The Science of Truthiness

E IS mC(Square) writes "Researchers at Indiana University have just launched Truthy.indiana.edu, which they humbly declare 'a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool that combines data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing to uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation leading up to the Nov. 2 elections.' According to their FAQ, they define 'truthy' thus: 'A truthy meme relies on deceptive tactics to represent misinformation as fact. The Truthy system uses Truthy to refer to activities such as political smear campaigns, astroturfing, and other social pollution."

Comments

Social Pollution

[foobsr]

What is bad about it? It just leads to social change (like climate change), and change (aka progress) is the thing we all want!

CC.

Every meme will be new

[AHuxley]

They have learned from Fox news not to use day long talking points.
Undercover, well funded efforts by governments, .coms, .orgs and faith based groups can flood any 'space'.
A random set of users twisting and distorting, voting down and attacking.
They will then just drift back down, waiting for the next mission.
At best you expose 1 ip with a users who has x post over y months.
They are quickly back with a new ip and 'old' users name even if detected.
For best results shine light on their masters, infiltrate their funding and hidden support networks, link into their millionaires, billionaires or gov funded ops units.
They have to spin up links fast on any new issue, that needs a network ;)
Colour revolutions did have strange automated bursts/injection points on web 2.0 sites and where noted.

Truthiness is truthy.

[Saint Stephen]

Truthiness is truthy. The cake is a lie :). This site and Colbert guess what - have an agenda, and Colbert is super liberal