Jonathan Albright, a Digital Sleuth Exposing Fake News
wired.com
wired.com
Before I gave up and unfriended them, I used to try and debate some FB friends that believed in chem trails, flat Earth, and other ridiculous things. I wasn't arguing against logic, reason, or science. I was arguing with YT channels Richie From Boston and others ( I wont link it; that rabbit hole is left to the reader).
The last thing that was said to me before unfriending was "i see what you're doing. That's real low energy, man."
I think arguing for the public's hearts and minds has more to do with the former than latter.
I don't even know how you begin to have a real conversation with that as a starting point.
This rang all kind of warning bells, so I went and looked up the source and suddenly it made all good sense. The polls was done between the start of the preliminaries (which happen to be around the time wikileaks started publishing their stuff) and ended a couple months before the election day, and all those "missing" scandals about Trump that made international news are all more or less during those last couple of months. In that context the word cloud perfectly matched more or less everything what international news had been writing about the two candidates during the preliminaries and shortly afterward before the election campaign had really started. The researchers even noted this in their original paper, pointing out that if the polls had been done closer to election date then the data would look very different.
I could have used many of the same material to hold my own keynote about how news has successfully informed the public correctly. I notified the conference organizers, but I doubt it had any effect since the message followed the political tides right now. People want to believe that fake news caused the election results, and that is to me a very worrying. First we need to establish if it did, and it seems that everyone is skipping that step.
She also gave another amazing talk on corporate astroturfing and media manipulation [2]: "Astroturf and manipulation of media messages"
Apparently it wasn't really used before November 9th, 2016 and then suddenly it became a talking point on certain US news networks:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...
It started to become widely used after this article https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-fa... , showed the top 5 "fake" stories had more Facebook engagement than the top 5 "mainstream" stories.
The term and coverage was grounded in a real phenomenon, though many people in the field (myself included) prefer to use other terms.
A search of the Nexis media database indicates that the term was initially used more broadly. In May 1989 Adweek writer Barbara Lippert panned ads in which former newsreader Linda Ellerbee appeared "in a fake news setting" hustling Maxwell House coffee. In August that year Ad Day's Ed Buxton criticized the use of "the fake news bite" where reporters re-enacted news events as part of a news story.
However, it was a cover article by David Lieberman titled "Fake News" in the February 1992 edition of TV Guide that popularized the term. In his article Lieberman took the media and PR industry to task over video news releases. He argued that if footage from VNR's were used in news it should be labelled so that viewers were aware of its origin. If not, he argued, media outlets risked undermining their own credibility if they "pretend out of pride that what they broadcast is real news, instead of labeling it for what it is."
Anyone know what this is about?
People only voted for Trump because they were 'tricked'.
It's like media folk and political pundits cannot fathom the idea that the political system is simply broken for many people. Yes it's likely trolls and state sponsored propaganda helped, since a situation where people are so heavily divided is easy to stir up controversy in.
But at the end of the day, what was on offer in the recent election? Four years of 'more of the same' or someone who claimed to overthrow the system. A choice between an insane person and a bunch of career politicians with no charisma.
Just feels like it's a constant set of searches for a nefarious conspiracy rather than accepting that the current system isn't offering much to anyone outside of large corporations and that people were getting sick of it.
This narrative implies we lack free will and is really insulting to people. They’re using fear to position the reader as a potential victim who should continue reading their articles to avoid a similar fate.
So we should't trust content pushed by people centric platforms, and only trusted news sources with well written introductions..
OK, so Albright has done outstanding work. His map[0] is mind-blowing.
But there's another key aspect: This isn't new. For sure, Russian propagandists are using the Internet very effectively. However, Russian influence on US culture and politics goes back many decades. Communist groups in the US during the 30s-60s. US anti-war movements in the 60s-80s. The anti-draft movement, with heavy Quaker involvement. And the Soviet-American Friendship Society. That Ramparts article about Johnson and JFK's corpse.
And since the 90s, they've been focusing more on the radical right. Pushing distrust of the US government. I saw that developing in cypherpunk communities. But I wasn't sure, until RT appeared.
And by the way, I'm not arguing that Russia isn't justified in doing all this. It's arguably just defense. Because the US does it too. In Afghanistan, supporting the Taliban. In the Balkans. In the Ukraine. In Chile. I mean, they broke up the Soviet Union, and one aspect was propaganda.
Anyway, just sayin'.
Edit: I'm not arguing that those were all Russian front groups. Just that they were Russian influenced. And here's another example: Mad Magazine :) Also, the US did the same. I mean, the US promoted modern/abstract art as a Cold War weapon!
Edit: I'm not making this up.[1] Also, re support offered to the JFK campaign.[2]
0) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-de...
1) https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/ru...
2) http://time.com/4851449/trump-jr-russian-kennedy-history/
It was quickly forgotten about because the right wing overplayed the anti-leftist outrage card, as they tend to do, and only people already invested in their conspiratorial rhetoric could muster the effort to care.
The fallout and consequences were in correct proportion to their relevance. Donna Brazile resigned, CNN cut ties with her, the news cycle eventually moved on.
As a regular citizen I think its a big deal because
1. It eroded publics confidence in MSM giving rise to alternative/fake news sites.
2. What about Donna Brazile's collaborators. Surely she didn't pull this off all by herself.
3. What were the motivations of collaborators at CNN, why did they do it.
Can you tell me why you believe it should be a bigger deal than it was? Numerous articles were written about it, someone lost their job, what else do you believe should happen?
Can you tell me why you started this non-sequitur thread to begin with? TFA isn't about Hillary Clinton's campaign or the scandal surrounding her having been given advance notice of questions, so why bring it up?
>Surely its possible to look at this without partisan lens.
It is possible, but partisan politics is inextricably linked to the subject at hand, and the only people still bringing it up are people with a partisan agenda.
I explicitly stated why I thought it was big deal.
>> As a regular citizen I think its a big deal because
>> 1. It eroded publics confidence in MSM giving rise to alternative/fake news sites.
> what else do you believe should happen?
Also addressed this
>> 2. What about Donna Brazile's collaborators. Surely she didn't pull this off all by herself.
>> 3. What were the motivations of collaborators at CNN, why did they do it.
I want answers to those questions. And possibly releasing the debate questions to everyone instead of pretending like they are secret. I really want to know why they are pretending that they are secret when they are not. Regular ppl are just idiots to be fucked with?
Merely firing one sacrificial lamb is not enough, why would i possibly care about a multimillonare's job at CNN. More honesty and not taking people for idiots would be a good outcome. You know like a change that would prevent this from happening in future.
> Can you tell me why you started this non-sequitur thread to begin with?
As I mentioned it many times, this to me was one of those things that "trump supporters" used to discredit the media and create fakenews. CNN never coming clean didn't help the case.
Donna Brazile was able to get a copy of the debate questions not because someone hacked in and got them for her, but because CNN just... gave them to her. Because she was a contributor to the network that was going to be talking about the debate. There were Republican contributors in the same role who presumably also received a copy of the questions (we would have heard if they didn't, I'm sure), so I personally work on the basis that both candidates have known the questions for (at least) CNN debates for quite some time. The only reason we know the DNC did is because of the e-mail leaks, we certainly don't know that the RNC didn't. I don't say this to excuse anyone involved, just that it's often sold as a left vs right scandal and I really don't think it is. I think it shows how little CNN cares about the integrity of things like this.
On a broader level, it isn't talked about that much because IMO it just didn't have that big of an effect. The topic of the debate was known in advance (economy, foreign policy, etc) and it wouldn't have taken a rocket scientist to prepare a list of very likely questions. Certainly, it could have fueled distrust in the mainstream media, but that's something people do talk about at great length, so in a way it's just become one evidence point in a much larger debate.
> so I personally work on the basis that both candidates have known the questions for (at least) CNN debates for quite some time.
People prlby already assume these debates are already staged like WWE matches. MSM is just tasked with organising this farce. I never paid attention to these debates before but I found it shocking that such ridiculous farce can be organised at such high levels. Why can't they just reveal the questions to everyone beforehand instead of pretending like they are some sort of secret. Makes me wonder what else is staged. Is this whole russia thing also staged by both parties.
> it could have fueled distrust in the mainstream media, but that's something people do talk about at great length,
Can you link me one high level article talking about this. I almost never hear about it.
This is prototypical of politics in America, and it's mind boggling: "the current president said he'd do something and then didn't do it!" Said by every D and R about every R and D. I wish we could examine systemicly, instead of along party lines.
Youtube is a carrier, rather like UHF frequency is a band for transmitting carriers. Your television can show anything, depending on which channels you choose to watch. YouTube service also contains just about anything, and there's no such thing as a "YouTube front page" like you have front page of a newspaper. It's your own front page that comes up, based on what you've previously been interested in.
If you are interested in fake news, you'll see fake news in YouTube. Just like if you're interested in supermarket tabloid stories, you'll buy National Enquirer and read that. It's your choice.
Have a source for that claim? I watch a lot of YouTube with one account and it only recommends things similiar to what I already watch. There's no sudden fake news switch to Fox news or CNN or... anything, really.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-po...
It links to this WSJ investigation:
How YouTube Drives People to the Internet’s Darkest Corners https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-youtube-drives-viewers-to-t...
I suspect people who watch a lot of YouTube aren't as badly affected as there is a large dataset to recommend from.
The logic is simple: the more reactions a piece of content generates, the more it will be recommended. "Fake news", at least in the form of incendiary propaganda, is designed to invoke strong emotions. In the case of YouTube (probably applies to FB too), the compound effect is pure amplification.
In a way one could say that YouTube and propaganda thrive from a perverse symbiotic relationship.
0: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtu...
ß: You can easily find other news items on the same topic, but they tend to have either have a paywall or GDPR modal.
YouTube profits from showing people things they might be likely to click on, and from collecting money from people who want people to click on their things. This has something to do with "interests" in some sense of the word but I do not think YouTube's recommendation engine is an unmediated expression of a user's true desires.
Cynically, I disagree. i think their recommendation engine is a reflection of a collection of people's true desires. People reveal their preferences through actions (clicking on things) more than thought, which is generally rationalization for a decision already made.
With respect, there is no way this is correct - at least not in a meaningful sense.
Are you logged in with a YouTube account? Does anyone else pass YouTube traffic through your IP address, ie do you have children, nieces, nephews, cousins, etc? Do you purposefully block ads and analytics that would make suggestions like this random? Lil durk and Peppa pig are simply not going to be recommended next to each other without reason.
I just loaded YouTube.com and scrolled for _dozens of pages_. There is nothing remotley bizzarre. The most annoying thing is that it supports cut-and-pasters, who take clips from source videos that I watch and repost them.