
How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit - rwmj
https://medium.com/@DFRLab/spread-it-on-reddit-3170a463e787
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pjc50
It's good to see this analysed; conspiracy theory of this kind has long been a
plague on US politics and now it seems to be spreading to Europe. It takes a
remarkably small number of people to put it in front of the meme-susceptible,
who will then themselves spread it.

(What I don't really understand is why US conspiracyism limits itself only to
things that don't exist - you don't hear so much about Watergate, Iran-Contra,
COINTELPRO and so on.)

~~~
fnovd
>(What I don't really understand is why US conspiracyism limits itself only to
things that don't exist - you don't hear so much about Watergate, Iran-Contra,
COINTELPRO and so on.)

There's an easy answer: you can't wildly speculate when you have the facts.
This is why "PizzaGate" is still being talked about. There will _never_ be
proof, because it's a ridiculous conspiracy. That leaves the conspiracy
enthusiasts free to hunt for evidence and clues forever.

It's almost tautological: once we know something happened, it's no longer a
conspiracy. Therefore, conspiracy enthusiasts will no longer care about it.

~~~
dllthomas
> It's almost tautological: once we know something happened, it's no longer a
> conspiracy.

That's... not actually what "conspiracy" means.

~~~
fnovd
Typing "define:conspiracy" into Google, I get:

"conspiracy (noun): a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or
harmful"

~~~
dllthomas
Could you make your point more clearly? I agree that an exposed conspiracy is
no longer an _ongoing_ conspiracy, but I don't think that is necessary for a
conspiracy theory.

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TorKlingberg
I feel that internet discussions have turned for the worse over the last
decade or so. There has always been plenty of trolls and weird conspiracy
theories, but there used to be a sense that the truth wins out in the end. It
was difficult to keep defending an obvious falsehood when faced with rational
arguments. Some tried anyway, but they failed to convince others. Online
discussions were never perfect of course, even reasonable people will often
disagree about what is true.

Now, it seems like people do not care if what they write is true or not, as
long as it gets repeated and upvoted enough. There is no self-correction
either. When something like pizzagate turns out to be complete nonsense, they
people who spread it are not discouraged from doing the same thing again. In
their eyes it was a very successful social media campaign.

~~~
pjc50
> In their eyes it was a very successful social media campaign.

Unfortunately the internet is now a theatre for propaganda war, in addition to
regular electioneering and marketing.

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kr7
> ...so that she could unleash an “EU Army” against fellow EU member states.

The article puts “EU Army” in scare quotes, but that part is actually true;
Merkel does support the creation of an EU Army:

> "Mrs Merkel is backing a push by Mr Juncker to create an EU army." [1]

[1]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11861247...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11861247/Merkel-
expects-Cameron-to-back-EU-army-in-exchange-for-renegotiation.html)

~~~
_ph_
The most convincing lies are based on some truth, then interpreted in a
completely wrong fashion. Yes, Angela Merkel, and other European heads of
state are pushing for an European Army. That is, an army to defend Europe
against aggression from the outside, and have even less national armies who
could potentially fight against each other inside Europe. So the idea is to
have less dangers of "unleashing" any forces against fellow EU member states.

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mathgenius
I wonder if flooding the internet with obviously-fake news (eg. markov model
it) is one way to immunize people against the more slick kind of fake news.

~~~
jbmorgado
It's also a sure way to inoculate them against every news in general... which
wouldn't be a very positive outcome.

~~~
mathgenius
Yes you may be right. I guess a _positive_ outcome would involve people using
their brain more and checking their sources (of information) and just
generally being less credulous.

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mizzack
Ok, now take a look at the same overlap for reddit powermods.

/u/qgyh2 , for example, mods a ton of default subs in addition to the
following country subs: canada, australia, greece, israel, malaysia, pakistan,
england, srilanka.

How are we so sure that this is isolated to only shaping a far right
narrative?

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Do we know who qgyh2 is? Because unless they're a shared account or a bot, I
don't see how one person could possibly moderate so many highly active
subreddits, let alone do so in a way to promote whatever agenda you think is
being promoted.

~~~
geofft
qgyh2 was an early Reddit user and does not actively moderate those
subreddits. They've addressed this directly:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/4xhyyh/okay_adm...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/4xhyyh/okay_admins_enough_is_enough_can_you_do_something/d6vzaz1/?context=3&st=iz07raaw&sh=6a0e9e10)

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throwaway420
Is she deliberately trying to "Hitlerize Europe" or is she just somebody whose
heart is in the right place but repeatedly making poor policy choices?
Regardless, she's running Europe into the ground.

We can't know what Merkel's end goal is because we cannot read her mind, so
this theory is obviously just conjecture that fits some of the facts and
cannot be proven or disproven.

------
geofft
This is interesting as a work of network analysis, but I'm not sure how to
connect this back to politics. It seems pretty clear to me whenever I browse
/r/The_Donald that they're actively uninterested in fact-checking. There are
posts hating on the new Netflix TV series "Dear White People" where people ask
questions like "Do I even want to know what it's about?". There was a highly-
upvoted image about Pizzagate with a leaked Podesta email on the left and a
UrbanDictionary screenshot on the right defining some word as a lewd sex
act—from the fourth page of results. Anyone who's ever been to UrbanDictionary
knows that literally every word has a definition somewhere about it being a
lewd sex act.

Are the majority of Trump (and Farage, and Petry, and so forth) voters
similarly uninterested in actual facts? That seems unlikely to me, although
certainly possible. I worry that the fringe of loud people on the internet
isn't actually connected in a meaningful way to voters, and so analyzing the
fringe isn't a good way to learn anything about the world at large, just about
loud people on the internet.

~~~
rorykoehler
I'm curious about Pizzagate. Some of those emails are clearly trying to hide
something. The language in them is obviously "code" for something or other.
Has there been any other plausible/implausible theories apart from the
Pizzagate one?

Edit: Getting downvoted for asking a question. To be clear I have no idea what
the emails are about and zero agenda here. The emails came across as very
weird to me which is why I am asking.

~~~
throwaway420
We can't know for certain what's going on there, but you will notice that some
people are desperate to declare that this has been "debunked" without there
being any sort of investigation.

~~~
tmuir
We can't know for certain if there has been an investigation, but you will
notice that some people are desperate to declare that this has not been
investigated by the relevant authorities.

~~~
throwaway420
Supposedly, somebody filed a FOIA request to get info on the DC police's
investigation into these allegations and despite previously saying that their
investigation hasn't yielded any proof of a crime, it turns out that the
police never even investigated it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omlQHWrgmd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omlQHWrgmd4)

Nothing conclusive here, but again, there are so many voices here who are so
hysterically adamant about something that can't be proven either way that it
makes me think that there's more to this.

~~~
tmuir
Perhaps the DC police are part of the pedophile ring? I haven't heard anyone
disprove that yet, and it would make the conspiracy even more evil. I'm
stunned that you haven't made this obvious leap of logic.

The hysteria stems from the concept that your algorithm for detecting
conspiracy is to grant credence to theories in direct proportion to their
nefariousness. Your hypotheses are not falsifiable.

This guarantees that you will reject reasonable and logical explanations which
are discordant with the conspiracy.

Your last sentence is a perfect example of this. The most villainous
explanation for what you see as hysterical adamance is that every commenter
here is covering up a pedophile ring.

~~~
throwaway420
That last sentence wasn't too precisely worded so I can understand your
response...but when I said "so many voices here" I was more thinking about the
media entities who were so adamant that there's nothing to see here than the
genuine posters on this site. Many of the posters here are well-intentioned,
I'm sure, but misled by the media.

Pedophile rings have been uncovered in many walks of life: religion, sports,
hollywood and media, business, foreign governments, even Dennis Hastert and
many others. Yet somehow the current US political establishment is immune to
this?

Look, I'm not saying to lock up anybody without a trial or anything. We
admittedly don't know if there's even a crime here yet. I just think the pile
of circumstantial evidence is enough to at least warrant some kind of
investigation. The media declared this "fake news" and brushed much of the
weirdest facts under the rug.

~~~
tmuir
The fallacy you are touting is that it is established fact that the media is
misleading its viewers with respect to the pizzagate conspiracy. For this to
be the case, both you and the media would need to possess the truth. Since
that is clearly not the case, you are once again jumping to the conclusion
that the conspiracy must be true, and from there, working backwards to the
media misleading people. You are conflating possibility with actuality.

Yes the media has misled it's viewers in the past. The media will mislead it's
viewers in the future. But these facts are not sufficient to logically
conclude that the media is misleading it's viewers on the pizzagate
conspiracy. Journalism is not 100% misleading.

Yes pedophile rings have existed in the past, and will likely exist in the
future. However, starting from the position that all organizations are assumed
to be pedophile rings until proven otherwise is a complete inversion of our
entire judicial system. The existence of other pedophile rings within powerful
organizations does not infer that all powerful organizations contain pedophile
rings.

Bias in journalism is an unavoidable reality. Choosing which stories to report
upon is an example of bias. But the existence of bias does not infer an
agenda. It is possible that journalists have an agenda, but it is not a
requirement.

A simple analogy is that all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles
are squares. Many of your arguments are analogous to saying that since some
rectangles are squares, and we can't directly observe this particular
rectangle, we must conclude that this rectangle is a square.

~~~
throwaway420
Thanks for your thoughtful response and attempt to provide logic and reason. I
respect that. Just to quickly reply to some of this though.

> both you and the media would need to possess the truth. Since that is
> clearly not the case, you are once again jumping to the conclusion that the
> conspiracy must be true,

I am not rushing to jump to the conclusion that this conspiracy is true. I
said the allegations should have some type of investigation. It is actually
the media that has determined, with no conclusive proof one way or another,
that this story is absolutely false.

> However, starting from the position that all organizations are assumed to be
> pedophile rings until proven otherwise is a complete inversion of our entire
> judicial system.

I never stated this. When speaking about Pizzagate in the past, I've always
maintained that everybody is innocent until proven guilty. Given the types of
allegations being spread here however, I support some type of investigation.

> Many of your arguments are analogous to saying that since some rectangles
> are squares, and we can't directly observe this particular rectangle, we
> must conclude that this rectangle is a square.

No, I'm saying that since we can't directly observe this particular rectangle,
I think it's wise to investigate before making a determination about it's
shape. The media are the ones that have already decided what shape it is
before having proof.

