
Fake News on Facebook? In Foreign Elections, That’s Not New - dragonbonheur
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/technology/fake-news-on-facebook-in-foreign-elections-thats-not-new.html
======
rdtsc
I think "Fake News" is a boogey-man rationalization for what happened.

"Half of the country voted for someone else. Not someone I liked. I am
baffled. What happened? Because they read about lizard people or how Obama was
born in Africa" or, the officially sanctioned response: "Because of those
pesky KGB agents hiding in the bushes". That is the easiest rationalization
and one which leads to least cognitive dissonance and one in which the other
side is completely demonized or idioticized.

All those working men and women from PA and MI who before voted for the "right
party" almost religiously for years, all of the sudden have been brainwashed
by sneaky foreigners to believe in lizard people, they are all now white
supremacists and like Hitler (nevermind they voted for Obama just a few years
ago), and will also use gays for target practice.

~~~
dmode
Did you even read the article? It's about implication of Facebook in
international politics. I have relatives in India and I know exactly how this
plays out. They are constantly sharing fake news that confirms their bias. For
example one of the stories was how NASA has validated a religious book in
India which had calculated the distance between Earth and Sun

~~~
rdtsc
> Did you even read the article?

Yes I did. Did you read my comment? There is a reason we are all of the sudden
talking about Fake News and just a few days almost nobody thought about the
phrase. It has little to do with elections in India.

~~~
fweespeech
> Yes I did. Did you read my comment? There is a reason we are all of the
> sudden talking about Fake News and just a few days almost nobody thought
> about the phrase. It has little to do with elections in India.

[2014]

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/08/30/large-the-
intern...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/08/30/large-the-internet-
fake-news-problem/SABBRta88xgqwEPY86oP3M/story.html)

> The Internet’s fake news problem

> Some of it is satire (The Onion and, to a less proven extent, its
> clickbaiting sister site Clickhole continue to bear the standard of
> mastery), but the larger part of what’s out there is “satire” — from the
> chronically unfunny half-jokes of the Daily Currant to the shrug-inducing
> falsehoods of Empire News , the toothlessly goofy sendups of Free Wood Post
> , the over-the-top Christian-trolling of Christwire , and the more
> pernicious race-baiting of sites like CreamBPM and Newsbuzzdaily .

[https://newrepublic.com/article/118013/satire-news-
websites-...](https://newrepublic.com/article/118013/satire-news-websites-are-
cashing-gullible-outraged-readers)

> Upworthy and Viralnova, at least, are honest about what they're selling:
> gaudy, sentimental, life-affirming stories. But the Currant class promises
> humor and almost universally fails to deliver it—because the actual goal is
> SEO clickbait. Given that, you might wonder why they even bother identifying
> themselves, usually in disclaimers at the bottom of the page, as satirical
> news sites.The answer is simple: to avoid a lawsuit.

> But the biggest mystery isn’t the identity of the conmen—it’s how much
> they're hauling in. Barkeley told Slate that his humor provides him with a
> “tight but livable” income. A number of publically available valuation
> services, which are by no means precise, estimate that The Daily Currant
> brings in anywhere from mid-five figures to $130,000 dollars a year on ad
> revenue alone. Finkelstein, the SEO expert, says even those numbers may be
> low, as they doesn't include revenue derived from short-term revenue bumps
> when a story goes viral. “I would estimate their yearly revenue from display
> advertising at about $100,000–$150,000 a year,” he said, noting that even
> with his expertise and access to estimation tools, it's not an exact
> science. “It isn’t perfect, but it is close. But at most, over the few years
> they’ve existed, The Daily Currant may have made as much as $500,000 in
> revenue—split between two people who are hardly doing any work.”

> The Daily Currant is likely the king of this particular con. But others may
> be catching up. The same public revenue calculators place Mediamass’s annual
> ad revenue alone at just under $40,000; Huzzlers' is rapidly approaching
> $45,000. Not bad takes, especially when you consider that some of these
> sites don’t even bother to write their own unfunny canards: They just steal
> them from other sites.

[2016]

[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-human-news-
editors-2...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-human-news-
editors-2016-9)

> After a Gizmodo story claimed Facebook editors had suppressed conservative
> news from the Trending section, the social network fired those editors in
> favor of an algorithm. As part of the change, the Trending section no longer
> shows custom headlines and summaries of news topics.

> “We’re not in the business of deciding what issues people should read
> about," he said. "We don’t create content. We’re not in that business.”

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2016/10...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2016/10/12/facebook-has-repeatedly-trended-fake-news-since-
firing-its-human-editors/)

> Facebook has repeatedly trended fake news since firing its human editors

~~~
rdtsc
Ok? What was the point. You pasted a whole page full of links without a single
response... Are you saying that "Fake News" was always just as popular topic
and not just something that was picked up in the last 4-5 days?

Ok then, I'll just post one link:

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22Fake%20news%22](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22Fake%20news%22)

~~~
fweespeech
Simply because people start searching for it more doesn't mean it wasn't
always a topic being discussed.

Why is it people always try to argue ignorance is okay because it is popular?

~~~
rdtsc
What's a better way to quickly discover popularity?

You posted a wall of links talking about Fake News without explaining or
adding anything to it. I never said Fake News were unknown.

The point was that the sudden popularity (of the topic) has certain
implications, which I feel are not correct and too dismissive.

------
colllectorof
This article is fake "news" (or "coverage") in its own right. Its main purpose
is anchoring[1] the reader. It attempts to impress the notions that fake
information on Facebook is a significant factor in politics. Conveniently,
it's published right after an American election where mainstream media like
NYT took a serious blow to their credibility.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring)

Ask yourself the following questions. Is this article covering some specific
recent event? Is there any investigative journalism involved? No and no. So
what is it "informing" us about, exactly? All I see is a bunch of random stuff
pulled together to promote a pre-determined meta-narrative.

If you don't believe in meta-narratives, just look below the text to "Related
Coverage" box on the page:

    
    
        STATE OF THE ART
        Social Media’s Globe-Shaking Power NOV. 16, 2016
        Google and Facebook Take Aim at Fake News Sites NOV. 14, 2016
        Facebook, in Cross Hairs After Election, Is Said to Question Its Influence NOV. 12, 2016
        The Hoaxes, Fake News and Misinformation We Saw on Election Day NOV. 8, 2016
    

This is what high-grade propaganda looks like. It doesn't use outright lies,
but rather relies on reframing, anchoring, deliberate name-dropping and rote
repetition to establish certain associations and emotional responses. I find
it infinitely more sinister than some outrageous bullshit appearing on
Facebook.

And it's disconcerting to see just _how hard_ some outlets try to (morally if
not otherwise) discredit the outcome of the elections right now. NYT is
actually not the worst in this regard. Just open the home pages of Washington
Post or The Atlantic. Political FUD stacked on top of more political FUD.
Maybe I have a memory lapse, but I've never seen anything quite like it.

~~~
illumin8
The article contains several real examples of fake news influencing foreign
elections. When you live in a country where your the only data you can afford
to access is Facebook and partner's "free" version of the Internet on your
mobile device, the possibility of fake news influencing the election is
increased dramatically.

You conveniently fail to mention that every example in the article is real,
factual, and documented. Do you have any specific examples mentioned in the
article that are demonstrably false?

Without any specific falsehoods, you're simply indulging in an ad hominem
attack on the source as being biased in and of itself based on what you
perceive to be their motives.

~~~
colllectorof
_> The article contains several real examples of fake news influencing foreign
elections._

It has exactly _one_ example that supports its thesis. That example involved
several other factors and the end result of the election was not affected.
Here is some coverage from the time it was happening:

[http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-
Pacific/2014/0529/Indone...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-
Pacific/2014/0529/Indonesia-smear-campaign-nips-at-election-frontrunner-Joko-
Widodo-video)

The rest of the NYT article is a hodgepodge of unsubstantiated statements,
hand-picked opinions, pictures and social media quotes. Or do you seriously
consider a badly Photoshopped picture of someone's T-Shirt to be a "fact" that
illustrates the influence of Facebook on world elections?

 _> Without any specific falsehoods_

You seem to have missed the part where I specifically said that high-grade
propaganda does not rely on outright lies.

...

Meanwhile, the title of the article in question was changed from "Fake News on
Facebook? In Foreign Elections, That’s Not New" to "Fake News in U.S.
Election? Elsewhere, That’s Nothing New". This serves to further illustrate my
point about framing.

------
micaksica
The problem with journalism and media today is that the fierce streak of
journalistic independence is long, long gone; media outposts have become too
connected, too hungry at the teat of the powerful for any scoop at all now
that they do not have regional monopolies on information. Because of the
supply of content outlets - blogs, newspapers, magazines, what have you - the
power has shifted back to those that have the information in the first place.
It does not matter the industry. If you are a unicorn tech startup, you build
_relationships_ with journalists that give you positive reviews, and shun
those that do not -- because there are enough to go around and still get your
message out, and the journos are hungry for pageviews. The same goes for CEOs
and "confidential sources" on Wall Street or Main Street, or politicians
gravitating toward CNN or Fox News, or respective anchors that paint them
positively that ensnare the audiences they are targeting. It is the way modern
PR works.

The quantity of journalists are now the surplus, and the real scoops that
generate traffic (and revenue) are scarce. Because of this economic inversion,
we now have the companies running the media institutions. In a mainstream
economic environment, you then have two choices: media that plays into the
confirmation biases of its readership (customers) - just as NYT is doing here
- or investigative journalism that is digging up heretofore unknown stories
people are trying to conceal (eg The Intercept, Muckrock) to get the pageviews
and therefore the ad revenue.

~~~
karmelapple
Also, what is the incentive to scoop in today's media climate?

If one news outlet breaks a story - even if it's a multi-month, highly-
researched think piece - every other website will quickly summarize it and
provide one link back to it. The link back is at least citing the source, but
the summary is likely good enough for most users, and the originating news
outlet gets no ad revenue if the reader only reads the summary.

How can we shift that incentive?

~~~
lambertsimnel
Be careful about shifting the incentive. One way to get scoops is to cozy up
to news makers, who are typically powerful people and often politicians in
government.

------
adnzzzzZ
Maybe people wouldn't believe fake news if there were any respectable legacy
media outlets left. When the media does everything it can to slowly erode
trust ([http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-
media...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-
new-low.aspx)), it's no surprise that things like this will happen.

And I find it funny how legacy media now turns the blame on Facebook instead
of looking at itself and changing its behavior. This is such a bad move (as
expected by people who don't know what they're doing) that will only empower
alternative media even more and further diminish the legacy media's influence
over people.

~~~
karmelapple
> When the media does everything it can to slowly erode trust

Your link provides nothing to support that comment.

Your link does clearly show people's trust in the media is extremely low, but
it makes no claims as to why the trust has eroded.

There have certainly been times when various media parties have not lived up
to their ethical duties, but to say blanket that the media has "done
everything it can to slowly erode trust" seems exaggerated.

Do you think political party rhetoric can erode trust in the media?

One presidential candidate regularly claimed reports about him from one
specific media outlet were lies, although they have turned out to be usually
true [1].

One presidential candidate made claims during the debates that he did not say
things which, simply, he did. The claims he denied making were well-documented
on the internet, frequently from his own social media account.

Is it unreasonable to think this rhetoric had some effect on the big drop in
mass media trust from supporters of that political party, documented in the
gallup.com link you posted?

And would you have recommendations for ways "the media" to gain back that
trust? Note that I take issue with the phrase "the media", since it's another
unhelpful blanket statement.

1\. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/11/16/do...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/11/16/donald-trumps-gripes-about-the-new-york-times-are-usually-
about-stories-that-are-shown-to-be-accurate/)

~~~
sergiotapia
Here you go, here's one reason why nobody trusts the mainstream media anymore,
-especially- CNN:
[http://i.imgur.com/1Y0sN6b.png](http://i.imgur.com/1Y0sN6b.png)

And it's real.

[https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/785299709342654465](https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/785299709342654465)

Mirror: [http://archive.is/JBUzM](http://archive.is/JBUzM)

~~~
slowmotiony
It's really bizarre that they would post this...

~~~
karmelapple
Precisely why is it bizarre?

The word "acid" has a clear physical connotation, and the post pointed out
that there was software that deleted emails, not some physical process. I
don't think it was helpful to be in a fact-check, "this is false" style, but
clarifying precisely what happened... that's what news is all about.

Please clarify why you think it's bizarre, so I can have a better
understanding.

------
Al-Khwarizmi
"Even in long-established democracies like Germany, Spain and Italy, false
news reports and hate speech on social media have whipped up grass-roots
populist movements, which have often targeted the recent influx of Middle
Eastern refugees, to garner wider electoral support."

I'm from Spain and I haven't seen such a thing.

To be precise: in Spain the movement that is typically called "populist" by
the establishment is Podemos, which by the way is pro-refugees, and fake news
have been widely disseminated (originating in _conventional_ media, although
being distributed in social media too) to discredit them. In fact they have
won several lawsuits in the courts against newspapers that published
absolutely made up news about supposed illegal funding, etc. (but who cares
about the lawsuits and meager compensations they get, once the information has
been publicized, the damage is done). I haven't seen any "pro-populist" fake
news circulating around, though. The establishment parties have so many open
corruption scandals that there is no need of any fake to discredit them.

As always, journalists make up whatever they need to go on with their "good
vs. evil" narrative where everything the establishment doesn't like is
"populist". And then the blame is on social networks...

~~~
mxfh
At least in Germany the whole AfD-Pegida-komplex had significant backing and
media support from foreign sources, namely Russia and Switzerland.

It's the "when they go low, we go high" fallacy that will cost more elections
to moderates. If it's free for all psyops out there, the non-authoritarians
need a emotional-demagogue front-outlet too.

If bot's and brigades are one-sidedly spamming controversial twitter hashtag
or or comment sections it's an inflation of their presence. Hashtags are
useless for anybody who wants to hear a plurality of opinions these days. As
long as social media is so easy to exploit by organized actors at marginal
costs, it's worse than no social media at all.

If a channel is brigaded and spammed by one party it should be spammed by all,
some sort of MAD-strategy might be needed, to get past the current status.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction)

------
gragas
Will the Times ever produce objective political journalism again? Or has it
just forever devolved into _how can we pin this on the other side_?

~~~
dfabulich
How would you know if it turned out that they were already objective?

~~~
LordHumungous
The term "biased" should be discarded, people just use it to mean "publishes
things I don't agree with".

~~~
rdtsc
Good point.

I think there are some sources where it is defined in a more rigorous manner,
Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent book is one example I like. They
tried as much as possible to document bias in reporting for similar instances
in corporate controlled media in US. There are a series of well documented
cases.

In conversation, I agree, the term "bias" when it comes to news means "doesn't
say things I like"

------
mr_bluesky
Fake news - not just on Facebook.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-
wo...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/)

------
lifeisstillgood
I think we need at least two guiding principles - transparency and equality
for the new politics thrust upon us by the web

Absolutely should facebook and google be forced to reveal their (ever
changing) algorithms. In fact (cf Kathy ONeills book weapons of math
destruction) inwould prefer a legal framework forcing this.

But as for fake news being pushed into people's feeds, well this is a direct
result of facebooks commercial desire to open up my feed to as many "friends
and friends of friends" as they can.

My friends don't share adverts about the Rock that lead to body building
supplements - no one shares that with their friends ! That's out there as a
"you might also like"

Restrict Facebook to only showing what my friends actively share and guess
what - no more fake news.

No more Facebook billions maybe but then who cares. It's a peer to peer
messaging site - it's not important really

Edit: I would suggest that facebooks content would stall at the level twitters
did if ones feed was driven by active sharing by ones actual nearest circle of
friends.

I think I would like to know more about the extent of content that appears in
a feed that is not active sharing vs active - it should resemble retweets.

------
coldcode
As Joseph Goebbels wrote in his book "The Big Lie" people will believe
anything if you post it in enough places including the fact that he never
wrote a book called "The Big Lie".

------
jister
Duterte and Philippines were mentioned in the article. Yes that is true that
there were many fake news in facebook during election and until now. In fact,
there are sponsored FB pages posting fake and exagerated news about Duterte
now. Aside from facebook we also have mainstream media that are publishing
unverified or poorly written news all the time namely ABS-CBN, Inquirer and
Rappler. These medias are owned by Liberal Party supporters. New York Times
gets their news from these presstitutes all the time. I know because I've read
several news/articles from NYT that were just pure BS.

Up to this day our news here are manipulated by Liberal Party -- they are the
people that runs and plundered the Philippines after the martial law in 1986.
Yes they are the same people that lost all the perks of corruption and drugs
when Duterte was elected and would want to do anything to impeach him.

So what's your country's excuse of having fake news?

------
puranjay
If something doesn't exist and the NYT tells you it does, doesn't that make
NYT a fake news outlet as well?

I'm talking about the WMDs in Iraq

~~~
udkl
Off-topic : Are you the puranjay from growthpub ?

~~~
puranjay
Yup!

~~~
udkl
Hey, can we connect ? I would like to understand what you do there. You can
send me an email :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=udkl](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=udkl)

------
tomohawk
A lot of the news this election was fake.

[https://sharylattkisson.com/newsgate-2016/](https://sharylattkisson.com/newsgate-2016/)

~~~
cpr
Why is this getting downvoted? Can you provide counter-arguments to her very
strong case?

~~~
rdtsc
The "downvote and run" actually exemplifies some of the points expressed.
Quickly dismissing opposite opinions, paint it all as influenced by "Fake
News", throwing labels like "racists", "sexists" around is part of the issue
at hand I think.

Interestingly, one would expect people here (or I would dare say liberal in
general) to be the more educated ones, with better self control, more rational
and local approaches to issues and so on. One thing this election has shown is
that it is not necessarily the case.

~~~
grzm
It'd be great to see better self control across the board, though HN does seem
better in that regard than some communities. When emotions get high and people
sometimes hit submit before they've really thought through the content,
phrasing, or tone of what they're posting, or down voting, or flagging. We're
all human.

I've seen "down vote and run" on all kinds of comments, and I suspect for all
kinds of reasons. throwaway accounts used for drive-by attacks look like
they're allied with no one party as well.

~~~
rdtsc
> though HN does seem better in that regard than some communities.

Agreed. That's why I like to comment here even though the topic at hand is not
necessarily technical. In other places it just turns into an mess much
quicker.

------
tmaly
Categorizing what is truth with an algorithm has the potential to create a
digital Fahrenheit 454

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify)

------
bigyaz
You assholes spent 8+ years promoting the racist lie that our duly elected
first black president was born in Africa. You tried to delegitimize him based
on nothing but his skin color. And you used fake news and dishonest, bigoted,
white-supremacist web sites to do it.

To pretend this is just harmless, standard politics is bullshit. Cowards are
behind this crap, and you sheep eat it up.

------
kneel
I'm really curious how long NYTimes will keep their paywall down. They
announced that they would take down the paywall for 72 hours leading up to the
election, they haven't put it back up since.

I would guess their eroding relationship with anything Whitehouse and the
potential rise of Breitbart is causing panic.

~~~
grzm
Has it not been up or perhaps you just haven't hit the limit since it's been
put back in place? Isn't it 10 articles or so a month?

~~~
kneel
I've been reading it everyday for hours (its free!) for the last week. No
paywall.

~~~
grzm
Enjoy it while it lasts! (Or am I supposed to say "Why are you reading the NYT
anyway?" ;) )

------
alarik33
I personally blame the New York Times as much as anyone for the results of the
election.

For the last 15 years, they've participated in the fear mongering over-
reporting on extremely rare Islamic terrorism to get readers and appeal to
fearful Americans who don't understand statistics and don't get told by the
media just how small a threat it's always really been.

The culture of irrational overblown fear of terrorism they've helped create is
what created Trump, more than emails, more than fake news.

Big media players like the NYT play up threats for views and wonder why people
vote for strongmen fascists to protect them from the big bad Muslims.

------
ceejay
I have done zero research in depth on this, but one of the first (easy) things
I would look at is the whois on the domains that are producing news. If
they're hidden behind a proxy identity, probably unreliable. Also what about
providing an inexpensive way to "verify" those whois credentials? Pay $5 and
we'll send you a letter in the mail and you confirm you're the owner of the
domain in question.

------
Chinjut
All the handwringing over fake news on the Internet prompts within me two
negative, dismissive reactions:

The first is that this is just a convenient scapegoat to avoid examining the
failures of the Democratic Party in this election cycle. They can't have
screwed up. Must have been FAKE NEWS which misled voters into erroneously not
voting for them. Fix that and fix the problem.

Fine, whatever. Pin the blame there if you like. But…

My second reaction is that I think among what we are inclined to think of as
"fake news", very little is actually outright brute falsehoods.

Such things as are actually libelous or fraudulent, perhaps they should be
blocked, or dealt with in some manner. But most of what is shared is, I
imagine, rather "fake news" in the sense of being ideologically shaded in a
manner we find ridiculous. "Immigrants are going to murder your children",
that sort of thing. And this stuff IS ridiculous, and false, and terrible… But
not in a clear, mechanical, bright-line distinguishable way.

It's wrong because it's wrong, not because there's something for a fact-
checker to point at.

And if we do put moderators in charge of deciding that such news is still
clearly false and therefore not shareable, I get uncomfortable. Because the
merit determination will just become "Whatever matches status quo consensus",
which is just "Whatever pleases the status quo powers".

It was fake news when the New York Times beat the drums for war, Judith Miller
speaking of WMDs in Iraq. But that would never be classified as such. The
source was prestigious, and the claims buttressed the politics of the right
people.

"fake" determination at any level where there is controversy would amount to
simply enshrining consensus of that class of often wrong people. Indeed, I say
to those liberals itching for something to be done, the same board that today
puts the kibosh on articles full of conservative idiocy about global warming
evidence being overblown could just as well tomorrow decide "Econ professor
consensus says minimum wage hikes destroy jobs; articles arguing otherwise
oughtn't be shared", or some such thing.

On the other hand, if "fake news" suppression only targets articles where
there is no controversy as to their falsehood, then it is a solution in search
of a significant problem. Such things exist, but did not (as far as I've yet
seen any evidence to prove) play that major a role in the election. The story
that fake news swung the election could itself be fake news.

Anyway, that's my skittishness over cries that communication networks don't do
enough to crack down on voluntary sharing of "fake news".

------
JanneVee
Who would have thunk? By feeding into biases and helping them resolving their
cognitive dissonance for ad dollars is unhealthy for politics.

------
alexmorenodev
Funny thing is that here in Brazil this is EXTREMELY common, and people
doesn't seem to care. Actually, people treat fake news as real here.

------
jopython
Most of the fake news sites listed are conservative. Don't believe the leftist
propaganda.

------
erikb
What means "foreign" in this context? I mean US elections shouldn't be
considered foreign by a US newspaper like the New York Times.

------
mikebay
Twitter, Facebook and Google. All push this same agenda. They are the most
corrupted organizations. They feel they can suppress, hide and delete your
online profiles when they feel that you or your organization is not following
they nwo agenda. Latest twitter censorship quiter is James Woods.

