July 2, 2026
Media Freedom
Elections & Democracy

Lucrative online influence detected during South Africa’s 30 June protests

Karen Allen
Link to article

Moxii Africa Director William Bird told ISS Today late on 30 June that he was ‘seeing posts about weapons, matches, petrol, tyres’ – all of which could be interpreted as a call for protesters to target foreign nationals (‘digital vigilantism’). This could have been even more inflammatory given the proliferation of online content generated by artificial intelligence, which is hard to distinguish as fake.