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> "I developed this for manipulating public opinion,” Peng told the Reporter, an investigative news site in Taipei, which partnered with BuzzFeed News for this

> "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 ago
  If 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 ago
  Yes. Manipulate people to click. Once you get that down, you can point the manipulation in different directions.
- alamaslah 7y ago
  I 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.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  Isn't getting clicks manipulating people into clicking? We might want to say it is categorically different than manipulating people in other ways such as getting them to buy certain products or vote certain ways, but if we go down that path then I think we can begin saying that about most forms of manipulating people and thus we would need to spend a bit more time working on a standard of how acceptable different forms of manipulation are. There is also a question of how do you draw the line between manipulating someone, tricking someone, educating someone, and convincing someone. If scientists are trying to warn the public about the dangers of climate change are they trying to manipulate public opinion, educate the public, or convince the public?
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    > If scientists are trying to warn the public about the dangers of climate change are they trying to manipulate public opinion, educate the public, or convince the public? Depending on the person, the methods used, and the level of integrity maintained, some combination of all three. If you suppress legitimate criticism and intentionally distort facts, you are engaging in trickery. If you correct misinformation and do your best to present an accurate representation of your understanding, you are educating. Generally, scientists tend to do a pretty good job of focusing on education, but the dynamics of the discussion around the information they share tends to cloud that distinction. The problem is that many groups have decided that trickery is more convincing than education and that should make compromising ethics and integrity mandatory. (While other groups seem to have had no integrity to start with.) As a result, the discussion of the distinction between education and trickery and accusations of trickery often drown out the actual attempts at education.
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      We might have a problem because scientists spend too much time just giving the information and not on working on the 'manipulation' side of it. For example, take any news site dedicated to scientific news and look at how much even they will twist the facts to make it easier to digest and more interesting. Scientist: Chemical XYZ seen to reduce growth rate of cancer ABC cultured in a petri dish compared to control group. Around 10% reduction average, p < .01, see table 4. Not statistically significantly better than chemical MNO which was also being tested. Further research needed. Science News: Chemical XYZ helps fight cancer ABC. Normal News: Does <something that contains chemical XYZ> cure cancer? If scientists were better at manipulating education to be engaging to the public they wouldn't lose out as often to those pushing fake (or at least far more questionable) information.
- ergothus 7y ago
  > just get clicks Just because you have one goal (in this case traffic) doesn't mean your actions dont have other effects. Generate clickbait that, for example, leverages the distrust the public has in a group, or is based on the desire to see someone/some group get their comeuppance, or the desire to hear tales about how your group is being exploited, etc, and you start manipulating public opinion about those things. Fox News, for example, started conservative but far less radical...I dont know if they were radicalized by the success of their own success by this sort of manipulation, but it is certainly an option. Once you have success at manipulation, even if that wasn't actually your intent, a financial incentive appears to MAKE it your intention.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    I think intent is pretty important to the concept of "manipulation": you don't often hear the sun being accused of manipulating the weather, despite the overwhelming influence it has over it.
    - ameister14 7y ago
      That's because manipulate implies active control, which the sun doesn't have. As a different example, you can manipulate the levers of a machine and, if you are not skilled or paying attention, get a result you did not plan for.
      - SiempreViernes 7y ago
        That is simply poor manipulation: intent was there but understanding was lacking, and so the outcome was not as desired.
        ameister14 7y ago
        an intent was there, but not the intent to create what became the eventual outcome. Buzzfeed has an intent - to create clicks. What GP was saying was that this creates an unintended effect, that of political and social manipulation, which unfortunately ends up as an incentivized loop for Buzzfeed.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  What's the difference, practically speaking?
  - duxup 7y ago
    Getting clicks and trying to change public opinion I think are different.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  I would say yes, but I think BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News should be separated here, because there is indeed some good investigative work. Also the reliance on Boulevard as a news source is probably the fault of the reader.
- StuffedParrot 7y ago
  > Was Buzzfeed trying to manipulate people or just get clicks? Publishing is an act of manipulation, including caring about what's happening around them (which is typically considered a good thing).
kevingadd 7y ago
Given how much of this is driven by upper management and ownership - just like Pivot To Video and other historically disastrous moves - I'm not really sure how much they can self-interrogate here. It'd basically end up being a takedown of their bosses, which always goes over well. If you're told to publish multiple articles a day (or even one piece per day) this limits your ability to do deep research or heavily-edited writing, and policies like that are common. FWIW some unionized web news outlets HAVE been writing about this lately, but it's usually in response to ownership laying off chunks of their team and telling them to stick to clickbait. It happened recently at a couple of outlets that were (years back) originally owned by Gawker and changed owners multiple times.
- makomk 7y ago
  Yeah, the main complaint of the ex-Gawker outlets seemed to be that management weren't letting them use their clickbait to manipulate public opinion in the political arena anymore and were making them stick to topics that were actually related to what the site was ostensibly about.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    What is a site "ostensibly about"?
partiallypro 7y ago
I was thinking the same thing, is BuzzFeed reporting on this because they don't like competition? I hate the new "hate clicks drive ad revenue" model to the internet and cable TV. It is so damaging to society, more so than any "fake news" thing posted on a random blog with a few wackos believing. We're talking 1000x the exposure and people believing it's "mainstream." Producers on cable TV purposefully tell people to play to an extreme, publications purposefully get pieces that get hate clicks and hate engagement because it boosts their numbers. It's all so horrible.
- hcurtiss 7y ago
  The Two Minutes Hate. Truly Orwellian.
  - Anthony-G 7y ago
    Upvoted for reminding me about this. I'm probably due a re-read of 1984 as I'd completely forgotten about the Two Minutes Hate. Orwell really was a visionary.
    - realmod 7y ago
      Two minutes hate is not something new, the difference is just how accesible creating and disseminating such sentiments have become.
      - HenryBemis 7y ago
        And once "the internet" (some nasties behind it) found the way to make these "two minute" increments compound (e.g. YT showing a more extreme version than the one just watched), combined with profiling etc, then boom, CA and FB win elections ;)
  - aalleavitch 7y ago
    This just once against demonstrates what Orwell really meant and America never heard, everything he painted in his dystopia was just as possible under authoritarian capitalism as it is under authoritarian communism. The American education system loves making kids read Animal Farm and 1984 but for some reason they never seem to mention that Orwell was an anarcho-socialist.
sj3k 7y ago
There is absolutely a distinction in getting website traffic and paying to manipulate public opinion.
milofeynman 7y ago
BuzzFeed has an investigative news group[0] that is separate from the clickbait they got famous for. They publish articles closer to propublica than top 10 lists. [0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/investigations https://www.buzzfeednews.com/investigations
- Fellshard 7y ago
  And yet have been caught publishing some of the most overt lies of the last couple years, while buckling down on it. I keep seeing people try to defend them here, but they have already ruined any credibility they have both by their association and their behavior. It's not worth it; find a better institution to defend.
  - neuronic 7y ago
    What organization is really even credible anymore? In Germany, I liked to read the SPIEGEL magazine (not Spiegel Online, that's half a step before boulevard) until the Claas Relotius case happened [1]. They tried to save face and apologized etc. etc. but who says that just fixes it? The Internet that has developed since the first ad-monetization almost demands, and at least incentivizes, shady behavior if you want to economically survive as an information processor - news outlet or others. Many of us on HN would gladly buy premium for something they enjoy but I fear the vast majority of people wants everything for "free". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius#Fabrication_of_stories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius#Fabrication_of_...
    - Fellshard 7y ago
      Agreed. Plus, print is also harder to quietly modify; silent post-hoc 'corrections' to online articles that wildly change the article's conclusions are the norm, with no rigorous path to present those changes to those who consumed the article previously. A dedicated print subscription forces the printer to weigh the consequences of correcting an error more heavily, and a regular reader of a subscribed publication can be presented with corrected errors on the front page of each day's edition. (Not that any of this would happen in print, either; and not that this is impossible with internet media; but rather that the natural consequences of the print medium pushes heavily towards a different set of behaviours. I doubt anyone would subscribe to an RSS feed of errors.)
StuffedParrot 7y ago
> It's a semi-automated system for creating clickbait to manipulate public opinion. What differentiates this from any other media outlet?
iron0013 7y ago
I find Buzzfeed News to be consistently factual and well-written. If anyone has evidence to the contrary I'd rather they discussed that than simply maligning the outlet
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
gumby 7y ago
Buzzfeed also does solid reporting. When they announced that they would start doing so nobody believed them. I don’t know the relationship between the two sides of the business.
lonelappde 7y ago
What are some examples of BuzzFeed promoting rage and misinformation?
- StartupTree 7y ago
  You can find many examples here: https://www.buzzfeed.com https://www.buzzfeed.com
KerrickStaley 7y ago
I don't think this is a useful comment. This comment is an example of "whataboutism", which is a logical fallacy [1]. It discredits the article because the article contradicts Buzzfeed's past actions, without actually making any statements about the merits of the article's claims. I think it's dangerous to commit this sort of logical fallacy, especially when discussing online trolling and disinformation campaigns, because logical fallacies like these are the the lifeblood of disinformation campaigns. For example, whataboutism was and is commonly used in Soviet and Russian propaganda. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
spdustin 7y ago
Buzzfeed News ≠ Buzzfeed It’s an important distinction :)
JadoJodo 7y ago
> this is exactly the model that they created My thought exactly. It's also one of the reasons I straight-up blacklist BuzzFeed in my NextDNS account.
uses 7y ago
I know right, how can we give any credence to this thoroughly researched report about how technology is being used to promote state sponsored disinformation campaigns, when Buzzfeed is out there AB testing headlines?
PavlovsCat 7y ago
> It's funny that Buzzfeed is reporting this Buzzfeed news, not Buzzfeed. This isn't "funny", this isn't even interesting or relevant, which is exactly why this tripe is the top comment, once again. Thank fuck for the collapse feature. May you investigate your own role in dumbing down people and licking boots -- that will never happen though.
grp000 7y ago
BuzzFeed news is an internal division inside BuzzFeed dedicated to actual fact checked journalism pieces. I think they've showed up on HN a few times before.
siruncledrew 7y ago
The marketing departments at modern news companies are already pitching 'rebranded' forms of this model to management under the premise of "KPIs" and "user engagement" to hit their quarterly quotas.

duxup 7y ago

> to manipulate public opinion Was Buzzfeed trying to manipulate people or just get clicks?

kevingadd 7y ago
If 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 ago
Yes. Manipulate people to click. Once you get that down, you can point the manipulation in different directions.
alamaslah 7y ago
I 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.
SkyBelow 7y ago
Isn't getting clicks manipulating people into clicking? We might want to say it is categorically different than manipulating people in other ways such as getting them to buy certain products or vote certain ways, but if we go down that path then I think we can begin saying that about most forms of manipulating people and thus we would need to spend a bit more time working on a standard of how acceptable different forms of manipulation are. There is also a question of how do you draw the line between manipulating someone, tricking someone, educating someone, and convincing someone. If scientists are trying to warn the public about the dangers of climate change are they trying to manipulate public opinion, educate the public, or convince the public?
- shkkmo 7y ago
  > If scientists are trying to warn the public about the dangers of climate change are they trying to manipulate public opinion, educate the public, or convince the public? Depending on the person, the methods used, and the level of integrity maintained, some combination of all three. If you suppress legitimate criticism and intentionally distort facts, you are engaging in trickery. If you correct misinformation and do your best to present an accurate representation of your understanding, you are educating. Generally, scientists tend to do a pretty good job of focusing on education, but the dynamics of the discussion around the information they share tends to cloud that distinction. The problem is that many groups have decided that trickery is more convincing than education and that should make compromising ethics and integrity mandatory. (While other groups seem to have had no integrity to start with.) As a result, the discussion of the distinction between education and trickery and accusations of trickery often drown out the actual attempts at education.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    We might have a problem because scientists spend too much time just giving the information and not on working on the 'manipulation' side of it. For example, take any news site dedicated to scientific news and look at how much even they will twist the facts to make it easier to digest and more interesting. Scientist: Chemical XYZ seen to reduce growth rate of cancer ABC cultured in a petri dish compared to control group. Around 10% reduction average, p < .01, see table 4. Not statistically significantly better than chemical MNO which was also being tested. Further research needed. Science News: Chemical XYZ helps fight cancer ABC. Normal News: Does <something that contains chemical XYZ> cure cancer? If scientists were better at manipulating education to be engaging to the public they wouldn't lose out as often to those pushing fake (or at least far more questionable) information.
ergothus 7y ago
> just get clicks Just because you have one goal (in this case traffic) doesn't mean your actions dont have other effects. Generate clickbait that, for example, leverages the distrust the public has in a group, or is based on the desire to see someone/some group get their comeuppance, or the desire to hear tales about how your group is being exploited, etc, and you start manipulating public opinion about those things. Fox News, for example, started conservative but far less radical...I dont know if they were radicalized by the success of their own success by this sort of manipulation, but it is certainly an option. Once you have success at manipulation, even if that wasn't actually your intent, a financial incentive appears to MAKE it your intention.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  I think intent is pretty important to the concept of "manipulation": you don't often hear the sun being accused of manipulating the weather, despite the overwhelming influence it has over it.
  - ameister14 7y ago
    That's because manipulate implies active control, which the sun doesn't have. As a different example, you can manipulate the levers of a machine and, if you are not skilled or paying attention, get a result you did not plan for.
    - SiempreViernes 7y ago
      That is simply poor manipulation: intent was there but understanding was lacking, and so the outcome was not as desired.
      - ameister14 7y ago
        an intent was there, but not the intent to create what became the eventual outcome. Buzzfeed has an intent - to create clicks. What GP was saying was that this creates an unintended effect, that of political and social manipulation, which unfortunately ends up as an incentivized loop for Buzzfeed.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
What's the difference, practically speaking?
- duxup 7y ago
  Getting clicks and trying to change public opinion I think are different.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I would say yes, but I think BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News should be separated here, because there is indeed some good investigative work. Also the reliance on Boulevard as a news source is probably the fault of the reader.
StuffedParrot 7y ago
> Was Buzzfeed trying to manipulate people or just get clicks? Publishing is an act of manipulation, including caring about what's happening around them (which is typically considered a good thing).

kevingadd 7y ago

Given how much of this is driven by upper management and ownership - just like Pivot To Video and other historically disastrous moves - I'm not really sure how much they can self-interrogate here. It'd basically end up being a takedown of their bosses, which always goes over well. If you're told to publish multiple articles a day (or even one piece per day) this limits your ability to do deep research or heavily-edited writing, and policies like that are common. FWIW some unionized web news outlets HAVE been writing about this lately, but it's usually in response to ownership laying off chunks of their team and telling them to stick to clickbait. It happened recently at a couple of outlets that were (years back) originally owned by Gawker and changed owners multiple times.

makomk 7y ago
Yeah, the main complaint of the ex-Gawker outlets seemed to be that management weren't letting them use their clickbait to manipulate public opinion in the political arena anymore and were making them stick to topics that were actually related to what the site was ostensibly about.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  What is a site "ostensibly about"?

partiallypro 7y ago

I was thinking the same thing, is BuzzFeed reporting on this because they don't like competition? I hate the new "hate clicks drive ad revenue" model to the internet and cable TV. It is so damaging to society, more so than any "fake news" thing posted on a random blog with a few wackos believing. We're talking 1000x the exposure and people believing it's "mainstream." Producers on cable TV purposefully tell people to play to an extreme, publications purposefully get pieces that get hate clicks and hate engagement because it boosts their numbers. It's all so horrible.

hcurtiss 7y ago
The Two Minutes Hate. Truly Orwellian.
- Anthony-G 7y ago
  Upvoted for reminding me about this. I'm probably due a re-read of 1984 as I'd completely forgotten about the Two Minutes Hate. Orwell really was a visionary.
  - realmod 7y ago
    Two minutes hate is not something new, the difference is just how accesible creating and disseminating such sentiments have become.
    - HenryBemis 7y ago
      And once "the internet" (some nasties behind it) found the way to make these "two minute" increments compound (e.g. YT showing a more extreme version than the one just watched), combined with profiling etc, then boom, CA and FB win elections ;)
- aalleavitch 7y ago
  This just once against demonstrates what Orwell really meant and America never heard, everything he painted in his dystopia was just as possible under authoritarian capitalism as it is under authoritarian communism. The American education system loves making kids read Animal Farm and 1984 but for some reason they never seem to mention that Orwell was an anarcho-socialist.

sj3k 7y ago

There is absolutely a distinction in getting website traffic and paying to manipulate public opinion.

milofeynman 7y ago

BuzzFeed has an investigative news group[0] that is separate from the clickbait they got famous for. They publish articles closer to propublica than top 10 lists. [0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/investigations https://www.buzzfeednews.com/investigations

Fellshard 7y ago
And yet have been caught publishing some of the most overt lies of the last couple years, while buckling down on it. I keep seeing people try to defend them here, but they have already ruined any credibility they have both by their association and their behavior. It's not worth it; find a better institution to defend.
- neuronic 7y ago
  What organization is really even credible anymore? In Germany, I liked to read the SPIEGEL magazine (not Spiegel Online, that's half a step before boulevard) until the Claas Relotius case happened [1]. They tried to save face and apologized etc. etc. but who says that just fixes it? The Internet that has developed since the first ad-monetization almost demands, and at least incentivizes, shady behavior if you want to economically survive as an information processor - news outlet or others. Many of us on HN would gladly buy premium for something they enjoy but I fear the vast majority of people wants everything for "free". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius#Fabrication_of_stories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius#Fabrication_of_...
  - Fellshard 7y ago
    Agreed. Plus, print is also harder to quietly modify; silent post-hoc 'corrections' to online articles that wildly change the article's conclusions are the norm, with no rigorous path to present those changes to those who consumed the article previously. A dedicated print subscription forces the printer to weigh the consequences of correcting an error more heavily, and a regular reader of a subscribed publication can be presented with corrected errors on the front page of each day's edition. (Not that any of this would happen in print, either; and not that this is impossible with internet media; but rather that the natural consequences of the print medium pushes heavily towards a different set of behaviours. I doubt anyone would subscribe to an RSS feed of errors.)

StuffedParrot 7y ago

> It's a semi-automated system for creating clickbait to manipulate public opinion. What differentiates this from any other media outlet?

iron0013 7y ago

I find Buzzfeed News to be consistently factual and well-written. If anyone has evidence to the contrary I'd rather they discussed that than simply maligning the outlet

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

gumby 7y ago

Buzzfeed also does solid reporting. When they announced that they would start doing so nobody believed them. I don’t know the relationship between the two sides of the business.

lonelappde 7y ago

What are some examples of BuzzFeed promoting rage and misinformation?

StartupTree 7y ago
You can find many examples here: https://www.buzzfeed.com https://www.buzzfeed.com

KerrickStaley 7y ago

I don't think this is a useful comment. This comment is an example of "whataboutism", which is a logical fallacy [1]. It discredits the article because the article contradicts Buzzfeed's past actions, without actually making any statements about the merits of the article's claims. I think it's dangerous to commit this sort of logical fallacy, especially when discussing online trolling and disinformation campaigns, because logical fallacies like these are the the lifeblood of disinformation campaigns. For example, whataboutism was and is commonly used in Soviet and Russian propaganda. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

spdustin 7y ago

Buzzfeed News ≠ Buzzfeed It’s an important distinction :)

JadoJodo 7y ago

> this is exactly the model that they created My thought exactly. It's also one of the reasons I straight-up blacklist BuzzFeed in my NextDNS account.

uses 7y ago

I know right, how can we give any credence to this thoroughly researched report about how technology is being used to promote state sponsored disinformation campaigns, when Buzzfeed is out there AB testing headlines?

PavlovsCat 7y ago

> It's funny that Buzzfeed is reporting this Buzzfeed news, not Buzzfeed. This isn't "funny", this isn't even interesting or relevant, which is exactly why this tripe is the top comment, once again. Thank fuck for the collapse feature. May you investigate your own role in dumbing down people and licking boots -- that will never happen though.

grp000 7y ago

BuzzFeed news is an internal division inside BuzzFeed dedicated to actual fact checked journalism pieces. I think they've showed up on HN a few times before.

siruncledrew 7y ago

The marketing departments at modern news companies are already pitching 'rebranded' forms of this model to management under the premise of "KPIs" and "user engagement" to hit their quarterly quotas.