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This post was written by Joe Ellis, CEO of our portfolio company Vidrovr.
The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has created changes in people’s everyday lives across the world. We’re working from home (if we can), cooking more meals, social distancing, and trying to make sense of the changes in our environment. For many of us, these changes have also come with a massive uptick in our media consumption as we all try to learn as much as possible about COVID-19. Sadly, our media landscape makes it easy for targeted adversaries to sow disinformation about the origins, treatment, and related stories about the COVID-19 pandemic.
In partnership with my company Vidrovr, The Association for Securing Democracy has extended its media monitoring and disinformation reporting dashboard, Hamilton 2.0. As part of this effort, Vidrovr has been monitoring state-sponsored media content from both state-sponsored Youtube accounts and live broadcast feeds for the past six months.
The Hamilton Dashboard is live and updated on a daily basis and is leveraged by world-leading organizations and government employees to understand the disinformation tactics that are currently being employed both online and on-air. Here is a sample of some of the articles written in the past few weeks leveraging the Vidrovr-powered Hamilton Dashboard:
“The U.S.-China propaganda war is on hold, but not for long,” by Josh Rogin, Washington Post (April 2, 2020).
“Amid COVID-19 outbreak, China shifts to use ‘Russian-style’ disinformation tactics,” by Olivia Gazis, CBS News (March 30, 2020).
“As virus spreads, China and Russia see openings for disinformation,” by Julian E. Barnes, Matthew Rosenberg and Edward Wong, New York Times (March 28, 2020).
“China Pushes Viral Messages to Shape Coronavirus Narrative”, by Betsy Morris and Robert McMillan, Wall Street Journal, (April 10, 2020).
I am honored that Vidrovr’s services are being utilized in such a constructive way during this time of turmoil and uncertainty, and look forward to the possibilities of similar future applications.
To learn more about the Vidrovr Platform and how it can be used to monitor social and live stream video content for targeted messaging, please reach out to contact@vidrovr.com.
About Joe Ellis
Joe Ellis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Vidrovr. He was previously an Electrical Engineering PhD candidate at Columbia University and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Joe has worked at Google, IBM Research, and the MITRE Corporation before founding Vidrovr. His research and publications lie in the intersection of Multimedia, Machine Learning, and Computer Vision. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, and on the weekends you can find him running around Prospect Park and watching Liverpool FC.
About Vidrovr
The Vidrovr platform automatically searches, indexes, and retrieves content from video archives and live streams. On top of the search and machine-learning core, we have built the most advanced video monitoring, alert, and summary report system on the market today, helping clients understand the contents of their videos and find the information they care about quickly. Our clients include some of the world's leading media companies, including the AP, multiple government agencies, and think tanks.
CEO and CTO Joe Ellis and Daniel Morozoff founded Vidrovr while PhD Students in the Digital Video and Multimedia Lab at Columbia University, and Prof. Shih-Fu Chang, of Columbia Engineering, continues to advise the company. The team has published and patented foundational research in machine learning, computer vision, and multimodal information processing. The company is backed by top-tier VCs, including Samsung Next, 415, R/GA, Techstars, and leading angels on both the east and west coast. You can learn more about the company at vidrovr.com.