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Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks
- jotm 8y agoTargeted smearing and destroying of one's reputation is quite an old endeavour. Works amazingly well online, too. Don't give up Internet anonymity like some governments want you to.
- yifanl 8y agoI don't think Internet anonymity is a thing though. Even if you make a fully unrelated identity, smearing that identity is enough to discredit your ability to engage online. Sure, you can make another and another, but starting over with zero online credibility is the same thing as losing all your credibility.
- tomatotomato37 8y agoOne of the components of online anonymity is having different identites for different communities. That way if your expiremental political blog goes horribly wrong it doesn't take your professional life or hobby group with it
- yifanl 8y agoWell sure, you can treat being online as an advanced form of roleplaying, but then that just limits your ability to really engage in serious discussion, because you're just talking to other roleplayers. And that's fine for most topics, but when you talk about certain issues, I feel that speaking in an honest manner (and assuming everyone who isn't obviously trolling is doing the same) is the only way to really have a discussion, otherwise it just makes all online discourse totally meaningless.
- tomatotomato37 8y agoI'm talking more about different pseudonames and siloing personal information rather than full on different identites. I'm as authentic here as I am on my Reddit or professional GitHub accounts, and yet it still will require corporate level shenanigans to find and link them all together
- canhascodez 8y agoExperimental political blog? What an interesting euphemism.
- ch4ck 8y agoVide Judge Kavanaugh.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoNeither of us knows if he was smeared or just outed.
- learc83 8y agoSome of the later accusations could have been targeted smears, or they could have been true. But if Dr. Ford was intentionally lying in an attempt to smear Kavanaugh, she was laying the groundwork for her accusation all the way back in 2012. That's a pretty far reaching conspiracy.
- paulddraper 8y agoIt could have been sincere yet wrong on her part, and an urgent targeted smear by others.
- learc83 8y agoSure it could have been, which is why I said "if Dr. Ford was intentionally lying". If you believe that she was sincere though, I think it's much more likely that Kavanaugh was lying to protect himself than it was that an assault victim randomly mixed him up with her assaulter. From her story she knew him and had fairly prolonged close contact with him. It wasn't like she just caught a glimpse of him from a distance. The mistaken identity defense was just a way for people to say they didn't believe the story without calling her a liar.
- paulddraper 8y agoThere's the identification during the event, and there's the identification many, many years later (even 2012 was still 30 years after the event). > I think it's much more likely that Kavanaugh was lying to protect himself than it was that an assault victim randomly mixed him up with her assaulter. I agree. And if it were 1982 that would weight heavily. On the other hand, delaying charges for multiple decades, then bringing them out within a narrow several-week window that happens to have the greatest possible maximum political effect...what are the probabilities of underlying motivation? Unfortunately, either way there are some incredulous events.
- ryanlol 8y agoDirect link without lead harvesting nonsense: http://info.digitalshadows.com/rs/457-XEY-671/images/DigitalShadows-TheBusinessofDisinformationFakeNews.pdf http://info.digitalshadows.com/rs/457-XEY-671/images/Digital... This is super lazy, the paper seems like it was produced by a PR drone whose knowledge on the subject was limited to a list of keywords to google.
- strictnein 8y agoThe article itself is pretty lazy too, like it was a paid placement. It mentions "Digital Shadows" nine times.
- f055 8y agoIt could be very meta if it turned out that the story about fake news is fake itself ;)
- blinky1456 8y agoThe way theregister.co.uk works is that along with their own writers, anyone can submit articles. They pick whether to publish it it/edit then publish. Most news sites do this, even the biggest and most respected. But I think they get a larger amount of their content this way, and consequentially some of it can be a bit self-promoty.
- ryanlol 8y agoI'm pretty sure that John Leyden works for The Register. https://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/John-Leyden https://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/John-Leyden I could be wrong, but that seems exceedingly unlikely given the amount of stories he authors. Very much seems like either he or The Register got paid for this article.
- bryanrasmussen 8y agook but what is the quality control like on all these tools to help do you illegal stuff? Better or worse than normal software. Is there any open source tools to help you do illegal stuff? Because if you can't see the source I think a good illegal tool moneymaking scheme would be to sell the tools to do illegal stuff and then blackmail the people who did illegal stuff for a part of the money. but that might also be dangerous.
- PeanutNore 8y agoAlmost all of the tools used to do legal stuff can also be used to do illegal stuff. You think scam websites are deep down built on Linux and Apache like everything else?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bryanrasmussen 8y agoSure, but the article suggested that there were tools that were written with pulling particular scams as their purpose.
- jsonne 8y agoI gave a talk at Denver startup week last year about the underlying profit incentives tied to fake news and how industry reforms in the way media companies do business could not only benefit the advertisers but also stop Fake news. At the end of the talk I had 3 people ask how they could make fake news to promote their startups. That this has turned into a booming industry surprises me 0%, though it is depressing.
- adamnemecek 8y agoCan you recommend some material on this and how to design the incentives properly?
- jsonne 8y agoYeah let me try and find some good articles. As for my talk, the tl;dr is that the lack of inventory transparency by ad networks coupled with the way that the CPM pricing model is currently administered incentivizes a system where the only that matters is clicks and not context or outcomes. Fake news is an extreme example, but a less sinister one is the Buzzfeeds and Upworthys of the world.
- mattferderer 8y agoIs your talk or similar online anywhere?
- jsonne 8y agoUnfortunately, I don't believe it was recorded. That said I've been submitting it to some local TedXs so hopefully, I can get a recording in the near future.
- guachesuedehack 8y agoWould you happen to have a slides or transcripts then ?
- whyaduck 8y ago
- sbhn 8y agoClick baits gonna click bait
- burtonator 8y agoI've been working on some algorithms I think can identify fake news easily and reliably. The key part is you have to have a massive dataset of historical information. With Datastreamer (my company) we have about 1PB of news, blogs, and social media from the last 4-5 years. I'm curious if it would make sense to ship an open/public API that would allow people both to report AND check on whether something is fake news. Sort of like Hacker News but a browser extension that allows you to flag whether you think something is fake.
- lifthearth 8y agoHi I am interested in this sort of service. I have 2 concerns. First is I don't install browser extensions unless I really trust them. Too many are pumped up and then sold to some malware company, one update later and you're owned. My second concern is that if this works well eventually the fake news producers will become aware of it, reverse engineer it and then attempt to game the detection.
- Aditya_Garg 8y agoFakespot has been popular for years, and spam reviewers haven't been able to game it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoWhat would make more sense is to build a certificate system around this that news organizations can use to declare an article is Fake News Free. Might be a nice business to start riding the Fake News Boom.
- social_quotient 8y agoTaking this idea. What would be the hypothetical flow for the recent Bloomberg chip article? I’m sure it would have been published with the cert since it’s from Bloomberg but later when it turns out to be less than true or more inflammatory than intended. Do they lose their cert? Or maybe just the article has to persist with the cert rating? I love the idea, just curious how it works logistically.
- fredley 8y agoIf you haven't seen Century of the Self[1] I recommend it. It is a documentary about the history, and rise of PR. We are now, perhaps, at the end of the century of the self - as the trustworthiness (and hence value) of broadcast information drops to zero (not that it has yet, but it will). How our current news/media copes, and what replaces it are still unknown. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
- onemoresoop 8y agoGood point. I highly recommend this documentary to anyone who hasn't watched it.
- olivermarks 8y agoI highly recommend too - Adam Curtis at his finest
- bilbo0s 8y ago>How our current news/media copes, and what replaces it are still unknown... You should be more worried about how the current government copes with it. I think fake news might have helped Trump gain power in part, but it's DEFINITELY contributing to Trump losing power. Which illustrates that it's much easier to tear down with fake news than it is to build up. That doesn't bode at all well for anyone who wants to be a mayor, or president, or senator, or police chief or whatever in the future.
- manux 8y ago100% agree with you, but I think for a lot of people who voted for Trump it might definitely have been an act of "tearing down" what was perceived as the corrupt establishment politics by these voters.
- pjc50 8y ago> DEFINITELY contributing to Trump losing power I thought that was the gradual exposure and prosecution of his money-laundering accomplices, along with the conspicuous nastiness of his few policies, and the huge amount of time spent golfing or tweeting?
- gonational 8y agoFake news as a service; CNN and NBC have been doing that for decades... well ahead of the curve.
- rapnie 8y agoTelling only part of the story, showing bias, spinning things. Surely. But fake news? Examples please..
- ch4ck 8y agohttp://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977814,00.html http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977814,...
- learc83 8y agoBased on what the experts they hired told them this is example of "Telling only part of the story, showing bias, spinning things". The experts NBC hired to conduct the demonstration insisted that the rockets wouldn't matter unless fuel spilled. They also told them that the explosion was sparked by a broken headlamp, not the rockets they added as part of the demonstration. Additionally, the demonstration was designed not as a scientific test, but as a demonstration of something that had been proven to happen in the past. The problem was that the audience was likely mislead into believing it was an experiment as opposed to a dramatic recreation. They didn't create the story out of thin air. Regardless it was 25 years ago, and the news organization in question was shamed, retracted the story, and made a apology.
- ch4ck 8y agoQ: Is it true that Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov from Moscow won a car in a lottery? A: In principle yes, but: it wasn't Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov but Aleksander Aleksandrovich Aleksandrov; he is not from Moscow but from Odessa; it was not a car but a bicycle; he didn't win it, but it was stolen from him.
- blinky1456 8y agoI have come across cloned news site of mirror.co.uk promoting crypto-currency scams. They talk about it here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/warning-fake-mirror-websites-promoted-12427136 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/warning-fake-mirror-we... It was from an advert on a legitimate website, but it had redirects/popups that show only on mobile devices.(this seems to affect a lot of even normally very trustworthy websites for some reason)
- adtac 8y agoHonestly, some of those fake articles could have legitimately been written by the original Mirror. It's slightly amusing to me how they pretend like they're the beacon of truth and journalism in that article; I'd be completely sympathetic if it was the BBC, but it's not. I'm not saying they deserved this, but I'll be lying if I said I don't feel a small amount of schadenfreude. The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Mirror are so unreliable and clickbaity.
- sefrost 8y agoHere's someone far more reputable to feel sympathy for, Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/fake-martin-lewis-ads/ https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/fake-martin-lewis...
- miluge 8y agoPeople promoting affiliates are using this technique too...It's been around loooooong before fake news was fake news
- olivermarks 8y agoThe term 'fake news' is unhelpful. Yellow journalism, deliberately confusing and deflecting writing and scams are as old as printing
- soundwave106 8y agoAgree that the term wasn't helpful overall (it unfortunately is politically loaded). But looking at the original paper (already posted but re-linked here -- http://info.digitalshadows.com/rs/457-XEY-671/images/DigitalShadows-TheBusinessofDisinformationFakeNews.pdf http://info.digitalshadows.com/rs/457-XEY-671/images/Digital...) I guess the author was trying to link a "current news event" with various other disinformation that is more relevant from a business perspective -- black hat SEO strategies, site / brand spoofing, social media spamming, and the like. I'm not sure how helpful the high-level overview is either :) but from what I can tell the intended audience was non-technical. One that, say, might not even be familiar with any of the above terms in the first place, yet is vaguely familiar with the concept that cyber threats exist, and might be looking at purchasing something from a digital security company (like, um, Digital Shadows) to help this. Businesses absolutely would be concerned about brand protection and preventing any malice (digital or otherwise) that could damage the business.
- blueadept111 8y agoThe concept of "fake" news is a slippery slope. Anyone that's in the business of gathering and presenting news has a number of vested interests. Sensationalism. Fabrication. Fear mongering. Persuasion. Ingratiation. Language itself is mostly a tool for some shade of lying and/or intimidation, with the occasional fringe use of conveying factual information or for enabling cooperation between peers.
- jotm 8y agoReally not sure what kind of people are downvoting these kinds of comments. Anyone care to enlighten?
- olivermarks 8y agoI'm puzzled by the down votes too
- daxorid 8y agoUsually the kind of people who esteem journalists as philosopher-kings, and the organizations who employ them as paragons of perfect, unassailable virtue. The Fourth Estate is not to be criticized.
- aurailious 8y agoWhat kind of conspiracy nonsense is this?
- olivermarks 8y ago'It’s Easier to Fool People Than to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled'
- kadendogthing 8y agoYikes.
- 8y ago
- gtirloni 8y agoThe fake news phenomenon is something that worries me at a local level: friends and family. I'm constantly bombarded by forwarded messages from them that don't pass a simple cursory review and are 99% fake if you dig further. I've tried to combat this by researching what's forwarded to me and pointing that out (including how I discovered it was false) but people either don't reply back or get hostile, assuming I'm one of the "others" (because these messages are usually trying to instill people to hate something). I have _never_ received a thank you from anyone for this and nobody ever apologized back, and I try to be extra polite when pointing these errors. I've left various chat groups and feel my energy is depleted to continue on this fight. It amazes me that people default to a "believe in everything that comes from WhatsApp/FB/Instagram" mentality versus distrusting the Internet completely (which would be more sensible if coupled with a minimum amount of research on what's shared with you).
- gambler 8y agoI feel most people who trust social media for news are super-late Internet adopters who don't quite understand how any of this stuff works. I know some older (but not old, really) people who use Facebook without understanding the boundary between Facebook and the rest of the web. They just see text on the screen and make arbitrary assumptions on where it's coming from. This is the price society is paying for making social media "accessible" through phone apps and such.
- helveticastand 8y agoA lot of people with that mindset really don't care where it comes from. Like you said, they're in part trying to fuel some hatred towards a particular person or group of people. It simply exists to propogate ideas in those who are unwilling to listen to any sort of reason, who will then spread and share these ideas with others. These people are perfectly fine living in a bubble and feeding off of each other all because they are unwilling to form their own opinions and face the facts, imagined or real.
- ccnafr 8y agofake news ^-^
- tyingq 8y agoMost of what they would need has existed "as a service" for shady internet marketers, SEO companies, etc, for quite some time. Buying tweets, likes, spammed/spun content/comments, and so on isn't terribly new.
- sorokod 8y agoPersonal news hygiene must be practiced in the same way food hygiene is practiced. You will not eat a free sandwich found on a public toilet floor. You should not consume news sourced from FB, Twitter, etc... Define your hygienic sources of news and stick to them, accept that you may need to pay for quality. Enforcing this is a personal responsibility. Oh... and teach the children personal news hygiene.
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