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How 4chan and The_Donald Influence the Fake News Ecosystem

54 points by sjmurdoch 9y ago

daptaq 9y ago
Much better written and researched that the title had me assume at first.
dingo_bat 9y ago
Bullshit article. Not a single example of supposed "fake news" that these guys were supposed to have used to influence the election.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Who said they were investigating that? There's one mention of the word election, and it asks a question. So every other discussion point there is bullshit, because they don't prove that The_Donald was trying to influence the election?
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    The title is "how the_donald influences the fake news ecosystem". Then they fail to provide any actual instance of that. Delete the word election from my comment (even though that was when this term was invented). And even then there is hardly one lame example of an image that the president retweeted, which was just a sort of conspiracy theory, not "fake news" that people thought was an actual news story. It is a heavily loaded term. A rumor, or a nutjob conspiracy theory, or a trolling joke, all of these and more have been called "fake news". Is that what we're worried about now? I would say not. What I understand by fake news is a false story reported by a news channel or website or newspaper. For example, CNN reported on TV that "it is illegal to look at the wikileaks dump, except for us". This is fake news. I'd like for such articles to tackle this, not random trolling and conspiracy theories.
- beager 9y ago
  Interestingly enough, your comment contains two strategies commonly used by witting or unwitting disseminators/consumers of disinformation to dispute inconsonant reporting: 1. Calling it "fake news" ("Bullshit article") 2. Introducing a straw man
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    > 1. Calling it "fake news" ("Bullshit article") Funny. That would apply on the article itself too. > 2. Introducing a straw man I'm not sure what's the strawman in my comment.
rstoj 9y ago
TLDR; snippets from the article: A shocking amount of disinformation (“fake news”) is also created by and spread from smaller, fringe Web communities that have relatively outsized influence on the greater Web. We set out to measure just how this influence flows in a systematic and methodological manner, analyzing how URLs from 45 mainstream and 54 alternative news sources are shared across 8 months of Reddit, 4chan, and Twitter posts. Highlights: 1. Reddit and 4chan post mainstream news URLs at over twice the rate than Twitter does 2. Alternative news URLs spread much faster than mainstream URLs, perhaps an artifact of automated bots 3. 4chan was also the most successful at “reviving” old stories We found that Twitter does have heavy influence on the spread of fake news. The_Donald and /pol/ are responsible for around 6% of mainstream news URLs over 4.5% of alternative news URLs on Twitter. Whole story in the arxiv paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.06947 https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.06947
- sogen 9y ago
  Surprised to see that unexpected amount of news generate over there 6% is a huge number specially these years
alva 9y ago
4chan can be extremely effective in shaping online conversation and mainstream news coverage. The strategy is never explicitly stated and is most likely done unconsciously, but is powerful. A relatively small number of people shape the mainstream news and a large part is done through gauging public interest. With Twitter, which journalists and editors use extensively, as well as news sites comment sections, motivated groups can storm the place using convincing messages and realistic profiles. If the journalist perceives a story is going viral and not being covered, they start to amplify. If the story is true, this may be in their interests. The blue check mark networks are extremely influential and so the message spreads rapidly. At this point the snowball has it's own momentum and 4chan can sit back whilst the 'normies' discuss, argue and boost the signal. Another aspect is 4chan friendly journalists. Not 'respectable' journalists, but with blue checks, a reputation and a lot of followers. They are happy to amplify these stories. Maybe about 10% of these are then picked up but the standard lot, mostly to mock, but the signal is boosted nevertheless. Basically the tactic is to get a respectable blue-check to amplify the message (positive or negative, doesn't matter) to cause a massive chain reaction. The journalists are getting played. Some will be aware and happy to partake, many I do not think are aware how much of they perceive to be real public opinion is. /pol/ has enough latent energy to have an effect. Thousands of bored, qausi-ideological young men. Many are skilled programmers. Government and other psyop manuals are distributed and put into practice. The incentives for the hive to work together for a goal is free. It is mostly for the lulz but with a slant towards their ideology. How much money would it cost for an agency to mobilise a few thousand workers to do a concentrated attack on a target from all angles? A fascinating group to study in regards to distributed, decentralised mobilisation of people in order to complete a goal. edit: The_Donald is downstream from 4chan
- norikki 9y ago
  The important thing to note here is that the 'mainstream' news sources and Blue Checkmarks have all that influence because their political adgenda is aligned with advertisers and so they have tons of money to self-promote. (See the adpocalypse on YouTube) They dont have all that influence because their political slant is vastly more popular or more accurate than non-corperate (aka alternative) news sources. That's why the niche for alternatives to them exist. Plenty of fake news on both 4chan and CNN, just different fake news. "Hands up don't shoot!" vs. naming the wrong man as the Vegas shooter https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/16/lesson-learned-from-the-shooting-of-michael-brown/?utm_term=.a8d8223d81a8 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/0... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/google-admits-citing-4chan-to-spread-fake-vegas-shooter-news/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/googl...
vim_wannabe 9y ago
For the love of God, don't feed the troll.
- seattle_spring 9y ago
  By "the troll," I assume you mean The_Donald and 4chan?
beager 9y ago
This was a much meatier writeup than I expected from the premise, which usually gets a pretty surface, opinionated treatment. Maybe I misunderstand the capabilities of offered solutions, but I can't imagine that ML would be a tremendously effective tool to gauge content veracity, at least on its own. Maybe it would be a good supplement to a headstrong human effort, but that headstrong human effort seems for major gatekeepers of content (Google, Facebook, etc) like it would be an underpowered cost-center to placate a concerned public at best, and a non-starter at worst. The final suggestion resonated with me a lot: > Finally, we think the research community should continue to build up our understanding of how this content is created; a deep enough understanding could allow us to adapt the strategies of bad actors as a tool against them. It’s time to fight fire with fire. This, to me, while maybe not the most tidy solution to the issue, acknowledges the messy reality of the situation and gives one way to effectively approach it: flood the zone. I think we did see tactical mimicry with things like Correct the Record during the 2016 election cycle. However, I believe that lacked the sort of ethical/factual ambivalence that got the 4chan/reddit pipeline running as well as it did (and continues to do). Essentially, the disseminators of propaganda operate asymmetrically, as they are governed by more dire motivations and by fewer rules. Those who would respond to nullify the effect of that propaganda can't half-ass it, they would need to match the shrewdness and power of what continues to crop up. It's very Brave New World.
sysdyne 9y ago
>Trusting whatever is said on 4chan Are these people for real? As a 4chan user I always never trust it! Makes me wonder who conducts these experiment since I don't think even the larger 4chan community actually takes itself seriously.

54 points by sjmurdoch 9y ago

Much better written and researched that the title had me assume at first.

Bullshit article. Not a single example of supposed "fake news" that these guys were supposed to have used to influence the election.

FireBeyond 9y ago
Who said they were investigating that? There's one mention of the word election, and it asks a question. So every other discussion point there is bullshit, because they don't prove that The_Donald was trying to influence the election?
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  The title is "how the_donald influences the fake news ecosystem". Then they fail to provide any actual instance of that. Delete the word election from my comment (even though that was when this term was invented). And even then there is hardly one lame example of an image that the president retweeted, which was just a sort of conspiracy theory, not "fake news" that people thought was an actual news story. It is a heavily loaded term. A rumor, or a nutjob conspiracy theory, or a trolling joke, all of these and more have been called "fake news". Is that what we're worried about now? I would say not. What I understand by fake news is a false story reported by a news channel or website or newspaper. For example, CNN reported on TV that "it is illegal to look at the wikileaks dump, except for us". This is fake news. I'd like for such articles to tackle this, not random trolling and conspiracy theories.
beager 9y ago
Interestingly enough, your comment contains two strategies commonly used by witting or unwitting disseminators/consumers of disinformation to dispute inconsonant reporting: 1. Calling it "fake news" ("Bullshit article") 2. Introducing a straw man
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  > 1. Calling it "fake news" ("Bullshit article") Funny. That would apply on the article itself too. > 2. Introducing a straw man I'm not sure what's the strawman in my comment.

rstoj 9y ago

TLDR; snippets from the article: A shocking amount of disinformation (“fake news”) is also created by and spread from smaller, fringe Web communities that have relatively outsized influence on the greater Web. We set out to measure just how this influence flows in a systematic and methodological manner, analyzing how URLs from 45 mainstream and 54 alternative news sources are shared across 8 months of Reddit, 4chan, and Twitter posts. Highlights: 1. Reddit and 4chan post mainstream news URLs at over twice the rate than Twitter does 2. Alternative news URLs spread much faster than mainstream URLs, perhaps an artifact of automated bots 3. 4chan was also the most successful at “reviving” old stories We found that Twitter does have heavy influence on the spread of fake news. The_Donald and /pol/ are responsible for around 6% of mainstream news URLs over 4.5% of alternative news URLs on Twitter. Whole story in the arxiv paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.06947 https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.06947

sogen 9y ago
Surprised to see that unexpected amount of news generate over there 6% is a huge number specially these years

alva 9y ago

4chan can be extremely effective in shaping online conversation and mainstream news coverage. The strategy is never explicitly stated and is most likely done unconsciously, but is powerful. A relatively small number of people shape the mainstream news and a large part is done through gauging public interest. With Twitter, which journalists and editors use extensively, as well as news sites comment sections, motivated groups can storm the place using convincing messages and realistic profiles. If the journalist perceives a story is going viral and not being covered, they start to amplify. If the story is true, this may be in their interests. The blue check mark networks are extremely influential and so the message spreads rapidly. At this point the snowball has it's own momentum and 4chan can sit back whilst the 'normies' discuss, argue and boost the signal. Another aspect is 4chan friendly journalists. Not 'respectable' journalists, but with blue checks, a reputation and a lot of followers. They are happy to amplify these stories. Maybe about 10% of these are then picked up but the standard lot, mostly to mock, but the signal is boosted nevertheless. Basically the tactic is to get a respectable blue-check to amplify the message (positive or negative, doesn't matter) to cause a massive chain reaction. The journalists are getting played. Some will be aware and happy to partake, many I do not think are aware how much of they perceive to be real public opinion is. /pol/ has enough latent energy to have an effect. Thousands of bored, qausi-ideological young men. Many are skilled programmers. Government and other psyop manuals are distributed and put into practice. The incentives for the hive to work together for a goal is free. It is mostly for the lulz but with a slant towards their ideology. How much money would it cost for an agency to mobilise a few thousand workers to do a concentrated attack on a target from all angles? A fascinating group to study in regards to distributed, decentralised mobilisation of people in order to complete a goal. edit: The_Donald is downstream from 4chan

norikki 9y ago
The important thing to note here is that the 'mainstream' news sources and Blue Checkmarks have all that influence because their political adgenda is aligned with advertisers and so they have tons of money to self-promote. (See the adpocalypse on YouTube) They dont have all that influence because their political slant is vastly more popular or more accurate than non-corperate (aka alternative) news sources. That's why the niche for alternatives to them exist. Plenty of fake news on both 4chan and CNN, just different fake news. "Hands up don't shoot!" vs. naming the wrong man as the Vegas shooter https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/16/lesson-learned-from-the-shooting-of-michael-brown/?utm_term=.a8d8223d81a8 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/0... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/google-admits-citing-4chan-to-spread-fake-vegas-shooter-news/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/googl...

vim_wannabe 9y ago

For the love of God, don't feed the troll.

seattle_spring 9y ago
By "the troll," I assume you mean The_Donald and 4chan?

beager 9y ago

This was a much meatier writeup than I expected from the premise, which usually gets a pretty surface, opinionated treatment. Maybe I misunderstand the capabilities of offered solutions, but I can't imagine that ML would be a tremendously effective tool to gauge content veracity, at least on its own. Maybe it would be a good supplement to a headstrong human effort, but that headstrong human effort seems for major gatekeepers of content (Google, Facebook, etc) like it would be an underpowered cost-center to placate a concerned public at best, and a non-starter at worst. The final suggestion resonated with me a lot: > Finally, we think the research community should continue to build up our understanding of how this content is created; a deep enough understanding could allow us to adapt the strategies of bad actors as a tool against them. It’s time to fight fire with fire. This, to me, while maybe not the most tidy solution to the issue, acknowledges the messy reality of the situation and gives one way to effectively approach it: flood the zone. I think we did see tactical mimicry with things like Correct the Record during the 2016 election cycle. However, I believe that lacked the sort of ethical/factual ambivalence that got the 4chan/reddit pipeline running as well as it did (and continues to do). Essentially, the disseminators of propaganda operate asymmetrically, as they are governed by more dire motivations and by fewer rules. Those who would respond to nullify the effect of that propaganda can't half-ass it, they would need to match the shrewdness and power of what continues to crop up. It's very Brave New World.

sysdyne 9y ago

>Trusting whatever is said on 4chan Are these people for real? As a 4chan user I always never trust it! Makes me wonder who conducts these experiment since I don't think even the larger 4chan community actually takes itself seriously.