Researchers Develop Online Game That Teaches Players How To Spread Misinformation

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Cambridge researchers have built an online game, simply titled Bad News, in which players compete to become "a disinformation and fake news tycoon." By shedding light on the shady practices, they hope the game will "vaccinate" the public, and make people immune to the spread of untruths. Players of the fake news game must amass virtual Twitter followers by distorting the truth, planting falsehoods, dividing the united, and deflecting attention when rumbled. All the while, they must maintain credibility in the eyes of their audience. The game distills the art of undermining the truth into six key strategies. Once a player has demonstrated a knack for each, they are rewarded with a badge. In one round, players can opt to impersonate the president of the United States and fire off a tweet from a fake account. It declares war on North Korea complete with a #KimJongDone hashtag. At every step, players are asked if they are happy with their actions or feel, perhaps, the twinge of shame, an emotion that leads to the swift reminder that "if you want to become a master of disinformation, you've got to lose the goody two-shoes attitude." The work is due to be published in the Journal of Risk Research.

Comments

Re:People are too stupid

[Hal_Porter]

You seem to be saying that the problem isn't that there aren't enough children, just not the right type of children. I asked why you thought the rate needed to be higher and you responded by describing the breeders.

If the end result of SJW culture is that the SJWs don't have enough kids to be survive that's not a problem with me. Well it's not in the US at least because US Christian religious conservatives will replace them. If they get replaced with Muslim religious conservatives - and that's the most likely outcome in Europe - that's a huge problem.

Not least for the SJWs because Muslims are a lot less tolerant of their social agenda than I am. All those LGBT types are going to end up getting the ISIS Free Water slides For Homosexuals treatment (Water slide and pool under construction )

The US outcome is more benign - a world where Ben Shapiro types are the majority is not going to being throwing people off building for being gay.

I.e. just saying 'the birth rate is fine' is missing the point. If some groups are breeding above the replacement rate and others are breeding way below it, that will affect the makeup of the society in the long run.

Amusingly the only people who deny this are the secular liberal types. Who are not the ones breeding above replacement rate. Of course they're also keen on bringing in third worlders who tend to breed above the replacement rate.