videos, its rules prohibit synthetic audio or video used to favour or harm a candidacy when it creates or alters the image or voice of a living, deceased or fictitious person. The difficulty is attribution and enforcement. When a synthetic video is published by an official campaign, responsibility can be relatively straightforward to investigate. When it comes from an apparently independent account with no demonstrated relationship to a candidate, lawyers interviewed by Aos Fatos said responsibility is more likely to fall on the individual creator, while imposing electoral sanctions on a campaign would require evidence of a connection. For the final 72 hours before the election and the 24 hours following it, the TSE has imposed additional restrictions on newly published or republished synthetic material involving candidates or public figures, reflecting the particular difficulty of correcting fabricated content immediately before voting. From deepfake politicians to synthetic electorates The Brazilian case illustrates a broader change in political manipulation. The first generation of electoral deepfakes concentrated on famous people: make a politician appear to say something damaging, or fabricate an endorsement from a celebrity. Synthetic vox pops reverse the perspective. The politician can remain completely authentic; it is the electorate around the politician that is fabricated. That changes the psychological proposition of the message. Instead of saying the candidate believes this, the video suggests people like you believe this. Age, clothing, accent, neighbourhood and social class can all be generated to construct an artificial constituency around almost any political claim. There is no evidence that the 50 Brazilian videos identified by Aos Fatos constitute a single centrally directed campaign, nor evidence that they changed voting intentions. What they demonstrate is a technique whose barrier to entry has become extremely low. AI no longer needs to forge the politician. #DISINFORMED #Episode14 #Brazil #BrazilElection2026 #Elections #ElectionDisinformation #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #SyntheticVoters #SyntheticMedia #AIAvatars #AIGeneratedVideo #VoxPop #FakeInterviews #Astroturfing #AIPropaganda #PoliticalDisinformation #InfluenceOperations #InformationWarfare #SocialMediaManipulation #TikTok #PublicOpinion #ManufacturedConsent #SyntheticPublicOpinion #DigitalInfluence #Deepfakes #ElectionIntegrity #TSE #AosFatos #FactChecking #OSINT #MediaManipulation #WRLD (translated)

The author said Aontú parliamentary questions had found that the government incorrectly paid out €1 billion in social welfare and never recovered the money. They added that much of the overpayment appeared to have resulted from fraud, and said taxpayers’ money had been given away without anything in return. https://t.co/cZVpPLp3z0 #SocialWelfare #Fraud #TaxpayersMoney #IE

Bonifacio Castellane wrote that Ezio Mauro indicated welfare as the problem, arguing that it was insufficient and that for this reason people were justifiably asking for it. He added that the "Gramscian parastate" was betting everything on it. #Welfare #EzioMauro #Società (translated)

“You cannot preach self-government and liberty to people in a starving land. Only a well-fed, well-housed, well-schooled people can enjoy the blessings of liberty.” — Fiorello La Guardia, former mayor of New York La Guardia was making a simple argument: people cannot fully enjoy liberty if they lack the basic conditions that make independence possible. That should make Danes stop and think. Denmark is not a starving land. We are wealthy, highly educated and protected by one of the world’s most extensive welfare states. And yet, look at the direction of travel. The cost of living and housing have become increasingly burdensome. Educational performance has deteriorated. And more and more decisions about how we live, work, raise our children, run our businesses and spend our own money are made through an ever-growing web of rules and regulations. So perhaps Denmark faces a different version of La Guardia’s warning. The question is no longer simply: Are Danes well-fed, well-housed and well-schooled? It is: Are Danes still being made capable of governing themselves? Because there is a difference between being provided for and being free. A prosperous welfare state can give people security. It can provide housing, education, healthcare and income protection. But it cannot manufacture the habits that liberty requires: independent thought, personal responsibility, courage, competence and a willingness to govern ourselves rather than continually asking the state to govern us. La Guardia warned that you cannot build liberty on hunger. Perhaps Denmark should ask whether security without sufficient independence can preserve it. A free society needs more than citizens who are taken care of. It needs citizens capable of taking responsibility for themselves. That is the real meaning of self-government” - ChatGPT

The author accused Meloni of having obeyed and defined her government as an accomplice of Netanyahu, whom he described as a war criminal. He argued that the government had involved Italy in the war against Iran, exposing it to enormous risks, and that the increase in military spending would destroy welfare. He added that the "master" would appreciate Meloni's return, which he compared to that of a prodigal daughter. https://t.co/gJzMtfubTy #Italia #Guerra #Politica #IT #IL #IR #IL (translated)

The economist Mario Pianta warns that, in the face of the current peak in inflation, Europe is repeating the same mistakes of 2022, investing in military spending at the expense of welfare and suggesting the adoption of a maximum price for essential goods such as energy and fuels to mitigate the impoverishment of families. #Inflazione #Riarmo #Disuguaglianze (translated)

“non vi è alcuna minaccia imminente per il territorio della Nato“Che fine ha fatto il Rutte che parlava di "fare la pace con la forza", il leader dell'Alleanza che invocava più spesa militare anche a costo dei tagli al welfare, l'uomo che ha spinto affinché venisse soddisfatta la richiesta di Donald Trump di alzare la spesa militare degli Stati membri fino al 5% del Pil? #Nato #Russia #MarkRutte