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I think this is a good place for authorship attribution AI's. A plugin that will identify text that resembles known PR and propaganda and links to the original

I think this is a good place for authorship attribution AI's. A plugin that will identify text that resembles known PR and propaganda and links to the original source. Is this a real review or is this person writing their review from a script? Am I interacting with a real person or someone paid to sway the public opinion of something on a forum? Edit: Maybe we could prevent more influence by Satya @ MS and the like. "In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress..." https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-corp-msft-q1-2019-005545657.html https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-corp-msft-q1-201...

potatoman22 5y ago
Creepy
eitland 5y ago
> "In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress..." Wow! That was unexpectedly - what should I say - candid? And I actually appreciate you all being here : ) But please distinguish between - "helping customers where they are" which is a great idea and - secretly pushing an agenda. And if anyone wonders about how do you distinguish between those two here's a rule of thumb: in the first case if someone realizes you work for that company it feels good. In the second case it probably feels bad.
crispyambulance 5y ago
> A plugin that will identify text that resembles known PR and propaganda and links to the original source. Certainly such a tool might be useful to someone analyzing disinformation campaigns, but it only goes so far. If the intent with such plugins and other forms of human/AI moderation is merely identify the source of what looks like disinformation, you're going to disappointed to hear that those who are influenced by disinformation don't care what "the source" is. It's why meatheads on Fox News can blabber non-stop garbage and get the highest news media ratings in history. Dealing with this problem with "plugins", at best, is entering an infinite game of wack-a-mole. It's fundamentally not a technological problem. This kind of stuff has always existed, and yes, now it's hopped-up on internet speed and naive countermeasures now need AI to keep up. But it's still qualitatively the same thing as it was in the 1930's. It requires a long game to battle it involving leadership, an educated populace and a government that isn't grossly polarized and dysfunctional. Sadly, I don't think we're up to the challenge at least in the USA.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Agreed about the whack-a-mole. Would be hard. Only a few people have the ability to lead projects that require so much mole whacking. I'm thinking of gorhill and ublock origin, for example.
- tekknik 5y ago
  > It's why meatheads on Fox News can blabber non-stop garbage and get the highest news media ratings in history. Interesting how you had to throw a right wing site in there with your underhanded attack. So you think the left is immune to this? Can you actually get through a CNN article without wanting to vomit? With that one statement you lost me entirely.
  - crispyambulance 5y ago
    To be honest, I do feel that CNN and MSNBC have fallen off a cliff as far as quality is concerned in the last 10+ years. All cable news is pretty much a wasteland. But there's a special place in hell reserved for Fox News. As bad as CNN can get with its cloying reductive stories, they at least try. Fox News is end-to-end garbage. Sorry.
retox 5y ago
The site https://www.churnalism.com/ https://www.churnalism.com/ tried to do something like this before ML was accessible, but it seems to have died on the vine just a year later.

potatoman22 5y ago

Creepy

eitland 5y ago

> "In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress..." Wow! That was unexpectedly - what should I say - candid? And I actually appreciate you all being here : ) But please distinguish between - "helping customers where they are" which is a great idea and - secretly pushing an agenda. And if anyone wonders about how do you distinguish between those two here's a rule of thumb: in the first case if someone realizes you work for that company it feels good. In the second case it probably feels bad.

crispyambulance 5y ago

> A plugin that will identify text that resembles known PR and propaganda and links to the original source. Certainly such a tool might be useful to someone analyzing disinformation campaigns, but it only goes so far. If the intent with such plugins and other forms of human/AI moderation is merely identify the source of what looks like disinformation, you're going to disappointed to hear that those who are influenced by disinformation don't care what "the source" is. It's why meatheads on Fox News can blabber non-stop garbage and get the highest news media ratings in history. Dealing with this problem with "plugins", at best, is entering an infinite game of wack-a-mole. It's fundamentally not a technological problem. This kind of stuff has always existed, and yes, now it's hopped-up on internet speed and naive countermeasures now need AI to keep up. But it's still qualitatively the same thing as it was in the 1930's. It requires a long game to battle it involving leadership, an educated populace and a government that isn't grossly polarized and dysfunctional. Sadly, I don't think we're up to the challenge at least in the USA.

fartcannon 5y ago
Agreed about the whack-a-mole. Would be hard. Only a few people have the ability to lead projects that require so much mole whacking. I'm thinking of gorhill and ublock origin, for example.
tekknik 5y ago
> It's why meatheads on Fox News can blabber non-stop garbage and get the highest news media ratings in history. Interesting how you had to throw a right wing site in there with your underhanded attack. So you think the left is immune to this? Can you actually get through a CNN article without wanting to vomit? With that one statement you lost me entirely.
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  To be honest, I do feel that CNN and MSNBC have fallen off a cliff as far as quality is concerned in the last 10+ years. All cable news is pretty much a wasteland. But there's a special place in hell reserved for Fox News. As bad as CNN can get with its cloying reductive stories, they at least try. Fox News is end-to-end garbage. Sorry.

retox 5y ago

The site https://www.churnalism.com/ https://www.churnalism.com/ tried to do something like this before ML was accessible, but it seems to have died on the vine just a year later.