
First Evidence That Social Bots Play a Major Role in Spreading Fake News - trextrex
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608561/first-evidence-that-social-bots-play-a-major-role-in-spreading-fake-news/
======
Fnoord
Fake news goes further than politics. Its claws reach to everything
unscientific. Those claws are -in theory- rather enormous for the amount of
unscientific debate on the Internet is huge.

Take the following two examples from the alt. health community: David
'Avocado' Wolfe [1] and Dr. Joseph Mercola [2]. The former is a self
proclaimed health guru with no medical degree yet he makes all kind of
(dangerous) health claims. The latter's similar tho he does have a degree. The
latter's article is on a website called Quackwatch. If Quackwatch is credible
(I didn't verify) it could be interesting to hook into them, perhaps via an
API.

Funny enough when I searched for these two (I used DDG, YMMV) in combination
with the term fake news I found articles where they comment about other
(supposed) fake news. For example, in one article they claimed in the headline
CNN distributed fake news. I don't know if that's deliberate, but at least
from a SEO PoV it seems clever of them.

Another interesting question is, could -in a future- whitelisting be a better
default modus operandi than blacklisting?

[1] [https://au.be.yahoo.com/lifestyle/real-
life/a/34572713/david...](https://au.be.yahoo.com/lifestyle/real-
life/a/34572713/david-wolfe-youre-fake-news-yahoo7-be/)

[2]
[http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/mercola.html](http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/mercola.html)

------
creaghpatr
>So widespread has this become that a number of independent fact-checking
organizations have emerged to establish the veracity of online information.
These include snopes.com, politifact.com, and factcheck.org.

As long as it remains an assumption that these are 'independent' non-partisan
fact-checking organizations, I would discard any conclusions drawn here.

Also Breitbart is highly editorialized news and commentary, but it's certainly
not fake. The fact that its CEO strategized the largest political upset in
recent history is very, very real.

~~~
extra88
The sentence before the ones you quoted is:

> At issue is the publication of news that is false or misleading.

Initially in the election, "fake news" was a term primarily used to refer to
stories and sites that were complete fabrications, created to make money from
ads and for political ends. Use of the term quickly expanded to include more
long-standing practitioners of distortion, like Breitbart.

The whole point of this article is that "fake news" can have real consequences
so the supposed successes of Steve Bannon has nothing to do with the veracity
of the publications headlines and stories.

Here's just one example of a fake Breitbart headline:

>Condemned as "fake news" by some media pundits, the Breitbart article was
headlined: “Revealed: 1,000-man mob attack police, set Germany’s oldest church
alight on New Year’s Eve.” However, according to local journalists, there was
no mob and the St Reinold Church – which is not Germany’s oldest – did not
catch fire. Local police said the night was “rather average to quiet” and the
number of incidents in Dortmund on New Year’s Eve had decreased to 185, down
from 421 in 2015/16\. The brief fire on scaffold netting near the church was
reportedly caused accidently by a wayward firework.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/breitbart-
new...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/breitbart-news-
dortmund-police-new-years-eve-fake-news-germany-angela-merkel-syrians-refugee-
crisis-a7514786.html)

~~~
alva
>Here's just one example of a fake Breitbart headline

But it starts to get a bit confusing when you actually look at the accusations
and rebuttals, especially when you look at the fleshed out indy article [0]

Accusation : "The right-wing American website, which enjoyed a meteoric rise
to prominence in 2016, claimed a 1,000-strong mob chanting “Allahu Akbar” set
fire to the country’s oldest church in Dortmund."

Rebuttal :"Mr Bandermann on the other hand, in a Q&A-style response published
the following day, said that from between 6.45pm and 1.30am, groups of young
foreign men formed a large group of 1,000 people. He said the fire at the
church only set light to netting surrounding the building and lasted just 12
minutes." ... "He said that saying Allahu Akbar is as normal as saying ‘Amen’
in church,"

So which is fake news? On the facts, the Independent agrees (although through
semantics "church netting on fire, not the church" "group" not "mob") with the
Breitbart article.

If they both agree on the facts, but spin them different ways, how do you
determine which is "fake news"?

[0]
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/edited-1038-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/edited-1038-headline-
works-well-a7512636.html)

edit: They did actually issue a correction for something they got wrong in the
article

"Correction: This article states St. Reinold’s Church is the oldest in
Germany. We are happy to clarify that accolade belongs to the Trier
Cathedral."

~~~
ygaf
Replying to the deadpost:

>They've literally _never_ accidentally reported in a direction that was
opposite their editorial spin.

You won't find any news outlet who will err two ways.

------
olivermarks
The biggest challenge to branded corporate 'masthead credibility' information
sources/'news' aggregators is their reliance on firms like Outbrain for
advertising revenue. Outbrain packages up salacious and questionable material
as click bait and runs it on sites like SFGate, supposedly as additional
'news' from a partner of SFGate. The result is deterioration of trust and
respect for SFGate.

The fuzzy term 'fake news' is fraught with problems. We've been lied to so
many times in the western world via 'official' sources many people simply
don't trust the mainstream media any more. Apparently more people were
watching Yogi Bear reruns than CNN in the US a few weeks ago during prime
time.

The joy of the internet is our ability to consume information from a wide
variety of sources, triangulate across many ideas, reporting and opinions to
make up our own minds. The old model of having a small number of 'news
outlets', such as the four commercial TV channels and one main 'news'
broadcast a night that worked so well during the Vietnam war era is long gone.

There seems to be a hankering for regulated, rubber stamped 'news' and
credibility checks, which I think is profoundly undemocratic and against the
principles of free speech.

~~~
jerrylives
> Apparently more people were watching Yogi Bear reruns than CNN in the US a
> few weeks ago during prime time.

lol fake news much? You got that from Sean Hannity's tweets. Cable news are
reporting huge viewership

[http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cable-news-ratings-cnn-
fox-n...](http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cable-news-ratings-cnn-fox-news-
msnbc-q2-1202479416/)

[http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/sean-hannity-mocks-
reruns-...](http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/sean-hannity-mocks-reruns-of-
yogi-bear-are-beating-cnn/article/2628304)

~~~
olivermarks
I read that here on right wing financial site ZeroHedge.
[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-06/cnns-rating-
collaps...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-06/cnns-rating-collapse-
prime-time-shows-draw-less-viewers-re-runs-yogi-bear)

Sean Hannity's tweets - along with any other TV bobble head of either
political persuasion - are not something I ever pay attention too.

I try and read a cross section of perspectives across the political spectrum
and draw my own conclusions from that...

~~~
boomboomsubban
Reading a variety of garbage that doesn't share their sources or even provide
a ledger for what their data means isn't going to give you good conclusions.
Including any of those outlets is a mistake.

~~~
olivermarks
Everything is relative. In my social circles virtually no one watches
broadcast or cable TV any more. The ad industry relies on Neilsen ratings to
say everything is wonderful in the world of passive consumption, but do you
trust their stats? [http://www.pajiba.com/think_pieces/ineffective-nielsen-
ratin...](http://www.pajiba.com/think_pieces/ineffective-nielsen-ratings-are-
ruining-tv-and-no-one-cares.php) Your dismissive idea about not bothering to
'read a variety of garbage' implies you will only read rubber stamped,
verified information. The question there, as we all seek versions of the
truth, is who is doing the verifying and what is their agenda... This is why
the internet is such a wonderful thing, don't be fenced in by pre chewed and
spun information...

~~~
boomboomsubban
If you don't trust Nielsen ratings, why are you reading things that only show
you a sliver of that data and use it to make attacks?

Reading multiple sources doesn't matter if they're all trash, you'll read
multiple biased accounts and then agree with the one conforming to your own
bias. I don't read "rubber stamped information," I read things that can source
their data and check the sources to make sure they aren't lying to me.

Your link's only source is another article that links to themselves multiple
times before providing any source, a bad sign, then the source is provided
without context. It basically says "lower on this list is worse therefore CNN
sucks."

~~~
olivermarks
'sources' is the key word here...I'm not attacking anything.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Trusting such content and repeating their claims is attacking what they want
you to.

------
rssmllr
It is way too simplistic to decree certain sites fake or not, and I would have
hoped than an article from MIT would acknowledge this instead of reinforcing
this "fake news" meme.

If you've heard about yellow journalism as well as Project Mockingbird, then
you can appreciate the fact that news is a tool to entertain and manufacture
consent and occasionally inform. All of it lies on a spectrum between fake and
not fake. Even The Onion which is intentionally satirical, typically has a
nugget of truth in each of his stories, which is why it's good satire.

If you're not already convinced how ridiculous this term is, consider for a
moment: How do you prove if a certain publication is "fake news" or not? If a
"not fake news" mainstream news source publishes a single story which is later
corrected or retracted, is the entire publication forever labeled "fake news"
or is a certain amount of fake stories required for a publication as a whole
to be considered fake?

~~~
gdulli
Journalists have been making mistakes since the beginning of journalism but if
you're paying attention you know there's a new class of web site that's
qualitatively different from journalism. It doesn't make an attempt to do
anything but spread transparent lies. And it's effective because it's aimed at
a specific audience that's susceptible to believing what it wants to believe
without asking questions, regardless of the transparency of the lie to
everyone else. There's a specific reason the term "fake news" was just
recently coined. And there's a reason why some are trying to pervert the term
by applying it to anything that's mistaken. Because then it applies to
everyone instead of calling attention to those who are specifically benefiting
from it.

~~~
rssmllr
I hear where you're coming from, and it could very well just be that the term
appeared to help explain why Hillary lost the election. However, I believe the
term can easily be used to silence independent news sources that are telling
inconvenient truths. The motive for this could be that the proliferation of
new media news sources (social media, blogs, youtube) is a threat to
mainstream establishment news sources' bottom line, as well as their immense
power in shaping public dialogue.

------
siegecraft
Distribution of propaganda by bots is at least sort-of democratic. I wish
there was more analysis of the automated suppression of news by the various
platforms (twitter, facebook et al).

~~~
KirinDave
It's not democratic at all. It's specifically the use of resources to
impersonate votes.

~~~
siegecraft
Ok, not democratic in that each person doesn't have an equal voice, but
democratic in that anyone could buy some twitter botnet time and get their own
message out.

~~~
KirinDave
It's not traditional to raft the notion of democracy to "how much money you
have to rent a resource."

In practice, sure. That can happen. But we tend to universally awknowledge
that it dilutes the intent of democracy, which is to keep a government honest
to the people it governs. It seems like, given the astronomical differences in
wealth between individuals in this world, this is precisely the kind of thing
where one person can use resources to dilute the power of many individuals.

------
jxramos
Would have liked to have seen a concrete example of where it worked and walked
the reader through a simple demonstration. At some point in the article you
realize it's all just a bunch of hand-waving.

------
egberts1
Paper would be better titled as "Examination of Online News Amplification
through Social Bots".

There are no multiple-bullet itemized criteria on what makes "Fake News" in
the whitepaper.

Some of the listed websites makes uses of only links to other websites, also
of dubious nature. Perhaps, that's the criteria.

------
ManlyBread
>Fake news were used to manipulate the recent election

I see this being repeated often, but very little evidence behind it.

------
Dowwie
arxiv link to the underlying research:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07592](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07592)

------
throwawaymanbot
FoxNews and Brietbart are 2 sides of the same coin. They are right/far-right
propaganda outlets, who's only aim is political discord. They will use fake or
blown out of proportion or Pumped up editorial "news" segments to spread their
message to serve an agenda. These bots help their message spread. Any guess
who's agenda they serve?

~~~
robattila128
Maybe it's justified. There's some big fear mongering and public shaming by
the MSM against conservatives, especially lately.

[https://imgur.com/a/c1RnG](https://imgur.com/a/c1RnG)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6rantp/does_any...](https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6rantp/does_anybody_have_any_fake_news_to_add_to_my_cnn/)

~~~
throwawaymanbot
Spare me "the Donald" reddit thread. You dont think in light of certain facts
thats conservatives and fascists masquerading as conservatives getting heat is
justified?

