6 ms·

A dodgy advert, an image embedded in an online forum, a malicious link on reddit. I agree this sounds worrying.

nicktelford 10y ago
Wow that's a good point: in the era of false news, getting someone to visit a site that covertly logs them as having visited suspicious domains would be pretty trivial. Just publish some really divisive fake news about Brexit and that'll rack up the UK hits on Facebook. Christ, it's even worse than I thought.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  It's so disgustingly trivially easy, I don't feel comfortable making even basic comments about how Id do that. But I am going to try a few PoC ones later today. (On a private network, using all domains and computers I control.) I... View a lot of use of digital records as the witchtrials of the modern era (eg, cases where people got charged for child porn because a coworker used their machine, but the logs say it was them!). The conclusions don't logically hold up, but reveal something about our reverance for technology (and assuming it worked right).
- dualogy 10y ago
  > in the era of false news How did we get here? Many folks have surfed the web for 20 years, even more for 15, most for 10 --- now in 2016, surprise surprise, fake news abound! /s Almost as if coinciding with the calls for (or introductions of) related legislation..
  - grzm 10y ago
    The number of people online, the level of engagement, and the money being made in online advertising, is unprecedented. I don't know what impact it had on the election, but it was definitely something that has attracted more attention due to the campaigns. It's not unusual for a problem that has existed for a relatively long-time to suddenly come to the attention of the legislature when it rises in prominence.
  - Nadya 10y ago
    Just a narrative being peddled [0]. The mainstream media lost their grip on "the people" so now need to brand anything that isn't themselves as "fake news". Google Trends shows how blatantly obvious the narrative crafting is. It's only suddenly an issue because the MSM needs it to be. So within a very short amount of time you see MSM like the NYT or WaPo posting articles about 'Fake News' and getting everyone to start talking about it. [0] http://i.imgur.com/lWjnRqt.png http://i.imgur.com/lWjnRqt.png
    - dualogy 10y ago
      Sure. Exactly. I just added a /s to my post.. ;)
    - pcwalton 10y ago
      Fake news started spiking in Google Trends around the election because that is when fake news became profitable. We are talking about blatant spam sites in which the owners openly admitted to making up stories out of whole cloth.
  - pcwalton 10y ago
    Fake news became profitable right around the time when a major candidate ran on a platform that peddled conspiracy theories. What a surprise!
    - grzm 10y ago
      Fakenews/webspam has been profitable for years. I've seen articles with titles like "Martin Sheen dead!" for a lot longer than the 2016 US Presidential campaign (which, granted, seemed like it lasted forever)
yclept 10y ago
DNS or html bowser prefetching... oh my

Wow that's a good point: in the era of false news, getting someone to visit a site that covertly logs them as having visited suspicious domains would be pretty trivial. Just publish some really divisive fake news about Brexit and that'll rack up the UK hits on Facebook. Christ, it's even worse than I thought.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
It's so disgustingly trivially easy, I don't feel comfortable making even basic comments about how Id do that. But I am going to try a few PoC ones later today. (On a private network, using all domains and computers I control.) I... View a lot of use of digital records as the witchtrials of the modern era (eg, cases where people got charged for child porn because a coworker used their machine, but the logs say it was them!). The conclusions don't logically hold up, but reveal something about our reverance for technology (and assuming it worked right).
dualogy 10y ago
> in the era of false news How did we get here? Many folks have surfed the web for 20 years, even more for 15, most for 10 --- now in 2016, surprise surprise, fake news abound! /s Almost as if coinciding with the calls for (or introductions of) related legislation..
- grzm 10y ago
  The number of people online, the level of engagement, and the money being made in online advertising, is unprecedented. I don't know what impact it had on the election, but it was definitely something that has attracted more attention due to the campaigns. It's not unusual for a problem that has existed for a relatively long-time to suddenly come to the attention of the legislature when it rises in prominence.
- Nadya 10y ago
  Just a narrative being peddled [0]. The mainstream media lost their grip on "the people" so now need to brand anything that isn't themselves as "fake news". Google Trends shows how blatantly obvious the narrative crafting is. It's only suddenly an issue because the MSM needs it to be. So within a very short amount of time you see MSM like the NYT or WaPo posting articles about 'Fake News' and getting everyone to start talking about it. [0] http://i.imgur.com/lWjnRqt.png http://i.imgur.com/lWjnRqt.png
  - dualogy 10y ago
    Sure. Exactly. I just added a /s to my post.. ;)
  - pcwalton 10y ago
    Fake news started spiking in Google Trends around the election because that is when fake news became profitable. We are talking about blatant spam sites in which the owners openly admitted to making up stories out of whole cloth.
- pcwalton 10y ago
  Fake news became profitable right around the time when a major candidate ran on a platform that peddled conspiracy theories. What a surprise!
  - grzm 10y ago
    Fakenews/webspam has been profitable for years. I've seen articles with titles like "Martin Sheen dead!" for a lot longer than the 2016 US Presidential campaign (which, granted, seemed like it lasted forever)

yclept 10y ago

DNS or html bowser prefetching... oh my