33 ms·

Well, David Brock and his Correct The Record army did exactly that for the past four or five months. Reddit and a bunch of other sites were crawling with copy

Well, David Brock and his Correct The Record army did exactly that for the past four or five months. Reddit and a bunch of other sites were crawling with copy paste Hillary spam twenty four seven. But the story was about bots and 'fake news'. There was no mention of what your talkin about "persona management". If you have some liks to that then post them. This flurry of stories about 'fake news' looks more like a coordinated media nariatve then anything else. Another angle to try and keep the political agitation going and keep people angry. As WikiLeaks has show the media is part of the party machine and they have an agenda in this.

kartan 10y ago
> This flurry of stories about 'fake news' looks more like a coordinated media nariatve then anything else. I have seen this fake news first hand. I live in Sweden and time to time my friends contact me to ask me how bad is here and how chaotic is the situation. I don't know what they are talking about until they point to some obscure news site that talks about "chaos in Sweden" because 1) Women equality 2) Refugees. It is annoying and has been going for a while. For sure just the fact that media talks about this instead , for example, of talking about the increasing wealth inequality is biased. And shows how much no one with resources wants to talk about the real issues. But that doesn't makes the fact that fake news are more widespread false.
- berntb 10y ago
  Let me expand on that... Just two simple data points: 1. Malmö, with large immigrant population, have a population of around 300,000 -- and half the number of murders this year as the whole of Norway, with 15 times the population. (Norway is culturally very similar to Sweden. Well, unless you ask Norwegians. :-) ) 2. in the last 20 years there have been a negligible building of housing, for political reasons. At the same time, the Swedish population have increased with 10+% -- also for political reasons! This created a really high risk for a housing bubble in the next economic downturn. In short -- there are scary problems. Those problems are much larger than Germany's problems with immigration -- and are pushed under the carpet extensively by the Swedish media. Hence, you see two Swedes with totally different views of the Swedish situation. The internal Swedish discussion is insanely polarized. The largest newspaper have for years stamped people nazi and fascist for arguing to implement a migration policy used in most of the rest of the EU. Norway and Denmark have been attacked for being "brown" (as in SA), despite being a couple of the world's most liberal and tolerant countries. And so on. Finally, the point: The Swedish general media have been systematically misrepresenting facts to the public. (For instance, up until a year ago, it was a "fact" that immigration of largely uneducated people was a good business and gave a good economical result for the country, despite an expensive welfare state.) What is really the fake news in Sweden..? (You might argue that media lie and spin everywhere. Probably true. But in democracies, the news don't generally all use exactly the same spin...)
  - berntb 10y ago
    My comment -- despite being quite carefully written and about something few people on HN really care about -- have really jumped up and down in votes. Which is expected. [Edit: A bit weird when it first had multiple plus votes, then ended up on -2 -- and the vote counter is +2? :-) 20 minutes later, up to 0 and vote counter 4. ] The most extreme parameter when Sweden was compared to the rest of Europe used to be the high amount of trust in the society. People trusted each others and the state. All that seems to be disappearing. I saw in my FB stream "Sweden is a country where we are right now learning to hate each others". Sad. Or maybe it is part of growing up, as a country and as a society. Edit: Vendan seems to think I'm happy about this change in societal climate? :-( I'm closer to mourning.
    - Vendan 10y ago
      Well, hating others is the first step. Soon you'll be able to "Make Sweden Great Again!"(tm)!!! /sarcasm
      - neffy 10y ago
        You only think you´re being sarcastic. A small note here on Swedish history. Back in the day (1600´s or so), Sweden was one of the great military powers of Europe, occupied Norway and Finland, and had armies and mercenaries fighting down as far as Munich in Germany. They were actually one of the leaders of the Protestant Revolution. Back in the day...
        berntb 10y ago
        Generally correct, but Finland was a part of Sweden since hundreds of years earlier than the 1600s (ignoring the question if you can use the concept "nation" about Sweden in e.g. the 1200s). And Norway never really got into our greedy, grasping Swedish hands until much later... they had a bad time enough with being part of Denmark anyway. :-) Edit: And I finally got that Vendan's point was about the recent US election. :-)
- skylan_q 10y ago
  No one denies that there's "fake news" This is an attempt by the media to control the narrative by gatekeeping what's "real news" and what isn't: i.e. what they disagree with or citizen/independent journalism that is beating traditional media in providing better coverage.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    Agreed. Corporations exist only to seek profit, it is indeed the executive staffs duty to do so, there should be a law of economics that states: "With every corporate action, there exists a profit motive”
  - kristjansson 10y ago
    Isn't the complaint about 'fake news' that it's false, not that it's from a non-traditional source?
    - xnull2guest 10y ago
      No, it's motivated that way to get support, but it's about source and credibility. Namely, the traditional media market is an advertising platform: it makes its money by selling stories and perspectives in the form of media narrative to its audience. Large corporations and governments contract with the media to determine what those stories are. You will get stories, and entertaining ones, sure. But it's hardly "true" in the true/false sense. It's like asking if the story Goldilocks is true or false. It isn't either. Indeed, that news media industry sold stories to the American people to - for example - get them into the Iraq war. This was a combination of very true and also false facts. You could point to any particular story and argue pointlessly about whether the individual story was true or false, like Goldilocks. Because of widespread distrust of the 'narrative morals' of mainstream media, alternatives have been appearing. There is a desire by information moguls - both public and private industry - to maintain credibility and to make in various forms alternative narratives not feasible. For public appeal, selective choices are being taken to highlight articles with clearly fabricated facts, with the message being: all alternatives are like this. The first part is true: there exist articles that are complete bullshit both inside and outside the main "credible" media industry. But the second part is not. There's plenty of very well researched, very well documented, very well analysed information that does not get any play in the mainstream media. I remember recently an audio recording of John Kerry talking to Syrian rebel forces was leaked. I got the NYT take. And then I listened to the leaked audio. The content was completely different than the NYT tried to make it out to be and in some cases the point Kerry was making was the exact opposite of the NYT had published. In this case, it was quite clear what the political implications would be of honestly reporting on the content, and including the parts that were selectively edited out.
- hackuser 10y ago
  If you haven't seen it, you may be interested in this story about Russian government information campaigns in Sweden and other countries: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden...
  - xnull2guest 10y ago
    Yeah I've seen that. With both the United States and the Russian government (and of course others) surging so much in information and psychological warfare, is it any wonder everyone is so confused?
    - hackuser 10y ago
      What information is the U.S. government "surging"? In Sweden? I think it's a false equivalency to imply all nations, including the U.S., are doing the same as Russia.
makomk 10y ago
Yeah, I mean "they made up nearly one-fifth of the political discourse on the microblogging service" sounds impressive, but how many people actually read those tweets? (Though I did, hilariously, see parts of the media reporting on a bot that auto-replies to all of Trump's tweets as though it was a real person.) Most of the Twitter fakery seems to be from people virally retweeting false claims. That doesn't require bots. In fact, the last dubious viral claim I investigated (about the election being rigged in favour of Trump) traced back to the verified Twitter account of a well-known journalist, Greg Palast. That didn't seem to make it any more true.

kartan 10y ago

> This flurry of stories about 'fake news' looks more like a coordinated media nariatve then anything else. I have seen this fake news first hand. I live in Sweden and time to time my friends contact me to ask me how bad is here and how chaotic is the situation. I don't know what they are talking about until they point to some obscure news site that talks about "chaos in Sweden" because 1) Women equality 2) Refugees. It is annoying and has been going for a while. For sure just the fact that media talks about this instead , for example, of talking about the increasing wealth inequality is biased. And shows how much no one with resources wants to talk about the real issues. But that doesn't makes the fact that fake news are more widespread false.

berntb 10y ago
Let me expand on that... Just two simple data points: 1. Malmö, with large immigrant population, have a population of around 300,000 -- and half the number of murders this year as the whole of Norway, with 15 times the population. (Norway is culturally very similar to Sweden. Well, unless you ask Norwegians. :-) ) 2. in the last 20 years there have been a negligible building of housing, for political reasons. At the same time, the Swedish population have increased with 10+% -- also for political reasons! This created a really high risk for a housing bubble in the next economic downturn. In short -- there are scary problems. Those problems are much larger than Germany's problems with immigration -- and are pushed under the carpet extensively by the Swedish media. Hence, you see two Swedes with totally different views of the Swedish situation. The internal Swedish discussion is insanely polarized. The largest newspaper have for years stamped people nazi and fascist for arguing to implement a migration policy used in most of the rest of the EU. Norway and Denmark have been attacked for being "brown" (as in SA), despite being a couple of the world's most liberal and tolerant countries. And so on. Finally, the point: The Swedish general media have been systematically misrepresenting facts to the public. (For instance, up until a year ago, it was a "fact" that immigration of largely uneducated people was a good business and gave a good economical result for the country, despite an expensive welfare state.) What is really the fake news in Sweden..? (You might argue that media lie and spin everywhere. Probably true. But in democracies, the news don't generally all use exactly the same spin...)
- berntb 10y ago
  My comment -- despite being quite carefully written and about something few people on HN really care about -- have really jumped up and down in votes. Which is expected. [Edit: A bit weird when it first had multiple plus votes, then ended up on -2 -- and the vote counter is +2? :-) 20 minutes later, up to 0 and vote counter 4. ] The most extreme parameter when Sweden was compared to the rest of Europe used to be the high amount of trust in the society. People trusted each others and the state. All that seems to be disappearing. I saw in my FB stream "Sweden is a country where we are right now learning to hate each others". Sad. Or maybe it is part of growing up, as a country and as a society. Edit: Vendan seems to think I'm happy about this change in societal climate? :-( I'm closer to mourning.
  - Vendan 10y ago
    Well, hating others is the first step. Soon you'll be able to "Make Sweden Great Again!"(tm)!!! /sarcasm
    - neffy 10y ago
      You only think you´re being sarcastic. A small note here on Swedish history. Back in the day (1600´s or so), Sweden was one of the great military powers of Europe, occupied Norway and Finland, and had armies and mercenaries fighting down as far as Munich in Germany. They were actually one of the leaders of the Protestant Revolution. Back in the day...
      - berntb 10y ago
        Generally correct, but Finland was a part of Sweden since hundreds of years earlier than the 1600s (ignoring the question if you can use the concept "nation" about Sweden in e.g. the 1200s). And Norway never really got into our greedy, grasping Swedish hands until much later... they had a bad time enough with being part of Denmark anyway. :-) Edit: And I finally got that Vendan's point was about the recent US election. :-)
skylan_q 10y ago
No one denies that there's "fake news" This is an attempt by the media to control the narrative by gatekeeping what's "real news" and what isn't: i.e. what they disagree with or citizen/independent journalism that is beating traditional media in providing better coverage.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Agreed. Corporations exist only to seek profit, it is indeed the executive staffs duty to do so, there should be a law of economics that states: "With every corporate action, there exists a profit motive”
- kristjansson 10y ago
  Isn't the complaint about 'fake news' that it's false, not that it's from a non-traditional source?
  - xnull2guest 10y ago
    No, it's motivated that way to get support, but it's about source and credibility. Namely, the traditional media market is an advertising platform: it makes its money by selling stories and perspectives in the form of media narrative to its audience. Large corporations and governments contract with the media to determine what those stories are. You will get stories, and entertaining ones, sure. But it's hardly "true" in the true/false sense. It's like asking if the story Goldilocks is true or false. It isn't either. Indeed, that news media industry sold stories to the American people to - for example - get them into the Iraq war. This was a combination of very true and also false facts. You could point to any particular story and argue pointlessly about whether the individual story was true or false, like Goldilocks. Because of widespread distrust of the 'narrative morals' of mainstream media, alternatives have been appearing. There is a desire by information moguls - both public and private industry - to maintain credibility and to make in various forms alternative narratives not feasible. For public appeal, selective choices are being taken to highlight articles with clearly fabricated facts, with the message being: all alternatives are like this. The first part is true: there exist articles that are complete bullshit both inside and outside the main "credible" media industry. But the second part is not. There's plenty of very well researched, very well documented, very well analysed information that does not get any play in the mainstream media. I remember recently an audio recording of John Kerry talking to Syrian rebel forces was leaked. I got the NYT take. And then I listened to the leaked audio. The content was completely different than the NYT tried to make it out to be and in some cases the point Kerry was making was the exact opposite of the NYT had published. In this case, it was quite clear what the political implications would be of honestly reporting on the content, and including the parts that were selectively edited out.
hackuser 10y ago
If you haven't seen it, you may be interested in this story about Russian government information campaigns in Sweden and other countries: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden...
- xnull2guest 10y ago
  Yeah I've seen that. With both the United States and the Russian government (and of course others) surging so much in information and psychological warfare, is it any wonder everyone is so confused?
  - hackuser 10y ago
    What information is the U.S. government "surging"? In Sweden? I think it's a false equivalency to imply all nations, including the U.S., are doing the same as Russia.

makomk 10y ago

Yeah, I mean "they made up nearly one-fifth of the political discourse on the microblogging service" sounds impressive, but how many people actually read those tweets? (Though I did, hilariously, see parts of the media reporting on a bot that auto-replies to all of Trump's tweets as though it was a real person.) Most of the Twitter fakery seems to be from people virally retweeting false claims. That doesn't require bots. In fact, the last dubious viral claim I investigated (about the election being rigged in favour of Trump) traced back to the verified Twitter account of a well-known journalist, Greg Palast. That didn't seem to make it any more true.