Pages with tag Fake News

Clinton Watts' in-depth explanation of Russia's social media warfare strategy Last week Security Analyst Clint Watts' explosive testimony in the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed an information warfare system created by the Russian Intelligence services. The strategy includes fake news websites, and fake social media accounts, that worked synergistically together to sow doubt and confusion. They are targeting both individuals and the population at large. A key thing is prior to the Internet, for a country to conduct direct actions in another country required that country to station staff in the target country, and set up organizations like newspapers. With the Internet, they (e.g. the Russians) can stay in their own country, their staff doesn't have to risk traveling to the target country, because it can all be done remotely. In other words, while social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) have arguably enriched our lives, it's possible to build amazing propaganda systems on those networks.
Facebook defends open advertising publishing platform that helps fake news propagandists

Two things are colliding on the Internet: Propagandists desire to spread fake news to influence society-wide-beliefs -- this is a huge portion of Russia's meddling in elections in the USA and other countries; and freedom of speech, freedom to build/publish websites, freedom to use social media networks, etc. Facebook and other Tech Giants are increasingly under fire for having allowed Russia to misuse their platforms, both advertising and social media, to spew out tons of fake news and society manipulation. Facebook's answer is that “The thing about free expression is when you allow free expression you allow free expression”, according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Okay, yes, we understand that any squashing of speach is problematic. But, it's false that Facebook doesn't check advertising before it is posted, and it is problematic when stuff that's portrayed as news is completely false and bogus. Facebook already hires a team of people, moderators, to monitor what folks post on Facebook, and delete material or accounts that prove to be problematic. Why doesn't Facebook do the same for fake news?
Facebook et al admits to large-scale Russian advertising campaigns, illegal political advertising by foreigners

In US law it is illegal for foreign nationals to purchase political advertising. It is easy for anyone to use the advertising platforms run by Facebook, Google, Twitter, and so forth. Anyone can sign up to run advertising, and Facebook/Google/Twitter et al are raking in tons of cash by showing advertising to their large audiences. The problem comes when someone places illegal advertising -- do these companies have adequate screening to avoid aiding and assisting folks committing fraudulent or illegal advertising?

In this case the concern is foreign governments (such as Russia) placing politically manipulative advertising. It's feared that Russia has launched a "cyber war" spreading propaganda through social media websites, and through blogs, with the goal of manipulating the politics of countries around the world. The war is also a War on Truth, meaning that Russia's goals involve destruction of our sense of truthful facts so that political manipulators can spread any kind of idea as if it's factual.

It's not like Russia is the only organization/country doing this kind of thing. The methods ascribed to Russia are commonplace among online marketers -- using roboticized accounts to pump twitter hashtags -- article spinning techniques to publish variants of the same article to multiple blogs -- etc -- are well known spammy low-integrity methods of gaming the search engines. For what it's worth, Russia does present a greater risk to society-as-a-whole than does a company pushing a new-and-improved soap. That's why Russia is in the crosshairs right now.
Facebook ignoring reported advertisement containing outright lies Fake news, and fake advertising, is plaguing us. How can we know the truth when we're surrounded by so many fake claims. The President of the USA is making decisions about the USA based on false news, his "gut hunches" that are plainly wrong. Facebook has been under fire for being a big avenue for being a major conduit for distributing fake news. Russia, and others, have set up an infrastructure to create and distribute fake news items, sometimes paying for advertising to help goose their distribution. Facebook claims to be addressing the problem, and has created a way to report postings containing fake information. In this case today Facebook refused to take action on an advertisement that is outright false, posted by a Facebook Page that is likely a Russian Fake News outlet.
Facebook was used by 'governments' to spread propaganda, says Facebook report A new report issued by Facebook outlines what they know about propaganda spread by 'Governments' through its website. As Facebook notes, the Internet and sites like Facebook give a whole new realm of possibilities for 'information operations'. Information operations are the are spread by 'organized actors' (governments) to distort political sentiment by distorting the truth. Governments have used such strategies for millennia, but of course the global reach of the Internet changes the game. It's clear now that the 2016 US elections were heavily influenced by a stream of fake news, a large part of which was directed by Russia's intelligence services. Indications are that Russia is now focusing on other elections, including in France where an extreme hard-liner who wants to remove France from the EU and NATO could well be elected. Russia's geopolitical needs would be well served if the EU and NATO were weakened. If government-led information operations really are being conducted over social media networks, shouldn't we call it 'Social Media Warfare'?
Google search ranking and YouTube monetization changes - demoting fake news while harming legitimate sources

Fake News constitutes a war on Truth, in that the more fake news is bandied about, the more confused we all are, making our collective decisions worse than they should be. The election of our dear President Donald Trump is an example of a horrible collective decision based on fake news. Other examples include the continued dependence on harmful fossil fuel consumption, and the fake news campaigns combatting the truth that fossil fuels poison everything around us, causes climate change, etc. To combat Fake News, Google, Facebook, and other search engines or social media websites, are working on their ranking algorithms to detect and supress fake news. Unfortunately many legitimate news sources are being harmed in the process.

Google is the 8-million-pound-gorilla in both search engines and online video. As cool as DuckDuckGo is, it doesn't bring as many organic search visitors as does Google's search engine. Website publishers, online authors, and video content creators alike are all dependent on Google's search ranking algorithms to bring visitors. For years Google has been fighting against spammers (a form of fake news) by tweaking its search results algorithms. Those tweaks have dramatic results on search traffic going to a given website, or viewing a given video, or the advertising revenue from a video. Hopefully it's having the desired effect, in that fake news sites are losing prominence. Indications are that several prominent legitimate news sources are being harmed either from lost traffic or lost ad revenue.

Google's search algorithm enables fake news from Russia or elsewhere to manipulate reality

If you control what the population believes is true, you can control what that population does. Propagandists have known this for generations. The rise of Nazi Germany was due to "weaponized" misinformation. The Nazi Party owned newspapers that churned out fake news, the Party pushed all kinds of lies including Racial Lies, and ruthlessly squashed any dissenters. In the current time period we're being told that Russia has weaponized a system of social media accounts, websites pushing fake news, and on and on, for the purpose of manipulating elections around the world, and weakening international organizations like the EU and NATO.

I believe that Russia is doing that kind of thing, because Russia has for ages pushed Propaganda. The Russian newspaper "Pravda" (the word Pravda means Truth) famously was full of lies every day. Pravda is still in exactly that business, and other news outlets owned by the Russian Government, like Sputnik News and RT News, also push a highly slanted view of the world (everything Russia does is enlightened, everything the West does is clueless and harmful). Russia's motive? To get NATO off its back without fighting an open war. An information war is the ticket, but the casualty is the sense of Truth we all need.

By determining the scope of information we get as answers to questions, search engines have a lot of power to shape what the population believes.

The game that's on is about controlling what the population believes is the Truth. Governments do it to push policy goals, businesses do it to earn more money, activists might do it to push their cause, and so on.

Russia isn't the only participant in spewing fake news into the world. We're being told The Russians are doing it, and they almost certainly are. But that idea is being pushed to the exclusion of others who are using similar mechanisms. What's the goal being served by pushing "The Russians are doing it" while failing to recognize the techniques are used across governments and industries?
How to report problems to Facebook, such as Facebook refusing to take action on fake advertising In my previous posting I documented an outright fake advertisement found on Facebook, my attempt to report this as a fake advertisement, and Facebook's refusal to take action. The same advertisement was posted by two separate Facebook pages, each containing postings with Cyrillic text, fitting the pattern of Russian interference. Therefore it's necessary to get some attention at Facebook, not just an automated review system. The problem is that Facebook doesn't have a public email address to use.
Russia has released The Kraken on the Internet - The Young Turks A 'troll farm' or 'troll factory' was disclosed by BuzzFeed journalists, documenting a fake news trolling operation run by the Russian Government in St. Petersburg. Plans for the facility were leaked to Western press by a secretive Russian hacker collective, but are understandably difficult to verify. It is easy to find comments on blogs, tweets, facebook postings, etc that are curiously pro-Russia. Often the languaging is strange as if the writer understands very little English.
Russia's Online Troll Army -- WGBH The Internet can be described as a gushing sewer of questionable information. It's bad enough that people honestly think up crazy things to say. In some cases governments hire people to purposely skew the conversation by putting in fake information, especially in comments. Maybe 'nobody' reads the comments section any more, but sometimes the comment section of a news website can host heated debates, and be a prime zone for spreading disinformation.
Russia's Propaganda Machine -- Vice News The Kremlin needs to rationalize the efforts to topple Ukraine's government. To do so, it's creating the impression Russians inside Ukraine are being slaughtered by the Ukraine government, and that the slaughter could move to Russia. In other words, fake news. In part it's a 'Cult of Personality' aiming to build up Vladimir Putin as a model for Russia. In part it's defaming the West as clueless and incompetent.
Russian think tank planned to influence the U.S. election, new documents reveal A Russian government-controlled think tank had outlined plans on how to swing the 2016 U.S. election toward Donald Trump, according to a Reuters report Thursday. New documents reveal a strategy of using social media to bolster Mr. Trump and undermine faith in America’s electoral system. William Brangham learns more from former CIA officer John Sipher and Ned Parker of Reuters. The Reuters report concerns two 'confidential' documents from the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, which was part of the successor to the KGB. These documents provide the framework and rationale for Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 US elections.
Russia’s disinformation campaign in Europe The Russian government has invested immense resources into media networks in Europe. The Russian state-media complex has established news and media outlets in the local languages of many European countries through which the Kremlin attempts to influence European discourse and public opinion on the Ukraine crisis. How does the Russian state-media complex use social media, political partnerships, and financial incentives to influence European media outlets? How successful is the media campaign launched by the Russian government? Where are the next targets of the Russian disinformation campaign? How could and should the EU respond?
Security Analyst Clinton Watts study of Russian social media fake news streams In July 2016, immediately following the Attempted Coup in Turkey, fake news appeared on RT News and Sputnik News, both known as Russian Propaganda outlets, claiming that a US Military Base in Turkey had been overrun threatening the security of the large nuclear weapons cache stored at that base. Within a few minutes a whole flotilla of bot accounts on social media systems (Twitter, et al) were echoing the news release. This and other details were the subject of testimony in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing of March 30, 2017. Clinton Watts was one of those giving testimony, giving us a clue to how social media technology is being currently utilized. The big question is whether Russia's goal ended with Trumps becoming President, or whether they're continuing to meddle in US and European politics. This is a technology story because of the means, that Russia is using channels on the Internet to conduct this warfare.
Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia's hacking of 2016 elections In the 2016 elections, it's now clear that Russia's President Vladimir Putin ordered a disinformation campaign aimed to subvert American Democracy and the campaign. They had a clearly preferred winner, Donald Trump, and utilized fake news and networks of social media bots to spread propaganda. The goal appears to be weakening Russia's major adversaries, especially the USA and NATO, so that Russia can act more freely in the world. The method, covert propaganda issued through social media, is a lot less expensive than a fighting war, and less risky since a direct battle between USA and Russia might bring in nuclear weapons. These hearings, conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee, are very different from the outright circus occurring in the House Intelligence Committee. The discussion focuses on the threat posed by Russia's use of 'active measures', active propaganda usage, and has experts describing the tools and strategies employed by the Russians. Further, the experts describe how the Trump Administration is complicit with Russia, speaking Russia-sourced talking points, and apparently collaborating with Russia.
The Russian Troll Factory in St. Petersburg The 'Internet Research Agency' is a Russian-intelligence-connected operation for constructing fake news. It is said the purpose is to affect internal dissent inside Russia. The facility is located in St. Petersburg, in a four-story building where hundreds of people work. An 'activist' managed to be hired to work in the Troll Factory, and talks about its operation. Every operative receives instructions via their computer as to the message to push, and they're to go about posting information on social media networks related to those instructions.
Trolling for Putin: Russia's information war explained - Agence France Presse Lyudmila Savchuk says it was money that wooed her into the ranks of the Kremlin's online army, where she bombarded website comment pages with eulogies of President Vladimir Putin, while mocking his adversaries. After two months she quit the so-called 'troll factory' outside St. Petersburg, after having documented its operation. Now she is showing journalists how the troll factory works.
Trump supporters claim rally for killed Police Officers was in support of Trump

It's close to the 2020 election, and among the craziness is this claim that motorcyclists are supporting Pres. Trump in a huge way. It's likely that more than a few motorcyclists do support Pres. Trump, but the picture here is not about Trump. Motorcyclists often form convoys like this to honor someone, but this particular honor ride was not for Pres. Trump. It was to honor Dallas police officers who'd died in the line of duty in 2016, many months before Pres. Trump's election.

Why are Russian trolls spreading online hoaxes in the U.S.? Russia's Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg Russia hires hundreds of people to post fake-news comments on websites, and to post fake news websites. The result is to amplify fake news and subvert the truth. The purpose in this report is to 'pollute' the Internet so that Russians cannot trust what they read on the Internet, and thereby stifle home-grown Russian activism.