
How Propagandists Abuse the Internet and Manipulate the Public [pdf] - pmcpinto
https://documents.trendmicro.com/assets/white_papers/wp-fake-news-machine-how-propagandists-abuse-the-internet.pdf?_ga=2.117063430.1073547711.1497355570-1028938869.1495462143&utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=1f1e1358fb-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-1f1e1358fb-154451305
======
civilian
> _News management and opinion manipulation by itself is not necessary “evil”.
> Corporate communications and public relations departments often use certain
> propaganda techniques as a crisis management measure to prevent panic,
> additional financial and reputation damage, etc._

Ehhh.... I'll refer you to George Carlin's [edit: it's Bill Hick's] "If you're
in marketing or advertising" bit.

> _Fake news is the promotion and propagation of news articles via social
> media. These articles are promoted in such a way that they appear to be
> spread by other users, as opposed to being paid-for advertising. The news
> stories distributed are designed to influence or manipulate users’ opinions
> on a certain topic towards certain objectives._

Good definition. But by that method... NYTimes is fake news when it comes to
GMOs and their consistent bias against it. I see journalists trying to push an
ideology all the time.

We've lost trust in news institutions. Capital-F Fake news is especially
egregious, but this definition of fake news, which is just about manipulating
opinion, is _everywhere_.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"If you're in marketing or advertising"

The government should apply a significant "sin tax" to advertising.
Advertising imposes huge external costs on society that aren't borne by the
advertiser; a sin tax would help to properly align the incentives.

And it really wouldn't hurt the advertisers very much -- if advertising became
more expensive they'd do less of it, but so would their competitors, making
the ads they do run much more effective.

It would hurt Google, Facebook and other billboard-selling agencies. Not
necessarily a bad thing.

~~~
opportune
Agreed. Advertising in many cases also isn't a net gain for society. One of
its goal is to manufacture demand where there is none. A famous example is the
DeBeers diamond company, which created expectations for diamonds to be used as
a sign of love in proposals. We could just as well get along as a society
without any diamonds in jewelry whatsoever, and might even be better off for
it. They didn't realize increase enjoyment in society so much as create a new
_negative_ situation (spouse upset/insecure with jewelry) that only money
could fix.

There are benefits to advertising: it keeps consumers up to date on the
current products on the market and can emphasize the positive traits of those
products. But in practice it more often relies on psychological tricks and
manipulation (look at any Budweiser commercial and tell me it isn't a subtle
play to insecure masculinity) that don't necessarily benefit consumers.

~~~
GauntletWizard
Insane spikes of demand happen. Fashion did not become an industry because of
Advertising. Fidget Spinners did not require advertising to be a huge hit.
Manufactured demand doesn't happen nearly as much as demand bubbles up and
advertising provides the lightning rod by which it's grounded.

Advertising can have a lot of really great effects on society, too. You think
that conservation programs came out of nowhere? That people learned how to
recycle because everyone was really interested? The entire "green" economy is
hugely driven by advertising - Not as much the corporate style, but lifestyle
advertising driven by conservation nonprofits (whose revenue, by the way, is
almost entirely driven by advertising; Look up the rates that nonprofit
fundraisers charge, and then realize that despite how insane they are, the
nonprofits still find them profitable!)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
None the less it's pretty easy to see advertising and the subsequent
consumption is a net loss to the environment.

------
uses
There will be comments about how some information from actual news
organizations contains opinions or incorrect facts...and therefore it's in the
same universe with fake news. This is like, the definition of throwing the
baby out with the bathwater...

And it's the actual final goal of the most evil forms of propaganda. Overwhelm
the audience with false information > make it harder to determine true vs
false > maybe no source can really be trusted > all sources of information
have some kind of agenda > all sources of information are roughly equal in
quality. Now in the mind of the individual in question, the playing field has
been leveled between propaganda and the work of trained journalists. And at
that point it's not a real contest.

~~~
pitt1980
Is fake news that's created in Eastern Europe or somewhere actually that
tricky?

who does it actually fool?

There are obviously some people this stuff fools, as a class though, are the
people who fall for this stuff high trust nodes in the information universe?

The problem with the Washington Post or wherever, is that when they get their
facts wrong, or slanted, it takes a far more careful reader to catch it, and
the people likely to spread it, tend to be far more trustworthy

~~~
nl
_who does it actually fool?_

There was more than one person on HN who argued very strongly that PizzaGate
was a real thing.

I found that completely shocking.

~~~
fivestar
The fact is that there was a pedophile scandal in the UK. You believe that,
correct? People were prosecuted, yes?

Also, you realize that US Catholic priests, and very likely priests in other
nations have been involved in innumerable cases of child molestation. Also
correct? Or is that just fake news?

So why is it such a giant leap of faith to suspect, given the rumors, that a
similar scandal might exist amongst elites in the US?

Whether some pizza shop was the nexus of the whole thing, I have no idea, that
isn't the point. The point is that powerful people with twisted appetites may
be getting away with extremely reckless and illegal behavior and therefore
deserves our attention.

Right now, we know there is 'human trafficking' going on. Who is involved? If
wealthy elites outside of politics are involved, is it not that giant a leap
to assume that political elites are also involved? And that some compare
notes?

~~~
nl
_Whether some pizza shop was the nexus of the whole thing, I have no idea,
that isn 't the point._

No, it's exactly the point. It was a specific story with specific allegations
which were untrue.

The rest of your comment is "something could be going on".

~~~
qb45
There was more to it than just a single shop.

Some random HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13432098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13432098)

~~~
nl
You realise that isn't anything more than what was posted above, right?

There's a link to some email and some art. No alleged victims, no evidence,
nothing. Just some interpretation of an email.

~~~
qb45
Yes. I only said that it was a wider story than just the specific allegations
against one particular shop, which you seemed to disagree with.

~~~
nl
I disagree with the entire conspiracy theory.

------
superobserver
A security company commenting on these matters suggests undue interest in
manipulating the infosec community. I would be interested to learn who
paid/funded for this slanted whitepaper. The absence of commentary on left-
wing disinfo actors (Media Matters, Correct the Record, Shareblue, etc.) and
principally those that operate according to yesterday's mainstream media
methods is most telling.

~~~
cwkoss
Another concerning datapoint: Google Now has recommended Shareblue propoganda
articles as "Trending News". Pretty Orwellian.

~~~
superobserver
Google has a long-standing bias that is comparable to other Silicon Valley
tech companies. Their Newsstand app is like a certified stream of mainstream
propaganda.

------
averagewall
Isn't it embarrassing that nobody cared about this until their favourite team
lost the election and now they have to find something to blame it on? He
should have lost because fake news isn't fair! He should have lost because of
popular vote! As the article says, it's been around for thousands of years. We
should just accept it. The UK has very popular fake news papers like News of
the World and The Sun. I once read an article about how a donkey's legs were
attached to a human who had lost his legs. It's entertainment, just like all
news some people might believe it. It doesn't matter.

For people who want real news, we have trusted brands, like The Guardian or
whatever.

~~~
peterashford
External money influencing elections is an issue for the integrity of the
voting system. That's not entertainment, nor is it (or it shouldn't be) a
partisan issue.

~~~
averagewall
America already has external money to pay for campaign advertising. Is that
just as much a problem? Why does it matter what form the paid advertising
comes in?

Even if it's foreign money, why can't foreigners help their preferred
candidate win? They're stakeholders too. The US government does things that
affect other countries so it's only fair that people there have some voice, if
not an actual vote.

Anything that seems objective is partisan if it benefits one party more than
the other. Eg Gerrymandering, campaign financing, electoral college. They're
only issues because people on the losing side noticed they were disadvantaged.

------
oceanplexian
There is no such thing as fake news. There's only news, otherwise you're
insinuating that some speech is 'fake', and conversely, some speech is
'genuine'.

News can be false, misleading, disproven, untrustworthy, and many shades in
between. In fact there are a lot more angles to information than a False/True
boolean. Some things can be true in a certain context, but not others.
Sometimes untested or fringe news outlets have real stories (Drudge Report,
was, for example, was the first news outlet to break the Monica Lewinsky
scandal). Sometimes trustworthy news outlets deliver a misleading stories, as
in the case of Iraq WMDs or Y2K.

A better way to phrase things would be to use more nuance to describe the
state of reporting on current events. But since skepticism and logic don't
increase readership or viewership, unfortunately those qualities aren't
encouraged among the discourse going around these days.

~~~
virtuabhi
It looks to me that you are spreading unnecessary confusion. Let me give you
two scenarios:

(1) I go to a marketplace and buy a service to plant a news story. Assume that
the title of the story is "oceanplexian is part of DC pizza scandal". This
story is posted on their affiliate websites, by bots on Twitter/Facebook, it
is even reported on your local TV as "rumors emerge about oceanplexian (with a
healthy dose of nuance, skepticism, logic)". This is certainly fake news,
right? (I hope so!)

(2) In the second scenario, imagine if two of your coworkers contact a
journalist with information that "oceanplexian is making bombs at home". Then
the journalist finds out that you are buying fertilizers even though you live
in a multi-story building. The police refuse to comment. Then a news story is
published with the title of "suspicious behavior by oceanplexian". Later it
turned out that you had joked to your friends about making bombs and the
fertilizers were for your science experiments. So this was a false story, the
people involved in spreading this story apologize and move on.

Also, the meaning of words depends on context and the context changes with
time. There is a current meaning of fake news. And we can easily classify many
fake news stories with 100% certainty as fake. I do not know how muddying the
water with Iraq War, Y2K, etc. helps in the discussion about fake news in the
current context.

~~~
fivestar
Because this shit has been going on a long, long time! That's why--you can't
discuss fake news and then not bring up the key examples put out by official
media sources. It's like talking about just Nigerian scammers when scams have
been going on for thousands of years.

------
jacquesm
> Governments are starting to recognize that fake news is something that must
> be actively fought.

That can be read in two very different ways. Sometimes the governments are the
ones that are the problem.

------
orionblastar
Actually most fake news sites are someone who set up a Wordpress blog that
reports on news items that cannot be verified. These sites can be set up
quickly on any VPS service.

Most of them use donain names that look like a real news site like
cbsnews45.com instead of cbs.com etc. So when they in this example claim to be
CBS news, it is a fake news site.

Steve Wozniak would use The Department of Defiance on T shirts and badges
because people would mistake it for the department of defence.

------
intended
>Fake news is the promotion and propagation of news articles via social media.
These articles are promoted in such a way that they appear to be spread by
other users, as opposed to being paid-for advertising. The news stories
distributed are designed to in uence or manipulate users’ opinions on a
certain topic towards certain objectives.

The definition itself is incorrect. This is the changed definition, post it
becoming a buzzword

>It is inevitable that other motivations—such as pro t—will come to the
forefront in later years.

Profit _was_ the original motivator. That's why those Romanian click bait
sites appeared in the first place.

------
ygaf
5MB pdf file. Just had to see if there was any more context to this:

>News management and opinion manipulation by itself is not necessary(sic)
“evil”.

It's either evil every time or none of the time.

------
r721
Accompanying blog post:

[https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime...](https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime-
and-digital-threats/fake-news-cyber-propaganda-the-abuse-of-social-media)

------
trendia
Consider the following contradiction: Supposedly, fake Facebook accounts
(which appear real) engage with "fake news" in order to fool _real_ Facebook
users. Then, the engagement of such articles is measured. That is, these
articles are spread by bots so that it appears like the articles are being
read by a wide swath of the population. Then, analyzers like Buzzfeed measure
the activity of the fake news articles and count the total number of
"engagement" activities, which includes _both the fake and real engagement_.
They claim that this is evidence that people are spreading fake news -- but
how can we know how many real people _actually_ read (or believed) the
content?

Next, they mention that fake news results in a change in people's perceptions.
They say:

> It can be considered a form of cognitive hacking12—except that the
> modification of a user’s perception is the goal of the operation, not a
> means for gaining access to a network.

Serious? They think that people reading an article are going to immediately
believe it? This idea sounds a lot like the beliefs in the 1920's that media
could "inject" false beliefs into humans:

> Hypodermic needle model, or magic bullet theory: Considers the audience to
> be targets of an injection or bullet of information fired from the pistol of
> mass media. The audience are unable to avoid or resist the injection or
> bullets.

However, we now know that people are _not_ passive consumers of media: they
are often very critical. If we were to categorize the engagement of fake news
in order of proportion of observed engagement acts:

1\. bots (not real people, not influenced, largest proportion)

2\. curious but critical people (real people, but not influenced)

3\. people whose beliefs are changed (real people, real influence, smallest
proportion)

Finally, to prove that fake news can be damaging, they use examples where
Spirit Airlines and American Airlines were damaged by _real news_ :

> For example, shares in the American ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC) Spirit
> Airlines fell 5% the day after videos of passenger fist fights due to
> cancelled flights15 made the rounds on social media. When United Airlines
> forcibly removed16 a passenger from a flight in April 2017, its stock price
> fell17 as well.

If you're going to claim that 1) fake news is a huge problem, 2) that fake
news affects people's perceptions, and 3) that fake news affects the
organizations targeted, then why do you:

1\. not show concrete examples of fake news?

2\. not show that people's beliefs are affected by that fake news?

3\. and show that targeted organizations are affected by people's beliefs?

Sorry, but this paper isn't really rooted in fact. I'd go so far as to say
that it's more or less fake news.

~~~
Spooky23
People are passive consumers of media and are easily manipulated when given a
story that jives with some general belief that they have. A great example of
this effect is the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings.

Question 1: Alex Jones, a talk show host who has a growing niche following,
including the current President, pushed a narrative that despite the dead
kids, identified shooter, etc this massacre of young children was a "false
flag" hoax.

Details: [https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/06/13/here-exactly-
wh...](https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/06/13/here-exactly-what-alex-
jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook-massacre/216889)

Question 2:

According to a Newsmax poll, 24% of people surveyed believed that Sandy Hook
was or may have possibly been a hoax.
[http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/752850?section=Poli...](http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/752850?section=Politics&keywords=voters-
believe-conspiracy-theories-
trump&year=2016&month=10&date=11&id=752850&aliaspath=%2FManage%2FArticles%2FTemplate-
Main&oref=www.google.com)

Question 3:

This kind of malicious misinformation makes the weak minded dangerous and can
influence policy.

Case in point: Parent of murdered Sandy Hook kindergartner threatened by
nutjob from Florida. [https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/tampa-area-
resident-ind...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/tampa-area-resident-
indicted-threatening-sandy-hook-parent)

Case in point: Gun advocacy groups get the benefit of angry anti-gun control
people mobilized to push for concealed carry and even mandatory arming of
school officials.

Other examples abound. The Gulf of Tonkin incident is a great example at the
nation state level.

There's always a reason. In the case of Gulf of Tonkin, LBJ wanted to escalate
the Vietnam Conflict. The the case of Alex Jones, he wants to undermine your
faith in society to make you buy his vitamins. In the case of the "pizza gate"
faux scandal, parties unknown wanted Clinton voters to stay home or vote
Trump.

------
carsongross
This is quite concerning indeed.

I'm glad that no one who I agree with politically would use such underhanded
techniques.

~~~
komali2
I'm not sure if you're intending to be hilarious here, but I'm taking it that
way.

~~~
carsongross
;)

------
algesten
title should say PDF

