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UW Professor: The Information War Is Real, and We're Losing It (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: It started with the Boston marathon bombing, four years ago. University of Washington professor Kate Starbird was sifting through thousands of tweets sent in the aftermath and noticed something strange. Too strange for a university professor to take seriously. "There was a significant volume of social-media traffic that blamed the Navy SEALs for the bombing," Starbird told me the other day in her office. "It was real tinfoil-hat stuff. So we ignored it." Same thing after the mass shooting that killed nine at Umpqua Community College in Oregon: a burst of social-media activity calling the massacre a fake, a stage play by "crisis actors" for political purposes. "After every mass shooting, dozens of them, there would be these strange clusters of activity," Starbird says. "It was so fringe we kind of laughed at it. "That was a terrible mistake. We should have been studying it." Starbird argues in a new paper, set to be presented at a computational social-science conference in May, that these "strange clusters" of wild conspiracy talk, when mapped, point to an emerging alternative media ecosystem on the web of surprising power and reach. There are dozens of conspiracy-propagating websites such as beforeitsnews.com, nodisinfo.com and veteranstoday.com. Starbird cataloged 81 of them, linked through a huge community of interest connected by shared followers on Twitter, with many of the tweets replicated by automated bots. Starbird is in the UW's Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering -- the study of the ways people and technology interact. Her team analyzed 58 million tweets sent after mass shootings during a 10-month period. They searched for terms such as "false flag" and "crisis actor," web slang meaning a shooting is not what the government or the traditional media is reporting it to be. Then she analyzed the content of each site to try to answer the question: Just what is this alternative media ecosystem saying? Starbird is publishing her paper as a sort of warning. The information networks we've built are almost perfectly designed to exploit psychological vulnerabilities to rumor. "Your brain tells you 'Hey, I got this from three different sources,'" Starbird says. "But you don't realize it all traces back to the same place, and might have even reached you via bots posing as real people. If we think of this as a virus, I wouldn't know how to vaccinate for it." The report goes on to say that "Starbird says she's concluded, provocatively, that we may be headed toward 'the menace of unreality -- which is that nobody believes anything anymore.'"
Really? We are there.
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
He didn't make a political statement but you completely verified his point. Must of picked on one of your truther sites I guess.
Unless I missed something, the University of Washington is not anywhere near Boston.
Next they will be saying that Bowling Green was a fake.
Your brain tells you 'Hey, I got this from three different sources,'" Starbird says. "But you don't realize it all traces back to the same place, and might have even reached you via bots posing as real people. If we think of this as a virus, I wouldn't know how to vaccinate for it." The report goes on to say that "Starbird says she's concluded, provocatively, that we may be headed toward 'the menace of unreality -- which is that nobody believes anything anymore.
Over the past 20 years I've felt this as well. It's scary, because for those of us used to seeking out signal in the noise, it just encourages apathy. We look around and feel like we're surrounded by idiots, when it may only in fact be just a bunch of bots propagating a single crazy person's mindless steam of consciousness.
Rational, fact/observation-based debate becomes just exhausting, and we say "whatever." That's not good.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I think that those conspiracy theories that are propagated by more than the usual crackpots may be a result of people realizing just how much fake news, biased news and "opinion pieces" there are in the mainstream media.
They overshoot the goal and now see fake news everywhere even when in some cases there are none.
Without critical thought people will accept many things that are just shoveled at them. Admittedly critical thought requires practice and is hard.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
This guy is 1) A professor, and 2) in Boston - ergo, he's probably extremely liberal (how'd I know???)
Not everyone is losing the information war. Just your side.
It's kind of a shame that you would really think that. Confirmation bias and gullibility are not monopolized by one side of a political divide. Anyone who thinks they are always correct and clear-eyed, is simply wrong.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
It makes you look dumb, but it makes you feel smart.
If you earnestly believe one of these ridiculous conspiracies, like the flat earth guys or something, then you feel like you're in on this big secret that nobody knows about. All those fools running around in their daily lives have no idea that the sun above their head is hanging from a string, but I do! I'm so much smarter than all of them!
It makes you feel as though you are smarter than everyone around you. And some people DESPERATELY want to feel that they are smarter than everyone around them.
But not badly enough that they'll go out & actually learn things. No, that takes effort.
Yes, the example stories provided are crazy and no one should believe them. So what should we believe? Not the government, which lies about really, really big important things like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, etc. Not the news media (owned by the same conglomerates that own the politicians) which thinks "unnamed sources believe Trump may or may not have had contact with someone who might have bought one of those silly Russian fur hats once" is worth a 10 minute segment with 5 panelists yapping. And who also repeatedly told us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
So, yes, there are bad people lying or crazy people hallucinating all kinds of nutty things. But they'd have no purchase if the "trustworthy" people in media and government weren't already doing the same thing.
This reminds of the joke "don't steal! The government hates the competition." Don't lie! The government hates the competition.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
At least read the first sentence or two in the summary. This 'guy' is named Kate.
The worrying part is that what has so often been labeled as "bullshit" ends up being true.
Ten or twenty years ago, anyone claiming that mass monitoring/recording of communications was taking place was labeled as a "kook", a "crazy", and "conspiracy theorist", or what have you.
Then we have the Snowden and Assange revelations which verify what was claimed by these supposed "kooks", and in some ways go beyond what was originally believed.
I'm sure you can fall back on the "a broken clock is right twice a day" idea, or even claim that they were accidentally right.
But the focus shouldn't be on the alleged "kooks" and their claims; it should be on how the truth was wrongly labeled as "bullshit".
Of course people will start to distrust official sources when the "truth" so often ends up being shown to be "bullshit", and the alleged "bullshit" ends up being true.
Part of the issue here is that people have become aware of the manipulation of public opinion by intelligence agencies. We have things like Operation Gladio, in which the CIA teamed up with people on post-war Europe to clandestinely fight the Soviets, which included bombings and assassinations which were blamed on the communists. We have the revelation of Operation Northwoods, approved by the then Joint Chiefs of Staff, that would have blown up dummy airplanes and blamed it on Cuba. The plan was squashed by Kennedy and McNamara, but the fact that it existed and was approved is concerning. We have the revelations of the Church Committee, which among other things revealed that the CIA had operatives working at all major news networks. They claim to have ceased that type of thing. But does anyone really believe we have effective and complete oversight of the CIA?
None of this justifies thinking that any given event, like the Boston Marathon bombing, or the Sandy Hook shootings are false flag operations, or anything other than what they seem. But once you realize that it is possible that there is a plan in place to manipulate public opinion, it can be hard to know what to believe anymore. And once you don't really trust the mainstream news sources, you start to look for alternatives. Many of those alternatives are not very good! But where do you go when you suspect that ABC (for example) might just be telling you what those in power want you to believe? Couple that with that fact that most news organizations rely solely on "official sources" and don't do much actual investigating, and you realize that such manipulation is quite possible. It can be very disconcerting and confusing.
I think there are a number of factors in play with this issue. Part of it is gullibility and paranoia. But it also stems from the fact that covert actors have used trusted news sources for propaganda and manipulation, and in doing so have damaged the reputation and trustworthiness of those outlets.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Properly functioning bullshit detectors are a matter of training in an environment conducive to developing one. If you do not have an environment where you can check facts, you cannot develop an instinct for who's shoveling turd and you cannot develop research skills. If you are surrounded by people in a similar situation, you're prone to develop your own dissembling skills as a survival mechanism, rather than an appreciation of honesty. You have to have something to get your footing on. In other words it is down to proper education, environment, and mentoring, not laziness.
If the neighborhood next door has a long-term infestation of head lice that just won't subside, do you do something to help them out of it, or just sit on your porch saying "look at all those dirty people."?
The answer should be the latter, if not for moral reasons, then for the fact that the consequences may occasionally spill out onto you.
Someone had to do it.
It wasn't enough to simply report the news - to fill 24 hours of programming "news" agencies had to throw their opinions into the mix as well.
Opinions, by their very nature cause division. Eventually you will push enough people away from your narrative and you will lose the information war.
If the mainstream media is honestly and truly concerned with winning the information war they need to bring back old school journalism. Only publish if you can get two reliable sources to corroborate a story and NEVER give your own damn opinion on the matter. Do that for the next 5 years and you might just get the respect you once had.
This last election cycle turned me away from all national TV news. Local news is as close as you can get to unbiased news and even then you need to be skeptical.
The concept of rumors and false information disseminated across the world isn't new ("I've heard she's a witch"). The concept of false narrative driving major social and political decisions isn't new (the entire religion thing anywhere, basically). Technology simply makes it more convenient by giving voice to millions of idiots who theretofore were limited to only their immediate surroundings.
yeah, what about PizzaGate ? So fake news are only wrong when the libs are doing it, is this what's you're saying ?
Typical discusting trumpist filth.
This is the liberal media that thought it would be a good idea to run with a story about how President Trump is into watersports and hires Russian prostitutes to piss on beds once slept in by the Obamas, despite the fact that it was completely unverified and unverifiable.
No, this is the liberal media that thought it would be a good idea to run with a story that a British intelligence agency had leaked a document with several derogatory statements about President Trump, and that several intelligence agencies had suggested that it was trustworthy.
Those were actual, facts, you know, things that could be verified. Every single article about this that I'm aware of stated that the dossier may not be accurate, but that intelligence agencies suggested it might be true.
It turns out after a while that at least a significant portion of the document is true, so they seem to have had a good basis there.
Not really unverifiable if the FSB has video.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I remember how frustrating it was back when Microsoft was ruling the OS/Office world. Top executives of most companies were easily fooled into buying "microsoft compatibility" when what they should have asked for was "interoperability". It was fudged, enough shills played along, fake studies showing retraining costs etc etc. It really was frustrating. It nearly peaked at the time Microsoft added ASCII tags around binary blobs and called it OOXML, specifically to confuse it open office. Microsoft argued there must be competition among standards themselves. If the Fortune 500 companies alone invested 1% of the license cost they were paying to Microsoft pooled the money and funded program to define and certify interoperability standards, (like for example SAE defining socket wrench definitions and oil properties like 10w-40) they would have benefited enormously. But no such thing happened and it looked like all was lost.
Then came up a new generation of executives who grew up with computers, and were not afraid of retraining boogeyman. Other products came in, and top executives buying the cool Macbook did more to force Microsoft to be standard compliant than most of our shouting. Active Directory must be able to authenticate Apple products, iphones,and then androids. Open Office trying match bell for bell and whistle for whistle had such tough time. Google docs with one new feature, collaborative editing across network with latencies, made it compelling. Docs, even now, can only do a fraction of MsOffice or OpenOffice, but it meets the need of 90% of the people all the time, and the rest 90% of the time.That was enough to counter Microsofts attempts to skew the playing field.
This fake news etc are frustrating for us older generation to understand and fight. But the younger generation growing up with twitter and snapchat all the time, with fragmented clusters in facebook, will develop their own ways of adjusting credibility and their own ways of authenticating and calibrating the information sources. So I think, and hope, and pray, it is overblown.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The NYT is famous for its WMD in Iraq, Saddam is going to attack the US fake news. Fox is packed with fake news. Face it, ever since the the news media turned to click bait journalism (infotainment), the news from the left, right and center is likely to have many fake components, salted with a dash of truth to make it more palatable. The Russians did it (meaning everything bad that ever happens) is the latest in click-bait journalism. Time to boycott the mainstream (fake) press.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Not being able to spell "losing" is bad. Not being able to spell it when it's in the bloody headline you just read, that's a whole other level of stupid.
I agree that the inability to distinguish between "losing" and "loosing" is bad. But suggesting the use of Slashdot article headlines as guides to spelling, syntax, or grammar is just wrong.
Our society rewards clicks no matter what information is behind it. Go fucking figure people starting perpetuating hype and bullshit when that kind of capitalistic model is presented.
This is the same reason you find mainstream news outlets perpetuating fake news. This is the same reason banking institutions purposely break laws and perpetuate unethical activity for monetary gain. The crime of manipulation is worth it.
STOP fucking rewarding the behavior that perpetuates this shit. Otherwise the proverbial global database of information will become worthless, tainted with lies and doubt.
Just Don't Look
Really. Seriously. I have spent the last couple of years really cutting back on my news. I haven't watched the nightly news for 4 years. I only catch a little bit of TV news in the breakroom at work because its on. I check the BBC website on occasion. That's really about it. I ditched Instagram, I don't do Facebook.
You'd be surprised how much most of it really doesn't matter.
To paraphrase a great quote:
If you don't watch the news, you're uninformed. If you do watch the news, you're misinformed.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Misinfotainment is everywhere. We need better critical thinking and demand for honesty.
If the neighborhood next door has a long-term infestation of head lice that just won't subside, do you do something to help them out of it, or just sit on your porch saying "look at all those dirty people."?
They're religiously objecting to washing their hair. I've tried explaining to them over and over again that the reason we don't have head lice is because we wash our hair on a daily basis. I've also tried pointing out to them that their holy book says that they shouldn't eat bacon either, but that they have no problem eating bacon.
I just can't get through to them. They think they'll go to hell if their wash their hair. This one guy even started screaming and gesticulating at me the other day while I was buying shampoo, going off about how I'm some ivory tower liberal elitist devil worshipper. He was adamant that his god infested him with lice because of how angry I make his god every time I buy shampoo.
Do you have any suggestions for how to get through to these people and help them see that washing one's hair is just as acceptable as eating bacon? I even tried quoting from the second half of their holy book about their prophet Eli and the parable of the good barber! I'm at my wits' end!
All I can do is sit on my porch, crack open a b33r, and laugh at them. Otherwise I would weep.
At least they're not as bad as those heathens that use Emacs!
I believe that the "nobody believes anything" is somewhat here today. To determine what is true, we rely on family and friends to help us. There is no longer any authority that we trust to tell us the truth. This puts us into bubbles where we only believe news that confirms our bias. We are suspicious of any news source that deviates from what we believe to be true. The internet makes it easy to confirm our bias and stay in our bubble. We need to listen to the alternate viewpoints even if we disagree. This will give us a broad background to help us think critically and help us break out of our bubbles.
Sadly I suspect the next generation will end up disengaged and unbelieving about anything; the present level of voting in the younger generation seems to support my pessimism.
This all seems to follow the same simple formula. 1) Create crazy sensationalist click bait headline (and article) 2) Funnel to ad-supported web site 3) Profit! If there wasn't serious money to be made doing this technique, then I am guessing the number of conspiracy theorist crackpots spreading garbage would be a lot lower. Wasn't there a story just a few months ago about Macedonian teens are making thousands of dollars creating outrageous news sites filled with political BS?
Just who is losing this alleged war? Everybody and his dog these days seems to be serving up some manner of self-serving propaganda. And if the 'we' she's talking about is all of society, then of course she's correct, because any entity that goes to war with itself loses. But this is not news; I'm pretty sure 'broken telephone' was a thing millennia before telephones even existed, and I'm virtually certain that much of the 'breakage' was an intentional part of advancing a variety of agendas.
The same news seeming to come from multiple independent sources is not a recent phenomenon. Even the Internet represents only a difference of degree, and not of kind, in that both information and disinformation travel faster and more broadly. The real difference between now and centuries ago, is the success of a public education regime founded specifically to create followers rather than leaders. As a result, most of society is both stupid, and addicted to novelty and spectacle. A lack of critical faculties and a need for ongoing distraction does NOT produce any effective immune response to the 'virus' of fake news.
I know I may sound like one of those Infowars conspiracy nuts; but if you read some John Taylor Gatto, and look at a few of the sources he quotes, you may realize that I'm really not foaming at the mouth and muttering about the sky falling. Alternatively, read a short story called Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr, and ask yourself if there isn't a sharp, hard grain of truth in his satire.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
is entirely too difficult to implement.
And that would be rating sources and reporters with a measure of how objectively truthful they are. Because just agreeing on objective reality is difficult enough in today's culture. But imagine a rating, on every byline and broadcast. You'd KNOW whether the reporter or writer generally reports the facts on the ground, what their typical slant is, and how much is opinion.
Unfortunately, most will ignore it, and go with their tribal reporters. . .
I think the "we" that the author is referring to is people who make decisions based on reality. That doesn't necessarily exclude conservatives. That only means you have some intelligence and maybe even a little common sense.
The forces of disinformation are neither liberal nor conservative. They are anarchists. No one with any intelligence and anything to lose wants anarchy.
Everyone knew that Iraq was not about to attack the US. It was fake, and even Colin Powell admits his testimony at the UN was bunk. Real journalists check their facts, they don't just report what they are told by officials. The NYT was intentionally misleading the public. That is the definition of fake news.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Yeah but if you report on what Colin Powell says thats not fake news, what was bullshit was him saying it, not papers reporting what he said. The misinformation around the iraq war came straight from the white house and from our own intelligence agencies. Pizza gate came from 4chan.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
It really doesn't matter the source of the false information, it is that it is false. The NYT knew that Iraq was not preparing to attack the US, but it was good for access journalism, and good for their profits. Indeed, when the source of the fake news if from "the paper of record" the malfeasance is even more severe. Journalism is not just writing down what the WH tells you to. Iraq's weapons programs had been systematically dismantled with UN oversight over the previous decade, and the NYT knew that. It was fake news.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Wag The Dog was released in 1997. The growth in internet usage has just made it a lot easier.
This guy is 1) A professor, and 2) in Boston - ergo, he's probably extremely liberal (how'd I know???)
Not everyone is losing the information war. Just your side.
It's sad that it has come so far that being educated and informed automatically labels you a liberal. I think it really reflects the low point that conservatism in the US has reached, peaking with Donald Trump being elected as president.
Because by saying that you of course suggest the other side of the coin, being that conservatism in the US has shifted towards ignorance, populism and a science-denying base of people with simple solutions to complex problems.
Such as building walls.
The Age of Enlightenment is what separated the West from other parts of the planet, such as the Middle East, Africa and Asia. This is what enabled our amazing progress in the last few centuries. Critical thinking, intellectualism, freedom of thought and religion, all of these great and amazing things. It seems some parts of the US want to turn back the wheels of time and return to the age of monarchs, priests and superstition.
If the professor is relying on comments on Social Media, then he is being mislead. Twitter has close to half a million fake accounts
I would not be surprised to learn that Facebook and the other S.M. sites suffer from the same thing.
Social Media is an advertising venue. It invites fake users and fake news.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Please explain your issues with the supposed "Uranium Deal"
I have yet to see anyone that raises the "Uranium Deal" understand that the Uranium in question is in the ground, in a mine, in Canada. Even with Russian ownership of said mine any processed ore will need additional approvals before the ore can be shipped out of Canada. Canadian and US approvals.
The US State Department, under the leadership of Hillary Clinton, was tasked to review whether the proposed purchase of a CANADIAN mine that produces raw uranium violated any laws or rules against foreign ownership. The Canadian State Department equivalent had already approved the deal, were they bought off too?
Again, to ship any processed Uranium ore from the mine additional approvals would be needed from both the Canadian and US Governments. FYI Russia has plenty of Uranium mines capable of producing enough Uranium to satisfy their requirements.
Yeah, I know explaining anything to an Anonymous Coward Troll is a waste of time.
the thing is when the white house makes a press release that itself is news
They did make a press release, there are many many many sources backing that up and those same sources will confirm exactly what the press release said
Thats news because the whilte house is important. If you make a press release that might not qualify, it depends on who you are and what the release is about.
Its also news if you independently verify the contents of the press release, or if you can dispute them. THAT is something that requires verification.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Because by saying that you of course suggest the other side of the coin, being that conservatism in the US has shifted towards ignorance, populism and a science-denying base of people with simple solutions to complex problems.
Reminds me of a similar flaw I've loved to point out in some so-called feminist claims that putting emphasis on things like "logic" or "justice" is emphasizing the masculine over the feminine: "really? do you realize you are thereby claiming that logic/justice/etc are unfeminine; that women are illogical/unjust/etc? and you call yourself a feminist?"
Nice catch that conservatives are basically doing the same thing with their attacks on intellectualism: unwittingly claiming willful ignorance as a trait of their side in contrast.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."