11 ms·

Inside a Fake News Factory: ‘This Is All About Income’

39 points by my_first_acct 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
visarga 10y ago
Just a different kind of spammers. News spammers.
- tombone12 10y ago
  True enough, but the damage is more nebulous and potentially greater. Also, will bag of words work well for news?
  - visarga 10y ago
    No, no, today we use bidirectional LSTMs with word embeddings. They work so much better.
nickff 10y ago
This may be a cynical take on things, but it seems to me that the 'fake news factories' figured out that the core product of a political website is confirmation of existing beliefs, then 'unbundled' it from everything else.
- dilemma 10y ago
  This is exactly how Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer designed their news products 100 years ago.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  Well, political news have had a pseudo-legitimate form of this for a long time: opinion and comment sections. Completely fabricated news is a step up, though.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Unbundled from reality. Tied to profit. It's an environment where they can rapidly iterate on what the most "click-worthy" stories are and dial in the content to meet audience expectations. This is worse than the pure sugar being fed by useless news organizations like CNN where their coverage has almost zero informational value. This is like heroin where it's actively feeding wild misconceptions.
  - tombone12 10y ago
    I find it funny how globalism is leaking back into the US in unexpected ways; who would have thought twenty years ago that a Georgian citizen would take flak for derailing a US election by producing pulp news? It was always supposed to be the American eagle spreading its freedom to the world who gratefully welcomed it with praise, they weren't actually supposed to influence the US back!
    - my_first_acct 10y ago
      Some geopolitical irony here. Georgia has been trying join NATO; President Trump will quite possibly recognize Georgia as being in the Russian sphere of influence.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      "It was always supposed to be the American eagle spreading its freedom to the world who gratefully welcomed it with praise, they weren't actually supposed to influence the US back! " They can 'influence' back as long as it's reasonable. Articles like: 'Hillary and Trump have secret sexual encounter' is not 'news' and not any kind of positive influence.
  - beambot 10y ago
    > It's an environment where they can rapidly iterate on what the most "click-worthy" stories are and dial in the content to meet audience expectations. Ha! That literally describes most websites... including some factors in the Google ranking algorithm. I guess that's what happens when damn-near every website on earth optimizes for user engagement.
- tpeo 10y ago
  If you see that much of a difference, you weren't being cynical enough.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
harlanji 10y ago
Surprise! All for-profit companies exist with making money as the highest priority. As idealistic software engineers we're programmed to think of everything as a mission, but as soon as you look higher at most post-investment companies you'll see it's about money even if leadership doesn't believe that itself. There may be an ideological honey moon period but as soon as there's a bump/loss in confidence cash is king without fail. One counter example is a bootstrapped solo entity because there is no external authority/commitment to maximize shareholder value for anyone else, so they can burn money if they want. A good way to confirm this in job interviews is to bring up B Corps in response to the founding/mission part of the pitch and watch them say it just hasn't been a priority. A B Corp is a certified for-profit company with a mission built in beyond quarter-over-quarter growth. If they really believe in their mission they should certify as a B Corp, if they're not and they're hiring with recruiters--implies some level of cash on hand, readiness to grow--it's lip service. I should note this isn't a deal breaker if they can pay, I just like to know who I am working with. In time I'd like to prefer employment from B Corps.
wallace_f 10y ago
This whole war on fake news thing bothers me. It leads to giving unprecedented power to private corporations in controlling what people are able to see and hear. The other thing is that the US media is far from perfect as well. I can point to plenty of articles in the BBC, NYT, the Economist and WaPo that are classified as News--not OpEds--that ignore science, are politically motivated, and would loosely qualify as "fake news," or at least OpEds. During the election cycle, I know a lot of people that were personally very turned off by the DNC corruption, yet US media coverage was scarce. When I type "DNC corruption" into Google and DuckDuckGo, there are no results on the first page from major media outlets. When I search site:nytimes.com "DNC Corruption" the first result is from 1860. The second is "Can we trust Julian Assange...?" I could keep going, but the point is, this is terrifying. Censorship by private corporations and government is not the answer.
- rodgerd 10y ago
  > It leads to giving unprecedented to private corporations in controlling what people are able to see and hear. You don't know much about Rupert Murdoch or Hearst, do you?
  - colordrops 10y ago
    What did the grandparent post say that indicates ignorance of Murdoch or Hearst? If anything I'd suspect the opposite.
  - wallace_f 10y ago
    Thanks for that. I am aware of who they are. Ok so AFAIK what you are trying to say is that corporations, as well as media moguls, already have power in controlling what people say and hear. It's true that is already a problem. So why don't we try to stop it from getting worse? The fact is the trend is towards people digesting news through filters such as Twitter, Facebook and Google. I don't want to see private corporations have unprecedented control in censoring the perceived choice of consumers in what they see and hear. The war on fake news is lending to a theme towards censorship. I think most people are aware most news is already produced by a few major media corporations. I don't want to live in a world where everything else is considered "fake."
generic_user 10y ago
It looks like the 'real news' is going to go down with the ship because the only response they have to discretization of there reporting is to double down on there false narrative. I stopped reading mainstream media and watching TV many years ago because I consider 80% of what they report to be misleading, misinformation and yes 'fake news'. The corporate media has finally lost the ability to control the public discourse. That was the only real value they still had to the handful of oligarchs that own them. Nazi Frogs, Russian hackers, Fake news factories and what ever else they come up with next is not going to save them.
andrewclunn 10y ago
So how is this different from say SNL perpetuating the false notion that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house? Call it satire and you're free to propagandize all you want. Only after the anointed candidate of the power lost, must we examine the means by which propaganda (specifically that we find unfavorable) is disseminated. Fake news is the crop you reap when you show mass censorship. Trying to double down on the censorship will only hasten your irrelevance.
- eropple 10y ago
  It's almost as if satire isn't propaganda at all. Weird, that.
yyhhsj0521 10y ago
So, real-world Onion News?
icomefromreddit 10y ago
'Fake News' took our jobs!
pryelluw 10y ago
Well, how is this different from the old supermarket tabloids? I vividly remember bat boy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character)

39 points by my_first_acct 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

visarga 10y ago

Just a different kind of spammers. News spammers.

tombone12 10y ago
True enough, but the damage is more nebulous and potentially greater. Also, will bag of words work well for news?
- visarga 10y ago
  No, no, today we use bidirectional LSTMs with word embeddings. They work so much better.

nickff 10y ago

This may be a cynical take on things, but it seems to me that the 'fake news factories' figured out that the core product of a political website is confirmation of existing beliefs, then 'unbundled' it from everything else.

dilemma 10y ago
This is exactly how Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer designed their news products 100 years ago.
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
Well, political news have had a pseudo-legitimate form of this for a long time: opinion and comment sections. Completely fabricated news is a step up, though.
astrodust 10y ago
Unbundled from reality. Tied to profit. It's an environment where they can rapidly iterate on what the most "click-worthy" stories are and dial in the content to meet audience expectations. This is worse than the pure sugar being fed by useless news organizations like CNN where their coverage has almost zero informational value. This is like heroin where it's actively feeding wild misconceptions.
- tombone12 10y ago
  I find it funny how globalism is leaking back into the US in unexpected ways; who would have thought twenty years ago that a Georgian citizen would take flak for derailing a US election by producing pulp news? It was always supposed to be the American eagle spreading its freedom to the world who gratefully welcomed it with praise, they weren't actually supposed to influence the US back!
  - my_first_acct 10y ago
    Some geopolitical irony here. Georgia has been trying join NATO; President Trump will quite possibly recognize Georgia as being in the Russian sphere of influence.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    "It was always supposed to be the American eagle spreading its freedom to the world who gratefully welcomed it with praise, they weren't actually supposed to influence the US back! " They can 'influence' back as long as it's reasonable. Articles like: 'Hillary and Trump have secret sexual encounter' is not 'news' and not any kind of positive influence.
- beambot 10y ago
  > It's an environment where they can rapidly iterate on what the most "click-worthy" stories are and dial in the content to meet audience expectations. Ha! That literally describes most websites... including some factors in the Google ranking algorithm. I guess that's what happens when damn-near every website on earth optimizes for user engagement.
tpeo 10y ago
If you see that much of a difference, you weren't being cynical enough.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

harlanji 10y ago

Surprise! All for-profit companies exist with making money as the highest priority. As idealistic software engineers we're programmed to think of everything as a mission, but as soon as you look higher at most post-investment companies you'll see it's about money even if leadership doesn't believe that itself. There may be an ideological honey moon period but as soon as there's a bump/loss in confidence cash is king without fail. One counter example is a bootstrapped solo entity because there is no external authority/commitment to maximize shareholder value for anyone else, so they can burn money if they want. A good way to confirm this in job interviews is to bring up B Corps in response to the founding/mission part of the pitch and watch them say it just hasn't been a priority. A B Corp is a certified for-profit company with a mission built in beyond quarter-over-quarter growth. If they really believe in their mission they should certify as a B Corp, if they're not and they're hiring with recruiters--implies some level of cash on hand, readiness to grow--it's lip service. I should note this isn't a deal breaker if they can pay, I just like to know who I am working with. In time I'd like to prefer employment from B Corps.

wallace_f 10y ago

This whole war on fake news thing bothers me. It leads to giving unprecedented power to private corporations in controlling what people are able to see and hear. The other thing is that the US media is far from perfect as well. I can point to plenty of articles in the BBC, NYT, the Economist and WaPo that are classified as News--not OpEds--that ignore science, are politically motivated, and would loosely qualify as "fake news," or at least OpEds. During the election cycle, I know a lot of people that were personally very turned off by the DNC corruption, yet US media coverage was scarce. When I type "DNC corruption" into Google and DuckDuckGo, there are no results on the first page from major media outlets. When I search site:nytimes.com "DNC Corruption" the first result is from 1860. The second is "Can we trust Julian Assange...?" I could keep going, but the point is, this is terrifying. Censorship by private corporations and government is not the answer.

rodgerd 10y ago
> It leads to giving unprecedented to private corporations in controlling what people are able to see and hear. You don't know much about Rupert Murdoch or Hearst, do you?
- colordrops 10y ago
  What did the grandparent post say that indicates ignorance of Murdoch or Hearst? If anything I'd suspect the opposite.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  Thanks for that. I am aware of who they are. Ok so AFAIK what you are trying to say is that corporations, as well as media moguls, already have power in controlling what people say and hear. It's true that is already a problem. So why don't we try to stop it from getting worse? The fact is the trend is towards people digesting news through filters such as Twitter, Facebook and Google. I don't want to see private corporations have unprecedented control in censoring the perceived choice of consumers in what they see and hear. The war on fake news is lending to a theme towards censorship. I think most people are aware most news is already produced by a few major media corporations. I don't want to live in a world where everything else is considered "fake."

generic_user 10y ago

It looks like the 'real news' is going to go down with the ship because the only response they have to discretization of there reporting is to double down on there false narrative. I stopped reading mainstream media and watching TV many years ago because I consider 80% of what they report to be misleading, misinformation and yes 'fake news'. The corporate media has finally lost the ability to control the public discourse. That was the only real value they still had to the handful of oligarchs that own them. Nazi Frogs, Russian hackers, Fake news factories and what ever else they come up with next is not going to save them.

andrewclunn 10y ago

So how is this different from say SNL perpetuating the false notion that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house? Call it satire and you're free to propagandize all you want. Only after the anointed candidate of the power lost, must we examine the means by which propaganda (specifically that we find unfavorable) is disseminated. Fake news is the crop you reap when you show mass censorship. Trying to double down on the censorship will only hasten your irrelevance.

eropple 10y ago
It's almost as if satire isn't propaganda at all. Weird, that.

yyhhsj0521 10y ago

So, real-world Onion News?

icomefromreddit 10y ago

'Fake News' took our jobs!

pryelluw 10y ago

Well, how is this different from the old supermarket tabloids? I vividly remember bat boy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character)