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Disinformation for hire: how a new breed of PR firms is selling lies online
- ceejayoz 7y agoVernor Vinge's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End was quite prescient on this point, describing a world where the Internet largely becomes useless due to infinite disinformation crowding out the real.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI thought that’s Putin’s playbook. Since you can’t control the situation anyway, just push out a lot of disinformation so nobody believes anything anymore. You could argue that the current US president plays the same game by shouting “fake news” all the time.
- jajag 7y agoBut isn't the whole "Russian disinformation" thing in turn a way of discrediting information? Orwell was writing about this 80 years ago, it's never seemed more relevant.
- Tagbert 7y agoThat is how disinformation can be protected from exposure. If you fill the channels with enough disinformation, then even true information exposing disinformation is treated as disinformation. It’s very corrosive of society.
- jajag 7y agoBut it's also how perfectly valid discussions can be completely shut down - certainly very corrosive.
- wavefunction 7y ago>whole "Russian disinformation" That depends on how you define "whole." There must be examples of people either unknowingly and wrongly invoking "Russian disinformation" or intentionally invoking it for whatever purposes but there is definitely actual "Russian disinformation" occurring. Disinformation from all sorts of sources. It's imperative to be discerning now, and to be discerning about how to be discerning.
- jajag 7y agoVery valid point.
- rjsw 7y agoThe suggestion is that Vladislav Surkov [1] is behind this playbook. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov
- Ididntdothis 7y agoInteresting guy. It just shows that we shouldn’t correlate high intelligence and talent with virtue.
- turk73 7y agoOne look at Elon Musk and you have the perfect counterexample. See also: Mark Zuckerberg. Also the twit Jack Dorsey who runs Twitter. Cosmically compromised ethics.
- skocznymroczny 7y agoIt's funny considering "fake news" was invented by liberals in the US to shut down conservative media.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoI think eventually (hopefully?) most folks realize that the only solution is smaller, highly-moderated communities (like this one), and even then it's important to be aware of the implicit underlying biases of those communities. Some really great smaller subreddits also come to mind.
- ceejayoz 7y agoYes, the book had people form "belief circles" of that nature.
- bilbo0s 7y agoI'm not sure, but that doesn't sound all that great. It's kind of the problem now, people in belief circles with little basis in reality.
- te_chris 7y agoThe problem is we kind of have that with Facebook groups, but when they’re filled with people with low online media literacy they become semi-private conspiracy breeding grounds
- te_chris 7y agoSeriously, why am I being downvoted? It’s well established that FB groups are being used as niche channels for spreading misinformation. The only difference between one of these and HN is the quality of moderation.
- seppin 7y agoI get downvoted for saying unpopular but true things here, and so are you. Which undercuts the quality of moderation argument you are making.
- jandrese 7y agoThe downside is that small communities become echo chambers and cause people to further polarize themselves. It is vitally important to engaged with a diversity of opinion if you don't want to become radicalized, especially with viewpoints that you don't agree with.
- downerending 7y agoMore surprising to me is that seems to have virtually wiped out legitimate journalism at the same time.
- munificent 7y agoOur unwillingness to pay for journalism is what wiped it out. People, in aggregate, appear to want to read "news stories" with little discrimination about the quality or accuracy of those stories. When consumers want a product without care for quality, the market optimizes for that. So you get free news that's worth what you paid for it.
- downerending 7y agoPerhaps. I should clarify that by "wiped out", I mean that many formerly reputable and workmanlike publications abandoned the basic principles of journalism (e.g., the five W's, separation of church and state, etc.).
- munificent 7y agoRight. The reason they abandoned them was economics. They were no longer making enough money to pay for fact checkers, copy-editors, and investigative journalists. They were forced to focus on clickbait articles because those were the only ones that generated enough traffic to pay for the ads to keep the business afloat.
- downerending 7y agoCan't really argue with that. Guess I should pry open my meager wallet and support a few of the last good ones.
- anigbrowl 7y agoNo it isn't. Lots of people are willing to pay for journalism, but it's a major pain to do it. That's the problem syndication was supposed to solve, but large media companies (apparently) made the decision to kill off RSS.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- malvosenior 7y ago> "I developed this for manipulating public opinion,” Peng told the Reporter, an investigative news site in Taipei, which partnered with BuzzFeed News for this article. He added that automation and artificial intelligence “can quickly generate traffic and publicity much faster than people.” It's funny that Buzzfeed is reporting this because this is exactly the model that they created and helped disseminate all over the internet. It's a semi-automated system for creating clickbait to manipulate public opinion. I would love to see outlets like Buzzfeed, Huffpo... examine their own role in creating the world of clickbait, ragebait and misinformation that they so often complain about. That will never happen though.
- duxup 7y ago> to manipulate public opinion Was Buzzfeed trying to manipulate people or just get clicks?
- kevingadd 7y agoIf your goal is just to monetize your website (via ads or perhaps sponsored content), manipulation doesn't really seem like it's in your wheelhouse. I suppose it's not utterly implausible that a political party or other major player could attempt to pay off an outlet's owners to use them for manipulation, but that seems a lot more expensive than just astroturfing on twitter and facebook. One notable counter-example to my POV though would be that the Koch family has a tendency to hand big chunks of money to think-tanks, websites and universities for promoting their agenda. Not really sure what the best take-away from that is, though.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Vrondi 7y agoYes. Manipulate people to click. Once you get that down, you can point the manipulation in different directions.
- alamaslah 7y agoI would suggest looking into the history of the organisation. And the operations of the organisation. Who do they target? How do they target them? etc. I've noticed on this forum that anything tangentially connected to a "right-wing" or "alt-right" organisation or figure should be considered suspicious...So it is worth noting that the founders of buzzfeed, also founded huffpost, alongside Andrew Breitbart. You know, of brietbart fame.
- SamuelAdams 7y agoIf you're interested in learning more about media manipulation, I highly recommend reading the book Trust Me, I'm Lying [1]. It's shocking how easy it is to sway public opinion or plant fake stories that could have a national impact. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Me,_I%27m_Lying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Me,_I%27m_Lying
- malvosenior 7y agoAlso see Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
- turk73 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self Also, Bernays. I guess Goebbels, too.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agoInfluence by Robert Cialdini also comes to mind.
- mistermann 7y agoAlso "Truth" by Hector MacDonald. https://books.google.ca/books/about/Truth.html?id=wegtDwAAQBAJ https://books.google.ca/books/about/Truth.html?id=wegtDwAAQB...
- elfexec 7y ago> It's shocking how easy it is to sway public opinion or plant fake stories that could have a national impact. If you want a specific example, just read about Nayirah's testimony. How the Bush government, Kuwaiti diplomats and a well placed PR firm along with collusion by news/media used an outright lie to sway the public into supporting war. Nobody was prosecuted for this, nobody went to jail. If you want a second example, go read about the yellowcake propaganda based on forged documents, by once again a bush government and well placed PR firms along with collusion by news/media to use another outright lie to sway the public into supporting war. Nobody was prosecuted for this, nobody went to jail. As George likes to say "Fool me once..." "The first casualty in war is the truth".
- bantunes 7y agoI guess Cambridge Analytica's collapse with no real consequence for people working there showed both that there's a huge market for this, and high reward with low risk.
- SeanAppleby 7y agoThe consequences are so low that I would seriously question calling it a collapse. It's just been shuffled under a new banner as Emerdata under the same parent company with really no consequences outside of having to file some paperwork and rebrand. https://medium.com/@wsiegelman/cambridge-analytica-executives-created-a-company-in-2017-with-the-executive-director-deputy-b803f27f84a2 https://medium.com/@wsiegelman/cambridge-analytica-executive...
- ceejayoz 7y agoCA was also doing all of this pretty openly. It'll be much harder catching the smarter bad actors.
- rapnie 7y agoI wonder whether this'll create FOMO with any and all political actors left, right and center to jump on this kind of targeted manipulation bandwagon. Can't afford not be a player in this shady game :(
- seppin 7y agoIt's not cheating if everyone is doing it!
- nottorp 7y agoBuzzfeed has a really funny idea about what cookies are required... just about everything related to tracking and add personalization in fact. Couldn’t agree to that so I couldn’t read their article.
- danShumway 7y agoUnless it's a matter of principle to you, the article loads fine without cookies if you disable 3rd-pary and/or 1st-party Javascript. The cookie consent banner doesn't even load for me, I assume that with 3rd-pary JS enabled you get some kind of redirect or pop-up? I didn't get asked to consent to or enable anything. I have no idea why more people on HN don't use UMatrix with at least 3rd-party JS turned off by default. It's trivial to re-enable for the sites that need it, and a nontrivial portion of news sites I visit work just fine (if not better) with JS disabled. Most popups just flat-out disappear.
- brenden2 7y agoThis is exactly why I stay away from things like buzzfeed.
- pkilgore 7y agoI'm about to use the word blockchain, so stuck with me here I'm sorry. But a web3 built on a the idea that to use a site (post, read) required even trivial thousandths of a cent would be unlikely to harm users but would at least dramatically increase the costs of this sort of thing. And moves the net to rely less on an advertising funding model.
- Zarath 7y agoBlockchain would also mostly solve the corrupt ICANN issues being discussed on another thread, but people here don't really want to hear it for some reason.
- progval 7y agoYou're describing proof of work, not blockchain. It's easy to implement it without a blockchain: make MTAs require the hash of the enveloppe of the mail (+ a nonce outside the enveloppe) to start with a certain number of 0 bits. And make the MTAs return a parseable message when there aren't enough zeros, so the sender MTA can retry with other nonces until there are enough zeros. And the enveloppe already contains a Message-ID which is to be unique (as it contains the hostname of the sender) and unpredictable, so there shouldn't be issues with replay attacks.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- calibas 7y agoHere's some good reading in case anybody believes this kind of stuff is new. They had it down to a science nearly 100 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agoa very good bbc documentary based on Bernays work is "The Century of the Self": The Century of the Self - Part 1: "Happiness Machines" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 TL;DR: The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires. Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar. His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile. It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world. --- The Century of the Self - Part 2: "The Engineering of Consent" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEsPOt8MG7E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEsPOt8MG7E TL;DR: This episode explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses. Politicians and planners came to believe Freud's underlying premise - that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again they set out to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind. Sigmund Freud's daughter, Anna, and his nephew, Edward Bernays, provided the centrepiece philosophy. The US government, big business, and the CIA used their ideas to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American people. But this was not a cynical exercise in manipulation. Those in power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life. --- The Century of the Self - Part 3: "There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads; He Must Be Destroyed." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2LB2MaGoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2LB2MaGoM TL;DR: In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself. Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people's minds by business and politics. This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help movements like Werber Erhard's Erhard Seminar Training - into the irresistible rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation. But the American corporations soon realised that this new self was not a threat but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts to read the inner desires of the new self. --- The Century of the Self - Part 4: "Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VouaAz5mQAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VouaAz5mQAs TL;DR: This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self. Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people's inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products. Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s. The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn't realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them. --- edit: copy/pasta from youtube description
- smarri 7y ago"use every tool and take every advantage available in order to change reality according to our client's wishes" We all need a healthy dose of cynicism to survive.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- CapmCrackaWaka 7y agoDigression here: This reminds me of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, based around a genius that predicts events and cultural paths based on a mathematical formulas for aggregated human psychology. It led me to imagine a world where societies can not only be influenced, but their actions predicted, and a system that would emerge that capitalizes on alphas in this environment much like the stock market. This would almost act as a solution to this problem we currently have, if many agents were predicting and acting on these alphas so that the alphas that do exist are very small. After all, most of the problems we currently experience are due to this potential (alphas, in my analogy) being so large and profitable.
- carapace 7y agoI've heard that Behavioral economics is inspired by "Psychohistory", and these Seshat folks are also pretty serious about it. Any attempt that wants to be predictive will have to contend with "strange loops" of propaganda/PR efforts as well as the side-effects of their own work (since they arn't hiding.) > Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and how those decisions vary from those implied by classical theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics > TerminusDB powers Seshat, the Global History Databank, which is like the Foundation in that Seshat is dedicated to bringing together the most current and comprehensive body of knowledge about human history in one place. The massive collection of historical information allows researchers to rigorously test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies and human history. The core TerminusDB team are active in the Cliodynamics community. Cliodynamics treats history as science — practitioners develop theories that explain such dynamic historical processes, translate these theories into mathematical models and then test predictions against data. https://medium.com/terminusdb/terminusdb-whats-in-a-name-27b8be6b0794 https://medium.com/terminusdb/terminusdb-whats-in-a-name-27b... > Our unique Databank systematically collects what is currently known about the social and political organization of human societies and how civilizations have evolved over time. This massive collection of historical information allows us and others to rigorously test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies across the globe and human history. http://seshatdatabank.info/ http://seshatdatabank.info/ > Cliodynamics (/ˌkliːoʊdaɪˈnæmɪks/) is a transdisciplinary area of research integrating cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the longue durée, and the construction and analysis of historical databases.[1] Cliodynamics treats history as science. Its practitioners develop theories that explain such dynamical processes as the rise and fall of empires, population booms and busts, spread and disappearance of religions.[2][3] These theories are translated into mathematical models. Finally, model predictions are tested against data. Thus, building and analyzing massive databases of historical and archaeological information is one of the most important goals of cliodynamics.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics
- nocturnial 7y agoA bunch of companies took hold of a distributed system of information and centralized it under their control. Now those companies are claiming they cannot control disinformation, adversial content and whatnot because they have too much content. At the same time they are saying they would be the best in place to currate and control it because of market dynamics. I'm not advocating for a total ban of content unless it's "government" approved. But what's the difference between a government setting the rules and a corporation deciding the rules? We can vote out a government, but we can't vote out a corporation. This isn't new and we've dealt with this in the past. The technology is different but the tactics are the same.
- Matticus_Rex 7y agoYou as an individual can stop using a corporation's products way more easily than you as an individual can vote out a government. My personal success with voting out governments is zero, but my success in boycotting corporations is pretty high. Occasionally others have stopped using them as well and they've stopped having a large effect on my life.
- rtikulit 7y agoThe issue is the Internet has provided bad actors (including rent-seeking entrenched interests) with the ability to anonymously, cheaply and pervasively spread lies and propaganda. They can precisely manipulate emotionally vulnerable segments, bury informed discussion, manipulate Overton windows, and subvert law and policy making for their own purposes. Individual choice is of almost no help in managing the problem.
- Matticus_Rex 7y agoIf that's your critique of the private sector, what about governments? I agree that those things are problems, but we're not comparing to an ideal state -- we're comparing to another deeply flawed thing. At least individual choice gets me something in the private sector.
- sct202 7y agoTaiwan's elections are this weekend and there's been a lot of articles about disinformation campaigns there ( https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/technology/taiwan-election-china-disinformation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/technology/taiwan-electio... ), and it's interesting that the guy being interviewed is from there and speaking so openly about doing it.
- mistermann 7y agoI believe peddlers of disinformation can afford to be completely brazen about it, because nothing will ever be done about it. Oh sure, people love to complain about specific instances of disinformation (outright false or even just somewhat misleading information), but there is no similar love for even considering the idea that humanity, all of it down to a person, largely runs on half-truths and semi-delusional thinking.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoI'll probably get downvoted for this, but here goes... I listened to a podcast with a guy who runs a ring of disinformation sites in the US. I don't think it's as big of a problem as most people think. People don't get hit with some disinformation article and then suddenly start supporting another political party. Fake news is mostly just something to make people feel better about their views -- which are already completely set in stone. Yes, it's fueling a bit of radicalization, which isn't great. But I think more people are focused on this because they think it's the reason one party is getting more votes than the other. It's just not how fake news works.
- lonelappde 7y agoYour theory is that babies are born with political views, or what? And it's important to spend money make them feel better about their wrong beliefs, even though it doesn't matter?
- seppin 7y ago
- SuperFerret 7y agoITT: whataboutism
- smt88 7y agoFor anyone who upvoted this and works for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or Google: How do you justify your role in this? As Sacha Baron Cohen said in his ADL speech, Facebook takes money from what most people consider to be repugnant sources (e.g. white supremacists). Part of that goes into your paycheck. The unfortunate reality is that most evil is done by organizations composed of well-intentioned people who don't see themselves as doing any harm (or having control over the harm).
- api 7y agoOne mid-future prediction I've been making for a while: eventually we will make lying in the public sphere either a crime or a civilly actionable tort. Libel and slander already can be, but I am suggesting something more broad: the criminalization of the promulgation of fiction, opinion, or propaganda not labeled as such. We've always had tabloids and dumb mass media but smart microtargeted mass media powered by machine learning is to these what the machine gun is to the flintlock. Add deep fakes and machine generated text crafted to appeal to each reader and it's a tactical nuclear weapon. Many religions believe in intelligent literal demons assigned to individuals to deceive them. Seems to me we are busy inventing a real version of that. Seems to me that lying at industrial scale with AI and big data and social media is just not something society will be able to tolerate.
- carapace 7y ago> Many religions believe in intelligent literal demons assigned to individuals to deceive them. Seems to me we are busy inventing a real version of that. The Daemon-haunted World. (In case it's not clear, I'm playing off the title of Carl Sagan's book "The Demon-Haunted World". We haven't fully exorcised "real" demons from our world yet here we are developing artificial ones, eh?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World > The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in which the author aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople, and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning.
- seppin 7y agoWhat you're talking about isn't really possible, however establishing trust is. And relying on 3rd parties for trust when you don't know someone is also possible.
- hsnewman 7y agoThis really isn't new, alex jones with his "infowars" has been doing the same for years.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoThis being "reported" by BuzzFeed is sadly ironic. They paved to way for manipulating influence.
- gumby 7y agoThis represents the democratization of propaganda. Before okey large state actors (Pravda, BBC Empire Service, Voice of America, Radio France International etc). Now it’s available retail. Spam fighting has not caught up.
- munificent 7y ago"Democratization" implies "equally available to all people". That's what the "demos" is about. But when you have to pay for something, what that really means is that it's available only to those with the money. This is really the capitalization of propaganda — those with capital get to control the narrative.
- gumby 7y agoThose with the capital have ways controlled the narrative (newspapers, and before that hiring people to just go out and talk to the people, e.g. to be elected tribune). The cost of these propaganda efforts has plummeted, and increased automation will simply lower the cost further. Trump pays nothing to use Twitter and it netted him a presidency (though, per your comment, he already had a TV show). I expectthat within the next four or five years there will be middle schoolers using this tech to run for student council.
- munk-a 7y agoThis is where the slippery slope of advertising leads, and I'm sort of amazed people can morally decide to start doing this - I imagine once you're in it's easy though as you'd get a hell of a grandiose power trip out of knowing you just controlled who was elected in Azerbaijan.
- kennickv 7y agoIsn't this just Buzzfeed?
- csours 7y agoMy 4th prediction is coming along nicely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943361 > "4. Reality as a Service will allow users to choose the facts of their reality."
- planetzero 7y agoWhy only mention fake news and trolls that supposedly helped Trump and his supporters? It's as if there's none of this on the other side.
- paulie_a 7y agoHas the author never seen madmen or thank you for smoking. It's not a new breed. It's just an evolution
- adamiscool8 7y agoThis article was disappointingly light and hand-wavey on the technical details of the system. I would be very interested in a deep dive on the specifics. Like, scraping and spinning web content onto a Wordpress blog that then syndicates it onto social media was state of the art 10 years ago. Is it just exciting now because, politics?
- m463 7y agoReminds me of "The Doubt Factory" by Paolo Bacigalupi (fiction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doubt_Factory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doubt_Factory
- AlexCoventry 7y agoWithout reading the article yet: Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill is an incredible in-depth account of efforts by The Weinstein Company, NBC, and The National Enquirer to use espionage and intimidation for suppression of reports of sexual misconduct. The Wikipedia pages of some NBC executives were completely scrubbed of any hint of this suppression, for a while.
- otikik 7y ago"We do it because there is demand" That should not be a valid reason. Child pornography, slavery, drugs and harvested organs all have high demand. I am sure these guys won't have any qualms about, say, defending and promoting taking homeopathic remedies instead of chemo for people with cancer. Or helping anti-vaxxers get children killed, if they decide to approach them and have deep enough pockets. In addition to these "immediate" problems, there's also a long-term, perhaps nastier one. As a species, what we know is what we are. Given enough time, every one of us is dead and gone, our physical and virtual wealth will dissipate. One of the few things which will perdure, and will always help our descendants, is knowledge. Every bit of truth that we can collectively find is a hard-fought treasure for the future. Be it via scientific rigorousness or journalistic professionalism. Finding truth is one of the single most important things we can do for humanity, present and future. What these people are doing to benefit themselves I see it as a crime against humanity as a whole.
- fareesh 7y agoHow does one theoretically get around the various anti-bot measures that the social media platforms have instituted? When I try to create a human account it asks for a phone number and Twitter seems to have a bit of an overzealous system that blocks new accounts for "suspicious" activity. YouTube has similar measures in place for registration. Most of them have captcha as well. Do these folks use humans to complete the registration and then have bots use the accounts?
- Tenoke 7y agoThere are services that sell proxies straight from their users' machines, so the traffic looks completely normal. You can also buy a lot of phone numbers for cheap if needed, though the phone requirement is almost always circumventable if nothing else is suscpicious. As for captchas - breaking them is trivial, there are services that do it but you can also beat most/all captchas with mturk for gathering data + training an off the shelf CV model. A social media bot army is a project that a single developer with relevant experience/time can complete on their own, providing they are willing to spend a little bit.
- Emanation 7y agoIs machine learning at all effective at spotting this sort of content?
- illiilliiililil 7y agoIronic story, coming from Buzzfeed.
- batt4good 7y agoOne could argue that Buzzfeed is as much of a mouthpiece for propaganda-for-pay as the PR firms described in their article.
- ev0lv 7y agoIt is ironic that the article is on buzzfeed.