6 ms·

Krebs links to a google doc in the article as well here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k-GgWMNhg1se5302MCBhHxmBJnEhvlc9OL_ONDfEsas/edit#gid=1824125632

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 7y 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 7y 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.
  - holler 7y ago
    How do you know that the motives of the site operators are what you think? For instance it could be that this is a network of ad-revenue generating sites and has nothing to do with civil protest movements... https://www.dw.com/en/disinformation-sites-generate-over-200-million-study/a-50537297 https://www.dw.com/en/disinformation-sites-generate-over-200...
    - wtallis 7y ago
      The sites I've looked at simply don't have enough advertisements for that to be at all plausible. Ads on these sites are so sparse that it's eerie compared to legitimate news sites. Only a small fraction of the content on these sites is going to get any real traffic, and without a regular audience base the handful of ads spots they do offer are not going to bring in much money. I counted just three ads on the "Metro East Sun" homepage and only two on their current top non-bot story—one of those ads was from the Trump campaign. And even if they do expect to turn a profit off these sites, the clear patterns in their non-bot content need to be explained. Why do all of these sites seem to be focused on mingling Republican propaganda with their filler content? Why not have some sites featuring clickbait for a different audience?
      - Kaiyou 7y ago
        Can we just take a moment to appreciate that a sites legitimacy is questioned because the site isn't crippled by ads to the point of being nearly unusable? That's a really unfortunate state of affairs. Especially since I don't think small sites trying to build an audience can afford to cripple themselves to the same degree with ads as bigger sites can. One reason I can think of for increased Republican content is because of outrage economics. They tend to generate more clicks. It's also something that isn't catered to by the big news networks. Smaller sites I'm regularly visiting for over ten years have also shifted in this direction and those type of articles always generate more comments than other ones, so the tactic seemingly works.
0x138d5 7y ago
When opening metroeastsun.com one is greeted with the following: >Help us continue our fight against cronyism, corruption and profligate government borrowing & spending. Well okay then. 2 things stood out for me which raised questions as a non-American. 1) The quality of the site - are the websites of local US papers usually this decently made? Even if it's just a random WP theme. I was under the impression that they were still perpetually 10 years behind the curve. See https://www.fredericknewspost.com/ https://www.fredericknewspost.com/ for example. 2) The real estate section looks fishy as all hell. Why would they include something like that?
- Balgair 7y ago
  As to 1), yes, this is about par for the course. Most local news sites are of near this quality. As to 2), I've no clue. Maybe they are scraping the MLS feeds or Redfin's site in order to appear more legitimate. Honestly, it does feel more legitimate to me as real estate is very serious business. Fake news of c. 2016 didn't have a real estate section per my remembering of them.
- zackees 7y ago
  Funny how 90% of the media is controlled by 4 corporations but now suddenly that domestic outreach groups are organizing people to stop the economic destruction based on a disease which has a mortality rate the same as the flu, and suddenly everyone on the left is an investigative reporter and conspiracy theorist.

dtien 7y 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 7y 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.
- holler 7y ago
  How do you know that the motives of the site operators are what you think? For instance it could be that this is a network of ad-revenue generating sites and has nothing to do with civil protest movements... https://www.dw.com/en/disinformation-sites-generate-over-200-million-study/a-50537297 https://www.dw.com/en/disinformation-sites-generate-over-200...
  - wtallis 7y ago
    The sites I've looked at simply don't have enough advertisements for that to be at all plausible. Ads on these sites are so sparse that it's eerie compared to legitimate news sites. Only a small fraction of the content on these sites is going to get any real traffic, and without a regular audience base the handful of ads spots they do offer are not going to bring in much money. I counted just three ads on the "Metro East Sun" homepage and only two on their current top non-bot story—one of those ads was from the Trump campaign. And even if they do expect to turn a profit off these sites, the clear patterns in their non-bot content need to be explained. Why do all of these sites seem to be focused on mingling Republican propaganda with their filler content? Why not have some sites featuring clickbait for a different audience?
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      Can we just take a moment to appreciate that a sites legitimacy is questioned because the site isn't crippled by ads to the point of being nearly unusable? That's a really unfortunate state of affairs. Especially since I don't think small sites trying to build an audience can afford to cripple themselves to the same degree with ads as bigger sites can. One reason I can think of for increased Republican content is because of outrage economics. They tend to generate more clicks. It's also something that isn't catered to by the big news networks. Smaller sites I'm regularly visiting for over ten years have also shifted in this direction and those type of articles always generate more comments than other ones, so the tactic seemingly works.

0x138d5 7y ago

When opening metroeastsun.com one is greeted with the following: >Help us continue our fight against cronyism, corruption and profligate government borrowing & spending. Well okay then. 2 things stood out for me which raised questions as a non-American. 1) The quality of the site - are the websites of local US papers usually this decently made? Even if it's just a random WP theme. I was under the impression that they were still perpetually 10 years behind the curve. See https://www.fredericknewspost.com/ https://www.fredericknewspost.com/ for example. 2) The real estate section looks fishy as all hell. Why would they include something like that?

Balgair 7y ago
As to 1), yes, this is about par for the course. Most local news sites are of near this quality. As to 2), I've no clue. Maybe they are scraping the MLS feeds or Redfin's site in order to appear more legitimate. Honestly, it does feel more legitimate to me as real estate is very serious business. Fake news of c. 2016 didn't have a real estate section per my remembering of them.
zackees 7y ago
Funny how 90% of the media is controlled by 4 corporations but now suddenly that domestic outreach groups are organizing people to stop the economic destruction based on a disease which has a mortality rate the same as the flu, and suddenly everyone on the left is an investigative reporter and conspiracy theorist.