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France might be losing its first big information war
- mc32 8y agoCan Twitter not do something where new and low activity accounts are given less weight and thus rise in relevance more slowly compared to seasoned and active accounts? Maybe even disallow likes and retweets till it matures as an account. That said, you can't just ban "non-local" accounts from injecting themselves into a remote topic. If Kyle Jenner wants to tweet about something in France or Brazil, it should be non-exceptional (etc.)
- tapoxi 8y agoWhy would they? That would reduce engagement.
- mc32 8y agoI don't think it would have a big impact. New accounts should by their nature have few followers. Accounts with historically low activity should also have little effect on "engagement".
- amadeusw 8y agoThese are good points. Twitter has means to prevent disinformation campaigns using relatively simple math. The question we need to ask is why they don't do it.
- jchw 8y agoI've thought about this but social media sites have negative incentive to prevent abuse. To them, all engagement is good engagement, it seems, whether it's vitriol or misinformation, if it gets people clicking, it's gonna make ad money.
- vrazj 8y agoI will never understand why Twitter exposes the UI language of all users. Terrible, security-wise.
- reustle 8y agoIs it really terrible? Maybe they should hide usernames too
- sdinsn 8y agoWhy is this terrible?
- int_19h 8y agoBecause in many places in the world, speaking some languages is inviting trouble. In US, for example, people speaking Arabic in public (including online) can be harassed over that.
- arkh 8y agoYou may want to redo your analysis with a #giletsjaunes or whatever the french tags are. Don't expect a French movement born on Facebook from mainly boomers to use an English tag on twatter.
- herogreen 8y agoAnother interesting place to help fact-checking: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com https://skeptics.stackexchange.com
- stabbles 8y agoNow wait till the trolls flood skeptics.stackexchange.com
- tareqak 8y agoIs disingenuous communication protected by freedom speech? If I am allowed to say X, can I also pretend to be person Y and say as X as Y? Can I pretend to be person Y_0 ... Y_N-1 and still say X for any arbitrarily large value of N? disingenuous - Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does. [0] [0] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/disingenuous https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/disingenuous
- spuz 8y agoDepends which country you live in.
- lbotos 8y agoI believe "no" if "disingenuous" is a synonym for false I think it'd be like "yelling fire in a crowded theater": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the... IANAL
- gowld 8y agoYour link says "yes". > limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot).
- rayiner 8y ago"Fire in a crowded theater" is probably the wrong example. (In part because it was used to justify restrictions on political speech that would not fly today.) A better example is: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/705/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/705/ > Petitioner's remark during political debate at small public gathering that, if inducted into Army (which he vowed would never occur) and made to carry a rifle "the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.," held to be crude political hyperbole which, in light of its context and conditional nature, did not constitute a knowing and willful threat against the President within the coverage of 18 U.S.C. § 871(a). Freedom of speech in the U.S. is extremely broad. False and damaging speech is in theory not protected (so defamation laws are valid), but the standard is very high even then. "Disingenuous" speech is protected (OP is calling it "disingenuous" because he can't prove it's clearly false.)
- diego_moita 8y agoBrazilian here. After the horrible very bad choices we made on last election here, thanks to WhatsApp, I fear that "digital democracy" looks each day more like mob rule fed by paranoia.
- chadAnon69 8y agoThe big thing nobody talks about with Bolsonaro though is the geopolitical implications with China. US and Brazil could starve China into compliance as they produce around 80% of the worlds soy and corn. Nobody is talking about that aspect,the fact that brazil has non-socialist anti-China leader for the first time in decades, although Trump must be aware because he sent Bolton down to Brazil and invited Bolsonaro to the white house It applies beyond China as well. They could just become OPEC for food and both countries would benefit from being able to jack up prices on crops and livestock.
- omegaworks 8y ago>US and Brazil could starve China into compliance Into compliance with what, exactly?
- baybal2 8y agoTrade blockade, and food in particular. Russian farmers will be happy, once in a blue moon.
- gdy 8y agoThey are not too unhappy even now. https://agfax.com/2018/10/12/global-markets-wheat-robust-russian-exports-in-spite-of-smaller-crop/ https://agfax.com/2018/10/12/global-markets-wheat-robust-rus...
- gdy 8y agoAmerican interests
- 8y ago
- malvosenior 8y agoWhy is the assumption that "bots" are being created by people not in France? If I was part of a semi-violent protest group I would definitely not use my personal account and instead create something new like this.
- stabbles 8y agoIt doesn't require thousands of TPUs and the latest deep learning methods to reveal these fake accounts, so there's at least something that can be done? Value authorative accounts higher somehow such that new / fake ones don't get this traction?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- upofadown 8y agoIt's like the whole world is in an Eternal September phase. These are the glory days for trolls. Some of them can even get paid for it...
- omegaworks 8y agoFrance is a nation of 67 million people. Who is losing, exactly?
- dev_dull 8y ago> Foreign propagandists are getting a strong foothold in France, and the traditional media can’t fight it Or, another way to look at it, is that MSM in the country has lost control of the "narrative". Whether that is good or bad largely depends on whether your opinions fit within the status quo.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoThat way of looking at it assumes that the MSM is no more truthful than the foreign propagandists. I'm willing to believe quite a bit negative about the MSM, but the foreign propagandists are in fact less truthful.
- narrator 8y agoThe foreign propagandists are nationalists and the domestic MSM is anti-nationalist. Weird huh? The anti-nationalists are saying because you support strengthening national sovereignty you are subversive to the nation and anti-patriotic. War is peace. Freedom is slavery and all that.
- int_19h 8y ago"Strengthening national sovereignty" is often a thinly veiled synonym for "putting a bunch of strong-hand authoritarians in charge and letting them suppress opposition". A good example of that is PiS in Poland. If you believe that political freedom is a core part of your national identity, then fighting back against those people is very much patriotic.
- lubiesezamki 8y ago> A good example of that is PiS in Poland. What are examples of "suppressing opposition" in Poland?
- gdy 8y agoTaking control of the Supreme Court.
- oh-kumudo 8y agoFrance is losing its war against digital populism amid a large scale of economic stagnation, might be a better title.
- AzzieElbab 8y agoLet's just call everyone who is fed up with overreaching overspending governments a foreign agent and get it over with. Also, every country should setup firewalls analogous to the China's to protect our democracies
- int_19h 8y agoConversely, let's just pretend that there's no foreign influence at all? Targeting mass discontent and revolutionary movements like that is not new. Germans have poured millions of marks into the Bolsheviks during WW1, for example. It doesn't mean that everyone who supported Bolsheviks was a foreign agent, but it would certainly be unwise to ignore that sort of thing, and it behooves one to ask why those other governments support these movements.
- sg0 8y agoCommunity detection in uncovering fake news FTW!
- hinkley 8y agoWe know that the human brain has trouble recalling that information came from an unreliable source. Until we can fix that problem, the only solution I know of is to filter it out before we perceive it. I think there are certain domains where anonymity is of paramount importance. Support groups for sure, matters of civics? Maybe. But someone making bold claims isn't entitled to my attention until they've established a track record of some kind, or are vouched for by someone I trust on the subject. I keep thinking we're going to end up with a social circle that's morally equivalent to Web-of-Trust in the old PGP days but nothing ever comes. And even if it does come, it won't fix the thought bubble problem because the people whose opinions you trust have their own biases.
- burtonator 8y ago> I think there are certain domains where anonymity is of paramount importance. Support groups for sure, matters of civics? Maybe. But someone making bold claims isn't entitled to my attention until they've established a track record of some kind The reverse is also true. Literally EVERY comment Trump makes should be followed up with "why would anyone trust anything you've said when you were so wrong about X"...
- hinkley 8y agoYeah the bold claims are only plausible if they are in a domain the persona has previously demonstrated competence in. If Aunt May tells me I have to use cold butter in grandma's cookie recipe, I'll absolutely believe her. But no matter how many times she corrects my baking, I'm never going to take her advice on dentistry or geopolitics.
- paraditedc 8y agoI will just leave this here for readers to judge: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11406694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11406694
- imgabe 8y agoWhy are people still paying attention to Twitter and Facebook? I kind of get Facebook because your friends are there but I've never seen the point of Twitter.
- ddmma 8y agoIn times like this when verifying identity on social media seems like valid point. Then you get into chinese way of getting more serious and have privacy concerns. Repetition creates reality, no matter media distribution, internet mass distribution makes it more convenient and remotely available.
- kfoley 8y agoSincere question, is this really France's "first big information war"? I feel like there was a lot of similar activity leading up their election last year try to get Le Pen elected which wasn't successful but I'm not sure how accurate that is.
- jphalimi 8y agoYou are right. The 2017 election in France was under the spotlight especially after what happened in 2016 in the US and the Brexit in the UK. EM! (Macron's party) was a victim of massive internet attacks during the campaign. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-russia-spies-emmanuel-macron-french-election-surveillance-marine-le-pen-a7863531.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne... In the past couple of weeks, I have seen French fake posts that were popular in the past 24 months raise again like an army of Phoenix. As far as media go, we have usually and relatively independent media in France, even public. However, foreign entities and especially RT France have been controversial in some of their coverage.
- quotemstr 8y agoThis talk of "information war" is extremely creepy. IW is unfalsifiable and indistinguishable from legitimate popular dissatisfaction, which is a much more likely explanation for recent political outcomes. No, the existence of a few foreign-sources social media posts is not evidence that recent political results differ from the genuine will of the people. The results of elections and polls do, in contrast, constitute evidence that the people, as a whole, feel a certain way. Macron has an approval rating of 17%. Are foreign agents manipulating 83% of the population? While "information war" is bogus as an explanatory or predictive theory, it's an excellent pretext for censorship, especially since it seems to be brought up whenever a political outcome disfavored by the elites occurs. Followed to its logical conclusion, fighting "information war" yields a regime of public censorship that differs from China's only in flavor.
- joeldg 8y agohttp://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/The_MADCOM_Future_RW_0926.pdf http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/The_MADCO...
- temp-dude-87844 8y agoModern platforms enable the rapid and wide spread of information from peer to peer, whether truthful or false. But if foreign provocateurs can successfully sow discord and fan the flames to the point that there's riots in the streets, there are deeper problems in that society that have been lurking skin deep in the minds and fears of the populace, almost always tracing back to economic anxiety, even when masquerading as xenophobia or racism. These posts about foreign psy-ops are implicitly suggesting that the representative democracy and predominantly free assembly that western states have come to expect is trivially susceptible to DDOS. This is true, but there's nothing fundamentally enshrined in the deep rulebook of history that says big western states must remain organized along such values. A populace not subject to daily economic anxiety is more willing to tolerate less representation in government without there being widespread discontent. It's a false dichotomy that a western state must either be overtly democratic or completely dysfunctional. The remarkable thing is that mega-states loosely constituted along ethno-national lines, beholden to frequent elections and policy reversals, in a hypercompetitive world with increasingly open borders and stubbornly persistent income inequality, existed with remarkable stability for as long as they did. We've entered a time where the formula is easy to disrupt, and it's up to each state's people to evaluate how to proceed when faced with such a threat, but people worrying about the cost of living will find it hard to think of the big picture.
- throwawayjava 8y ago> A populace not subject to daily economic anxiety is more willing to tolerate less representation in government without there being widespread discontent. No one has figured out the whole "prosperity without scary periods of scarcity" thing yet. > almost always tracing back to economic anxiety, even when masquerading as xenophobia or racism. Xenophobia has a bit of a chicken-and-egg relationship with economic anxiety. Does the xenophobia cause economic anxiety, or does economic anxiety cause xenophobia? I don't think the answer is so straight-forward, especially this time around history's block. It's not like 2016 was the 1930's... even economically depressed parts of the country were doing better than they were for decades. Are people anxious because they're xenophobic and believe that "those people" are out to get them where it hurts (for them, the pocket book)? Or, are they anxious because they're afraid of losing their way of life and the objectively most likely cause of that loss is "those people", thus causing xenophobia?
- tr352 8y agoWhile I too worry about political influence through abuse of social media, this article doesn't prove that this actually took place. What we see here is that there are some very dubious twitter accounts with some interactions. But are these meaningful interactions? Did any of the content reach and influence the supposed target audience? Are the communities shown in the Gephi graph real communities? These communities and their interactions could just as well be fake. When I was working on exactly this, I noticed that fake communities (i.e. sets of fake accounts all retweeting each other) are quite common. Just look at the specific accounts mentioned (Pascal66616113 and 1Happeningnow). They have only 2 and 51 followers, respectively, and right now it's 4 and 72. I think it's very important to detect malicious political accounts on social media and be aware of their impact. This article mentions two examples of such accounts, but doesn't prove anything about impact. The conclusion that France is losing an information war here doesn't follow.
- mc32 8y agoYou make some good points. It's possible that the article, in itself, is a kind of propaganda to make it seem as if the actions of the French are influenced more by foreign agents than by their own volition and will. That said, TW could do more to make the example accounts less relevant in any case --to eliminate some of the accusation.
- dionian 8y agoIndeed. How do we not know this article itself is not an example of the phenomenon?
- jancsika 8y ago> Make your own opinion and fact check everything you read online. Dear French Citizens, A foreign adversary has infiltrated our country and sabotaged seven of our bridges. When driving, please stop and briefly leave your vehicle to manually authenticate each bridge for structural integrity before continuing your trip. Stay safe, France! Sincerely, The GPG UX Team
- Tycho 8y agoI suspect these 'misinformation campaigns' are completely ineffectual and the main effect we are seeing is factual information routing around mainstream media outlets and successfully embarrassing subjects that the mainstream media would rather protect. For instance it was very embarrassing for the mainstream media and the democratic party that leaked emails showed them in collusion and undermining Bernie Sanders, but this was not misinformation. Likewise it was very embarrassing for the foreign policy establishment when their tools such as the oscar-winning White Helmets relief-workers were photographed arm-in-arm with rebel militants and shown staging videos, but I didn't see any of this exposed as 'misinformation.' I guess it was just 'the wrong information' to be reporting on. Revelations like this are much more powerful than silly memes from Twitter accounts with no real followers.
- Hasknewbie 8y ago>> Likewise it was very embarrassing for the foreign policy establishment when their tools such as the oscar-winning White Helmets relief-workers were photographed arm-in-arm with rebel militants and shown staging videos I looked this up and I found is this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-this-proof-white-helmets-staged-chemical-attack/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-this-proof-white-helmet... Wikipedia has a couple of incidents listed in the 'Controversies' section on White Helmets, that do not really show them as 'tools of the foreign policy establishment'. >> but I didn't see any of this exposed as 'misinformation.' Well there you go then.
- Tycho 8y agoThe snopes page has them admitting in an official statement to making a fake video but, you see, that’s ok because they were intentionally making a fake video, it was an exercise, and they never meant for it to be distributed. Right. The Wikipedia article states that they were founded by a man who happens to be a former British military intelligence officer, that they were initially funded by the UK foreign office, that they received 30 million annually from western governments and NGOs, and that they now operate in other countries. Sounds a hell of a lot more like a foreign policy tool than a grass roots charity operation, to me at least. And lest we think this is just some pictures flying around on unverified Twitter accounts, here’s a BBC Panorama documentary featuring blatantly faked footage. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SvjTeuSKTW0&t=3m54s&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SvjTeuSKTW0&t=3m54s&feature=yo...
- joeldg 8y agoThere is a paper written by an expert on this for the US Government as basically the handbook of what could be the future of this kind of attack. It's shocking and will change the way you think about these stories forever. http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/The_MADCOM_Future_RW_0926.pdf http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/The_MADCO...
- buboard 8y agowe have overabundance of information. You can find evidence to support / prove anything, including misinformation.
- caenorst 8y agoUnfortunately most of people out of France don't understand the situation here. They get to blame some violence propaganda of twitter account with less than a hundred followers without talking about how one-sided are mainstream medias (which have much bigger reach). I'm tempted to say that this is a move to discredit Gilets Jaunes movement.
- mberning 8y agoBingo. The establishment media is so desperate to control the narrative of this. For the longest time they kept beating the drum of “gas tax protests” to downplay other less flattering issues. Well, the gas tax was abandoned but the problem remains. What now? Better blame it on bots and foreign interests. This seems really familiar...
- RivieraKid 8y agoWhat are those other issues?
- mberning 8y agohttps://apnews.com/216f4fe17e85429a82ee088ed2a73b41 https://apnews.com/216f4fe17e85429a82ee088ed2a73b41
- sjg007 8y agoThis is the Russians.
- mmmmmmmmm 8y agoWe as a society need to come together to reject protests and social media as a means of influencing government. They're far too easy to manipulate, and it's far too difficult to prosecute manipulators. Voting should be the only means of influencing government. Protests and social media give a disproportionate voice to louder people. Social media is especially nefarious since its controlled by corporations that usually have their own biases and agendas.
- damota 8y agoThe author of the article clearly doesn't know France nor its recent history. The Gilets Jaunes movement is a contestation of late stage capitalism, not a series of pogroms against muslims. The people has been rumbling for quite some time now. With an arrogant, borderline authoritarian president that has nothing but contempt and mocking towards the French people, added to a weak political line (ni de droite ni de gauche ... mais surtout de droite. Neither left nor right, but especially right). People are roaring in uprising because what they see is a convergence of the resources towards the hands of those who have too much, and less and less towards those of who have too few. You don't need propaganda when the King is also the Fool.
- j-c-hewitt 8y agoIt's not like it's inconceivable that generally rural people struggling to make ends meet might be sensitive to a fuel tax increase. Tax revolts have been happening for thousands of years. Not all of them are the result of Russians posting online.
- gjvc 8y agoSomewhat orthogonal to this: live coverage from the streets of Paris. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEcYzBGfKBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEcYzBGfKBA
- MidgetGourde 8y agoHas anyone bothered to check the validity of the link / website? It looks pretty dodgy and conceals itself as a Medium blog post.......