
Disinformation for hire: how a new breed of PR firms is selling lies online - edward
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/disinformation-for-hire-black-pr-firms
======
nocturnial
A bunch of companies took hold of a distributed system of information and
centralized it under their control.

Now those companies are claiming they cannot control disinformation, adversial
content and whatnot because they have too much content. At the same time they
are saying they would be the best in place to currate and control it because
of market dynamics.

I'm not advocating for a total ban of content unless it's "government"
approved.

But what's the difference between a government setting the rules and a
corporation deciding the rules? We can vote out a government, but we can't
vote out a corporation.

This isn't new and we've dealt with this in the past. The technology is
different but the tactics are the same.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
You as an individual can stop using a corporation's products way more easily
than you as an individual can vote out a government. My personal success with
voting out governments is zero, but my success in boycotting corporations is
pretty high. Occasionally others have stopped using them as well and they've
stopped having a large effect on my life.

~~~
Seenso
>> But what's the difference between a government setting the rules and a
corporation deciding the rules? We can vote out a government, but we can't
vote out a corporation.

> You as an individual can stop using a corporation's products way more easily
> than you as an individual can vote out a government. My personal success
> with voting out governments is zero, but my success in boycotting
> corporations is pretty high.

That presumes your main interaction with a corporation is by the consumption
of its products as a customer. However, that's so often not the case that it
might as well be assumed to be false. For instance, you can't boycott Equifax
or an industrial chemicals factory that's polluting the air in your city
because you're not their customer, but you're still affected by their
decisions and rules.

The main difference between a government and a corporation setting the rules
is that, in democracies, the government is theoretically accountable to the
interests of all citizens while the corporation is only accountable to the
interests of its shareholders and (depending on market conditions) its
customers.

~~~
blaser-waffle
For example, Facebook creates accounts for people who don't even use the site.

------
calibas
Here's some good reading in case anybody believes this kind of stuff is new.
They had it down to a science nearly 100 years ago.

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

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
a very good bbc documentary based on Bernays work is "The Century of the
Self":

The Century of the Self - Part 1: "Happiness Machines"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04)

TL;DR: The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American
nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in
the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the
masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things
they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their
unconscious desires. Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern
techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from
celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.
His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading
them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays
was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It
was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner
irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy
and thus docile. It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to
dominate today's world.

\---

The Century of the Self - Part 2: "The Engineering of Consent"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEsPOt8MG7E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEsPOt8MG7E)

TL;DR: This episode explores how those in power in post-war America used
Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses.
Politicians and planners came to believe Freud's underlying premise - that
deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears.
They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led
to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again they set out
to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind. Sigmund
Freud's daughter, Anna, and his nephew, Edward Bernays, provided the
centrepiece philosophy. The US government, big business, and the CIA used
their ideas to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the
American people. But this was not a cynical exercise in manipulation. Those in
power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable
society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface
of normal American life.

\---

The Century of the Self - Part 3: "There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads;
He Must Be Destroyed."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2LB2MaGoM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2LB2MaGoM)

TL;DR: In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the
influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of
Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of, who had turned against him and was hated by the
Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and
controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself. Out of this came a
political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological
conformity that had been implanted in people's minds by business and politics.
This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help
movements like Werber Erhard's Erhard Seminar Training - into the irresistible
rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation. But the American corporations
soon realised that this new self was not a threat but their greatest
opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were
unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To
do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts to read
the inner desires of the new self.

\---

The Century of the Self - Part 4: "Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VouaAz5mQAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VouaAz5mQAs)

TL;DR: This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and
America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the
inner desires of the self. Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the
Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented
by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their
policies to people's inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt
to do with products. Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and
marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain
was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward
Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s. The politicians
believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly
responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn't realise
was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not
been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them.

\---

edit: copy/pasta from youtube description

~~~
lonelappde
> The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of
> democracy

That's extraordinary nonsense.

> and the CIA used their ideas to develop techniques to manage and control the
> minds of the American people. But this was not a cynical exercise in
> manipulation

The CIA intentionally tortured Ted Kaczynski (inspiring him to become the
Unabomber) when he was 17 years old, as an experiment in mind control. They
were not trying to help anyone.

~~~
StuffedParrot
> That's extraordinary nonsense.

What are you basing this on?

~~~
exolymph
Common sense? Does it seem likely that politicians concluded being able to
manipulate people better = improvement to democracy?

Hmm, actually, you may have a point.

~~~
jariel
Wearing seatbelts?

Drinking less alcohol?

Eating well?

Not beating your wife?

Voting?

Finishing school?

Recycling?

Most of the ways our government wanted us to change in the last century were
fairly positive and actually barely controversial.

It's the controversial one's we talk about.

------
SamuelAdams
If you're interested in learning more about media manipulation, I highly
recommend reading the book Trust Me, I'm Lying [1]. It's shocking how easy it
is to sway public opinion or plant fake stories that could have a national
impact.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Me,_I%27m_Lying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Me,_I%27m_Lying)

~~~
malvosenior
Also see Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky:

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

------
malvosenior
> _" I developed this for manipulating public opinion,” Peng told the
> Reporter, an investigative news site in Taipei, which partnered with
> BuzzFeed News for this article. He added that automation and artificial
> intelligence “can quickly generate traffic and publicity much faster than
> people.”_

It's funny that Buzzfeed is reporting this because this is exactly the model
that they created and helped disseminate all over the internet. It's a semi-
automated system for creating clickbait to manipulate public opinion. I would
_love_ to see outlets like Buzzfeed, Huffpo... examine their own role in
creating the world of clickbait, ragebait and misinformation that they so
often complain about. That will never happen though.

~~~
duxup
> to manipulate public opinion

Was Buzzfeed trying to manipulate people or just get clicks?

~~~
ergothus
> just get clicks

Just because you have one goal (in this case traffic) doesn't mean your
actions dont have other effects.

Generate clickbait that, for example, leverages the distrust the public has in
a group, or is based on the desire to see someone/some group get their
comeuppance, or the desire to hear tales about how your group is being
exploited, etc, and you start manipulating public opinion about those things.

Fox News, for example, started conservative but far less radical...I dont know
if they were radicalized by the success of their own success by this sort of
manipulation, but it is certainly an option.

Once you have success at manipulation, even if that wasn't actually your
intent, a financial incentive appears to MAKE it your intention.

~~~
SiempreViernes
I think _intent_ is pretty important to the concept of "manipulation": you
don't often hear the sun being accused of manipulating the weather, despite
the overwhelming influence it has over it.

~~~
ameister14
That's because manipulate implies active control, which the sun doesn't have.
As a different example, you can manipulate the levers of a machine and, if you
are not skilled or paying attention, get a result you did not plan for.

~~~
SiempreViernes
That is simply _poor_ manipulation: intent was there but understanding was
lacking, and so the outcome was not as desired.

~~~
ameister14
_an_ intent was there, but not the intent to create what became the eventual
outcome. Buzzfeed has an intent - to create clicks. What GP was saying was
that this creates an unintended effect, that of political and social
manipulation, which unfortunately ends up as an incentivized loop for
Buzzfeed.

------
ceejayoz
Vernor Vinge's
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End)
was quite prescient on this point, describing a world where the Internet
largely becomes useless due to infinite disinformation crowding out the real.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I think eventually (hopefully?) most folks realize that the only solution is
smaller, highly-moderated communities (like this one), and even then it's
important to be aware of the implicit underlying biases of those communities.
Some really great smaller subreddits also come to mind.

~~~
ceejayoz
Yes, the book had people form "belief circles" of that nature.

~~~
bilbo0s
I'm not sure, but that doesn't sound all that great. It's kind of the problem
now, people in belief circles with little basis in reality.

------
bantunes
I guess Cambridge Analytica's collapse with no real consequence for people
working there showed both that there's a huge market for this, and high reward
with low risk.

~~~
SeanAppleby
The consequences are so low that I would seriously question calling it a
collapse. It's just been shuffled under a new banner as Emerdata under the
same parent company with really no consequences outside of having to file some
paperwork and rebrand.

[https://medium.com/@wsiegelman/cambridge-analytica-
executive...](https://medium.com/@wsiegelman/cambridge-analytica-executives-
created-a-company-in-2017-with-the-executive-director-deputy-b803f27f84a2)

~~~
ceejayoz
CA was also doing all of this pretty openly.

It'll be much harder catching the smarter bad actors.

------
sct202
Taiwan's elections are this weekend and there's been a lot of articles about
disinformation campaigns there (
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/technology/taiwan-
electio...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/technology/taiwan-election-
china-disinformation.html) ), and it's interesting that the guy being
interviewed is from there and speaking so openly about doing it.

~~~
mistermann
I believe peddlers of disinformation can afford to be completely brazen about
it, because nothing will ever be done about it. Oh sure, people _love_ to
complain about _specific instances_ of disinformation (outright false or even
just somewhat misleading information), but there is no similar love for even
considering the idea that humanity, all of it down to a person, largely runs
on half-truths and semi-delusional thinking.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but here goes...

I listened to a podcast with a guy who runs a ring of disinformation sites in
the US.

I don't think it's as big of a problem as most people think.

People don't get hit with some disinformation article and then suddenly start
supporting another political party. Fake news is mostly just something to make
people feel better about their views -- which are already completely set in
stone.

Yes, it's fueling a bit of radicalization, which isn't great.

But I think more people are focused on this because they think it's the reason
one party is getting more votes than the other. It's just not how fake news
works.

~~~
dfxm12
_I don 't think it's as big of a problem as most people think._ _Yes, it 's
fueling a bit of radicalization, which isn't great._

What is the output of this radicalization? Just how big of a problem is it
compared to what people are making out it? We know someone opened fire a pizza
place as a direct result of this. Do you think the rise in hate crime
(especially violent crime) is in some way related, too? Perps have left behind
manifestos, like at El Paso, Christchurch, etc., with the same language as
disinfo campaigns.

People are focused on this because it's the reason that people are being
murdered because of their religion or where they were born.

~~~
cwkoss
> We know someone opened fire a pizza place as a direct result of this.

Pizzagate resulted in someone firing a single shot at the lock on a closet
door to open it. In a discussion of disinformation, I think your
characterization is misleading and exemplary of disinformation as well - in a
manner quite similar to the disinformation that led that individual to decide
to do a vigilante raid on the pizza parlor.

~~~
zach_garwood
"Opened fire" and "firing a single shot" are the same thing. I'm not sure what
point you're trying to make.

~~~
deith
Until I read cwkoss' comment right now I had always assumed someone came to
the pizza joint and started firing rounds at people. I admit I'm not American
so I never cared enough to look up what "opened fire" meant here, but I think
it's evident what people will think of when they read that expression. Hint:
not someone shooting a closet's lock once to open it.

~~~
nl
It was multiple shots, and he pointed the gun at employees first. See my other
comment for references.

------
CapmCrackaWaka
Digression here: This reminds me of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, based
around a genius that predicts events and cultural paths based on a
mathematical formulas for aggregated human psychology. It led me to imagine a
world where societies can not only be influenced, but their actions predicted,
and a system that would emerge that capitalizes on alphas in this environment
much like the stock market. This would almost act as a solution to this
problem we currently have, if many agents were predicting and acting on these
alphas so that the alphas that do exist are very small. After all, most of the
problems we currently experience are due to this potential (alphas, in my
analogy) being so large and profitable.

~~~
mar77i
Wow, you're prompting as little as I ever knew about the book "The I inside"
by Allan Dean Foster of an artificial intelligence named Colligatarch mostly
capable of, let's say, aggregation far beyond what Cambridge Analytica was
capable of. It ends up leading to a high level detection of a very miniscule
(an individual on a global scale) intrusion, but that's beside the point.

World peace, if achieved, has nothing to do with the eradication of free will.
This is exemplified by Colligatarch's recipe for success in the book. It is
not conquering the world step by step in any way, but it accurately enough
predicts patterns on what the future will bring, and if the various people
adhere, they automatically learn to fare better to follow these action plans.
If you'd imagine the beginning of this kind of world-spanning awareness as
described would start out very messy, at this point it's safe to assume that
we might even be past that initial mess - which came into being through the
two world wars at the beginning of the 20th century. Disclaimer: I'm treading
far outside my field of expertise here, so if you know more than me, chime in,
let's discuss the topic.

------
nottorp
Buzzfeed has a really funny idea about what cookies are required... just about
everything related to tracking and add personalization in fact.

Couldn’t agree to that so I couldn’t read their article.

~~~
danShumway
Unless it's a matter of principle to you, the article loads fine without
cookies if you disable 3rd-pary and/or 1st-party Javascript. The cookie
consent banner doesn't even load for me, I assume that with 3rd-pary JS
enabled you get some kind of redirect or pop-up? I didn't get asked to consent
to or enable anything.

I have no idea why more people on HN don't use UMatrix with at least 3rd-party
JS turned off by default. It's trivial to re-enable for the sites that need
it, and a nontrivial portion of news sites I visit work just fine (if not
better) with JS disabled. Most popups just flat-out disappear.

~~~
nottorp
It's the principle.

I do have uBlock Origin etc, but I'd rather not give them the eyeballs.

------
gumby
This represents the _democratization_ of propaganda. Before okey large state
actors (Pravda, BBC Empire Service, Voice of America, Radio France
International etc).

Now it’s available retail.

Spam fighting has not caught up.

~~~
munificent
"Democratization" implies "equally available to all people". That's what the
"demos" is about. But when you have to _pay_ for something, what that really
means is that it's available only to those with the money.

This is really the _capitalization_ of propaganda — those with capital get to
control the narrative.

~~~
gumby
Those with the capital have ways controlled the narrative (newspapers, and
before that hiring people to just go out and talk to the people, e.g. to be
elected tribune).

The cost of these propaganda efforts has plummeted, and increased automation
will simply lower the cost further. Trump pays nothing to use Twitter and it
netted him a presidency (though, per your comment, he already had a TV show).

I expectthat within the next four or five years there will be middle schoolers
using this tech to run for student council.

------
adamiscool8
This article was disappointingly light and hand-wavey on the technical details
of the system. I would be very interested in a deep dive on the specifics.

Like, scraping and spinning web content onto a Wordpress blog that then
syndicates it onto social media was state of the art 10 years ago. Is it just
exciting now because, politics?

------
otikik
"We do it because there is demand"

That should not be a valid reason. Child pornography, slavery, drugs and
harvested organs all have high demand.

I am sure these guys won't have any qualms about, say, defending and promoting
taking homeopathic remedies instead of chemo for people with cancer. Or
helping anti-vaxxers get children killed, if they decide to approach them and
have deep enough pockets.

In addition to these "immediate" problems, there's also a long-term, perhaps
nastier one.

As a species, what we know is what we are. Given enough time, every one of us
is dead and gone, our physical and virtual wealth will dissipate. One of the
few things which will perdure, and will always help our descendants, is
knowledge.

Every bit of truth that we can collectively find is a hard-fought treasure for
the future. Be it via scientific rigorousness or journalistic professionalism.
Finding truth is one of the single most important things we can do for
humanity, present and future.

What these people are doing to benefit themselves I see it as a crime against
humanity as a whole.

------
munk-a
This is where the slippery slope of advertising leads, and I'm sort of amazed
people can morally decide to start doing this - I imagine once you're in it's
easy though as you'd get a hell of a grandiose power trip out of knowing you
just controlled who was elected in Azerbaijan.

------
api
One mid-future prediction I've been making for a while: eventually we will
make lying in the public sphere either a crime or a civilly actionable tort.
Libel and slander already can be, but I am suggesting something more broad:
the criminalization of the promulgation of fiction, opinion, or propaganda not
labeled as such.

We've always had tabloids and dumb mass media but smart microtargeted mass
media powered by machine learning is to these what the machine gun is to the
flintlock. Add deep fakes and machine generated text crafted to appeal to each
reader and it's a tactical nuclear weapon.

Many religions believe in intelligent literal demons assigned to individuals
to deceive them. Seems to me we are busy inventing a real version of that.

Seems to me that lying at industrial scale with AI and big data and social
media is just not something society will be able to tolerate.

~~~
carapace
> Many religions believe in intelligent literal demons assigned to individuals
> to deceive them. Seems to me we are busy inventing a real version of that.

The _Daemon_ -haunted World.

(In case it's not clear, I'm playing off the title of Carl Sagan's book "The
Demon-Haunted World". We haven't fully exorcised "real" demons from our world
yet here we are developing artificial ones, eh?)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-
Haunted_World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World)

> The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by
> astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in which the author aims to explain the
> scientific method to laypeople, and to encourage people to learn critical
> and skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between
> ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered
> pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for
> consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and
> should stand up to rigorous questioning.

------
csours
My 4th prediction is coming along nicely:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943361)

> "4\. Reality as a Service will allow users to choose the facts of their
> reality."

------
fareesh
How does one theoretically get around the various anti-bot measures that the
social media platforms have instituted?

When I try to create a human account it asks for a phone number and Twitter
seems to have a bit of an overzealous system that blocks new accounts for
"suspicious" activity. YouTube has similar measures in place for registration.
Most of them have captcha as well.

Do these folks use humans to complete the registration and then have bots use
the accounts?

~~~
Tenoke
There are services that sell proxies straight from their users' machines, so
the traffic looks completely normal. You can also buy a lot of phone numbers
for cheap if needed, though the phone requirement is almost always
circumventable if nothing else is suscpicious. As for captchas - breaking them
is trivial, there are services that do it but you can also beat most/all
captchas with mturk for gathering data + training an off the shelf CV model.

A social media bot army is a project that a single developer with relevant
experience/time can complete on their own, providing they are willing to spend
a little bit.

------
AlexCoventry
Without reading the article yet: Ronan Farrow's _Catch and Kill_ is an
incredible in-depth account of efforts by The Weinstein Company, NBC, and _The
National Enquirer_ to use espionage and intimidation for suppression of
reports of sexual misconduct.

The Wikipedia pages of some NBC executives were completely scrubbed of any
hint of this suppression, for a while.

------
m463
Reminds me of "The Doubt Factory" by Paolo Bacigalupi (fiction)

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

------
smarri
"use every tool and take every advantage available in order to change reality
according to our client's wishes"

We all need a healthy dose of cynicism to survive.

------
brenden2
This is exactly why I stay away from things like buzzfeed.

------
batt4good
One could argue that Buzzfeed is as much of a mouthpiece for propaganda-for-
pay as the PR firms described in their article.

------
planetzero
Why only mention fake news and trolls that supposedly helped Trump and his
supporters? It's as if there's none of this on the other side.

------
Emanation
Is machine learning at all effective at spotting this sort of content?

------
ev0lv
It is ironic that the article is on buzzfeed.

------
illiilliiililil
Ironic story, coming from Buzzfeed.

------
paulie_a
Has the author never seen madmen or thank you for smoking.

It's not a new breed. It's just an evolution

------
smt88
For anyone who upvoted this and works for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or
Google:

How do you justify your role in this? As Sacha Baron Cohen said in his ADL
speech, Facebook takes money from what most people consider to be repugnant
sources (e.g. white supremacists). Part of that goes into your paycheck.

The unfortunate reality is that most evil is done by organizations composed of
well-intentioned people who don't see themselves as doing any harm (or having
control over the harm).

------
kennickv
Isn't this just Buzzfeed?

------
hsnewman
This really isn't new, alex jones with his "infowars" has been doing the same
for years.

------
chiefalchemist
This being "reported" by BuzzFeed is sadly ironic. They paved to way for
manipulating influence.

------
pkilgore
I'm about to use the word blockchain, so stuck with me here I'm sorry.

But a web3 built on a the idea that to use a site (post, read) required even
trivial thousandths of a cent would be unlikely to harm users but would at
least dramatically increase the costs of this sort of thing. And moves the net
to rely less on an advertising funding model.

~~~
progval
You're describing proof of work, not blockchain. It's easy to implement it
without a blockchain: make MTAs require the hash of the enveloppe of the mail
(+ a nonce outside the enveloppe) to start with a certain number of 0 bits.

And make the MTAs return a parseable message when there aren't enough zeros,
so the sender MTA can retry with other nonces until there are enough zeros.

And the enveloppe already contains a Message-ID which is to be unique (as it
contains the hostname of the sender) and unpredictable, so there shouldn't be
issues with replay attacks.

