
A 12-Month Campaign of Fake News to Influence Elections Costs $400K - KasianFranks
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/a-12-month-campaign-of-fake-news-to-influence-elections-costs-400-000/
======
lr4444lr
_An examination of Chinese, Russian, Middle Eastern, and English-based
underground fake news marketplaces reveals a wide range of services available
on these portals_

How laudable that the propaganda for hire industry is so multicultural.

------
j_m_b
So this is the cost, what about the effectiveness? How does it stack up
against the millions paid in traditional campaign outreach?

------
failrate
It should be far more expensive to lie to me, otherwise that will continue to
be the logical choice.

~~~
criddell
It's going to be interesting to see how this evolves. I would expect there to
be much, much more of this in future elections.

------
CWuestefeld
Link to the underlying report (PDF):
[https://documents.trendmicro.com/assets/white_papers/wp-
fake...](https://documents.trendmicro.com/assets/white_papers/wp-fake-news-
machine-how-propagandists-abuse-the-internet.pdf)

I'm not clear on how effective such a campaign promises to be. But assuming
that folks wouldn't pay if they couldn't get something out of it, what does
this tell us about democracy? Do we need to throw out either democracy or
freedom of speech?

~~~
pjc50
Freedom of speech _purism_ is probably unworkable. I'm old enough to remember
people arguing that _spam_ was free speech and that spamfighting was immoral.

Fake news is much more sophisticated than spam but is ultimately going to
encounter the same fight.

~~~
danjoc
Today, we have a big 10 situation where 95% of all email travels through 10
hosts... gmail, live, aol, yahoo, etc. Email was designed to be open to all,
but thanks to the spam fighting tactics employed, we ended up with all the
power concentrated in the hands of a few.

We lost nntp entirely, but that wasn't due to spam. The copyright industry
shut it down under the premise of "think of the children."

http was designed to allow anyone to run a server, but thanks to asymmetric
bandwidth and port blocking, it's all hosted on the NSA cloud.

It hasn't been a good two decades for free speech. The only fight we won was
crypto, and they're coming after that again.

~~~
maxerickson
NNTP is still alive, with basically the primary purpose of disregarding
copyright.

The talk groups are all abandoned for web forums with UX that people end up
preferring (I understand that NNTP allows choice of client and people are
going to explain how much better that is; over here in the reality experiment,
the abandonment already happened).

------
gaetanrickter
"$50,000 - Discredit a journalist" wow.

~~~
blfr
Pretty expensive when most journalists spend their days doing it themselves at
no extra cost.

~~~
shuntress
Do you have non-anecdotal evidence to back up this claim?

~~~
reitanqild
Yep:

-a lot about what was written in the presidential election last year seems to have been wishful thinking or meant to influence not inform. _And this is from somebody who doesn 't like Trump._

\- Swedish police has no-go zones, firefighters gets attacked - journalists
keeps telling everything is fine.

\- and bad reporting from the Middle east has plenty of crazy examples.
(Journalist: "Israelis, the most advanced army in the area, actually tries to
kill civilians". Fact is of course, for anyone who bothers to think for 15
seconds that if the Israelian army _tried_ to kill civilians then I must say
they have failed _spectacularily_.)

~~~
mikeyouse
> _Swedish police has no-go zones, firefighters gets attacked - journalists
> keeps telling everything is fine._

This still isn't true. There are many legitimate issues with integrating
immigrant populations into fairly insular and homogeneous societies. People
lying about the magnitude of those problems really, really discredit efforts
to make them better though.

Swedish police are incredibly well trained.. it's absurd to think they've just
abandoned parts of major cities, especially when those cities are safer than
most large cities in the US. Malmo, the 'center' of all of the alleged police
no-go zones has a murder rate equal to that of San Diego.. It's 90% lower than
the murder rate in Chicago. The overall murder rate is dramatically lower than
the rate in the US:

[https://imgur.com/a/wKh0X](https://imgur.com/a/wKh0X)

It's really bizarre how the right wing in the US has chosen Sweden as the
symbol for their refugee distrust when there's very little evidence that their
problems are anything more than those seen by every major city with large
impoverished populations of any background.

------
cmurf
_The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other
rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery,
for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has
not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case._ \- Thomas
Paine

I think voting rights and electoral integrity is more important than fake news
(i.e. propaganda) which has been around forever and isn't going away.

------
aswanson
I wonder if the Byzantine generals algorithm could be applied to fake news. A
distributed truth block chain.

~~~
Upvoter33
seems like you need people to agree on "what is truth" first?

------
jakeogh
Not even remotely scratching the surface.
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.2017.76.issu...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.2017.76.issue-2/issuetoc)

------
rdudek
Since this is HN, the bigger question is how much of this can be automated?
For example, you go to one of those sites, fill out a form, pay in bitcoin,
and let the system do the rest?

------
coldtea
A 12-month campaign of fake promises, ruthless hypocrisy and BS interpretation
of reality (which has been the standard for decades) has comparable costs...

------
sgberlin
Seems expensive for what mostly sounds like basic black hat marketing tricks

------
xnandor
This article was purchased through a fake news vendor.

------
throwaway-1209
Correct The Record and Share Blue cost millions. Maybe the DNC should
outsource.

------
ausjke
unless you're going to do full censorship there is no cure, the MSM is clearly
against trump in the election which could be decisive in the past, the social
network dared to disagree this time and actually made a difference, but, what
is wrong then, let them compete and people will know where to turn to,
remember, majority of them have already made their mind no matter what, it's
the middle ground that is affected.

~~~
wnevets
>unless you're going to do full censorship there is no cure, the MSM is
clearly against trump in the election

by giving him billions in free air time?

~~~
reitanqild
Yep. As far as I can see he outsmarted American media.

They really tried hard to help every other candidate but ended up playing
right into his hands.

Given what people think about the current president this says quite a lot
about media.

------
SteveGerencser
I have said for many years now that before anyone can vote they need to take a
test. It's a dead simple 5 question T/F test. And you only have to get 3 right
to vote.

~~~
DanBC
What would happen to people with a learning disability?

Would you protect their vote? Or are they subhuman and not allowed to take
part in democracy?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's a reasonable question, and reasonable people come down on different
sides.

~~~
DanBC
No, reasonable people recognise CRPD.

Particularly article 29:
[https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-...](https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-
on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities/article-29-participation-in-
political-and-public-life.html)

> States Parties shall guarantee to persons with disabilities political rights
> and the opportunity to enjoy them on an equal basis with others, and shall
> undertake:

> a) To ensure that persons with disabilities can effectively and fully
> participate in political and public life on an equal basis with others,
> directly or through freely chosen representatives, including the right and
> opportunity for persons with disabilities to vote and be elected, inter
> alia, by:

> i. Ensuring that voting procedures, facilities and materials are
> appropriate, accessible and easy to understand and use;

> ii. Protecting the right of persons with disabilities to vote by secret
> ballot in elections and public referendums without intimidation, and to
> stand for elections, to effectively hold office and perform all public
> functions at all levels of government, facilitating the use of assistive and
> new technologies where appropriate;

> iii. Guaranteeing the free expression of the will of persons with
> disabilities as electors and to this end, where necessary, at their request,
> allowing assistance in voting by a person of their own choice;

But also:

[https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-...](https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-
on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities/article-5-equality-and-non-
discrimination.html)

[https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-...](https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-
on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities/article-9-accessibility.html)

[https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-...](https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-
on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities/article-12-equal-recognition-
before-the-law.html)

[https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-...](https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-
on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities/article-19-living-independently-
and-being-included-in-the-community.html)

[https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-...](https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-
on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities/article-21-freedom-of-expression-
and-opinion-and-access-to-information.html)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sure, that's the law. But we were talking philosophy. Should a comatose person
vote? How about someone who hasn't the wits to draw the 'x' on the ballot?
There's a whole spectrum. At some point, the potential for abuse of such
people is as large as the harm in preventing them from voting.

See how complicated it is? A bunch of legal citations doesn't come near the
issue.

~~~
maxerickson
The UN isn't law, that stuff is all philosophy (expressions of ideals and so
on).

It isn't an obvious thing though, determining intent when it isn't clearly and
plainly expressed.

