7 ms·

I thought it was weird that people would create fake news, but I just realized that it's all about getting clicks/ad views. If Facebook/Google instituted a pol

by deegles 10y ago

I thought it was weird that people would create fake news, but I just realized that it's all about getting clicks/ad views. If Facebook/Google instituted a policy of denying ad payouts to fake news (assuming that could be reliably determined) then the problem would correct itself. Of course, content creators would argue that it's "entertainment" and that "no one really believes it" but that's another issue. :)

waqf 10y ago
F/G don't have a monopoly on ad sponsorship — partly because they refuse to sponsor some kinds of unethical content.
chrishacken 10y ago
That's assuming that fake news sites only use Google/Facebook to monetize their sites.
mcintyre1994 10y ago
Couldn't you monetise fake news that's visible enough to make Google/Facebook do that by charging whoever benefits politically from it? Assuming you can convince them you can do it over and over maybe they'd pay you to keep going or stop?
enraged_camel 10y ago
>>I thought it was weird that people would create fake news Story time... The very first class I took in college was called Information Fluency, back in 2002. Among other things, it taught HTML and CSS (which I already knew) and then the professor did something really interesting for the capstone project, which was to have everyone create a fake website containing some big news and host it on its own domain (which weren't so easy to get back then). The more real-looking you made it, the higher your score. So you quickly learned to pay attention to little things such as copyright notices in footers, professional-looking logos, professional-sounding domain names, static pages for stuff like "organization history" and whatnot. The best part though? As extra credit, the teacher sent everyone a list of ten links, which were either the fake websites created by other students, or real websites. If you were able to correctly distinguish the fake ones from the real ones, you earned the extra credit! So your overall score was a function of how well you fooled others, and how likely you yourself were to be fooled. :) I got the highest score in that class. Mine was a website belonging to some fake space agency called Interstellar Space Sciences, and it was reporting on its front page that scientists had found trace of alien life on Mars. The story had fake citations from real people working at real organizations, as well as high-quality photos of what looked like the Martian landscape (actually Death Valley in California that I applied a reddish color filter to) and diagrams of organic molecules. I also had a "Contact Us" page where I listed my phone number, which several people actually called! For a period of three weeks I just answered all calls with, "Good afternoon, Interstellar Space Sciences, how may I direct your call?" and everyone fell for it, including some of my actual friends... Anyway, I think my experiences in that class turned me into a super skeptic, and from then on I started to take all incoming information with a grain of salt, especially if it is reported in the news.
- lazaroclapp 10y ago
  Nobody thought of checking company registration records, press releases or how long the domain had been active? I mean, I get the main point and I know in practice very few people will go to those lengths for a random site, but given you were given a list known to contain false sites... well, checking for incorporation documents, street address registration and legal contact sounds time effective.
acdha 10y ago
> If Facebook/Google instituted a policy of denying ad payouts to fake news (assuming that could be reliably determined) then the problem would correct itself. Only in some cases: consider how much money is spent on political advertising, and then all of the second-order work funding think-tanks, newspapers, magazines, TV networks, etc. to promote a particular viewpoint. I wouldn't classify Reason as a fake news source but they're an example of what that might look like. Here are their IRS filings from 2015 showing ~90% of their operating income coming from donations: https://www.reason.org/files/2015-reason_990.pdf https://www.reason.org/files/2015-reason_990.pdf What happens if one or two of their major donors decides this isn't the most effective way to support their viewpoint and they'd get more return at the polls by setting up a less ethical site? How many Google Ads could you buy for $9M/year, and how quickly would that translate into organic page-rank? Now consider that Presidential campaign spending has been in the billion-plus range for awhile and ask how many activist donors would be totally comfortable dropping tens of millions for a couple of years to run a fake site if they thought it'd be more effective than a few more TV ads.

by deegles 10y ago

waqf 10y ago

F/G don't have a monopoly on ad sponsorship — partly because they refuse to sponsor some kinds of unethical content.

chrishacken 10y ago

That's assuming that fake news sites only use Google/Facebook to monetize their sites.

mcintyre1994 10y ago

Couldn't you monetise fake news that's visible enough to make Google/Facebook do that by charging whoever benefits politically from it? Assuming you can convince them you can do it over and over maybe they'd pay you to keep going or stop?

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>I thought it was weird that people would create fake news Story time... The very first class I took in college was called Information Fluency, back in 2002. Among other things, it taught HTML and CSS (which I already knew) and then the professor did something really interesting for the capstone project, which was to have everyone create a fake website containing some big news and host it on its own domain (which weren't so easy to get back then). The more real-looking you made it, the higher your score. So you quickly learned to pay attention to little things such as copyright notices in footers, professional-looking logos, professional-sounding domain names, static pages for stuff like "organization history" and whatnot. The best part though? As extra credit, the teacher sent everyone a list of ten links, which were either the fake websites created by other students, or real websites. If you were able to correctly distinguish the fake ones from the real ones, you earned the extra credit! So your overall score was a function of how well you fooled others, and how likely you yourself were to be fooled. :) I got the highest score in that class. Mine was a website belonging to some fake space agency called Interstellar Space Sciences, and it was reporting on its front page that scientists had found trace of alien life on Mars. The story had fake citations from real people working at real organizations, as well as high-quality photos of what looked like the Martian landscape (actually Death Valley in California that I applied a reddish color filter to) and diagrams of organic molecules. I also had a "Contact Us" page where I listed my phone number, which several people actually called! For a period of three weeks I just answered all calls with, "Good afternoon, Interstellar Space Sciences, how may I direct your call?" and everyone fell for it, including some of my actual friends... Anyway, I think my experiences in that class turned me into a super skeptic, and from then on I started to take all incoming information with a grain of salt, especially if it is reported in the news.

lazaroclapp 10y ago
Nobody thought of checking company registration records, press releases or how long the domain had been active? I mean, I get the main point and I know in practice very few people will go to those lengths for a random site, but given you were given a list known to contain false sites... well, checking for incorporation documents, street address registration and legal contact sounds time effective.

acdha 10y ago

> If Facebook/Google instituted a policy of denying ad payouts to fake news (assuming that could be reliably determined) then the problem would correct itself. Only in some cases: consider how much money is spent on political advertising, and then all of the second-order work funding think-tanks, newspapers, magazines, TV networks, etc. to promote a particular viewpoint. I wouldn't classify Reason as a fake news source but they're an example of what that might look like. Here are their IRS filings from 2015 showing ~90% of their operating income coming from donations: https://www.reason.org/files/2015-reason_990.pdf https://www.reason.org/files/2015-reason_990.pdf What happens if one or two of their major donors decides this isn't the most effective way to support their viewpoint and they'd get more return at the polls by setting up a less ethical site? How many Google Ads could you buy for $9M/year, and how quickly would that translate into organic page-rank? Now consider that Presidential campaign spending has been in the billion-plus range for awhile and ask how many activist donors would be totally comfortable dropping tens of millions for a couple of years to run a fake site if they thought it'd be more effective than a few more TV ads.