19 ms·

We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

358 points by dkarapetyan 10y ago

icomefromreddit 10y ago
No need to look further, NPR...
- fencepost 10y ago
  > No need to look further, NPR... If that's meant to imply that NPR publishes fake news, either you're a poorly done troll or you're exactly the sort that those fake news sites are targeted to. Just about everything "news" coming out of NPR can be well sourced, though that may be harder to do for investigative things like this story. Even for this one though I suspect there's enough information in the story to allow a qualified investigator to duplicate or verify their work.
epicureanideal 10y ago
This was the most interesting part for me... -------- He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right. "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says. -------- So in this case, the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right, rather than by the alt-right to promote their views. Oh man. I don't think this tactic can lead to anything good. I hope we don't get to the point where it's really just all out information warfare... and it seems like we're already halfway there.
- caf 10y ago
  I suppose there's the potential for making people cast a more critical eye over outlandish articles that appear to support their own position, if there's a possibility that it might have been created by "the enemy" to discredit them.
  - epicureanideal 10y ago
    But it also creates an environment where you can't ever actually know what any group thinks. "Are there REALLY neo-nazis giving nazi salutes celebrating Trump's victory on video, or is this a staged event to make Trump look like he has neo-nazi supporters?" "Are there even that many well dressed, non-tattoo'd neo-nazis?" (Maybe there are... I don't know any personally, but I wasn't expecting to see people in button down shirts and khakis and clean looking... apologies to any neo-nazis that may be reading this for having a pre-formed impression of what you might be like.) And what happens when a group comes along that REALLY DOES have absolutely crazy views? "Oh well, that was discredited, but that group doesn't ACTUALLY believe the (minority group here) are the cause of all our problems. That's just some fake news designed to discredit them. I like some of the less crazy articles by these guys. I think I'll still vote for the (actually batshit crazy neo-nazi party by another name of 2032)."
    - trprog 10y ago
      Although the medium is new the idea of publishing stuff that misrepresents other people's position is nothing new. Here is a relatively modern example from the very early 20th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of... And although the term has a very tinfoil hat connotation "false flag operations" have also been a thing for millennia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag Even young children understand the logic of "I will do a thing and try to make it look like someone else did it." >But it also creates an environment where you can't ever actually know what any group thinks. You never could really. At best you could get a vague approximation that was hopefully not inaccurate in any way that would bite you in the ass.
      - dvtv75 10y ago
        I seem to recall news video of Muslims firing guns into the air and celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center actually being video of Muslims celebrating a sporting match victory, about 15 years ago.
    - 10y ago
- wyager 10y ago
  > I hope we don't get to the point where it's really just all out information warfare I honestly thing we're headed for full-blown Strossian memetic warfare. The amount of high-level shilling this election cycle (both professional and amateur) was unreal.
- visarga 10y ago
  The tactic was to make money off the gullibility of people during elections and it worked. He's one of the most successful. You can't believe a professional liar who says he did it for the party, when you can also find in the same article that he makes 1000$ per day from it.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  I hope we don't get to the point where it's really just all out information warfare Make no mistake, it's always been all out information warfare. The difference now is that the new messengers are not high ranking government or business people and the medium is faster and easier to penetrate. In the past you had to have background, credential and access to get your word into one of the few mediums available, Radio, TV or Print. Now all you need is to make something look good enough and find the right audience.
  - _nedR 10y ago
    >Make no mistake, it's always been all out information warfare. If you look at evolution, it is just a fight over whose genes get passed over to the next generation. Genes are just biological encoding of information. Viruses are almost entirely strands of DNA, that is until they find a host cell to infect their information with. In a way it is all just information warfare.
    - kingkawn 10y ago
      The focus of genes as the fundamental location of the information of life has been a multi-decade assumption that has not born the fruit it was assumed that the "code" of life would produce. Seeing life through the lens of genetics is as meaningful as judging it against any other arbitrary metric, and leaves out so much that it permits little insight beyond further refinement of the model. Much like the mistakes made recently by the established political class in over emphasizing the predictive power of their metrics even as the world itself spins further and further away from them.
- noobermin 10y ago
  >the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right I would say that this individual who was a liberal tried to do this. This isn't like a group of leftists conspiring to do (anti-)propaganda. It is pretty stupid, and his continuation of it is extremely confusing. Sorry, but a side rant to the more "entrepreneurial" startup-cats who browse here. Would you consider this fellow and others like him an entrepreneur? I ask because there is talk in the article that he is one. Even if you take him at his word that he is trying to highlight the problem of disinformation rather than profit off of it, it seems quite suspect to me. A good analogy here is a cook serving spoiled food to highlight healthy and safe cooking habits, regardless of who it hurts. It makes no sense.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    The term "entrepreneur" is value-neutral. It refers to someone who successfully forms a business venture by noticing and taking advantage of an opportunity or need.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      > The term "entrepreneur" is value-neutral. Even on Hacker News?
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      Isn't "successful" a value-term? Aren't there "entrepreneurs" who repeatedly fail? My interpretation of entrepreneur is someome who fails with other people's money. The one you described is just a business person.
  - ehnto 10y ago
    The continuation of it could be explained purely by the financial insentives from advertising on the sites. It doesn't sound like he would have any morale qualms with the whole situation. Sounds pretty entrepreneurial to me.
    - messel 10y ago
- golfer 10y ago
  I don't believe his narrative for a second. He's in this for the money, period. He peddles lies for a living, and also is lying about "publicly denouncing" anything.
  - woogiewonka 10y ago
    This exactly. He's in it purely for money. So Cal is full of shady characters like him...
  - jonathankoren 10y ago
    He even said he tried to do with fake news targeting liberals, but it didn't work. If this was ideological, he never would try for an own goal. Vox even did an article on conspiracies and why they flourish on the right more than the left.[0] Essentially it's low trust, highly engaged people versus lesser engaged people. If you don't trust anything, and you're consuming "knowledge", you're going to latch on to conspiracies.[1] [0] http://www.vox.com/2015/12/10/9886222/conspiracy-theories-right-wing http://www.vox.com/2015/12/10/9886222/conspiracy-theories-ri... [1] Or at least, that's what they want you to think.[2] [2] FNORD
    - zigzigzag 10y ago
      Let's assume for a moment that "conspiracies flourish on the right" is true. If so, I'd have to say that must only be true in parts of America. I have met lots of people with both right and left wing views outside of the USA (some of whom were also Americans), and didn't see any obvious correlation between political viewpoint and conspiracy theories. If anything I'd say there was a slight left wing slant if we include very generic conspiracy theories like "the banks and big corporations are trying to undermine us all". If it is true then I would guess the reason is the relative lack of conservative media in America vs say the UK. In the UK if you want to get viewpoints from the extreme left and right just pick up the Guardian and the Express and read both. In the USA it seems harder. Are there any mainstream conservative-leaning newspapers? Whenever I see the term "conservative media" used in America it always means Fox News which is only a TV channel. Breitbart seems to be tapping into that market segment but again, it's not a newspaper. If you have right wing views and have figured out that there aren't any media outlets that subscribe to your worldview, I can see that this would very easily look like a generic conspiracy and that in turn would breed receptivity to fake right-wing news simply because there are so few places with good reputation where such news is likely to be covered.
- rhizome 10y ago
  I hope we don't get to the point where it's really just all out information warfare... and it seems like we're already halfway there. Those in power have been there for all of our lives. J. Edgar Hoover only died in 1972 and his practice of information warfare was well in place by then. The "halfway" you speak of is in the citizen's awareness that anybody can be ratfucked[1] and that they're going to need to be able to protect themselves. Maybe there should be a 2nd Amendment for data, packets, or internet connections in general. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking
- JKCalhoun 10y ago
  > So in this case, the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right, rather than by the alt-right to promote their views. And so after the gullible rubes swallowed his bit of fake news hook line and sinker, he ran to tell the world.
  - ec109685 10y ago
    More like after he got caught, he felt the need to spin.
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
    I'm not into making fake news but I might have found another bait: "YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS! Progressives (lefties, or what you Americans call them) are behind fake news industry to spread lies and discredit conservatives!" All in all, it's an interesting bait and valuable lesson. Who knew you could make so much money like that? I guess now the train is gone and it might hit very hard a lot of blogs/new newspapers who try to get into the industry for being fake. Your AdSense account's value is getting higher, folks!
- aikah 10y ago
  > publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction Denounce those stories by making $30k a month as a spammer ? that's how this guy "denounces the alt-right" ? and NPR buys that argument just like that ?
  - Gargoyle 10y ago
    In all these interviews with fake news makers, I've been amused that people who are obvious experts at telling people what they want to hear are still telling people what they want to hear. And it sails right by the real journalists un-noted.
  - ec109685 10y ago
    I don't think the NPR passed judgement as to whether it should be bought or not. They are letting us decide. My value judgement is that this is a terrible way to make money and it is unfortunate blatant lies are not somehow slander, despite it being about a prominent individual. The rolling stone was held liable for their false article about sexual assault. I wish this guy could be as well. He duped millions of people.
    - aikah 10y ago
      > I don't think the NPR passed judgement as to whether it should be bought or not. They are letting us decide. How about they actually investigate and find out whether he is telling the truth or lying ? This isn't passing judgement , this is actual reporting. So he was lying back then but now he is telling the truth and "journalists" should not pass judgement ?
      - omginternets 10y ago
        They did investigate: they're telling us that this guy makes significant money from his activities. Draw your own conclusions. They don't have to engage in finger-wagging in order to be reporters.
- discardorama 10y ago
  > the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right I would have a hard time taking a guy who's the "godfather of fake news" at his word. Who's to say he isn't making this all up?
- reitoei 10y ago
  > I hope we don't get to the point where it's really just all out information warfare... and it seems like we're already halfway there. We live in a world where the Daily Mail is the most-visited English language news web site and people are using fucking toasters to launch DDOS attacks. The internet has gone to hell. We've already lost.
  - titzer 10y ago
    It's not all bad. We're here, aren't we?
    - reitoei 10y ago
      Going totally OT here for a sec, but you guys are awesome. Seriously. This is one of the only places I feel I can come where people are, for the most part, respectful and polite to each other. Nobody is pushing a personal agenda with religion, politics or ethics. Nobody is trying to convince you the world is flat or that aliens built the pyramids. Nobody cares if you're male/female/trans/whatever. Just a bunch of folks talking about their passion without the overhead (for want of a better word) of the everyday web. Places like HN are rare these days. If there is anything similar, please let me know.
      - TorKlingberg 10y ago
        Maybe a couple of years ago. Today, I wouldn’t trust the average HN commenter to evaluate even the silliest conspiracy theory. Even back then, it only worked because we aggressively downvoted the nutters and ignored their complaints.
      - forgetsusername 10y ago
        HackerNews happens to share your values and opinions on things like religion and politics. Donald Trump just won the election; did you read the opinions of people here on this happening? And while we may not be pushing a Flat World, there are plenty of conspiracy theories and ignorance on topics (eg. banks), and a fanaticism with regards to a other things (eg. Tesla) . Opposing views on these sorts of topics are smashed with down votes. My point is, of course it feels comfortable amongst like minded people. But don't extrapolate that to mean this is somehow a special place that's uniquely accepting of all opinions. If you don't believe me, do what the guy in the article did, and play devil's advocate in a few comment threads here.
- Malarkey73 10y ago
  I think he is being disingenuous. Maybe he started it as an experiment but it's obviously been all about the Benjamins for a long time (20-25 writers? $10000-30000 a month?).
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  False flag operations. Purposeful provocateurs. Seeing a lot of that lately. The thing to remember -- and this comes before the time there was a net -- is that the vast majority of people are nice, socially intelligent, and well-meaning. What the net is doing is convincing us that those in the out-group are simple-minded fools being led around by evil demagogues. That is not the case. But the net is not doing that because of bad people on the net. The net is doing that because humans are predisposed to consume lots of content that tells them this. The fault is internal to each of us. The net is just automating the ability of content providers to take advantage of it.
- _pmf_ 10y ago
  > So in this case, the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right, rather than by the alt-right to promote their views. See also: the complete HRC campaign.
kordless 10y ago
> But, he says, dozens, maybe hundreds of entrepreneurs will be ready to take his place. This is one of many examples of the dialog where this individual is speaking for others while ironically indicating he's running a "business". The fabrication and willful spread of disinformation is a powerfully disruptive behavior.
- derrickdirge 10y ago
  This is a common "troll" mentality. Truly they just get a thrill from getting a rise out of someone (and/or there's an economic motive, as is the case here), but they're able to post-rationalize it as a helpful service to their victims. They're pointing out areas of weakness; or they're playing 'devil's advocate'; or they're demonstrating the folly in engaging with an unreasonable person. One of the things I find most frightening about people is that, generally, we all think we're the good guy.
  - Pokepokalypse 10y ago
    >This is a common "troll" mentality. Also the justification for nuclear proliferation. . .
caf 10y ago
The first "fake news" I remember seeing was about a year ago, and it was completely apolitical - it was a made-up story about a multiple-fatality car crash in my city. When I investigated the source, it had several exact copies of the same article, just set in different cities around the world. At the time I was completely bewildered as to the motive behind this, but I can only assume that it's the ad money, as paltry as that would seem. Coler's protestations notwithstanding.
- nickfromseattle 10y ago
  I was tricked by KNP7.com. If you search "Eminem moves to {city name}" the exact same article appears for multiple cities including Seattle, New York and probably dozens of other cities.
  - joshmn 10y ago
    Taylor Swift, Miley, and the Biebs himself also moved to my hometown.
  - usrusr 10y ago
    That's how you increase click rates using geoIP databases.
- knowaveragejoe 10y ago
  In that case it's likely a script generating these to catch people in google searches. "Fake news" for sure, but not politically motivated.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  I think (all) the ad networks are the grandfathers of fake news. Maybe it's not news, but with "native advertising" the trend to forward folks to a blog post about this AMAZING PRODUCT instead of shopping cart started. I blame Taboola!
- pcunite 10y ago
  I've seen the big networks doing this as well. All very strange. Seems to be leading up to something.
visarga 10y ago
> At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers Ha! He's hired some shady SEO company to write those. You can buy "spun" articles by the hundreds from black hat forums. I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually written by some poor Indian. No way can he pay 25 writers with $20-30K/month. It's just a get rich quick scheme, a spammer, but one that destroys a lot of public value in order to profit a little.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Fiverr. You can buy a huge amount of unique ("unspun") articles with $20k-$30k month. Maybe he spins them too, but getting huge amount of unique content cheaply is trivial if you don't care much about the quality.
failrate 10y ago
The problem I have is that I have never seen a denouncement. If there have been any denouncements, then they have not had the same amount of impact as the initiating fake news lie.
matt_wulfeck 10y ago
> "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide." The story is completely false Yes this story false. What's not false is that a DNC staffer was found murdered in DC and nothing was taken from his pockets right after the DNC email leaks. Assange suggested he was the source and offered up a $25k reward[0]. 1. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/10/assange-implies-murdered-dnc-staffer-was-wikileaks-source.html http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/10/assange-implies-m...
- ec109685 10y ago
  Assange could have made things clear by confirming he was the source. Otherwise, it is ineuendo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Committee_email_leak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Com...
WhitneyLand 10y ago
Jestin Coler is a cancer and his actions should be made illegal. It seems possible such a law could be narrowly applied such that it would prove constitutional. Judicial review could weigh the value to society of false speech, or lying, against the erosion of integrity in the free press. One example of a false speech review was the stolen valor act. Lot of doors left open here; http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/the_first_amendment_and_the_right_to_lie http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/the_first_amendment_a...
- veidr 10y ago
  As long as we're making up fantasy laws to solve this problem, why don't we just outlaw being lazy, stupid, and gullible?
  - jknoepfler 10y ago
    Playing devil's advocate here, but why don't we? It's not the worst idea anyone has ever hand. I sort of think epistemological pollution is an externality of being stupid/gullible that we should make people liable for. Laziness is pretty difficult to operationalize, but if you were literally too lazy to feed your children that would be a form of criminal negligence. So we do, to an extent, already do this.
    - freshhawk 10y ago
      Why don't we? Because thankfully some people understand how power works. Especially the power to imprison people for subjective qualities. Depending on who's judging, this comment could get you in some legal trouble if those laws existed. Flawed people adjudicate and enforce laws. Because they are people. Forgetting that is dangerous.
      - jknoepfler 10y ago
        We already do this very liberally in the United States judicial system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence. This has nothing to do with power, and everything to do with a setting minimum legal bar for due diligence below which an individual can be held accountable in a court of law.
meritt 10y ago
Huh, weird, I actually looked into this exact same site (when it was being shared all across FB) and found something else telling -- a reused Google Adsense publisher tag ("ca-pub-1413743582782046") which I then found on a number of other sites: FireBrandLeft.com, NationalReport.net and some articles by this author http://www.liberalamerica.org/author/matt/ http://www.liberalamerica.org/author/matt/ -- All were either owned by the same guy or he was a "journalist" at these other sites. Except these all pointed back to the same individual: Matt Terzi https://www.facebook.com/Mattterzi https://www.facebook.com/Mattterzi https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-terzi-aa6b4542 https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-terzi-aa6b4542 terzimatt@gmail.com But then I lost interest and moved onto something else, guess I should have contacted NPR. I assume this is simply Jestin Coler's fake persona and I should have done some more digging.
- derrickdirge 10y ago
  Or "Jestin Coler" is just the name the author used to protect his real identity.
  - mrleiter 10y ago
    Well, if that's the case, it's off the table now.
  - mcbits 10y ago
    > as for actual employed writers, again these guys sort of make their own money through ad code. He's probably just one of the contributing writers.
- probably_wrong 10y ago
  Please don't post someone else's personal info. Let's not turn this into a witch hunt.
  - ManlyBread 10y ago
    It's publicly available data that takes a few minutes to dig up.
LargeCompanies 10y ago
And fake news the majority of it on Facebook is shared by Trump supporters. A demographic who are neophytes....
- deleted 10y ago
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  - deleted 10y ago
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- LargeCompanies 10y ago
  Im just sharing what Im seeing ... older demographic are not tech/Internet savvy and voting data shows that demographic's majority voted for Trump (no matter what I think of him and or Clinton .. i didnt vote for either).
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Possible older folks are less likely to lie to exit pollers, too?
dmfdmf 10y ago
Since the government had taken over education aren't they responsible for churning out morons who can't think for themselves and distinguish fake news from real news? Perhaps that was their goal all along.
- insertnickname 10y ago
  When companies fail, consumers go somewhere else. When the government fails, we give it more money. The real problem with government is not enough spending.
  - neom 10y ago
    Not enough or misapplied?
    - insertnickname 10y ago
      That's the point.
kriro 10y ago
My cynic takeaway: it seems like the concerns over falling ad revenues due to ad-blockers are exaggerated.
- kristjansson 10y ago
  There's probably also a relationship between users likely to click on these things, and users likely to have ad block off.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  it's stopping the trend before it becomes a norm and even grandma has ad block installed
vinhboy 10y ago
This story is fascinating to me. I also run a couple of these "wordpress" informational type sites, but never in my dream did I thought about publishing fake news to make money. Too bad I was not smart enough to get into this business. I wish he would be more honest about it. I am pretty sure he's just doing it for the money. I don't blame him. That's good money. The moral and ethical dilemma of it is kinda murky. Is it really his fault people are so stupid?
- msane 10y ago
  Wow. Thanks for the insight into this psychology. It's all greed with you then isn't it? You'll lie to people and de-educate them for good money. Perhaps you would consider being a slum lord or a pimp or a drug dealer for the right price?
  - pakitan 10y ago
    Do you really think it's possible to de-educate any further people who think the moon landing was faked?
    - usrusr 10y ago
      Just as education, de-education is a lifelong process.
      - pakitan 10y ago
        If one lacks education in the first place, they don't have much to de-, do they?
        msane 10y ago
        I suppose you would watch the world burn.
    - msane 10y ago
      Of course. "Do you really think" it's fine to encourage them further?
natural219 10y ago
Flagging this issue, again. It's a one-sided, polarized political issue.
greggman 10y ago
Fascinating. I'm not sure I buy the left isn't just as gullible as the right. Or at least not without more proof? I suspect you'd need a right leaning person with a similar background writing left bait fake news to have the same impact though. Write fake news about charter schools doing something bad (charter school puts LGBT students in detention) or fake churches doing bad (church in Idaho found funneling funds to Trump campaign) or fake doctors doing something the left would find atrocious but believable (medical clinic in Utah refuses to help unwed pregnant teens unless they agree to marry) I say that because I know lots of traditionally left leaning people who believe all kinds of unscientific stuff with the same fervor as the "religious right". Auras, Rieki, Astrology, Homeopathy, Chakra, etc...
- russdill 10y ago
  I think in general yes, absolutely true. Everyone across the political spectrum is just as susceptible. However, in this election, people on the left didn't need to look any further than the candidate's own words to get the rage high they were seeking. For the right though, I mean sure, you have mishandling of emails and a charitable foundation, but even with years investigation and even publicly leaked emails there wasn't a whole lot of fire, just a bunch of smoke.
  - briandear 10y ago
    Actually I'd make the argument that given the propensity for major media outlets to be strongly left-biased, there were plenty of real stories to inflame the left. While those same outlets were actually promoting an unproven talking point that Clinton emails were hacked/released by the Russians. Hillary Clinton claimed that to be true, so that became the narrative, even though that news was "fake." There has been, in fact no proof that the Russians did anything -- only that the techniques uses were similar to ones the Russians have used. [1] Yet, we're still hearing stories that the Russians "hacked" the DNC and Clinton. In fact, the media was casting doubt on the authenticity of the leaked documents. MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle, dutifully informed viewers that the transcripts "haven't been authenticated." (When referring to a leaked Goldman Sachs speech.) Clinton said in front of the 66 million TV viewers of the second presidential debate, "The Russian government [is] directing the attacks, the hacking on American accounts to influence our election and WikiLeaks is part of that.." The emails were either hacked or they're not real. Nobody has ever complained about their fake emails being hacked. Outlets spent more time talking about how despicable the Russians were yet ignoring, for the most part the content of those emails. For example, one of those emails was Clinton campaign chair talking about "Needy latinos." Not a single word printed in the Times, the Washington Post or any mainstream media outlet. However, Trump says something 20 years ago and it becomes front-page news for literally a week. Given that one of the themes of this election was "racism" -- the characterization of the two people to which Podesta was referring would be considered relevant considering claims of racism were being made against Trump. However, imagine if a "reputable" news organization dug into the Clinton Foundation's apparent irregularities with the gusto with which they covered Trump's purported sexual harassment. For example, The Daily Beast published a story in October called "All of Donald Trump's Accusers: A Timeline of Every Alleged Grope."[2] Now to their credit, they did use the word "alleged," however, if you look at their coverage of the Clinton Foundation, they were almost apologetic. For example, "Hey Hillary, It's Past Time to Shut Down the Clinton Foundation. It does great work. But in political terms, it's an albatross."[3] The writer then goes on to complain about how Judicial Watch is scrutinizing the Foundation. The entire point of that piece and those similar is that the Clinton's should shut down the foundation because it's red meat for right-wing investigation and thus politically unhelpful. Not a single word about the allegation of pay-to-play or any number of ethical issues (such as the Foundation paying for Chelsea's wedding.[4].) Interesting that only Fox and the NYPost reported this, despite this being hugely unethical and probably illegal and germane to the question of Hillary Clinton's trustworthiness and ethics as well as interesting to the IRS as well as donors who ostensibly are donating to charity. Jenna Bush drinking underage in Austin during the Bush administration got more coverage on CNN than what approaches embezzlement by Chelsea Clinton.[5] The purpose of this comment is to point out that those on the right who are typically targeted by fake news are so gullible to it because there is a large percentage of stories in the mainstream media that are anti-conservative yet there ARE substantial stories that the media either ignores or glosses over when it comes to the left. Chelsea Clinton potentially embezzling millions of charitable contributions is a huge story that at least warrants investigation. Sanders supporting DNC activist Seth Rich gets murdered, the media calls it a robbery despite nothing being taken, yet no enterprising reporter seems interested in digging any deeper?[6] What that means is that there is a market demand for more information about the stories that are hinted at but aren't fully reported. The left, on the other hand has plenty of well-reported anti-right news to read with mainstream outlets, thus their appetite for information is mostly satisfied. [1] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/441266/hillary-clinton-democratic-emails-hacked-russia http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/441266/hillary-clinton-... [2] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/12/all-of-donald-trump-s-accusers-a-timeline-of-every-alleged-grope-and-assault.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/12/all-of-dona... [3] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/23/hey-hillary-it-s-past-time-to-shut-down-the-clinton-foundation.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/23/hey-hillary... [4] http://nypost.com/2016/11/06/chelsea-clinton-used-foundation-to-help-pay-for-wedding-emails/ http://nypost.com/2016/11/06/chelsea-clinton-used-foundation... [5] http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/04/27/bush.daughter/ http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/04/27/bush.daughter/ [6] https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4sejv7/the_death_of_seth_rich/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4sejv7/the_deat...
castratikron 10y ago
>He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot. "What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened," Coler says. Amazing.
freshhawk 10y ago
I guess a lot of people don't know the type, judging by the accusations that his "this was to troll the alt-right" was a lie. Seems obvious to me, he started with that intent, thought that obviously the stories would be discredited and the people who bought it would be shamed. It sometimes happens to organizations that promote an Onion article as real. It does a lot of damage to their reputations. Then that didn't happen and he made a lot of money. He was disgusted by how stupid everyone is, liked the money and justified it to himself that he's conning money from gullible rubes who are bad people. I don't know this guy, but I know more than one person just like him.
JonnieCache 10y ago
This is utterly offensive and this man is utterly corrupt. He claims to be doing this to discredit his foes, but there's no evidence that he's done any of the "public denouncing" which he gives as his justification for polluting the public sphere with his lies. He does however admit to coining it to the tune of six figures. If we've learned anything from the twentieth century its that corrupting the public discourse like this can lead to the slaughter of millions and the downfall of whole societies. This man and those like him deserve harsh punishment. There's a similar interview here, with another left-winger who claims to be making "satire" and is more outwardly racked with guilt than this man, but who is also still cashing the adsense checks: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/17/facebook-fake-news-writer-i-think-donald-trump-is-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/?tid=a_inl https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11...
- dmichulke 10y ago
  It almost sounds as if you believe that silencing these fake news will stop people from believing fake news. I don't think so. Also, slaughtering millions in the 20th century was usually the job of a big government in a big country and I have difficulty recalling that "fake news believers" or any kind of people actually voted for a war or went on the streets in favor of a war. And practically always before and during these wars the governments regularly shouted "fake news" on everything that didn't fit their narrative.
  - JonnieCache 10y ago
    I'm not talking about wars - I'm talking about the holocaust and the deaths from internal repression in the soviet union and maoist china. One of the preconditions for such things to take place is the corruption of truth in the public discourse. I'm sorry if this seems like exaggeration or scaremongering but I find these stories terrifying far beyond the election of donald trump. >the governments regularly shouted "fake news" This is another aspect of what I'm talking about. Once you break the good faith assumption of truth speaking in the public sphere, it becomes a vicious cycle as nobody is incentivised to speak truthfully. Of course the press has always been used to manipulate the public, but this seems categorically different. The people who are writing these stories are shamelessly fabricating them, as opposed to uncritically republishing information fed to them by authority figures. This breaks down interpersonal trust in society in a way that simply pushing the government line doesn't.
sethx 10y ago
Am I the only one who had a deja vu reading this article?
dluan 10y ago
What boggles my mind is that Facebook and Twitter are so very complicit by creating platforms for very granular targeting. You liked the Green Bay Packers, a gun owners group, an old 2008 Tea Party video, live 60 miles outside of a city and between 40-65? Not only is that profile there, Facebook ads will tell you almost exactly how large your reach is. This is nothing more than information arbitrage, and that the unit economics from advertisers hasn't quite caught up yet. It's what allowed Buzzfeed to exist in the first place, and ultra targeted startups like Teespring to grow, by training a small part of the crowd to become content creators. Moreover, traditional content creators like NYTimes don't even understand how much they are being undercut cents-to-words. You work out the funnel conversion, hope for some organic spread, and just pump things out. In a few years, this whole thing could be automated and AI generated to sway elections and public opinions. All you need is a training dataset for the targeted population's underlying views and beliefs. Imagine a startup trying to do this at scale, growing 10% week over week or something insane. At this point it's basically going to match the velocity of information across online networks of people. If this becomes a positive feedback loop where readers start to accelerate the spread after becoming radicalized - this becomes a social virus.
- dluan 10y ago
  "In any case, we can’t pretend that engineers are not legislators of public discourse anymore." https://medium.com/initialized-capital/fascism-and-the-historical-irony-of-facebooks-fake-news-problem-d744b05045fd#.xe5433ci0 https://medium.com/initialized-capital/fascism-and-the-histo...
  - threatofrain 10y ago
    Are the construction workers legislators of the road? Are actors the legislators of TV? Engineers do not own their efforts, and nor do construction workers or actors.
  - atmosx 10y ago
    > "In any case, we can’t pretend that engineers are not legislators of public discourse anymore." Legislation is a rather complex sport that requires deep understanding of repercussions. I've seen rather skilled blockchain hackers talking economics, finance, politics and monetary policy. Their understanding of the current system (in terms of structure) was appalling. One needs to know the role of central banks before bashing them. I am afraid that your average engineer will make a pretty incompetent legislator. So let's leave legislation to legislators... :-)
jondubois 10y ago
I think that all the news which we consume is misleading in one way or another; whether they deceive us through outright misinformation, unevenly balanced arguments, or priming (through repeated exposure to particular concepts). While these small fake news creators deceive us through outright misinformation, big news corporations deceive us through priming. If you repeatedly draw peoples' attentions to the same concepts and ideas over and over again; they will incorporate these ideas as part of their core belief system and it will cause them to block out real information which opposes those ideas. Small independent 'news' creators just don't have the necessary scale to leverage priming effects, so they are forced to resort to outright 'sensational' misinformation to push forward their agendas. I think that fake news is important for society, just like religion; sometimes the intention behind the text is more important than the actual information content within.
- makomk 10y ago
  Definitely. For example, compare these two Wired articles about the possibility of rigging the US election by hacking voting systems: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-rigging-presidential-election/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-rig... was from before the election and claimed that it would be virtually impossible, would require a conspiracy of thousands to get past all the safeguards, and was ridiculous. https://www.wired.com/2016/11/hacked-not-audit-election-rest/ https://www.wired.com/2016/11/hacked-not-audit-election-rest... after the election claims that actually, it's well established that they're hackable, and that the audits are so ineffective it's almost as though they're designed not to detect hacking. Two completely contradictory positions, both backed up with an arsenal of facts and expert opinions and presented as definite truth. All that changed is that the idea the election results could be hacked became anti-Trump rather than pro-Trump.
jlubawy 10y ago
Makes me really question if this article is fake to prove some sort of point, it's really hard to know (for sure) anymore
meira 10y ago
So npr created a fake news based on a fake news created by a Hillary supporter. Let's track down another fake news creator. Who wrote this?
ndr 10y ago
Quote 0: What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened," Coler says. Quote 1: Coler, a registered Democrat, says he has no regrets about his fake news empire. He doesn't think fake news swayed the election. Quote 2: However, Coler insists this is not about money. It's about showing how easily fake news spreads. And fake news spread wide and far before the election. When I pointed out to Coler that the money gave him a lot of incentive to keep doing it regardless of the impact, he admitted that was "correct." Did he created his own bubble to justify this?
paulajohnson 10y ago
I notice that his attempts to seed fake news on the liberal side always got promptly debunked. I think this election is going to be the high water mark for fake news, its just that liberals are ahead of the curve in being skeptical about information on the Net. What this needs is a click-baitey headline to make it go viral on the Right. Something like "You won't believe how this liberal guy made $$$ scamming conservatives!".
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- return0 10y ago
  > its just that liberals are ahead of the curve in being skeptical about information on the Net. The entire raison-d-etre of the "alternative right" websites is that conservative views are being suppressed in the entire leftist-leaning media establishment. If anything, liberals missed the entire ideological wave by pitting their heads in the sand, until it hit came back to bite them.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  I thought so too but on some issues like GMO, gun control, diamonds, etc. liberals believe fake news all the time. Breitbart came from a guy who learned the business working at Huffington post. Post an inaccurate article about evil Monsanto(and ignore its bigger gmo competitors) or the long dead debeers cartel(diamonds aren't pricy because of debeers). The load of horse shit on gun controls blows my mind.
  - philovivero 10y ago
    Ding! "Left isn't fooled by fake news" makes me just shake my head in disbelief. You named three or four in what... two minutes? I'm glad you spent the 120 seconds of your life enumerating the ones that work over and over and over again. I wasn't even going to bother. Left/Right just have different triggers that shut their brains down and make them believe what they're told without any thought whatsoever.
tigerBL00D 10y ago
If a post is being pitched as news, then some amount of fact checking needs to take place. Traditional media has been doing that forever and identifying sources of information, since they have to uphold their reputation. I think in this day and age the responsibility falls on Facebook, or whatever is publishing the "news". Facebook could use a standardized and easily recognizable visual language to indicate how "newsworthy" a given post is. Heck we now have an animated language for reactions, why can't we have this? I would be cautious about outright filtering content without giving user some way to set thresholds. It feels like handing way too much power to the algorithm. I want to make the final (informed) decision on what to read and what to believe.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Traditional media has been doing that forever Have they? I got to admit I used to think this too. But in the past few years I've had quite a few occasions to talk to the media due to them covering a topic I happen to be (publicly) knowledgeable about. I've been quoted in a lot of media stories in various highbrow outlets. So I've been approached by journalists a whole bunch of times for stories. However, I have never been approached by a fact checker. If news firms were routinely doing fact checks, I'd expect to see 1) Way fewer obvious mistakes that could be detected with 60 seconds Googling 2) Fact checkers emailing me as part of cross-checking stories they're doing on my area of specialism But I see (1) a lot and (2) never. I've also never heard any journalist refer to fact checkers or tell me to expect my statements to be fact checked, or actually seen any evidence of these people existing at all.
krige 10y ago
I think he straight up lied, or "rused" as I think they call it, the journalist. I mean, the line >>>Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.<<< is as blatant winking and nudging as it can get without spelling it out. In other words "Liberals never take the bait", he told to a liberal as he was taking the bait.
- donkeyd 10y ago
  Either that, or they're not very good at writing fake stories for liberals. They might have different triggers that he's unable to find.
axelfreeman 10y ago
He doesn't need to display ads to make his point. But he does. There is also no "public denouncing" of anything here. (Maybe change the text after 1 hour or something) He just said that because he don't want to be the bad guy in front of the reporter and his family.
wobbleblob 10y ago
If people see a headline that doesn't reinforce what they already believe, they dismiss it as obviously alt-right fake news, or obviously part of the liberal media conspiracy. Maybe it's a good idea not to unfriend your [Wrong side] voting facebook friends and relatives, but to keep your network diverse. At the very least you won't be as utterly shocked when [Wrong side] wins, even though absolutely no one you know would ever vote for [Wrong side].
- philovivero 10y ago
  The real problem right now is if you say anything that identifies you as being in someone's [Wrong side], they will attack your livelihood and send you death threats and tell you you're voting for Hitler (yes, many on the right saw Hillary as Hitler, so this works both directions). We have a society that has been taught: 0) Truth is bad, honesty is a sin 1) Intellectualism is bad 2) Your feelings are as valid as facts 3) [Wrong side] are actually evil 4) [Wrong think] is as bad as murder/rape 5) Do whatever is required given the above Lawlessness, riots, class struggle, fake news. It all seems a logical extension of what we're being taught. Point 0 above might seem a little odd to you. So ask yourself: what is the dominant mode of communication in society today? Get up, walk around, observe who is telling you what. Remember, billboards, magazines, TV, salesmen, politicians all count. Also, ask yourself how long anyone's political career (or even just regular old career) would last if they were honest and truthful 100% of the time?
bitJericho 10y ago
Wow this is really interesting. I did the satire writing thing and was disgusted when people believed it without question. I didn't want my real name associated with it, and so I would be unable to promote it. Promoting it under a fake name to people who believed it was distasteful to me, and so I just kinda quit after only writing a few articles.
hartator 10y ago
trolltrace.com becoming reality.
CalChris 10y ago
HN has a hide button. Click it and something's gone, no questions asked. That should be the standard. FB has some hide buttons. Click it and up pops a menu. Click Hide Ad. Up pops a dialog asking Why don't you want to see this? Choose It's not relevant to me. This is followed by a Thanks dialog. And after it's hidden, it's not hidden. There's a grey box saying and asking You won't see ads like it. Undo? FB also doesn't have some hide buttons. For suggested pages, I was getting a completely offensive German page. There was not way to hide it. And it showed up regularly. To be clear, I don't speak German and I really wasn't interested in what the page was purveying. Their iPhone app is even worse. If there's anyone from Facebook reading this, y'all are idiots. Google News is pretty much the same. Frankly, everyone is pretty much the same. I should be able to click hide or left swipe and it's gone. And no, I don't want to answer a quick five minute customer support questionnaire. Y'all don't like Ad Blockers? Well, I don't like not being in control of what's in my face.
- j2kun 10y ago
  Problem is, when every fake news story comes from a new fake news website, clicking hide doesn't help for the future.
  - CalChris 10y ago
    I can't dictate what FB does with my hide clicks since I don't really have them right now. Literally it takes 30s to fight through their helpful screens. But they should use hide clicks to determine whether to show that entry to others. I can imagine there are sophisticated ways of doing that. But it starts with that vote and right now FB, Google, basically everyone, is saying: We don't want to give you that vote. We just want to give you this ad because that's what we're getting paid for. When I get a Breitbart story listed on Google News, I'm wondering about the programmers who wrote the policy that served it. What were they thinking? Rarely. Were they Rarely thinking? I could maybe slap them upside the head with a Swipe Left but apparently they know better.
    - j2kun 10y ago
      That being said, you're proposing introducing a dynamical system, and dynamical systems are freaking hard to get right. Extremely sensitive, with counterintuitive consequences. If you want the engineers to even understand why pages are served the way they are, or to improve the quality, you should not be advocating for user-submitted votes.
dpeterson 10y ago
The MSM is butt hurt they don't control the narrative anymore. The last election proved that. They are scared. Their current strategy is to label their call for censorship as limiting the reach of fake news. Of course everything not in line with whatever narrative they control is fake news. They find some real fake news and attempt to blur the lines in people's heads by associating real fake news with anything not MSM.
dqv 10y ago
When I got to the midpoint of the article, I started to wonder if the author was going to tell me at the end that the whole article was fake news.
A_COMPUTER 10y ago
He is doing the same thing to NPR, and by extension NPR's listeners, what he was doing to low-info right-wingers: telling them what they wanted to hear, whether or not it's true. He's good at it. He wants you to believe that he tried, but he just couldn't get the left wing to fall for it. But anybody who has used Facebook as seen how popular AddictingInfo-org is, and it is an overtly left wing fake news site. It's not remotely the only one. The fake news reporting is itself filled with fake news. And it's easy to find marks because after the election, many people need to find a scapegoat so they are turning off their critical faculties. The current complaining about fake news is a mirror image of the right's disrespect of the "mainstream" media. For instance all the reporting on the Trump-Russia covert email server communication matches the formula for fake news, it took a nugget of truth, twisted it, and tried to ride the lie long enough that by the time it was exposed as nothing, the election would be over and the "damage" done. But it wasn't fake news I guess because the outlet has to be small and the target and victim were reversed. Anybody looking at that should reasonably be upset about "fake news" but it's categorically ignored by the left. You are not inhumanly wise and immune to the effects of incentivized bias.
- MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
  > "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says. Listening to the audio of the interview, I couldn't help but hear him say the above with a sneer. He claims to be a registered Democrat, maybe it's true, but since this is how he makes his living, he clearly doesn't give a fuck in either direction. It's something I detect from a fairly large portion of supposed alt-righters online: they don't actually believe that the racism and fascism they're espousing is righteous or good for them/humanity, but they just don't give a fuck. Years of living with their main source of socialization coming via disembodied interactions in the ether of memes, cynicism, shock material, etc of 4chan and reddit has driven many to a deep and true nihilism. This guy is the one eyed king troll in the land of the emotionally blind.
- Chathamization 10y ago
  My guess is that part of the focus on fake news is a bit of deflection. The media hyperfocused on the Comey story in the week leading up to the election, and in the end that turned out to be nothing at all. Instead of looking at the issues in their own reporting, they're spending all the time talking about fake news (which is still an issue, however).
EEGuy 10y ago
What to do about fake news? Some suggestions[1] from John Bothwick Jeff Jarvis. I particularly like #4. "Make the brands of those sources more visible to users". ------- [] http://buzzmachine.com/2016/11/18/call-cooperation-fake-news/ http://buzzmachine.com/2016/11/18/call-cooperation-fake-news...

358 points by dkarapetyan 10y ago

icomefromreddit 10y ago

No need to look further, NPR...

fencepost 10y ago
> No need to look further, NPR... If that's meant to imply that NPR publishes fake news, either you're a poorly done troll or you're exactly the sort that those fake news sites are targeted to. Just about everything "news" coming out of NPR can be well sourced, though that may be harder to do for investigative things like this story. Even for this one though I suspect there's enough information in the story to allow a qualified investigator to duplicate or verify their work.

epicureanideal 10y ago

This was the most interesting part for me... -------- He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right. "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says. -------- So in this case, the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right, rather than by the alt-right to promote their views. Oh man. I don't think this tactic can lead to anything good. I hope we don't get to the point where it's really just all out information warfare... and it seems like we're already halfway there.

caf 10y ago
I suppose there's the potential for making people cast a more critical eye over outlandish articles that appear to support their own position, if there's a possibility that it might have been created by "the enemy" to discredit them.
- epicureanideal 10y ago
  But it also creates an environment where you can't ever actually know what any group thinks. "Are there REALLY neo-nazis giving nazi salutes celebrating Trump's victory on video, or is this a staged event to make Trump look like he has neo-nazi supporters?" "Are there even that many well dressed, non-tattoo'd neo-nazis?" (Maybe there are... I don't know any personally, but I wasn't expecting to see people in button down shirts and khakis and clean looking... apologies to any neo-nazis that may be reading this for having a pre-formed impression of what you might be like.) And what happens when a group comes along that REALLY DOES have absolutely crazy views? "Oh well, that was discredited, but that group doesn't ACTUALLY believe the (minority group here) are the cause of all our problems. That's just some fake news designed to discredit them. I like some of the less crazy articles by these guys. I think I'll still vote for the (actually batshit crazy neo-nazi party by another name of 2032)."
  - trprog 10y ago
    Although the medium is new the idea of publishing stuff that misrepresents other people's position is nothing new. Here is a relatively modern example from the very early 20th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of... And although the term has a very tinfoil hat connotation "false flag operations" have also been a thing for millennia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag Even young children understand the logic of "I will do a thing and try to make it look like someone else did it." >But it also creates an environment where you can't ever actually know what any group thinks. You never could really. At best you could get a vague approximation that was hopefully not inaccurate in any way that would bite you in the ass.
    - dvtv75 10y ago
      I seem to recall news video of Muslims firing guns into the air and celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center actually being video of Muslims celebrating a sporting match victory, about 15 years ago.
  - 10y ago
wyager 10y ago
> I hope we don't get to the point where it's really just all out information warfare I honestly thing we're headed for full-blown Strossian memetic warfare. The amount of high-level shilling this election cycle (both professional and amateur) was unreal.
visarga 10y ago
The tactic was to make money off the gullibility of people during elections and it worked. He's one of the most successful. You can't believe a professional liar who says he did it for the party, when you can also find in the same article that he makes 1000$ per day from it.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
I hope we don't get to the point where it's really just all out information warfare Make no mistake, it's always been all out information warfare. The difference now is that the new messengers are not high ranking government or business people and the medium is faster and easier to penetrate. In the past you had to have background, credential and access to get your word into one of the few mediums available, Radio, TV or Print. Now all you need is to make something look good enough and find the right audience.
- _nedR 10y ago
  >Make no mistake, it's always been all out information warfare. If you look at evolution, it is just a fight over whose genes get passed over to the next generation. Genes are just biological encoding of information. Viruses are almost entirely strands of DNA, that is until they find a host cell to infect their information with. In a way it is all just information warfare.
  - kingkawn 10y ago
    The focus of genes as the fundamental location of the information of life has been a multi-decade assumption that has not born the fruit it was assumed that the "code" of life would produce. Seeing life through the lens of genetics is as meaningful as judging it against any other arbitrary metric, and leaves out so much that it permits little insight beyond further refinement of the model. Much like the mistakes made recently by the established political class in over emphasizing the predictive power of their metrics even as the world itself spins further and further away from them.
noobermin 10y ago
>the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right I would say that this individual who was a liberal tried to do this. This isn't like a group of leftists conspiring to do (anti-)propaganda. It is pretty stupid, and his continuation of it is extremely confusing. Sorry, but a side rant to the more "entrepreneurial" startup-cats who browse here. Would you consider this fellow and others like him an entrepreneur? I ask because there is talk in the article that he is one. Even if you take him at his word that he is trying to highlight the problem of disinformation rather than profit off of it, it seems quite suspect to me. A good analogy here is a cook serving spoiled food to highlight healthy and safe cooking habits, regardless of who it hurts. It makes no sense.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  The term "entrepreneur" is value-neutral. It refers to someone who successfully forms a business venture by noticing and taking advantage of an opportunity or need.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    > The term "entrepreneur" is value-neutral. Even on Hacker News?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    Isn't "successful" a value-term? Aren't there "entrepreneurs" who repeatedly fail? My interpretation of entrepreneur is someome who fails with other people's money. The one you described is just a business person.
- ehnto 10y ago
  The continuation of it could be explained purely by the financial insentives from advertising on the sites. It doesn't sound like he would have any morale qualms with the whole situation. Sounds pretty entrepreneurial to me.
  - messel 10y ago
golfer 10y ago
I don't believe his narrative for a second. He's in this for the money, period. He peddles lies for a living, and also is lying about "publicly denouncing" anything.
- woogiewonka 10y ago
  This exactly. He's in it purely for money. So Cal is full of shady characters like him...
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  He even said he tried to do with fake news targeting liberals, but it didn't work. If this was ideological, he never would try for an own goal. Vox even did an article on conspiracies and why they flourish on the right more than the left.[0] Essentially it's low trust, highly engaged people versus lesser engaged people. If you don't trust anything, and you're consuming "knowledge", you're going to latch on to conspiracies.[1] [0] http://www.vox.com/2015/12/10/9886222/conspiracy-theories-right-wing http://www.vox.com/2015/12/10/9886222/conspiracy-theories-ri... [1] Or at least, that's what they want you to think.[2] [2] FNORD
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Let's assume for a moment that "conspiracies flourish on the right" is true. If so, I'd have to say that must only be true in parts of America. I have met lots of people with both right and left wing views outside of the USA (some of whom were also Americans), and didn't see any obvious correlation between political viewpoint and conspiracy theories. If anything I'd say there was a slight left wing slant if we include very generic conspiracy theories like "the banks and big corporations are trying to undermine us all". If it is true then I would guess the reason is the relative lack of conservative media in America vs say the UK. In the UK if you want to get viewpoints from the extreme left and right just pick up the Guardian and the Express and read both. In the USA it seems harder. Are there any mainstream conservative-leaning newspapers? Whenever I see the term "conservative media" used in America it always means Fox News which is only a TV channel. Breitbart seems to be tapping into that market segment but again, it's not a newspaper. If you have right wing views and have figured out that there aren't any media outlets that subscribe to your worldview, I can see that this would very easily look like a generic conspiracy and that in turn would breed receptivity to fake right-wing news simply because there are so few places with good reputation where such news is likely to be covered.
rhizome 10y ago
I hope we don't get to the point where it's really just all out information warfare... and it seems like we're already halfway there. Those in power have been there for all of our lives. J. Edgar Hoover only died in 1972 and his practice of information warfare was well in place by then. The "halfway" you speak of is in the citizen's awareness that anybody can be ratfucked[1] and that they're going to need to be able to protect themselves. Maybe there should be a 2nd Amendment for data, packets, or internet connections in general. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking
JKCalhoun 10y ago
> So in this case, the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right, rather than by the alt-right to promote their views. And so after the gullible rubes swallowed his bit of fake news hook line and sinker, he ran to tell the world.
- ec109685 10y ago
  More like after he got caught, he felt the need to spin.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  I'm not into making fake news but I might have found another bait: "YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS! Progressives (lefties, or what you Americans call them) are behind fake news industry to spread lies and discredit conservatives!" All in all, it's an interesting bait and valuable lesson. Who knew you could make so much money like that? I guess now the train is gone and it might hit very hard a lot of blogs/new newspapers who try to get into the industry for being fake. Your AdSense account's value is getting higher, folks!
aikah 10y ago
> publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction Denounce those stories by making $30k a month as a spammer ? that's how this guy "denounces the alt-right" ? and NPR buys that argument just like that ?
- Gargoyle 10y ago
  In all these interviews with fake news makers, I've been amused that people who are obvious experts at telling people what they want to hear are still telling people what they want to hear. And it sails right by the real journalists un-noted.
- ec109685 10y ago
  I don't think the NPR passed judgement as to whether it should be bought or not. They are letting us decide. My value judgement is that this is a terrible way to make money and it is unfortunate blatant lies are not somehow slander, despite it being about a prominent individual. The rolling stone was held liable for their false article about sexual assault. I wish this guy could be as well. He duped millions of people.
  - aikah 10y ago
    > I don't think the NPR passed judgement as to whether it should be bought or not. They are letting us decide. How about they actually investigate and find out whether he is telling the truth or lying ? This isn't passing judgement , this is actual reporting. So he was lying back then but now he is telling the truth and "journalists" should not pass judgement ?
    - omginternets 10y ago
      They did investigate: they're telling us that this guy makes significant money from his activities. Draw your own conclusions. They don't have to engage in finger-wagging in order to be reporters.
discardorama 10y ago
> the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right I would have a hard time taking a guy who's the "godfather of fake news" at his word. Who's to say he isn't making this all up?
reitoei 10y ago
> I hope we don't get to the point where it's really just all out information warfare... and it seems like we're already halfway there. We live in a world where the Daily Mail is the most-visited English language news web site and people are using fucking toasters to launch DDOS attacks. The internet has gone to hell. We've already lost.
- titzer 10y ago
  It's not all bad. We're here, aren't we?
  - reitoei 10y ago
    Going totally OT here for a sec, but you guys are awesome. Seriously. This is one of the only places I feel I can come where people are, for the most part, respectful and polite to each other. Nobody is pushing a personal agenda with religion, politics or ethics. Nobody is trying to convince you the world is flat or that aliens built the pyramids. Nobody cares if you're male/female/trans/whatever. Just a bunch of folks talking about their passion without the overhead (for want of a better word) of the everyday web. Places like HN are rare these days. If there is anything similar, please let me know.
    - TorKlingberg 10y ago
      Maybe a couple of years ago. Today, I wouldn’t trust the average HN commenter to evaluate even the silliest conspiracy theory. Even back then, it only worked because we aggressively downvoted the nutters and ignored their complaints.
    - forgetsusername 10y ago
      HackerNews happens to share your values and opinions on things like religion and politics. Donald Trump just won the election; did you read the opinions of people here on this happening? And while we may not be pushing a Flat World, there are plenty of conspiracy theories and ignorance on topics (eg. banks), and a fanaticism with regards to a other things (eg. Tesla) . Opposing views on these sorts of topics are smashed with down votes. My point is, of course it feels comfortable amongst like minded people. But don't extrapolate that to mean this is somehow a special place that's uniquely accepting of all opinions. If you don't believe me, do what the guy in the article did, and play devil's advocate in a few comment threads here.
Malarkey73 10y ago
I think he is being disingenuous. Maybe he started it as an experiment but it's obviously been all about the Benjamins for a long time (20-25 writers? $10000-30000 a month?).
DanielBMarkham 10y ago
False flag operations. Purposeful provocateurs. Seeing a lot of that lately. The thing to remember -- and this comes before the time there was a net -- is that the vast majority of people are nice, socially intelligent, and well-meaning. What the net is doing is convincing us that those in the out-group are simple-minded fools being led around by evil demagogues. That is not the case. But the net is not doing that because of bad people on the net. The net is doing that because humans are predisposed to consume lots of content that tells them this. The fault is internal to each of us. The net is just automating the ability of content providers to take advantage of it.
_pmf_ 10y ago
> So in this case, the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right, rather than by the alt-right to promote their views. See also: the complete HRC campaign.

kordless 10y ago

> But, he says, dozens, maybe hundreds of entrepreneurs will be ready to take his place. This is one of many examples of the dialog where this individual is speaking for others while ironically indicating he's running a "business". The fabrication and willful spread of disinformation is a powerfully disruptive behavior.

derrickdirge 10y ago
This is a common "troll" mentality. Truly they just get a thrill from getting a rise out of someone (and/or there's an economic motive, as is the case here), but they're able to post-rationalize it as a helpful service to their victims. They're pointing out areas of weakness; or they're playing 'devil's advocate'; or they're demonstrating the folly in engaging with an unreasonable person. One of the things I find most frightening about people is that, generally, we all think we're the good guy.
- Pokepokalypse 10y ago
  >This is a common "troll" mentality. Also the justification for nuclear proliferation. . .

caf 10y ago

The first "fake news" I remember seeing was about a year ago, and it was completely apolitical - it was a made-up story about a multiple-fatality car crash in my city. When I investigated the source, it had several exact copies of the same article, just set in different cities around the world. At the time I was completely bewildered as to the motive behind this, but I can only assume that it's the ad money, as paltry as that would seem. Coler's protestations notwithstanding.

nickfromseattle 10y ago
I was tricked by KNP7.com. If you search "Eminem moves to {city name}" the exact same article appears for multiple cities including Seattle, New York and probably dozens of other cities.
- joshmn 10y ago
  Taylor Swift, Miley, and the Biebs himself also moved to my hometown.
- usrusr 10y ago
  That's how you increase click rates using geoIP databases.
knowaveragejoe 10y ago
In that case it's likely a script generating these to catch people in google searches. "Fake news" for sure, but not politically motivated.
angry-hacker 10y ago
I think (all) the ad networks are the grandfathers of fake news. Maybe it's not news, but with "native advertising" the trend to forward folks to a blog post about this AMAZING PRODUCT instead of shopping cart started. I blame Taboola!
pcunite 10y ago
I've seen the big networks doing this as well. All very strange. Seems to be leading up to something.

visarga 10y ago

> At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers Ha! He's hired some shady SEO company to write those. You can buy "spun" articles by the hundreds from black hat forums. I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually written by some poor Indian. No way can he pay 25 writers with $20-30K/month. It's just a get rich quick scheme, a spammer, but one that destroys a lot of public value in order to profit a little.

vidarh 10y ago
Fiverr. You can buy a huge amount of unique ("unspun") articles with $20k-$30k month. Maybe he spins them too, but getting huge amount of unique content cheaply is trivial if you don't care much about the quality.

failrate 10y ago

The problem I have is that I have never seen a denouncement. If there have been any denouncements, then they have not had the same amount of impact as the initiating fake news lie.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago

> "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide." The story is completely false Yes this story false. What's not false is that a DNC staffer was found murdered in DC and nothing was taken from his pockets right after the DNC email leaks. Assange suggested he was the source and offered up a $25k reward[0]. 1. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/10/assange-implies-murdered-dnc-staffer-was-wikileaks-source.html http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/10/assange-implies-m...

ec109685 10y ago
Assange could have made things clear by confirming he was the source. Otherwise, it is ineuendo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Committee_email_leak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Com...

WhitneyLand 10y ago

Jestin Coler is a cancer and his actions should be made illegal. It seems possible such a law could be narrowly applied such that it would prove constitutional. Judicial review could weigh the value to society of false speech, or lying, against the erosion of integrity in the free press. One example of a false speech review was the stolen valor act. Lot of doors left open here; http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/the_first_amendment_and_the_right_to_lie http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/the_first_amendment_a...

veidr 10y ago
As long as we're making up fantasy laws to solve this problem, why don't we just outlaw being lazy, stupid, and gullible?
- jknoepfler 10y ago
  Playing devil's advocate here, but why don't we? It's not the worst idea anyone has ever hand. I sort of think epistemological pollution is an externality of being stupid/gullible that we should make people liable for. Laziness is pretty difficult to operationalize, but if you were literally too lazy to feed your children that would be a form of criminal negligence. So we do, to an extent, already do this.
  - freshhawk 10y ago
    Why don't we? Because thankfully some people understand how power works. Especially the power to imprison people for subjective qualities. Depending on who's judging, this comment could get you in some legal trouble if those laws existed. Flawed people adjudicate and enforce laws. Because they are people. Forgetting that is dangerous.
    - jknoepfler 10y ago
      We already do this very liberally in the United States judicial system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence. This has nothing to do with power, and everything to do with a setting minimum legal bar for due diligence below which an individual can be held accountable in a court of law.

meritt 10y ago

Huh, weird, I actually looked into this exact same site (when it was being shared all across FB) and found something else telling -- a reused Google Adsense publisher tag ("ca-pub-1413743582782046") which I then found on a number of other sites: FireBrandLeft.com, NationalReport.net and some articles by this author http://www.liberalamerica.org/author/matt/ http://www.liberalamerica.org/author/matt/ -- All were either owned by the same guy or he was a "journalist" at these other sites. Except these all pointed back to the same individual: Matt Terzi https://www.facebook.com/Mattterzi https://www.facebook.com/Mattterzi https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-terzi-aa6b4542 https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-terzi-aa6b4542 terzimatt@gmail.com But then I lost interest and moved onto something else, guess I should have contacted NPR. I assume this is simply Jestin Coler's fake persona and I should have done some more digging.

derrickdirge 10y ago
Or "Jestin Coler" is just the name the author used to protect his real identity.
- mrleiter 10y ago
  Well, if that's the case, it's off the table now.
- mcbits 10y ago
  > as for actual employed writers, again these guys sort of make their own money through ad code. He's probably just one of the contributing writers.
probably_wrong 10y ago
Please don't post someone else's personal info. Let's not turn this into a witch hunt.
- ManlyBread 10y ago
  It's publicly available data that takes a few minutes to dig up.

LargeCompanies 10y ago

And fake news the majority of it on Facebook is shared by Trump supporters. A demographic who are neophytes....

deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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LargeCompanies 10y ago
Im just sharing what Im seeing ... older demographic are not tech/Internet savvy and voting data shows that demographic's majority voted for Trump (no matter what I think of him and or Clinton .. i didnt vote for either).
- throwanem 10y ago
  Possible older folks are less likely to lie to exit pollers, too?

dmfdmf 10y ago

Since the government had taken over education aren't they responsible for churning out morons who can't think for themselves and distinguish fake news from real news? Perhaps that was their goal all along.

insertnickname 10y ago
When companies fail, consumers go somewhere else. When the government fails, we give it more money. The real problem with government is not enough spending.
- neom 10y ago
  Not enough or misapplied?
  - insertnickname 10y ago
    That's the point.

kriro 10y ago

My cynic takeaway: it seems like the concerns over falling ad revenues due to ad-blockers are exaggerated.

kristjansson 10y ago
There's probably also a relationship between users likely to click on these things, and users likely to have ad block off.
ryuker16 10y ago
it's stopping the trend before it becomes a norm and even grandma has ad block installed

vinhboy 10y ago

This story is fascinating to me. I also run a couple of these "wordpress" informational type sites, but never in my dream did I thought about publishing fake news to make money. Too bad I was not smart enough to get into this business. I wish he would be more honest about it. I am pretty sure he's just doing it for the money. I don't blame him. That's good money. The moral and ethical dilemma of it is kinda murky. Is it really his fault people are so stupid?

msane 10y ago
Wow. Thanks for the insight into this psychology. It's all greed with you then isn't it? You'll lie to people and de-educate them for good money. Perhaps you would consider being a slum lord or a pimp or a drug dealer for the right price?
- pakitan 10y ago
  Do you really think it's possible to de-educate any further people who think the moon landing was faked?
  - usrusr 10y ago
    Just as education, de-education is a lifelong process.
    - pakitan 10y ago
      If one lacks education in the first place, they don't have much to de-, do they?
      - msane 10y ago
        I suppose you would watch the world burn.
  - msane 10y ago
    Of course. "Do you really think" it's fine to encourage them further?

natural219 10y ago

Flagging this issue, again. It's a one-sided, polarized political issue.

greggman 10y ago

Fascinating. I'm not sure I buy the left isn't just as gullible as the right. Or at least not without more proof? I suspect you'd need a right leaning person with a similar background writing left bait fake news to have the same impact though. Write fake news about charter schools doing something bad (charter school puts LGBT students in detention) or fake churches doing bad (church in Idaho found funneling funds to Trump campaign) or fake doctors doing something the left would find atrocious but believable (medical clinic in Utah refuses to help unwed pregnant teens unless they agree to marry) I say that because I know lots of traditionally left leaning people who believe all kinds of unscientific stuff with the same fervor as the "religious right". Auras, Rieki, Astrology, Homeopathy, Chakra, etc...

russdill 10y ago
I think in general yes, absolutely true. Everyone across the political spectrum is just as susceptible. However, in this election, people on the left didn't need to look any further than the candidate's own words to get the rage high they were seeking. For the right though, I mean sure, you have mishandling of emails and a charitable foundation, but even with years investigation and even publicly leaked emails there wasn't a whole lot of fire, just a bunch of smoke.
- briandear 10y ago
  Actually I'd make the argument that given the propensity for major media outlets to be strongly left-biased, there were plenty of real stories to inflame the left. While those same outlets were actually promoting an unproven talking point that Clinton emails were hacked/released by the Russians. Hillary Clinton claimed that to be true, so that became the narrative, even though that news was "fake." There has been, in fact no proof that the Russians did anything -- only that the techniques uses were similar to ones the Russians have used. [1] Yet, we're still hearing stories that the Russians "hacked" the DNC and Clinton. In fact, the media was casting doubt on the authenticity of the leaked documents. MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle, dutifully informed viewers that the transcripts "haven't been authenticated." (When referring to a leaked Goldman Sachs speech.) Clinton said in front of the 66 million TV viewers of the second presidential debate, "The Russian government [is] directing the attacks, the hacking on American accounts to influence our election and WikiLeaks is part of that.." The emails were either hacked or they're not real. Nobody has ever complained about their fake emails being hacked. Outlets spent more time talking about how despicable the Russians were yet ignoring, for the most part the content of those emails. For example, one of those emails was Clinton campaign chair talking about "Needy latinos." Not a single word printed in the Times, the Washington Post or any mainstream media outlet. However, Trump says something 20 years ago and it becomes front-page news for literally a week. Given that one of the themes of this election was "racism" -- the characterization of the two people to which Podesta was referring would be considered relevant considering claims of racism were being made against Trump. However, imagine if a "reputable" news organization dug into the Clinton Foundation's apparent irregularities with the gusto with which they covered Trump's purported sexual harassment. For example, The Daily Beast published a story in October called "All of Donald Trump's Accusers: A Timeline of Every Alleged Grope."[2] Now to their credit, they did use the word "alleged," however, if you look at their coverage of the Clinton Foundation, they were almost apologetic. For example, "Hey Hillary, It's Past Time to Shut Down the Clinton Foundation. It does great work. But in political terms, it's an albatross."[3] The writer then goes on to complain about how Judicial Watch is scrutinizing the Foundation. The entire point of that piece and those similar is that the Clinton's should shut down the foundation because it's red meat for right-wing investigation and thus politically unhelpful. Not a single word about the allegation of pay-to-play or any number of ethical issues (such as the Foundation paying for Chelsea's wedding.[4].) Interesting that only Fox and the NYPost reported this, despite this being hugely unethical and probably illegal and germane to the question of Hillary Clinton's trustworthiness and ethics as well as interesting to the IRS as well as donors who ostensibly are donating to charity. Jenna Bush drinking underage in Austin during the Bush administration got more coverage on CNN than what approaches embezzlement by Chelsea Clinton.[5] The purpose of this comment is to point out that those on the right who are typically targeted by fake news are so gullible to it because there is a large percentage of stories in the mainstream media that are anti-conservative yet there ARE substantial stories that the media either ignores or glosses over when it comes to the left. Chelsea Clinton potentially embezzling millions of charitable contributions is a huge story that at least warrants investigation. Sanders supporting DNC activist Seth Rich gets murdered, the media calls it a robbery despite nothing being taken, yet no enterprising reporter seems interested in digging any deeper?[6] What that means is that there is a market demand for more information about the stories that are hinted at but aren't fully reported. The left, on the other hand has plenty of well-reported anti-right news to read with mainstream outlets, thus their appetite for information is mostly satisfied. [1] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/441266/hillary-clinton-democratic-emails-hacked-russia http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/441266/hillary-clinton-... [2] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/12/all-of-donald-trump-s-accusers-a-timeline-of-every-alleged-grope-and-assault.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/12/all-of-dona... [3] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/23/hey-hillary-it-s-past-time-to-shut-down-the-clinton-foundation.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/23/hey-hillary... [4] http://nypost.com/2016/11/06/chelsea-clinton-used-foundation-to-help-pay-for-wedding-emails/ http://nypost.com/2016/11/06/chelsea-clinton-used-foundation... [5] http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/04/27/bush.daughter/ http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/04/27/bush.daughter/ [6] https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4sejv7/the_death_of_seth_rich/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4sejv7/the_deat...

castratikron 10y ago

>He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot. "What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened," Coler says. Amazing.

freshhawk 10y ago

I guess a lot of people don't know the type, judging by the accusations that his "this was to troll the alt-right" was a lie. Seems obvious to me, he started with that intent, thought that obviously the stories would be discredited and the people who bought it would be shamed. It sometimes happens to organizations that promote an Onion article as real. It does a lot of damage to their reputations. Then that didn't happen and he made a lot of money. He was disgusted by how stupid everyone is, liked the money and justified it to himself that he's conning money from gullible rubes who are bad people. I don't know this guy, but I know more than one person just like him.

JonnieCache 10y ago

This is utterly offensive and this man is utterly corrupt. He claims to be doing this to discredit his foes, but there's no evidence that he's done any of the "public denouncing" which he gives as his justification for polluting the public sphere with his lies. He does however admit to coining it to the tune of six figures. If we've learned anything from the twentieth century its that corrupting the public discourse like this can lead to the slaughter of millions and the downfall of whole societies. This man and those like him deserve harsh punishment. There's a similar interview here, with another left-winger who claims to be making "satire" and is more outwardly racked with guilt than this man, but who is also still cashing the adsense checks: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/17/facebook-fake-news-writer-i-think-donald-trump-is-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/?tid=a_inl https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11...

dmichulke 10y ago
It almost sounds as if you believe that silencing these fake news will stop people from believing fake news. I don't think so. Also, slaughtering millions in the 20th century was usually the job of a big government in a big country and I have difficulty recalling that "fake news believers" or any kind of people actually voted for a war or went on the streets in favor of a war. And practically always before and during these wars the governments regularly shouted "fake news" on everything that didn't fit their narrative.
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  I'm not talking about wars - I'm talking about the holocaust and the deaths from internal repression in the soviet union and maoist china. One of the preconditions for such things to take place is the corruption of truth in the public discourse. I'm sorry if this seems like exaggeration or scaremongering but I find these stories terrifying far beyond the election of donald trump. >the governments regularly shouted "fake news" This is another aspect of what I'm talking about. Once you break the good faith assumption of truth speaking in the public sphere, it becomes a vicious cycle as nobody is incentivised to speak truthfully. Of course the press has always been used to manipulate the public, but this seems categorically different. The people who are writing these stories are shamelessly fabricating them, as opposed to uncritically republishing information fed to them by authority figures. This breaks down interpersonal trust in society in a way that simply pushing the government line doesn't.

sethx 10y ago

Am I the only one who had a deja vu reading this article?

dluan 10y ago

What boggles my mind is that Facebook and Twitter are so very complicit by creating platforms for very granular targeting. You liked the Green Bay Packers, a gun owners group, an old 2008 Tea Party video, live 60 miles outside of a city and between 40-65? Not only is that profile there, Facebook ads will tell you almost exactly how large your reach is. This is nothing more than information arbitrage, and that the unit economics from advertisers hasn't quite caught up yet. It's what allowed Buzzfeed to exist in the first place, and ultra targeted startups like Teespring to grow, by training a small part of the crowd to become content creators. Moreover, traditional content creators like NYTimes don't even understand how much they are being undercut cents-to-words. You work out the funnel conversion, hope for some organic spread, and just pump things out. In a few years, this whole thing could be automated and AI generated to sway elections and public opinions. All you need is a training dataset for the targeted population's underlying views and beliefs. Imagine a startup trying to do this at scale, growing 10% week over week or something insane. At this point it's basically going to match the velocity of information across online networks of people. If this becomes a positive feedback loop where readers start to accelerate the spread after becoming radicalized - this becomes a social virus.

dluan 10y ago
"In any case, we can’t pretend that engineers are not legislators of public discourse anymore." https://medium.com/initialized-capital/fascism-and-the-historical-irony-of-facebooks-fake-news-problem-d744b05045fd#.xe5433ci0 https://medium.com/initialized-capital/fascism-and-the-histo...
- threatofrain 10y ago
  Are the construction workers legislators of the road? Are actors the legislators of TV? Engineers do not own their efforts, and nor do construction workers or actors.
- atmosx 10y ago
  > "In any case, we can’t pretend that engineers are not legislators of public discourse anymore." Legislation is a rather complex sport that requires deep understanding of repercussions. I've seen rather skilled blockchain hackers talking economics, finance, politics and monetary policy. Their understanding of the current system (in terms of structure) was appalling. One needs to know the role of central banks before bashing them. I am afraid that your average engineer will make a pretty incompetent legislator. So let's leave legislation to legislators... :-)

jondubois 10y ago

I think that all the news which we consume is misleading in one way or another; whether they deceive us through outright misinformation, unevenly balanced arguments, or priming (through repeated exposure to particular concepts). While these small fake news creators deceive us through outright misinformation, big news corporations deceive us through priming. If you repeatedly draw peoples' attentions to the same concepts and ideas over and over again; they will incorporate these ideas as part of their core belief system and it will cause them to block out real information which opposes those ideas. Small independent 'news' creators just don't have the necessary scale to leverage priming effects, so they are forced to resort to outright 'sensational' misinformation to push forward their agendas. I think that fake news is important for society, just like religion; sometimes the intention behind the text is more important than the actual information content within.

makomk 10y ago
Definitely. For example, compare these two Wired articles about the possibility of rigging the US election by hacking voting systems: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-rigging-presidential-election/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-rig... was from before the election and claimed that it would be virtually impossible, would require a conspiracy of thousands to get past all the safeguards, and was ridiculous. https://www.wired.com/2016/11/hacked-not-audit-election-rest/ https://www.wired.com/2016/11/hacked-not-audit-election-rest... after the election claims that actually, it's well established that they're hackable, and that the audits are so ineffective it's almost as though they're designed not to detect hacking. Two completely contradictory positions, both backed up with an arsenal of facts and expert opinions and presented as definite truth. All that changed is that the idea the election results could be hacked became anti-Trump rather than pro-Trump.

jlubawy 10y ago

Makes me really question if this article is fake to prove some sort of point, it's really hard to know (for sure) anymore

meira 10y ago

So npr created a fake news based on a fake news created by a Hillary supporter. Let's track down another fake news creator. Who wrote this?

ndr 10y ago

Quote 0: What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened," Coler says. Quote 1: Coler, a registered Democrat, says he has no regrets about his fake news empire. He doesn't think fake news swayed the election. Quote 2: However, Coler insists this is not about money. It's about showing how easily fake news spreads. And fake news spread wide and far before the election. When I pointed out to Coler that the money gave him a lot of incentive to keep doing it regardless of the impact, he admitted that was "correct." Did he created his own bubble to justify this?

paulajohnson 10y ago

I notice that his attempts to seed fake news on the liberal side always got promptly debunked. I think this election is going to be the high water mark for fake news, its just that liberals are ahead of the curve in being skeptical about information on the Net. What this needs is a click-baitey headline to make it go viral on the Right. Something like "You won't believe how this liberal guy made $$$ scamming conservatives!".

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
return0 10y ago
> its just that liberals are ahead of the curve in being skeptical about information on the Net. The entire raison-d-etre of the "alternative right" websites is that conservative views are being suppressed in the entire leftist-leaning media establishment. If anything, liberals missed the entire ideological wave by pitting their heads in the sand, until it hit came back to bite them.
ryuker16 10y ago
I thought so too but on some issues like GMO, gun control, diamonds, etc. liberals believe fake news all the time. Breitbart came from a guy who learned the business working at Huffington post. Post an inaccurate article about evil Monsanto(and ignore its bigger gmo competitors) or the long dead debeers cartel(diamonds aren't pricy because of debeers). The load of horse shit on gun controls blows my mind.
- philovivero 10y ago
  Ding! "Left isn't fooled by fake news" makes me just shake my head in disbelief. You named three or four in what... two minutes? I'm glad you spent the 120 seconds of your life enumerating the ones that work over and over and over again. I wasn't even going to bother. Left/Right just have different triggers that shut their brains down and make them believe what they're told without any thought whatsoever.

tigerBL00D 10y ago

If a post is being pitched as news, then some amount of fact checking needs to take place. Traditional media has been doing that forever and identifying sources of information, since they have to uphold their reputation. I think in this day and age the responsibility falls on Facebook, or whatever is publishing the "news". Facebook could use a standardized and easily recognizable visual language to indicate how "newsworthy" a given post is. Heck we now have an animated language for reactions, why can't we have this? I would be cautious about outright filtering content without giving user some way to set thresholds. It feels like handing way too much power to the algorithm. I want to make the final (informed) decision on what to read and what to believe.

zigzigzag 10y ago
Traditional media has been doing that forever Have they? I got to admit I used to think this too. But in the past few years I've had quite a few occasions to talk to the media due to them covering a topic I happen to be (publicly) knowledgeable about. I've been quoted in a lot of media stories in various highbrow outlets. So I've been approached by journalists a whole bunch of times for stories. However, I have never been approached by a fact checker. If news firms were routinely doing fact checks, I'd expect to see 1) Way fewer obvious mistakes that could be detected with 60 seconds Googling 2) Fact checkers emailing me as part of cross-checking stories they're doing on my area of specialism But I see (1) a lot and (2) never. I've also never heard any journalist refer to fact checkers or tell me to expect my statements to be fact checked, or actually seen any evidence of these people existing at all.

krige 10y ago

I think he straight up lied, or "rused" as I think they call it, the journalist. I mean, the line >>>Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.<<< is as blatant winking and nudging as it can get without spelling it out. In other words "Liberals never take the bait", he told to a liberal as he was taking the bait.

donkeyd 10y ago
Either that, or they're not very good at writing fake stories for liberals. They might have different triggers that he's unable to find.

axelfreeman 10y ago

He doesn't need to display ads to make his point. But he does. There is also no "public denouncing" of anything here. (Maybe change the text after 1 hour or something) He just said that because he don't want to be the bad guy in front of the reporter and his family.

wobbleblob 10y ago

If people see a headline that doesn't reinforce what they already believe, they dismiss it as obviously alt-right fake news, or obviously part of the liberal media conspiracy. Maybe it's a good idea not to unfriend your [Wrong side] voting facebook friends and relatives, but to keep your network diverse. At the very least you won't be as utterly shocked when [Wrong side] wins, even though absolutely no one you know would ever vote for [Wrong side].

philovivero 10y ago
The real problem right now is if you say anything that identifies you as being in someone's [Wrong side], they will attack your livelihood and send you death threats and tell you you're voting for Hitler (yes, many on the right saw Hillary as Hitler, so this works both directions). We have a society that has been taught: 0) Truth is bad, honesty is a sin 1) Intellectualism is bad 2) Your feelings are as valid as facts 3) [Wrong side] are actually evil 4) [Wrong think] is as bad as murder/rape 5) Do whatever is required given the above Lawlessness, riots, class struggle, fake news. It all seems a logical extension of what we're being taught. Point 0 above might seem a little odd to you. So ask yourself: what is the dominant mode of communication in society today? Get up, walk around, observe who is telling you what. Remember, billboards, magazines, TV, salesmen, politicians all count. Also, ask yourself how long anyone's political career (or even just regular old career) would last if they were honest and truthful 100% of the time?

bitJericho 10y ago

Wow this is really interesting. I did the satire writing thing and was disgusted when people believed it without question. I didn't want my real name associated with it, and so I would be unable to promote it. Promoting it under a fake name to people who believed it was distasteful to me, and so I just kinda quit after only writing a few articles.

hartator 10y ago

trolltrace.com becoming reality.

CalChris 10y ago

HN has a hide button. Click it and something's gone, no questions asked. That should be the standard. FB has some hide buttons. Click it and up pops a menu. Click Hide Ad. Up pops a dialog asking Why don't you want to see this? Choose It's not relevant to me. This is followed by a Thanks dialog. And after it's hidden, it's not hidden. There's a grey box saying and asking You won't see ads like it. Undo? FB also doesn't have some hide buttons. For suggested pages, I was getting a completely offensive German page. There was not way to hide it. And it showed up regularly. To be clear, I don't speak German and I really wasn't interested in what the page was purveying. Their iPhone app is even worse. If there's anyone from Facebook reading this, y'all are idiots. Google News is pretty much the same. Frankly, everyone is pretty much the same. I should be able to click hide or left swipe and it's gone. And no, I don't want to answer a quick five minute customer support questionnaire. Y'all don't like Ad Blockers? Well, I don't like not being in control of what's in my face.

j2kun 10y ago
Problem is, when every fake news story comes from a new fake news website, clicking hide doesn't help for the future.
- CalChris 10y ago
  I can't dictate what FB does with my hide clicks since I don't really have them right now. Literally it takes 30s to fight through their helpful screens. But they should use hide clicks to determine whether to show that entry to others. I can imagine there are sophisticated ways of doing that. But it starts with that vote and right now FB, Google, basically everyone, is saying: We don't want to give you that vote. We just want to give you this ad because that's what we're getting paid for. When I get a Breitbart story listed on Google News, I'm wondering about the programmers who wrote the policy that served it. What were they thinking? Rarely. Were they Rarely thinking? I could maybe slap them upside the head with a Swipe Left but apparently they know better.
  - j2kun 10y ago
    That being said, you're proposing introducing a dynamical system, and dynamical systems are freaking hard to get right. Extremely sensitive, with counterintuitive consequences. If you want the engineers to even understand why pages are served the way they are, or to improve the quality, you should not be advocating for user-submitted votes.

dpeterson 10y ago

The MSM is butt hurt they don't control the narrative anymore. The last election proved that. They are scared. Their current strategy is to label their call for censorship as limiting the reach of fake news. Of course everything not in line with whatever narrative they control is fake news. They find some real fake news and attempt to blur the lines in people's heads by associating real fake news with anything not MSM.

dqv 10y ago

When I got to the midpoint of the article, I started to wonder if the author was going to tell me at the end that the whole article was fake news.

A_COMPUTER 10y ago

He is doing the same thing to NPR, and by extension NPR's listeners, what he was doing to low-info right-wingers: telling them what they wanted to hear, whether or not it's true. He's good at it. He wants you to believe that he tried, but he just couldn't get the left wing to fall for it. But anybody who has used Facebook as seen how popular AddictingInfo-org is, and it is an overtly left wing fake news site. It's not remotely the only one. The fake news reporting is itself filled with fake news. And it's easy to find marks because after the election, many people need to find a scapegoat so they are turning off their critical faculties. The current complaining about fake news is a mirror image of the right's disrespect of the "mainstream" media. For instance all the reporting on the Trump-Russia covert email server communication matches the formula for fake news, it took a nugget of truth, twisted it, and tried to ride the lie long enough that by the time it was exposed as nothing, the election would be over and the "damage" done. But it wasn't fake news I guess because the outlet has to be small and the target and victim were reversed. Anybody looking at that should reasonably be upset about "fake news" but it's categorically ignored by the left. You are not inhumanly wise and immune to the effects of incentivized bias.

MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
> "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says. Listening to the audio of the interview, I couldn't help but hear him say the above with a sneer. He claims to be a registered Democrat, maybe it's true, but since this is how he makes his living, he clearly doesn't give a fuck in either direction. It's something I detect from a fairly large portion of supposed alt-righters online: they don't actually believe that the racism and fascism they're espousing is righteous or good for them/humanity, but they just don't give a fuck. Years of living with their main source of socialization coming via disembodied interactions in the ether of memes, cynicism, shock material, etc of 4chan and reddit has driven many to a deep and true nihilism. This guy is the one eyed king troll in the land of the emotionally blind.
Chathamization 10y ago
My guess is that part of the focus on fake news is a bit of deflection. The media hyperfocused on the Comey story in the week leading up to the election, and in the end that turned out to be nothing at all. Instead of looking at the issues in their own reporting, they're spending all the time talking about fake news (which is still an issue, however).

EEGuy 10y ago

What to do about fake news? Some suggestions[1] from John Bothwick Jeff Jarvis. I particularly like #4. "Make the brands of those sources more visible to users". ------- [] http://buzzmachine.com/2016/11/18/call-cooperation-fake-news/ http://buzzmachine.com/2016/11/18/call-cooperation-fake-news...