6 ms·

The godfather of fake news (2018)

52 points by ColinWright 7y ago

samizdis 7y ago
Anyone interested in a broader history of fake news might like the book This is Not Propaganda, by Peter Pomerantsev. Decent review in The Guardian here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/10/this-is-not-propaganda-peter-pomerantsev-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/10/this-is-not-pr... Pomerantsev bio etc on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pomerantsev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pomerantsev
- montalbano 7y ago
  Also these three books are interesting: Lippmann - Public Opinion Bernays - The Engineering of Consent Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent
fnord77 7y ago
I thought I hit the end of the article as scrolling came to an abrupt halt at the "The Birth of term fake news". Nope, there's scrolling resistance that you have to "break through" as it cycles like a powerpoint. Awful layout. Fake end of article
- pmachinery 7y ago
  I already hated the design before that but persevered because the text was at least readable, but gave up bothering at the point you mention.
forgingahead 7y ago
This is too funny -- pompous BBC with their "other people spread fake news" shtick. All media outlets are guilty of bending the truth, often outright inventing stories to fit their preferred narratives. This is not "new", this has just been pearl-clutching since they've realised they no longer can control the narrative in society. Go look up how the majority of western media outlets were pushing "just the flu" about coronavirus as late as early March. (This is BOTH on the left and right, nobody is innocent in this). If you want to see the real history of fake news, or "founder" as it may be, read up on Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism *Edit -- look, I don't take the downvotes personally, I get that this is a huge cognitive short-circuit for many folks who read this site -- a large part of your learning comes from reading and understanding from so-called authoritative sources. It is certainly very difficult to realise (in the most unpleasant way possible, ie your candidate lost an election, or your countrymen successfully voted against the EU, or that masks-dont-work-oh-wait-they-actually-do) that the sources you've learned some positive things in your life from have biases, are fallible, and with the rise of "measuring engagement", are all in huge race to the bottom for immense pandering and therefore carefully crafted narratives. Feeling discombobulated is fine, but let's not lie to ourselves that any of that is "news" or "fair and balanced". Wishing all of you a good day.
- new2628 7y ago
  Dear fellow HN'ers, please don't downvote a comment as a reflex if you disagree with it and consider engaging a point on its merits. Hiding viewpoints you disagree with creates an echo chamber.
  - op00to 7y ago
    Please don't try to influence people how to vote with replies to the comment.
    - LocalH 7y ago
      Outside of that, do you disagree with the rest of their statement?
      - ooobit2 7y ago
        Late, but wanted to point out: No, they can read but they also can't read too.
  - LocalH 7y ago
    I agree with your comment, but unfortunately HN guidelines suggest that we shouldn't discuss comment voting (outside of, perhaps, a larger meta-HN discussion). So I don't expect your comment to last long either. For what it's worth, I upvoted the originally-referenced comment.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    The comment is getting downvoted because it claims the BBC spreads fake news but then gives no evidence for it, instead pointing to Hearst publications from more than a hundred years ago. Hiding poorly argued viewpoints creates an echo chamber of well-reasoned arguments, which converges on the truth. Do you consider arithmetic textbooks an echo chamber for endlessly parroting that 2+2=4?
    - knolax 7y ago
rvz 7y ago
> Just because it’s trending, doesn’t mean it’s true Precisely. We simply shouldn't be too gullible to believe everything we see and here on the internet just because it is simply trending especially on social media which most of the time a tweet, video or article can also be taken out of context purposefully to create confusion, hype and obviously disinformation. But on the other hand, I'm not sure if this article is also talking about the BBC here, since the dreadful Newsbeat and entertainment sections has lots of this clickbait and fake-news level nonsense which look as if it were imported from Buzzfeed.
- jl6 7y ago
  Got any examples of fake news in the Newsbeat section?
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  It takes 2 things for a news to be believable: it needs authority, that is to come from sources you're inclined to believe or to be repeated many times, but it also has to fit well with your own existing narrative. The 2nd is absolutely necessary, you will never believe into something that goes against your world views (even if it's true, often). We only buy into stories that fit into the patterns that we're already susceptible to, and world views that we already have.
  - pasabagi 7y ago
    I think this idea is a bit paradoxical - how then, do we ever change our views? I think people simply reject isolated facts that are inconsistent with the paradigm that explains the greater body of facts. Which is reasonable. Einstein refused to accept that god plays dice, for instance.
    - ivanhoe 7y ago
      Usually we change views in many very small steps, slowly turning from one direction to another. Also sometimes when confronted with a paradox in our existing model of the world that invalidates our previous believes, but that's extremely stressful event and also rare... fake news can't do that to you. They just push the buttons that already exist. I'll never buy a fake news promoting say anti-vaxxers' ideas, but give me something that proves something I already believe in and I'll be sharing it all over (ok, not, by now I've learned to be careful, but I'll have a strong impulse to do it)
insickness 7y ago
The influence of fake news mills is overstated by corporate news media who benefit by attempting to legitimize their own reporting. Russian collusion turned out to be a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads. Bloomberg spent more than 900 million dollars and couldn't sway the election, yet we're supposed to believe that some fake news stories on Facebook got Trump elected.
- DangitBobby 7y ago
  Dont forget the tens of thousands of fake Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. accounts that were so pivotal in spreading misinformation! https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/19/twitter-admits-far-more-russian-bots-posted-on-election-than-it-had-disclosed https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/19/twitter-a...
  - knolax 7y ago
    I feel that this paranoia of bots has become a modern Red Scare. It becomes impossible online to express certain unpopular opinions without being instantly labeled a bot or shill no matter how well backed your argument is. In fact I've seen people comment that "you should be afraid of the smart ones" when it comes to bots. It seems that "bots" have simply become an intellectual cop-out for most. On the other hand, I can find plenty of accounts on Reddit that post endlessly with the same (popular) political agenda using shoddy sources (think screenshots of headlines) that are invariably highly upvoted. Despite this, you will not find accusations of shilling towards these accounts.
    - DangitBobby 7y ago
      We know that those accounts exist, and that they were created and deployed by numerous governments when opportunity struck. We can see their activity: what countries they came from, what they were saying, and what hashtags they made up. My understanding of the data is that they were pervasive and influencial in the 2016 US President Elections and in many other socially sensitive events such as the protests in Hong Kong. So I dont think the word paranoia is really fair. It's a real, known problem. (Edit: and now there's evidence[1] that they are spreading climate denialism as well). Anyone calling someone a bot when they are clearly not a bot is probably just being intellectually lazy, dishonest, or arguing in bad faith. But that's just another flavor of the issues with political (or any rational) discourse we had already. If it weren't bots, it would be something else. And yes, shilling (and failure to recognize shilling) is endemic on that platform. One of the many reasons I try to stay away from it now. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-tweets-twitter-bots-analysis https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-t...
ooobit2 7y ago
OK. Now we just need a write-up on The Godmothers of Fake Outrage. The sheer volume of damage caused by people like Roxanne Gay, Myriam Gurba, Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, et.al., is at minimum overtaking the damage caused by Clinton pizza parlor sex trafficking articles, and at best creating arbitrary protections for a wide number of demographics to racketeer anarcho-syndicalism on social media and in public policy. When an obese, black lesbian on the East Coast wakes up to write half an article on the "White Fever Dreams" of a white author who wrote a novel about an immigrant from Acapulco, because she was criticized by biracial Mexican-Americans on the West Coast, that's leaving a trail of social damage far greater than a faked Clinton Foundation article. No one's stopping a black lesbian Liberal from making a buck on the "lived experience" of Mexican-Americans; or Zoe Quinn using social media to publicize false rape allegations that ultimately led to Alec Holowka taking his own life last year; or Myriam Gurba gatekeeping a culture she was raised 1,700 miles away from in Santa Barbara County, CA. Those people are making a buck off disinformation too, BBC.
netsharc 7y ago
"Bill Gates" was trending on Twitter yesterday. I looked at the tweets and many many tweets were claiming he wants to implement population control and the Covid-19 vaccine will implant an ID in each recipient, which will be the mark of the beast. I saw a Twitterer retweeting this stuff whose bio said "Critical thinker". I thought of engaging, but then thought, "What's the point?". Depressing how far gone much of the other inhabitants of this planet are...
- DangitBobby 7y ago
  If you call him on it, he might use more scrutiny next time. We definitely don't win by not trying.
  - toss1 7y ago
    Sadly, it is more likely, you'll get in a mudslinging contest with a troll paid to spread desinformatsiya. You'll make sensible responses, then get back either some whataboutism with a supposedly supporting but irrelevant article link, insulting meme, or some other technique designed to destroy good-faith discussion or the concept of truth. Repeat a few cycles and then lookup the account and find that it is either new w/few followers or has a history of troll/bot activity that as analyzed by sites like Bot Sentinel [1]. Then, you report as fake and block. The only exceptions I've found were not to people posting articles, but making comments, where you can sometimes wind up in a discussion. They are professionals (of varying skill), you are the person who can't tell he is the mark. This is almost always a game where the only winning move is to not play. [1] https://botsentinel.com/ https://botsentinel.com/
    - netsharc 7y ago
      It'd be more comforting if they're being paid or they're bots, but the depressing truth is, many many people probably believe the conspiracy theories they believe.
      - toss1 7y ago
shrubble 7y ago
Is it true, that Orwell's Ministry of Truth in his book 1984, was based on the BBC? Seems like discussion of what is true in news has been going on for a while, yes?
- tobylane 7y ago
  It’s somewhat true, but not really in the way it’s used. He worked there for two years during WWII and didn’t like the language required in BBC news reports. I don’t think that says anything about what content was allowed out, which was restricted even after the war ended. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/d3a46264-89b5-3198-8143-5158da7ff20b https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/d3a46264-89b...
go-red-team 7y ago
It's no small task to create a program that can churn this stuff out automatically using algos and such. Such articles need sources, and this leads the way for fact-checkers. No source? Then you are immediately marked as disreputable. Although a common tactic that has worked for years (especially on Wikipedia) is the act of linking to a source, only to find the page either doesn't exist, or the source relies on another source, and that source relies on another source, etc
- djohnston 7y ago
  nowadays people just link to twitter posts as some sort of reliable first hand source
fnord77 7y ago
> “I’m not some monster. I’m a liberal,” he says. “The goal isn’t money.” proceeds to fabricate articles damaging to liberals because the money is good
- keketi 7y ago
  He also claims his intention is to troll people. > Once his stories go viral, the Facebook comments burst forth. And that’s when Christopher Blair the fake news writer becomes Christopher Blair the crusading left-wing troll. > “The mission with the trolling first and foremost is we pull them into the comments [section underneath each fake article],” he says. > It's then that he starts on the offensive. The faker becomes the exposer, weeding out and reporting the most extreme users among his fans. Since Trump got elected, I would say that he ended up trolling himself.

52 points by ColinWright 7y ago

Anyone interested in a broader history of fake news might like the book This is Not Propaganda, by Peter Pomerantsev. Decent review in The Guardian here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/10/this-is-not-propaganda-peter-pomerantsev-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/10/this-is-not-pr... Pomerantsev bio etc on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pomerantsev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pomerantsev

montalbano 7y ago
Also these three books are interesting: Lippmann - Public Opinion Bernays - The Engineering of Consent Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent

fnord77 7y ago

I thought I hit the end of the article as scrolling came to an abrupt halt at the "The Birth of term fake news". Nope, there's scrolling resistance that you have to "break through" as it cycles like a powerpoint. Awful layout. Fake end of article

pmachinery 7y ago
I already hated the design before that but persevered because the text was at least readable, but gave up bothering at the point you mention.

forgingahead 7y ago

This is too funny -- pompous BBC with their "other people spread fake news" shtick. All media outlets are guilty of bending the truth, often outright inventing stories to fit their preferred narratives. This is not "new", this has just been pearl-clutching since they've realised they no longer can control the narrative in society. Go look up how the majority of western media outlets were pushing "just the flu" about coronavirus as late as early March. (This is BOTH on the left and right, nobody is innocent in this). If you want to see the real history of fake news, or "founder" as it may be, read up on Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism *Edit -- look, I don't take the downvotes personally, I get that this is a huge cognitive short-circuit for many folks who read this site -- a large part of your learning comes from reading and understanding from so-called authoritative sources. It is certainly very difficult to realise (in the most unpleasant way possible, ie your candidate lost an election, or your countrymen successfully voted against the EU, or that masks-dont-work-oh-wait-they-actually-do) that the sources you've learned some positive things in your life from have biases, are fallible, and with the rise of "measuring engagement", are all in huge race to the bottom for immense pandering and therefore carefully crafted narratives. Feeling discombobulated is fine, but let's not lie to ourselves that any of that is "news" or "fair and balanced". Wishing all of you a good day.

new2628 7y ago
Dear fellow HN'ers, please don't downvote a comment as a reflex if you disagree with it and consider engaging a point on its merits. Hiding viewpoints you disagree with creates an echo chamber.
- op00to 7y ago
  Please don't try to influence people how to vote with replies to the comment.
  - LocalH 7y ago
    Outside of that, do you disagree with the rest of their statement?
    - ooobit2 7y ago
      Late, but wanted to point out: No, they can read but they also can't read too.
- LocalH 7y ago
  I agree with your comment, but unfortunately HN guidelines suggest that we shouldn't discuss comment voting (outside of, perhaps, a larger meta-HN discussion). So I don't expect your comment to last long either. For what it's worth, I upvoted the originally-referenced comment.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  The comment is getting downvoted because it claims the BBC spreads fake news but then gives no evidence for it, instead pointing to Hearst publications from more than a hundred years ago. Hiding poorly argued viewpoints creates an echo chamber of well-reasoned arguments, which converges on the truth. Do you consider arithmetic textbooks an echo chamber for endlessly parroting that 2+2=4?
  - knolax 7y ago

rvz 7y ago

> Just because it’s trending, doesn’t mean it’s true Precisely. We simply shouldn't be too gullible to believe everything we see and here on the internet just because it is simply trending especially on social media which most of the time a tweet, video or article can also be taken out of context purposefully to create confusion, hype and obviously disinformation. But on the other hand, I'm not sure if this article is also talking about the BBC here, since the dreadful Newsbeat and entertainment sections has lots of this clickbait and fake-news level nonsense which look as if it were imported from Buzzfeed.

jl6 7y ago
Got any examples of fake news in the Newsbeat section?
ivanhoe 7y ago
It takes 2 things for a news to be believable: it needs authority, that is to come from sources you're inclined to believe or to be repeated many times, but it also has to fit well with your own existing narrative. The 2nd is absolutely necessary, you will never believe into something that goes against your world views (even if it's true, often). We only buy into stories that fit into the patterns that we're already susceptible to, and world views that we already have.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  I think this idea is a bit paradoxical - how then, do we ever change our views? I think people simply reject isolated facts that are inconsistent with the paradigm that explains the greater body of facts. Which is reasonable. Einstein refused to accept that god plays dice, for instance.
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    Usually we change views in many very small steps, slowly turning from one direction to another. Also sometimes when confronted with a paradox in our existing model of the world that invalidates our previous believes, but that's extremely stressful event and also rare... fake news can't do that to you. They just push the buttons that already exist. I'll never buy a fake news promoting say anti-vaxxers' ideas, but give me something that proves something I already believe in and I'll be sharing it all over (ok, not, by now I've learned to be careful, but I'll have a strong impulse to do it)

insickness 7y ago

The influence of fake news mills is overstated by corporate news media who benefit by attempting to legitimize their own reporting. Russian collusion turned out to be a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads. Bloomberg spent more than 900 million dollars and couldn't sway the election, yet we're supposed to believe that some fake news stories on Facebook got Trump elected.

DangitBobby 7y ago
Dont forget the tens of thousands of fake Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. accounts that were so pivotal in spreading misinformation! https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/19/twitter-admits-far-more-russian-bots-posted-on-election-than-it-had-disclosed https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/19/twitter-a...
- knolax 7y ago
  I feel that this paranoia of bots has become a modern Red Scare. It becomes impossible online to express certain unpopular opinions without being instantly labeled a bot or shill no matter how well backed your argument is. In fact I've seen people comment that "you should be afraid of the smart ones" when it comes to bots. It seems that "bots" have simply become an intellectual cop-out for most. On the other hand, I can find plenty of accounts on Reddit that post endlessly with the same (popular) political agenda using shoddy sources (think screenshots of headlines) that are invariably highly upvoted. Despite this, you will not find accusations of shilling towards these accounts.
  - DangitBobby 7y ago
    We know that those accounts exist, and that they were created and deployed by numerous governments when opportunity struck. We can see their activity: what countries they came from, what they were saying, and what hashtags they made up. My understanding of the data is that they were pervasive and influencial in the 2016 US President Elections and in many other socially sensitive events such as the protests in Hong Kong. So I dont think the word paranoia is really fair. It's a real, known problem. (Edit: and now there's evidence[1] that they are spreading climate denialism as well). Anyone calling someone a bot when they are clearly not a bot is probably just being intellectually lazy, dishonest, or arguing in bad faith. But that's just another flavor of the issues with political (or any rational) discourse we had already. If it weren't bots, it would be something else. And yes, shilling (and failure to recognize shilling) is endemic on that platform. One of the many reasons I try to stay away from it now. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-tweets-twitter-bots-analysis https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-t...

ooobit2 7y ago

OK. Now we just need a write-up on The Godmothers of Fake Outrage. The sheer volume of damage caused by people like Roxanne Gay, Myriam Gurba, Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, et.al., is at minimum overtaking the damage caused by Clinton pizza parlor sex trafficking articles, and at best creating arbitrary protections for a wide number of demographics to racketeer anarcho-syndicalism on social media and in public policy. When an obese, black lesbian on the East Coast wakes up to write half an article on the "White Fever Dreams" of a white author who wrote a novel about an immigrant from Acapulco, because she was criticized by biracial Mexican-Americans on the West Coast, that's leaving a trail of social damage far greater than a faked Clinton Foundation article. No one's stopping a black lesbian Liberal from making a buck on the "lived experience" of Mexican-Americans; or Zoe Quinn using social media to publicize false rape allegations that ultimately led to Alec Holowka taking his own life last year; or Myriam Gurba gatekeeping a culture she was raised 1,700 miles away from in Santa Barbara County, CA. Those people are making a buck off disinformation too, BBC.

netsharc 7y ago

"Bill Gates" was trending on Twitter yesterday. I looked at the tweets and many many tweets were claiming he wants to implement population control and the Covid-19 vaccine will implant an ID in each recipient, which will be the mark of the beast. I saw a Twitterer retweeting this stuff whose bio said "Critical thinker". I thought of engaging, but then thought, "What's the point?". Depressing how far gone much of the other inhabitants of this planet are...

DangitBobby 7y ago
If you call him on it, he might use more scrutiny next time. We definitely don't win by not trying.
- toss1 7y ago
  Sadly, it is more likely, you'll get in a mudslinging contest with a troll paid to spread desinformatsiya. You'll make sensible responses, then get back either some whataboutism with a supposedly supporting but irrelevant article link, insulting meme, or some other technique designed to destroy good-faith discussion or the concept of truth. Repeat a few cycles and then lookup the account and find that it is either new w/few followers or has a history of troll/bot activity that as analyzed by sites like Bot Sentinel [1]. Then, you report as fake and block. The only exceptions I've found were not to people posting articles, but making comments, where you can sometimes wind up in a discussion. They are professionals (of varying skill), you are the person who can't tell he is the mark. This is almost always a game where the only winning move is to not play. [1] https://botsentinel.com/ https://botsentinel.com/
  - netsharc 7y ago
    It'd be more comforting if they're being paid or they're bots, but the depressing truth is, many many people probably believe the conspiracy theories they believe.
    - toss1 7y ago

shrubble 7y ago

Is it true, that Orwell's Ministry of Truth in his book 1984, was based on the BBC? Seems like discussion of what is true in news has been going on for a while, yes?

tobylane 7y ago
It’s somewhat true, but not really in the way it’s used. He worked there for two years during WWII and didn’t like the language required in BBC news reports. I don’t think that says anything about what content was allowed out, which was restricted even after the war ended. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/d3a46264-89b5-3198-8143-5158da7ff20b https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/d3a46264-89b...

go-red-team 7y ago

It's no small task to create a program that can churn this stuff out automatically using algos and such. Such articles need sources, and this leads the way for fact-checkers. No source? Then you are immediately marked as disreputable. Although a common tactic that has worked for years (especially on Wikipedia) is the act of linking to a source, only to find the page either doesn't exist, or the source relies on another source, and that source relies on another source, etc

djohnston 7y ago
nowadays people just link to twitter posts as some sort of reliable first hand source

fnord77 7y ago

> “I’m not some monster. I’m a liberal,” he says. “The goal isn’t money.” proceeds to fabricate articles damaging to liberals because the money is good

keketi 7y ago
He also claims his intention is to troll people. > Once his stories go viral, the Facebook comments burst forth. And that’s when Christopher Blair the fake news writer becomes Christopher Blair the crusading left-wing troll. > “The mission with the trolling first and foremost is we pull them into the comments [section underneath each fake article],” he says. > It's then that he starts on the offensive. The faker becomes the exposer, weeding out and reporting the most extreme users among his fans. Since Trump got elected, I would say that he ended up trolling himself.