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First Evidence That Social Bots Play a Major Role In Spreading Fake News (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Indiana University in Bloomington provide an answer for how social bots play a major role in spreading fake news. MIT Technology Review reports: "At issue is the publication of news that is false or misleading. So widespread has this become that a number of independent fact-checking organizations have emerged to establish the veracity of online information. These include snopes.com, politifact.com, and factcheck.org. These sites list 122 websites that routinely publish fake news. These fake news sites include infowars.com, breitbart.com, politicususa.com, and theonion.com. 'We did not exclude satire because many fake-news sources label their content as satirical, making the distinction problematic,' say researcher Chengcheng Shao and co. Shao and co then monitored some 400,000 claims made by these websites and studied the way they spread through Twitter. They did this by collecting some 14 million Twitter posts that mentioned these claims. At the same time, the team monitored some 15,000 stories written by fact-checking organizations and over a million Twitter posts that mention them. Next, Shao and co looked at the Twitter accounts that spread this news, collecting up to 200 of each account's most recent tweets. In this way, the team could study the tweeting behavior and work out whether the accounts were most likely run by humans or by bots. Having made a judgment on the ownership of each account, the team finally looked at the way humans and bots spread fake news and fact-checked news.
'Accounts that actively spread misinformation are significantly more likely to be bots,' say Shao and co. 'Social bots play a key role in the spread of fake news.' Shad and co say bots play a particularly significant role in the spread of fake news soon after it is published. What's more, these bots are programmed to direct their tweets at influential users. 'Automated accounts are particularly active in the early spreading phases of viral claims, and tend to target influential users,' say Shao and co."
'Accounts that actively spread misinformation are significantly more likely to be bots,' say Shao and co. 'Social bots play a key role in the spread of fake news.' Shad and co say bots play a particularly significant role in the spread of fake news soon after it is published. What's more, these bots are programmed to direct their tweets at influential users. 'Automated accounts are particularly active in the early spreading phases of viral claims, and tend to target influential users,' say Shao and co."
proves exactly how much value we should attribute to these so-called 'fact-checking organizations'.
Even after several news organizations apologized and retracted their statements about "17 intelligence organizations all agreeing", Politifact continued to offer apologetics for their favored media outlets, saying it wasn't a big deal (being factually incorrect), as long as the overall notion was in the right direction.
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Contrast this to the near anal-retentive literal manner in which PolitiFact analyzes other stories.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Can someone link to a Breitbart article that's actually fake news?
From what I've read, their reporting is very tight, usually with references to whatever it is they're talking about.
Yes, they have a conservative bias, but bias is not the same thing as fake.
Nah, 90% of twitter accounts are bots. The social bots are just entertaining their fellow bots.
I'd run out of comment space before i'd get done with describing the issue, but i'll leave you with two words: Jayson Blair.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
These sites list 122 websites that routinely publish fake news. These fake news sites include infowars.com, breitbart.com, politicususa.com, and theonion.com.[emphasis added.]
Look, I get it: fake news, it's a problem. But let's not get carried away. The Onion publishes more factually correct stories than most major media outlets. Plus they are actually entertaining to read. Don't go messing with The Onion.
lol
Daily Stormer has the best "Real News"
Propaganda isn't new. As long as there is money driving it, then it will spread by whatever available channels there are.
Look, case in point, the Seth Rich story. Hannity launches a "Seth Rich was murdered for leaking, since he's the DNC leaker, Russia is innocent of DNC hacks, FBI investigator says so". That was pushed via Hannity on Fox News.
This is falling apart now, and you can see the elements of it.
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/01/540783715/lawsuit-alleges-fox-news-and-trump-supporter-created-fake-news-story
1. Fox News hired an ex FBI investigator and scripted him a few lines. (Confirmed by the lawsuit from the investigator).
2. This was coordinated with the Whitehouse, (confirmed by Sean Spicer).
3. Fox News is providing cover for Russia, a fake alternate story to cover their hack of the election. i.e. Propaganda.
4. You can see from the Hannity dinner with Trump, that the coordinating link from Hannity to the Whitehouse is direct to Donald Trump.
And it's money that is the driver, not some sort of ideological belief.
The money flow is simple, the sanctions against Russia are biting. Russian banks are reporting losses, and the economy is down. The sanctions have an economic value that can be sold. If it costs Russia $10 billion in sanctions losses, they'll happily pay $1 billion to overturn the sanctions.
The money is funneled to key people, who in turn launder it down the propaganda feeding chain. Their motivation is money, pure and simple.
I don't see anything in TFA that makes a claim as to which side of the political spectrum had more bots. Please do those anti-persecution-complex breathing exercises the shrink showed you.
Someone had to do it.
Here's something more recent: http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...
The title doesn't match the content. Calling it misleading would be an understatement.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Here's a link to the original paper.
A quick scan shows that they... apparently use every type of data representation. You'll find a scatter plot with non-linear regression, a joint distribution image, a histogram, line charts, diffusion networks, and a triangular distribution thingy where color indicates the log of the number of articles (what the heck is that called?).
It plots the Gini coefficient of the various tweets. (I'll save you the trouble.)
The paper goes from the introduction directly to the results, then the discussion, then talks about the methods afterwards. Is that typical? I always thought the methods section comes before the results.
As near as I can tell, there is no supplemental data that indicates what their data is. Their entire paper relies on the correctness of "hoaxy" and "botometer".
Taking "botometer" as an example, looking for an estimate of accuracy, I could find no papers in established journals about this service. There are a couple of conference papers though - will those do? None has an indication of how accurate the service is.
So if "botometer" has an accuracy of 80%, which would be pretty good, and "hoaxy" had an accuracy of 80%, which would also be pretty good, then the results of the cited paper would be... how good?
Looking at the paper, I have to wonder if it's an elaborate hoax.
There's a *lot* of... um... surprising things about this paper.
Other than with one story ("Spirit Cooking"), the paper itself doesn't seem to break anything out by site or by story. What if 95% of these retweets are Items from the Onion?
There's a hand-waving single statement at the end saying basically "we know people will complain about us including The Onion, so we left it out and looked again; but the results were all the same"... but without any actual data. If it didn't affect the results, why not show us? And, since it was indeed workable to leave The Onion out after all, why did the authors make a big deal regarding why they had to Include it in the first place?
#DeleteChrome
I'm waiting for machine learning to be applied to big data on individuals' browsing habits and message history to figure out what individuals are likely to click on, with machine-written fake news articles custom-made for each click, guaranteed to be conformed to your biases and preconceptions. Once this gets turned from "profit-generating clickbait" to "self-writing custom propaganda" it's going to go from a big problem to a huge one. Sure, people can just read/watch trusted static news, but there will be an increasing sense that this is biased, because it doesn't conform to the viewer's own biases.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Is this going to put the President out of business?
The Singularity is upon us!
Did they include MSM sites like nytimes.com, cnn.com, washingtonpost.com, msnbc.com? They have their fair share of fake news.
They don't specify in the article where they get the $3million claim, but that doesn't make it fake news. Maybe they simply read about it at another site.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Brietbart USED TO BE fairly reliable, when Breitbart and Drudge were running the place. Infowars, less so. TheOnion doesn't belong in this category, because it's OBVIOUSLY fake.
I'm certain that there are more "progressive" fake news sites than putatively "conservative" ones. And the clickbait ads around all of them are even faker than the supposed news articles.
The paper calls out this Infowars spirit cooking article as an example of fake news and how it spreads. The diffusion chart for that one article takes up the entirety of page 4 of the paper.
I reviewed that article, and couldn't find anything that was in any way "fake".
John Podesta's brother forwarded an E-mail where Marina Abramovic invited them to a spirit cooking dinner. All of this is fact, made public when wikileaks published the actual E-mail.
There's some background on spirit cooking (which I didn't check - looks legit), and some references to innuendo (which I *did* check - they're legit).
Overall, there's nothing in the Infowars article that appears fake, or even blown out of proportion. Snopes.com pretty-much agrees with the facts laid out in the article.
John Podesta didn't go to that dinner or participate in spirit cooking, and InforWars didn't say that he did!
Not to take partisan shots here, but what part of that article is fake news?
Got a /. user ID lower than 1x10^6? All of your posts will be mocked by cowards. Why? The few who remember what this community was like 15 years ago could straight up tell you that bots have been running influence campaigns on this and every other social site that allow AC posts for well over 10 years now. Some keep hoping they will eventually get a life but sadly their will always be fuckwits only out for 'teh lulz'.
/hire some real moderators, you greedy scumbag /. editors
Um, What seems to be your beef with that article?
Then title appears to me to correlate well with the article. $3 million will be spent by PP to support the Democratic nominee. That's what the article says. The article references a Washington Post article which says the same thing.
Caution: Contents under pressure
The only thing "fake" are the Russian trolls trying to persuade public opinion using American social media!!! OMG, for months I have been coming across odd commentary that is seemingly pro-Trump or Republican - but has also maybe been a little off grammatically or ideologically incomplete or odd in some way.... turns out Russia has employed thousands and thousands of Russians to infiltrate American social media in mass in an attempt to sway public opinion!!! The question is "why?" Trump supporters, fair warning, stop being so brash and boastful - when you think you're in the company of many other supporters on social media - YOU ARE NOT - many of these supposed and perceived Trump supporters are actually Russian bots!!! Please, please, please AMERICANS PLEASE BEWARE - the enemy is here now as you read this, disguised as a Trump supporter but is really a RUSSIAN TROLL!!!
Slashdot has lost it a few years ago when it was overrun not with conservatives (nothing against them) but first with hordes of Putinbots and then with absolutely retarded alt-right followers who want to push their bizarre agenda. People who are full of hatred and don't give a shit about reality at all. These posters have successfully destroyed /. Talking about the political spectrum, it used to play no role and there also used to be many reasonable and well educated conservatives on this site, say 10-15 years ago, but most of them are long gone. I don't know what happened to them, maybe some of them got polarized and radicalized by recent US politics so much that they are no longer recognizable. US lefties have become more radical, too, of course, and these political 'debates' have become so vitriolic, they are no longer bearable for people outside the US. Let me assure you that nobody outside the US gives a shit about your president or your religious fanatism.
What's going on on /. is just a mirror of what's going on in the US in general, but at least for /. my outlook is bleak. Strictly banning all political topics might help, but frankly speaking it would be best to close down the site. The current user demographics is no longer suitable for a tech-related site driven by user-submissions. I won't tell anyone here which other forums I use, for fear of attracting the trolls to them. Suffices to say that there are way better places nowadays than /.
Just like the inverse wisdom of those who think news explicitly labeled as satire makes the distinction more problematic instead of less.
or maybe they are all running to get as much clicks (and ads revenue) as possible by quickly re-posting some sensationalist trash without much checking.
The next step would to check the source mentioned in each of them and build a graph of the propagation.
Then several possible outcome :
- you'll go up stream until you find an actual report (the planned parenthood listing 3M spent on this politician on their taxt returns)
- you'll go up stream until you find something that remotely looks like this if you squinit enough, which then got completely emplified along the buzz-click mill.
(see PhDCommics' entry about news cycle).
- you'll just see a giant cycle of people reposting each other's crap (with perhaps some tabloid citing "anonymous sources") (or outright telling that the info was leaked out of the secret base of Illuminati thanks to the action of alien spies)
Mainstream news probably reached the same conclusion and that's why they aren't interested in reposting this shit :
- they are not trying to "hide truth so the reptilian can keep opression the people"
- they have simply found out that the fact don't add up and the information isn't worth publishing.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
proves exactly how much value we should attribute to these so-called 'fact-checking organizations'.
The alternative would be to equip the people with the (intellectual) tools, so they can make up their mind of their own.
There are french teachers currently organising such classes in schools (media awareness).
One of them has a youtube channel (sorry, everything in french currently), where he makes presentations about such media-critic methods, and also documents a colleague doing such a lesson in a classroom.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The list of 'fake news' sites should have included Slashdot, CNN, and MSNBC. Snopes is not trustworthy either.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
You beat me to posting this! There seems to be a bit of a bias here in the list of sites posted. Claiming you fact check is as trustworthy as the fake news being examined. Let me guess, the Washington comPost is trustworthy, right?
I'm probably crazy, but I found the observation "Accounts that actively spread misinformation are significantly more likely to be bots," quite reassuring.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
OK, humoring you for a moment... name ONE credible conservative fact-checking site. Seriously. Just one.
Does Just Facts count? They're a little different than the sites listed in TFS, but they're conservative and typically accurate.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
There is a bias evident in the sites not listed there but those are certainly fake news sites. Slashdot is user submitted links to other sources so not really a fake news site. CNN, FOX, and NBC should all be listed. They aren't sites per say but factual and deliberately misrepresented news would include the Daily Show and The John Oliver show.
The integrity of these shows ranks right up there with Ancient Aliens and UFO related shows on the History channel. Events and words presented may have actually taken place but they slice and dice them like a movie trailer to tell any story they want.
a HUGE amount of the shit posters are NOT american.
They aren't sites per say but factual and deliberately misrepresented news would include the Daily Show and The John Oliver show.
Just because The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight do a reasonable job of fact checking does not make them "news" any more than The Tonight Show. They're entertainment that happens to contain facts. They're closer to being satire than they are "misrepresented news". The Daily Show actually describes itself as "The Real Fake News". Anyone who uses these shows as "news sources" is ignorant of the news. That's not what Comedy Central or HBO are for.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
"overrun not with conservatives"? Are you joking? People just got fed up with the bullshit narratives from the marxists and extreme leftists promoting whacko ideology over facts on a site that is supposed to be a "news for nerds" site.
Today, you can't post without a high risk being modded a troll or flaimbait if you are a conservative. Rational dialogue has gone out the window, and the leftist extreme has become the celebrated and norm..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
And the fact that they're owned by the Miami Herald, which in turn is owned by the Poynter Institute for Journalism, which is openly left wing.
I trust Snopes over Politifact. Politifact may bring objective facts to the table, but in the end, their final judgments are still subjective in terms of what constitutes a "mostly false vs. half true" type rating or similar, and it's in those judgments that their bias, however subtle, is often evident.
Case in point, Michelle Obama's statement that the White House was "built by slaves"; Politifact rated this "Mostly True" despite their own article citing that slaves worked in the quarry cutting and supplying raw stone for the masons to refine and lay; as well as did some of the whitewashing (painting) on the finished building. No actual mention of them doing any of the actual masonry, carpentry, woodworking, metalworking, tiling, or plasterwork, and certainly none of the architecture/design. No actual building, as the word is understood. Most or all of this was done by local and European contractors (electricity and plumbing came later, I believe).
That should reasonably earn her statement a "mostly false", or "half true" at best, as slaves were forced to work primarily in the capacity of suppliers, not builders.
Her statement also entirely discounts the work of the non-slaves involved and overall gives a very incorrect impression; in addition, FWIW, the slaves were paid for their work as well, though they were not given a choice in the matter of doing the work.
Somehow, they saw fit to give this a "Mostly True".
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Cut me a break. I love this bit, which immediately struck me as "brilliant" in that the audience they are pandering to typically have no senses of humor:
>> We did not exclude satire because many fake-news sources label their content as satirical, making the distinction problematic
And wow-- making the distinction problematic! The Left continues to reveal the disdain they have for the general public.
If you are triggered by this (i.e. teeing up cliche insults and unintelligent slogans) but still reading it, here is some advice: When someone with an agenda tells you *not to read something*, you should read it. You might just find yourself with a new understanding of the world.
(And no, Trump doesn't tell you to *not read* stuff. Actually, I think he's commenting on the death of legacy media quite nicely.)
The same could be said of most of the programming on FOX. Sadly a huge majority of millennials do look to these shows as legitimate news sources with a comedic style delivery that allows them to be more honest. In fairness, in some cases that does come through. In other cases it does not. For instance the John Oliver show covered a range of topics that would be unpopular with the status quo, the secret treaties, attacks on net neutrality, pointing out problems with the insurance and healthcare industries, etc. But since Trump has been elected each and every episode has been largely focused on mocking Trump.
In a story on gerrymandering a blatantly gerrymandered district in the NE was pointed out with the implication that the hidden truth was a minority group would be marginalized if it weren't districted in this way... remind me again how that isn't gerrymandering for the benefit of the party that group typically votes for and additionally a racist effort to disproportionately raise the voice a racial minority? John Oliver (show writers) know that full well, the delivery begged the question intentionally and that sort of rhetoric is designed to manipulate the opinions of those watching. That is the essence of fake news, whether it is Nancy Grace, Bill Mahr, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Tracy Maddock, Geraldo, Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, or John Oliver makes no difference. It's all fake news and propaganda (including strawman support points for the side you aren't supposed to take).
Sounds like the Paperclip Maximizer problem to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Gotta get that reader engagement, at any cost.
There would sufficiently little incentive enough to preclude the use of bots to spread news, fake, real, or otherwise if it weren't for the prevailing ad-based revenue model of web publishing that panders to fear, greed, desire, and lowest common denominators in the attempt to push buttons to generate a profit or gain an electoral victory, regardless of cost. This is a broader problem than whether it's fake or not, or by whose standards. I'm afraid the MIT study, however informative, will likely be used to further the agenda for more centralized control of web publishing, totally at odds both with web history and freedom of speech. I'll bet my bottom dollar some Senate or Congressional staffer is preparing a bill right now. Yeah, they got yer network neutrality for you. The network will be so controlled you won't care any more. Click that bait. Yeah. Forget the 1st Amendment. MIght as well move to China.
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Back between 2004 to 2007, there were plenty of gov't proposal bids for G-Trolls, trolls hired through the State Department, FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. so this article is waaaaay off, as G-trolls are essentially Fake News to the max!
As for the often stated claim that no one wants a late term abortion, and no doctor performs one unless medically necessary, remember Dr Gosnell.
When your counter-example is someone engaging in felonious behavior,
My counter example is proof of hundreds of women who wanted late term abortions, not for medical purposes, and a doctor and numerous assistants who provided them for years before his practice was finally brought to light.
Actually, his practice was brought to light repeatedly over three decades, but nothing was done to close him down. For all his illegal and unethical practices, he apparently filled a role that the pro-choice establishment wanted filled. They were willing to ignore serious issues and allow him to continue with minor penalties, or let him move to another area where no one knew his past.
Also, do you really think Dr Gosnell is the only practitioner providing late term abortions? He is simply the one that finally killed one too many adult women and was no longer able to be protected.
you might as well be citing Orville Lynn Majors as an argument against Euthanasia.
Possibly, except for the distinction that euthanasia is generally done to prevent pain and suffering in patients who have terminal diseases, whereas Majors
Hmmm. Ending suffering and pain vs ending whining and increased workload. So you really consider Majors' actions to be that similar to euthanasia, to compare them to Dr Gosnell's actions being exactly like late term abortions? Please note that I didn't make any comment on the infanticide aspect of Dr Gosnell, to compare Majors' serial killing to. I strictly mentioned late term abortions, which many pro-choice advocates insist don't happen, but who still attack anyone who opposes them.
The most your argument supports is the desirability of a modifier such as "competent" or "reasonable" instead.
That's really relying too much on pedantry.
The most my argument supports is the acknowledgement that late term abortions happen, for non-medical reasons, and with the knowledge and support of staff, regulators, politicians, women's groups, and thousands of women who have had them.
I hate repeatedly asking this type of question, but do you honestly believe Dr Gosnell was a singular case, or that he was shut down after just a few ill-advised procedures? Do you not realize there was a network of people needed to keep him in business in multiple locations for three decades?
And again, this is just in regards to the late term abortions. The multiple cases that were pure murder of a newborn should elevate this above anything else you care to reply with. Unless you argument is that a few cases of newborn murder are just the price of doing business for non-medically necessary late term abortions, and that a relatively few non-medically necessary late term abortions are the price to pay for medically necessary late term abortions, which are of course not that common in themselves, so this is really not a very important branch of the abortion issue.
The problem with your opinion here is that you are still forcing some subset of women to carry a child to term, and insisting you have a right over the woman's body. To the hardcore feminists and their apologists, you are just
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Per se, not per say.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So Home Depot/Lowes built your house?
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Heck, I found the Putinbots amusing. (Were they bots? I always assumed they were humans being paid.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes