
How political data teams game Google to fool people - some1else
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/06/how-the-trump-russia-data-machine-games-google-to.html
======
korrachs
As someone who has been on the publication side of digital media: Never
ascribe to propaganda what you can explain by greed.

News is fundamentally broken, all those sites linking to each other are
probably doing it to increase the "trending" part of the news which will push
all of them up the google rankings.

The reason why Russians, and Eastern Europeans in general, are more highly
represented as owners of these places is because the cost of living is so low
there. That you make $2,000 from add revenue in the US would mean you can
afford to eat out a few more times a month. When you can do the same thing in
a country where this is double the average wage you can spend all your time
doing it and be better off than if you tried doing anything else.

~~~
DINKDINK
>As someone who has been on the publication side of digital media: Never
ascribe to propaganda what you can explain by greed.

A great documentary on the interplay between investigative journalism,
government lies, and infotainment (greed based media guised as "news" or
"journalism" is

All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of IF Stone
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_cKC0_sGu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_cKC0_sGu0)

------
doktrin
> Why aren’t Democrats paying people to do this kind of thing with the truth?
> No idea. None. They can do it, just like that other company crushed us, but
> they haven’t learned.

As a casual observer, it certainly does seem like the political right in
America has consistently been more willing and eager to bend the rules of the
information game - up to and including willfully propagating falsehoods. This
has at a minimum been repeatedly evidenced over the last 20 years, first in
cable news and now online.

Is the solution - as the OP implies - for the left / center left to adopt the
same dirty tactics as their counterparts? Is there any alternative? I'm sure
every rational individual (a group in which I hope to include myself), would
really just prefer if everyone started behaving like adults and returned to
discussing issues in what at least looks like good faith. Is that at this
point a pipe dream?

~~~
djscram
The problem is that the tactics work best for fake stories, because they can
be pre-loaded and coordinated. True news is worked out between competing
outlets and breaks messily.

~~~
smacktoward
Fake stories are also quicker to write. Truth requires careful research, which
takes time. Fake news can be written as fast as fingers can strike the
keyboard.

Fake stories can be tuned for maximal appeal to people's existing opinions,
preconceptions and prejudices. Truth has a habit of telling us things other
than what we want to hear.

------
nippples
"Left wing media" lost me a few years ago to no credit of "Right wing media".
They're shamelessly embracing polarization and every time I decide to take
another peek at it, it seems it's sunken further.

Journalism is broken, completely broken, and as long as people are trying to
figure out how to fling mud at other publications rather than rise above the
sea of trash they'll keep losing to ever less credible sources.

~~~
ygaf
> as long as people are trying to figure out how to fling mud at other
> publications

And that's half of what this article boils down to, "as if _these_ websites
are above _these_ ". Google rankings for one story - the author is very
specific in fetching that story - aren't going to strictly follow alexa
rankings of entire websites. I can see pro-trump users clicking "No evidence
of trump-russia collaboration" much more commonly than people who don't want
to believe it is true. The author is onto something very believable, but he
doesn't so much have evidence as whining.

~~~
mistermann
From TFA:

> Now let’s see exactly what’s up here. Together, we’re going to Google the
> phrase “trump no evidence collusion.” (And because Google searches change
> over time, I’ll drop screenshots of my results here.) What will emerge is a
> picture of an invisible hand writing a specific argument, over and over and
> over. That hand belongs to Robert Mercer, Trump’s data man, who gamed Google
> and fake news during the campaign and whose return to the scene is heralded
> by Trump’s war room and bot boom. If you want, you can read more about this
> crazyAF, richAF, crackpot genius with a heart of shit.

> Before we begin, though, we need to establish the fact that this statement
> is a lie: “There’s no evidence of collusion!” The reason I’m using this
> specific example is because this highly nuanced claim is the perfect
> loophole to exploit for misinformation, to shade the truth as lie and get
> away with it clean.

> The truth: no one in the intelligence community and no one on any of the
> Congressional committees looking into this thing, be they Democrat or
> Republican, none of them have said categorically, flat-out, “There is no
> evidence of collusion.” Period. People investigating the case will only go
> so far as to say they haven’t seen any evidence. Or that there hasn’t been
> any evidence made available to them yet. But they don’t ever say there flat-
> out isn’t any evidence of collusion. Ever. Read this if you don’t believe
> me.

Maybe I misread/skimmed the article, or misunderstood the premise, but are
these statements not more or less guilty of the same thing? Most any left-
leaning (or at least anti-Trump) person I know is _highly_ certain that
Trump/Russia collusion is a fact, despite (as far as I know) no hard evidence
being found. So to my mind, accusing pro-Trump people of being intellectually
dishonest by saying "There’s no evidence of collusion!" is _at least_ as great
of a crime as whatever it is the pro-Trump side is doing. When we have
reporting 24x7 on numerous news networks and casual news shows like the Daily
Show repeating the Trump-Rusia story ad nauseum, stating the _correct_ (is it
not?) fact that no hard evidence of Trump/Russia collusion has _so far at
least_ been found seems like the lesser of two crimes. (Being pedantic, it is
actually a true statement as far as the public record is concerned, based on
my understanding).

But them maybe I'm misunderstanding.

If one wants to see something truly illuminating, set aside a few hours some
evening, go on YouTube and watch some Noam Chomsky interviews, especially the
more recent ones. Indeed I'm sure my mind is biased, but what you will see,
albeit skewed by Noam's political leanings, is pretty damning to both sides.
The hypocrisy of Americans being so incredibly morally outraged at election
tampering is probably one of the biggest recurring gems you will come across,
this whole thing borders on hilarious if you take off your partisan hat and
actually think about it.

About the only thing I feel quite confident about, is that anyone who has very
strong leanings to one side or the other is likely wrong (compared to the
actual omniscient truth).

------
graeme
Why does Google prioritize freshness so much? In some domains (i.e. Tech
developments), freshness is very important.

But in most, old content (the classics) is likely to be better than most new
content.

~~~
blowski
To me, this seems like one of those issues that's easy for a human to parse,
but hard for a computer. For example:

* Terrorist attack in London

* Terrorist attacks in London

The only difference is the plural. However, the first is probably time-
sensitive, looking for the most recent attack that's in the news right now.
The second is more general.

~~~
microcolonel
Those categories are fast whittling down, as the terrorist attacks are now
apparently a weekly occurrence.

------
swalsh
The thing that scares me the most, let's say Trump IS impeached. Not outside
the realm of possibility. This group of people, they literally live in a
different reality, and in their reality this impeachment would be a coup.

People don't just silently stand by when that happens. This is a heavily armed
group of people, who's been "riled" up for literally years. Go to their
discussions about the "free speech rallies" online. Look up based stickman. A
lot of people are eager.

When the stakes reach the climax, we could see this "information" war turn
into a real life war. Conspiracies, whether right or wrong, play HUGE roles in
significant parts of history.

------
caseysoftware
This is not new or unique. According to Wikipedia, "Google bomb" was added to
the Oxford Dictionary in 2005.[1] The first instance I remember was "miserable
failure" linking to Bush 43's biography.. so probably not Republicans.

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

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hadrien01
The UK has the concept, at least for televised news, of "Due Impartiality and
Due Accuracy and Undue Prominence of Views and Opinions" [1]. I know the US
loves its first amendment, but such a law could really help to have better
televised debates and opinion programs on cable news (I'm obviously thinking
of Fox News, but the problem exists for the other news channels). Other
European-inspired laws like no political ads or limited amount of money spent
during the campaign [2] would also help to have a better political
environment.

[1]
[https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/86307/b...](https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/86307/bc2015-07-section_5_due_impartialitiy.pdf)
[2] Still can't understand Citizens United with my European point of view

------
simion314
I am wondering why for factual statements like X is Y that are provable as
false can't the entity damaged by the publication ask for a retraction and/or
damages ? As a person if you denigrate other person you are in trouble.

~~~
chasing
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its
shoes." -Mark Twain

~~~
goodmachine
"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after" \- Jonathon Swift

[http://www.bartleby.com/209/633.html](http://www.bartleby.com/209/633.html)

------
rijoja
Well if you google for "no evidence collusion", and if you get evidence for
collusion there is something wrong with the algorithm don't you think?

------
ygaf
>the way those results are ordered isn’t exactly organic. Alexa ranks the NYT
at 120 globally; WaPo at 190. Now, what about the illustrious townhall.com,
which had not one but two hits on page one? It’s ranked at 9,109. In other
words, those first four pages (four full pages of synchronized bullshit) are
evidence of a massive and centrally managed strategic misinformation campaign
being waged on your brain.

Granted.

>These dozens of sites are all peddling the same lie...

Uh, the headlines provided range from "No evidence of trump-russia collusion"
(page 1) all the way to... "lack of evidence on trump-russia collusion" (page
4).

>If you read closely (which they’re betting you won’t) they all include the
proper, honest caveats: no evidence YET; no one says they’ve SEEN evidence;
etc.

The jump from that, to "No evidence" in the headline, is _the_ most humdrum of
spin used in every media article written every day, it's the background noise
of journalism.

You're onto something big, don't mire your articles in blue tribe whining.

------
krona
maskirovka has been used for centuries. The fact is, the internet makes it as
easy for someone with a youtube channel on the other side of the world to be
more effective at disseminating disinformation as a state sponsored newspaper
in the 1920s.

If the WWW is to remain unregulated, then get used to it.

~~~
rrggrr
It was used to great effect after the American Revolutionary war. Competing
presses would print all manner of slander against monarchist and anti-
monarchist factions, seeking to impact public opinion.

------
some1else
I hope everyone is keeping in mind that constant conversion + more traffic =
more users.

~~~
chatmasta
Yep. This is no different than any marketing campaign. Trump builds the
product, and people set up websites "selling" it.

I've been in marketing a long time, and everything I've seen reinforces my
cynical view that people are nothing but a bunch of sheep waiting to be
herded. As a convoluted example, consider the fact that simply changing the
color or position of a button on a webpage can measurably alter the rate of
people who click on it. Looking at it this way, one begins to wonder when free
will ends and conformity begins.

------
vwcx
Nigritude ultramarine, but for control of the United States of America.

------
brockvond
the only thing Russia hacked was how stupid Americans are and how addicted
they are to using quick quotes to signal a false intelligence... so that's on
us. As far as the DNC... those emails should be public from the moment they
are sent. All government emails should reside on a public searchable
database... content is king.

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zspitzer
from Australia, I'm seeing the credible results on the first page (both logged
in and incognito), how does it look from elsewhere? Has Google already tweaked
their algorithm?

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gadders
Why has the title been changed from the original "How the Trump-Russia Data
Machine Games Google to Fool Americans"?

~~~
drops
Because it implies that Trump and Russia are somehow parts of the same evil
rightwing-shilling machine. That meme is getting ridiculous.

~~~
chasing
Given that it's under active investigation, "meme" might be wrong word.

~~~
coldtea
Like WMDs were under active investigation, with agencies checking on them, the
NYT, CNN and other "serious" outlets informing the public about them, and even
a whole war (and tons of lives lost, not to mention a trillion dollars spent)
was justified on their presence?

Yeah, "BS excuse of large part of the establishment for their own incompetence
and disconnect" would be a better moniker.

