7 ms·

I checked a few links listed in that MassMove github repository around the Bay Area in CA, including: https://sanjosestandard.com/ https://sanmateosun.com

by 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.
- holler 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
    - pwg 6y ago
      If they are not going for ad revenue as you indicate above (sparse ads, at best) are they instead going for a huge number of "references"? I.e., do they feel (or have they A/B tested) that their miss-information campaign can be more convincing if their initial "contact" can cite a bunch of "references" that all seem to support the "issue" being pushed in that initial contact? I.e., presume their real aim is some kind of initial email contact, possibly soliciting donations/support for some 'cause'. If that contact email can reference ten of these fake websites, all of which support the point made in the initial email, does it increase the rate of donation/support return from that initial contact email?
beirut_bootleg 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. Correct. Some are completely automated using state/county filters of public APIs, while others are word for word scrapings of Facebook posts from relevant local groups. > 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. Already happening. Besides the automated posts there is also what appears to be original content written by professional content writers. Some of the websites listed in the spreadsheet will only have automated posts as you've found, but look further and you'll see closer to a 50/50 split on the sites for some of the larger cities. What's more concerning here is that some of these authors are submitting their work to sites in completely disparate areas, and own accounts on all of the websites even if they don't write there. > 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. My understanding of this original content from some of the MassMove discussions is that it's trying to build public opinion where there is none to eventually get laws pushed and signed - so effectively astroturfing.
potench 6y ago
I imagine these sites need to look/be legitimate in order to be approved to buy advertising on FB. Automating them from press releases is a cheap way to do that. FB does some rigorous checks on ad-sets - I’ve had to honeypot their process to debug why on earth they kept rejecting a site (was an automated scraper flagging it? Or was a manual reviewer rejecting it after clicking around? Was the content, user experience, or something else in violation of FB ad policies?): https://facebook.com/policies/ads https://facebook.com/policies/ads Anyways, if these sites want to buy advertising on FB they need to pass this scrutiny. Would be curious to see which urls/content on these sites MassMove sees as nefarious. What landed these sites on the list? Edit: Oh I see, there’s a short list of site operators.
- mentor20 6y ago
  This content was seen as nefarious: https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/fzunwk/caught_a_dangerous_article_on_corona_by_one_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/fzunwk/caught_a_d... They were running ads by LGIS on Facebook for that specific Corona story: https://www.facebook.com/ChicagoCityWire/posts/844290535981912 https://www.facebook.com/ChicagoCityWire/posts/8442905359819... Rush Limbaugh's quotes the article ChicagoCityWire.com: https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/04/10/two-stories-indicate-coronavirus-herd-immunity/ https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/04/10/two-stories-in... And the ads got people to post the article to reddit repeatedly: https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/g0icy3/rmassmove_launches_cyber_dome_a_bot_that_alerts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/g0icy3/rmassmove_...
mometsi 6y ago
Looks like they used the bootstrap.js blog example as a template-- compare with https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.4/examples/blog/ https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.4/examples/blog/ I see tracking via facebook, linkedin, quantcast, matomo, and locallabs.com, and user monitoring via newrelic js-agent.
dr-detroit 6y ago
in facebook culture people dont go to news sites ever anymore. they consume retweets of shared articles removed from all context.
Balgair 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. In googling a few lines here and there in the articles, I couldn't find a way back to other content. I'm not saying they aren't using other documents as the seed for an article, but the writing appears to be unique upon a quick gut-check. Additionally, the photos appear to be unique as well. Again, super quick checks on my part. To me, that means these things fit the bill of 'fake news' perfectly [0]. Maybe it was a very good bot that wrote the articles with a very good GAN image creator, maybe it was a mechanical turk that wrote them for ~$0.10. I don't really care. To me, it's fake news. [0] Per Webster's: "False stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke"
jvanderbot 6y ago
Using automated tools to bring easily-scraped news to people is a good way to enure deniability and keep an audience around. Aggregators are wonderful homepages. Then, occasionally, you can (either by accidental scrape or design), push highly biased content that is provably false, and it will be a subtle signal in innocent-seeming noise. Not saying that's what's happening here, just saying that an abundance of innocuous content does not make a site unbiased and trustworthy, just as it does not make it immediately suspicious.

by dtien 6y ago

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.

holler 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
  - pwg 6y ago
    If they are not going for ad revenue as you indicate above (sparse ads, at best) are they instead going for a huge number of "references"? I.e., do they feel (or have they A/B tested) that their miss-information campaign can be more convincing if their initial "contact" can cite a bunch of "references" that all seem to support the "issue" being pushed in that initial contact? I.e., presume their real aim is some kind of initial email contact, possibly soliciting donations/support for some 'cause'. If that contact email can reference ten of these fake websites, all of which support the point made in the initial email, does it increase the rate of donation/support return from that initial contact email?

beirut_bootleg 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. Correct. Some are completely automated using state/county filters of public APIs, while others are word for word scrapings of Facebook posts from relevant local groups. > 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. Already happening. Besides the automated posts there is also what appears to be original content written by professional content writers. Some of the websites listed in the spreadsheet will only have automated posts as you've found, but look further and you'll see closer to a 50/50 split on the sites for some of the larger cities. What's more concerning here is that some of these authors are submitting their work to sites in completely disparate areas, and own accounts on all of the websites even if they don't write there. > 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. My understanding of this original content from some of the MassMove discussions is that it's trying to build public opinion where there is none to eventually get laws pushed and signed - so effectively astroturfing.

potench 6y ago

I imagine these sites need to look/be legitimate in order to be approved to buy advertising on FB. Automating them from press releases is a cheap way to do that. FB does some rigorous checks on ad-sets - I’ve had to honeypot their process to debug why on earth they kept rejecting a site (was an automated scraper flagging it? Or was a manual reviewer rejecting it after clicking around? Was the content, user experience, or something else in violation of FB ad policies?): https://facebook.com/policies/ads https://facebook.com/policies/ads Anyways, if these sites want to buy advertising on FB they need to pass this scrutiny. Would be curious to see which urls/content on these sites MassMove sees as nefarious. What landed these sites on the list? Edit: Oh I see, there’s a short list of site operators.

mentor20 6y ago
This content was seen as nefarious: https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/fzunwk/caught_a_dangerous_article_on_corona_by_one_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/fzunwk/caught_a_d... They were running ads by LGIS on Facebook for that specific Corona story: https://www.facebook.com/ChicagoCityWire/posts/844290535981912 https://www.facebook.com/ChicagoCityWire/posts/8442905359819... Rush Limbaugh's quotes the article ChicagoCityWire.com: https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/04/10/two-stories-indicate-coronavirus-herd-immunity/ https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/04/10/two-stories-in... And the ads got people to post the article to reddit repeatedly: https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/g0icy3/rmassmove_launches_cyber_dome_a_bot_that_alerts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/g0icy3/rmassmove_...

mometsi 6y ago

Looks like they used the bootstrap.js blog example as a template-- compare with https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.4/examples/blog/ https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.4/examples/blog/ I see tracking via facebook, linkedin, quantcast, matomo, and locallabs.com, and user monitoring via newrelic js-agent.

dr-detroit 6y ago

in facebook culture people dont go to news sites ever anymore. they consume retweets of shared articles removed from all context.

Balgair 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. In googling a few lines here and there in the articles, I couldn't find a way back to other content. I'm not saying they aren't using other documents as the seed for an article, but the writing appears to be unique upon a quick gut-check. Additionally, the photos appear to be unique as well. Again, super quick checks on my part. To me, that means these things fit the bill of 'fake news' perfectly [0]. Maybe it was a very good bot that wrote the articles with a very good GAN image creator, maybe it was a mechanical turk that wrote them for ~$0.10. I don't really care. To me, it's fake news. [0] Per Webster's: "False stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke"

jvanderbot 6y ago

Using automated tools to bring easily-scraped news to people is a good way to enure deniability and keep an audience around. Aggregators are wonderful homepages. Then, occasionally, you can (either by accidental scrape or design), push highly biased content that is provably false, and it will be a subtle signal in innocent-seeming noise. Not saying that's what's happening here, just saying that an abundance of innocuous content does not make a site unbiased and trustworthy, just as it does not make it immediately suspicious.