5 ms·

There is already an ongoing and massive automated astroturfing campaign using hundreds of faked local news websites (news|times|standard|reporter|record|today.c

There is already an ongoing and massive automated astroturfing campaign using hundreds of faked local news websites (news|times|standard|reporter|record|today.com) run by Metric Media, Locality Labs, Record Inc. and possibly others [1]. This reopen*.com wave is just more of the same, but I thank you for making the connection obvious to me. There is also an ongoing crowdsourced investigation that is committed to exposing these misinformation campaigns that I'm sure would welcome your assistance [2]. [1] - https://github.com/MassMove/AttackVectors/blob/master/LocalJournals/sites.csv https://github.com/MassMove/AttackVectors/blob/master/LocalJ... [2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/

deleted 6y ago
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pstuart 6y ago
Thanks for the links, this is good stuff!
Balgair 6y ago
Krebs links to a google doc in the article as well here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k-GgWMNhg1se5302MCBhHxmBJnEhvlc9OL_ONDfEsas/edit#gid=1824125632 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k-GgWMNhg1se5302MCBh... To note, Krebs has ~700 sites listed. Go ahead and ctrl+F for a city near you to see. The format of each of them is pretty cookie-cutter but the articles and pictures had a lot of work put into them. For instance, here is one: https://metroeastsun.com/ https://metroeastsun.com/ Looking at this, I would never suspect that it was just a fraud. Looking at the headlines for the articles, it's pretty corruption heavy and seems to have a thing about government workers being paid, also a lot of white people smiling or pointing fingers while in suits. TinEye reports that the few photos that I bothered to check are all unique, whatever that may mean. Googling for lines in a few of the articles gets you back to that site and not others. Still, it's not even remotely out of line, just a bit odd when you look at it. But we know it's not just odd, we know it's fake news. Even a bit of digging on the articles and photos points to it passing a sniff test. Without Krebs telling me that it stunk like a fish market, I'd never know.
- dtien 6y ago
  I checked a few links listed in that MassMove github repository around the Bay Area in CA, including: https://sanjosestandard.com/ https://sanmateosun.com/ https://sanfransun.com/ I wouldn't characterize these as fake news, they just appear to be massively automated sites generated from public press releases from local government. In several of the articles they list the byline as "By Press Release submission". So it appears they aren't trying to be too deceptive, and if you search the text from the articles is does link back to the actual press release from a real .gov site in that locality. Also looking at the bylines from metric media news service itself ( just append /author/metric-media-news-service to the main domain ), I would have expected a more discernible pattern of articles biased towards a particular viewpoint, but again, I didn't see anything too nefarious. So at first glance, it looks like a reasonable local site albeit very cookie cutter, and primarily regurgitations of press releases from local official govs. And at second glance, it doesn't appear to be much worse than that. NOW having said all of that, I can easily see how this can be turned sideways very easily and quickly by the site maintainers. If you're actually able to build up a good readership with some of this 'basic' content, then come election time or some other critical moment where influence is important, you can easily seed more biased content into the articles. And these don't necessarily need to be blatantly 'fake', they can just be slanted a certain way. They could certainly go full bore and insert some really fake content in there once in awhile. The sheer magnitude of it all is impressive, taken in isolation these sites would seem legitimate but seeing them all side by side and seeing the content laid out it becomes painfully obvious there's an ulterior motive to it all. Thanks to the parent comment for making me ( and hopefully more of us ) aware of this type of activity.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    > I wouldn't characterize these as fake news, they just appear to be massively automated sites generated from public press releases from local government. That's just filler: low-quality automated content so that the site appears genuine at first glance. These sites are not intended to attract regular readership. They're a context into which propaganda pieces can be inserted and be linked to on social media. Readers are expected to hit the site only for specific articles, and to not be motivated to explore much further. If these sites were a genuine attempt to make money by peddling local news, they would have more ads and at least some mention of weather or traffic.

deleted 6y ago

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pstuart 6y ago

Thanks for the links, this is good stuff!

Balgair 6y ago

Krebs links to a google doc in the article as well here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k-GgWMNhg1se5302MCBhHxmBJnEhvlc9OL_ONDfEsas/edit#gid=1824125632 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k-GgWMNhg1se5302MCBh... To note, Krebs has ~700 sites listed. Go ahead and ctrl+F for a city near you to see. The format of each of them is pretty cookie-cutter but the articles and pictures had a lot of work put into them. For instance, here is one: https://metroeastsun.com/ https://metroeastsun.com/ Looking at this, I would never suspect that it was just a fraud. Looking at the headlines for the articles, it's pretty corruption heavy and seems to have a thing about government workers being paid, also a lot of white people smiling or pointing fingers while in suits. TinEye reports that the few photos that I bothered to check are all unique, whatever that may mean. Googling for lines in a few of the articles gets you back to that site and not others. Still, it's not even remotely out of line, just a bit odd when you look at it. But we know it's not just odd, we know it's fake news. Even a bit of digging on the articles and photos points to it passing a sniff test. Without Krebs telling me that it stunk like a fish market, I'd never know.

dtien 6y ago
I checked a few links listed in that MassMove github repository around the Bay Area in CA, including: https://sanjosestandard.com/ https://sanmateosun.com/ https://sanfransun.com/ I wouldn't characterize these as fake news, they just appear to be massively automated sites generated from public press releases from local government. In several of the articles they list the byline as "By Press Release submission". So it appears they aren't trying to be too deceptive, and if you search the text from the articles is does link back to the actual press release from a real .gov site in that locality. Also looking at the bylines from metric media news service itself ( just append /author/metric-media-news-service to the main domain ), I would have expected a more discernible pattern of articles biased towards a particular viewpoint, but again, I didn't see anything too nefarious. So at first glance, it looks like a reasonable local site albeit very cookie cutter, and primarily regurgitations of press releases from local official govs. And at second glance, it doesn't appear to be much worse than that. NOW having said all of that, I can easily see how this can be turned sideways very easily and quickly by the site maintainers. If you're actually able to build up a good readership with some of this 'basic' content, then come election time or some other critical moment where influence is important, you can easily seed more biased content into the articles. And these don't necessarily need to be blatantly 'fake', they can just be slanted a certain way. They could certainly go full bore and insert some really fake content in there once in awhile. The sheer magnitude of it all is impressive, taken in isolation these sites would seem legitimate but seeing them all side by side and seeing the content laid out it becomes painfully obvious there's an ulterior motive to it all. Thanks to the parent comment for making me ( and hopefully more of us ) aware of this type of activity.
- wtallis 6y ago
  > I wouldn't characterize these as fake news, they just appear to be massively automated sites generated from public press releases from local government. That's just filler: low-quality automated content so that the site appears genuine at first glance. These sites are not intended to attract regular readership. They're a context into which propaganda pieces can be inserted and be linked to on social media. Readers are expected to hit the site only for specific articles, and to not be motivated to explore much further. If these sites were a genuine attempt to make money by peddling local news, they would have more ads and at least some mention of weather or traffic.