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Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
- vdaea 3y agoI visited one of those sites, https://sevillatimes.com/ https://sevillatimes.com/ , and absolutely none of the articles posted there talk about the city, not even about the country where the city is in. So nobody would think that website is a local news website. Also this article offers little to no proof that the Chinese government is behind these sites. They look more like a network of crypto spam. https://sevillatimes.com/category/presionesoltar/ https://sevillatimes.com/category/presionesoltar/
- Maken 3y agoI think they are not trying to target Spain but rather some country in Latin America, possibly Colombia. Weird enough, all their news seem to be reposted from a Dominican newspaper but there is no Sevilla there. Maybe they thought it was close enough.
- dash2 3y agoI doubt if lots of websites all saying "[Chinese scientist who made allegations about Covid] is a complete rumor maker" are crypto spam. The Chinese government seems like a plausible patron.
- gs17 3y agoIt's also very likely that both are paying customers. The article doesn't accuse it of being run by the government directly, they specifically refer to it as a private firm.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dmonitor 3y agoThe strategy would be to post the articles to facebook. Nobody goes to a specific website to see the news anyway. The website just exists to be linked to by facebook and look “legit enough”
- globalnode 3y ago[flagged]
- richbell 3y ago> didnt read the article but even if the clickbait was true... If you didn't read the article then calling it clickbait is extremely disingenuous.
- krapht 3y ago1) whataboutism 2) citation needed 3) Even if both sides utilize propaganda, historically the scale of agitprop coming from authoritarian countries has been much greater. This is still newsworthy. You can't even read most Western propaganda in China because the government goes to great lengths to censor narratives counter to offical views.
- feedforward 3y ago> You can't even read most Western propaganda in China because the government goes to great lengths to censor narratives counter to offical views. Sure, because you can watch Russian news channels like RT in the EU, or read websites like rt.com - oh no, they're blocked. Just like in the EU, where the government goes to great lengths to censor narratives counter to offical views, so does China.
- atlantic 3y agoDepends how narrowly you define agitprop. If you consider everything that comes out of the American media/news conglomerates as propaganda, then it's orders of magnitude greater than the efforts of China or Russia.
- neves 3y agoand Hollywood. And Facebook. And X
- Workaccount2 3y agoThe difference is that American media isn't owned by the government. Chinese media can't tell the government to "fuck off" if they don't want to report something. In the US they can.
- xtian 3y ago[dead]
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- feverzsj 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoPlease don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sva_ 3y agoSeems bad, but tbh not terribly sophisticated. I imagine one could do a lot worse in filler content generation using LLMs as well as better obfuscation techniques for the servers. Or perhaps those who do it better are just undetected.
- CrazyStat 3y agoWhat is up with the font rendering on this website? It looks terrible at default zoom (100%), looks fine if I change it to 90% or 110%. Chrome 120.0.6099.200 on Windows 11. Screenshot at 100% zoom: https://i.imgur.com/X7bN7hT.png https://i.imgur.com/X7bN7hT.png
- lolinder 3y ago> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- CrazyStat 3y agoIt’s an earnest question, not a complaint. I looked at and messed around with the CSS a bit but I’m not a web dev so I don’t know what the problem is.
- aembleton 3y agoLooks OK for me. Its loading the font from https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/themes/citizenlab-wp-theme/library/fonts/source-sans-pro-v9-latin-regular.woff2 https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/themes/citizenlab-wp-theme/... Can you access that URL or is it being blocked for you?
- CrazyStat 3y agoNot blocked, I'm able to access it fine.
- netsharc 3y agoSeeing the screenshot of the headlines, "mimic" (HN title) is a different to "posing as" (article title). If I can extrapolate from 3 headlines screenshot there, the sites have generic boring looks (maybe they're Wordpress sites), but they pose to be a news site for Sevilla, Rome, or Milan. Whereas when "mimicking", I would expect them to be copying the design of well-known news sites (I've seen fake CNN-looking sites). It's always amusing/depressing when people claim something, usually something fake-news-ey or propaganda) and link to one of these random Wordpress-looking sites as their "news source". I remember someone linking to a page that claimed that a map of the March 2011 Japanese tsunami effects measured throughout the Pacific[1] was a map of the radiation from the nuclear accident, so people do fall for it, because not everyone is as discerning as us super-clever HN readers. ;) [1] The map from https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/news-story/new-study-shows-some-coastlines-face-double-whammy-tsunamis https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/news-story/new-study-shows-some-co..., but the original caption was under the map and not superimposed on the map, and was cropped by the fake-news peddler.
- drewg123 3y agoI'm not the submitter, but there is a length limit on post titles. I've run into this before with articles whose titles exceed that limit, and I've had to "edit" the titles to fit. I imagine the submitter had the same issue, and didn't catch the different connotation of "mimic" vs "posing as", which does seem to change the meaning some. Dang: Do you think you could raise the length limit by 50 characters or so? Most of the problems I've had with title length limits seem to have been just a few words that I had to squeeze down..
- kieto 3y agoSubmitter here, this is exactly what happened, I hit the length limit with the non-editorialized title, so I tried to reduce it the best I could :)
- mistrial9 3y agomeanwhile, a woman from Japan came to visit the David Brower Center in Berkeley soon after the meltdown, because someone there had been recording TEPCO and National Radiation Levels info since the Fukishima events. Those recordings were in dispute, they did not match. There was intense national interest, international science poking in, and in fact the public records were in dispute. The anecdote here only says "I thought the website was this, and it turned out to be that" .. so many ways that small bit can fail. Very significant world event with actual conflicting information..
- boomboomsubban 3y agoSo Chinese people are running some of the low quality spam content farms that have been plaguing the internet for years, seemingly primarily for financial reasons like the rest of them. The only real difference is their Reuters is linked to China rather than the West.
- andsoitis 3y ago> their Reuters is linked to China rather than the West. Reuters is a company in a regulatory and political framework with high degree is freedom of the press and expression, rather than an instrument controlled by a government for the purpose of propaganda.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pessimizer 3y agoReuters is an outlet completely captured by its owners, for whatever purposes that benefit its owners, exactly like whatever this is. UPI is owned by the Moonies. The Falun Gong have multiple OTA television stations in the US that give no indication that they are owned by the Falun Gong. edit: I forgot that the Epoch Times is also owned by the Falun Gong, an outlet that plays a significant part in US politics. If you are familiar with the Epoch Times, did you know it was owned by the Falun Gong? Did you know that the Washington Times, another important newspaper, is also Moonie-owned? Or that the "International Business Times" and Newsweek are likely controlled by the Korean Christian sect The Community?
- signatoremo 3y ago> Reuters is an outlet completely captured by its owners, for whatever purposes that benefit its owners, exactly like whatever this is Such a vague statement. You can say that about anything. Who are the owners? What are their interests? How did Reuters serve those interest? Reuters changed ownership in 2008. Did their content also change after? Everyone who follows Chinese news knows Epoch Times is affiliated with Falun Gong — [0]. China media make sure of that. Was anyone aware of this fake network of China affiliated websites if not for the investigation of citilab? [0] -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times
- stratigos 3y agoChina makes war through deception and gaslighting, not through tanks and bombs. They declared war on the entire world more than two decades ago.
- actualhuman 3y ago[dead]
- dang 3y agoPlease don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar, regardless of which nation. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mschuster91 3y agoNothing new, sadly. Before the 2016 and 2020 election, fake news farms in Macedonia made the rounds [1] - these were in it for the money, and in 2015 there were reports about Russian propaganda farms targeting Serbia and the rest of Europe [2]. [1] https://money.cnn.com/interactive/media/the-macedonia-story/ https://money.cnn.com/interactive/media/the-macedonia-story/ [2] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/russische-trollfabrik-eine-insiderin-berichtet-a-1036139.html https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/russische-trollf...
- ryandrake 3y agoYes, back before You-Know-Who neutralized the phrase "fake news" by turning it into a generic insult to disparage legitimate news organizations, the big story was all these actual fake newspapers popping up, made to look legitimate, but actually pumping out nonsense and political propaganda instead. Suddenly the phenomenon just stopped getting reported on, and we now mostly forget that these fake sites even exist.
- lostlogin 3y agoAs an aside ‘You-Know-Who’ is an immediate Harry Potter reference for me.
- ryandrake 3y agoYea, I've made it my general practice on HN to not even say the guy's name because whenever you do, your comment boards the upvote-downvote roller coaster, and I'm not going for controversy.
- avgcorrection 3y agoOh please. Your Voldemort never had the power to neutralize that term. People who were clued-in enough to know about Fake News before Trump wasn’t swayed in their belief. And people who were blissfully aware of it (of reality) would just think that it was a new “Trump Thing” and then delude themselves into thinking that getting rid Trump would be the same as getting rid of Fake News (quotation marks may or may not apply).
- xbmcuser 3y agoThis is the time of information warfare I guess they learned something from India "Pro-Indian 'fake websites targeted decision makers in Europe'" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50749764 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50749764
- reaperducer 3y agoIn the U.S., rich people and political organizations are actually buying or setting up real newspapers in small towns so that when they post fake news on social media, they can reference a dead tree "news source" that is actually their own P.R. machine. There have been a few articles about it in the real press (NYT, etc) over the last couple of years.
- psunavy03 3y agoThis is no different from the majority of US history. Partisan/slanted news outlets have been a thing in the US going back to the Revolution, on both sides of the aisle. It's often a reason why larger cities had multiple papers. One for each side.
- scarecrowbob 3y agoWell, one for each side that can field a media organization. :D
- kwhitefoot 3y agoAs far as I can tell (from the other side of the Atlantic) most Americans seem to think that the Republican versus Democrat party system is provided for by either the constitution or god, or perhaps both, and that any deviation from two party politics is just that: deviation.
- wolverine876 3y ago> This is no different from the majority of US history. It is very different. I and many reading have been here for the time when it didn't happen this way, when the world was not drowning in disinformation. Turning it into a binary question: 0) It doesn't exist at all, or 1) It exists, makes the question meaningless (and ironically is a common form of misinformation, and technique of disinformation). By binary reasoning, murder exists whether we have law enforcement or not, and cancer always exists so you might as well smoke cigars and work in a coal mine. But what is the point of saying it's no different? Even if it were true, what do you conclude from that? Why make this argument?
- somenameforme 3y agoSo I decided to take the really sophisticated step of doing a "link:www.milanomodaweekly.com" search on Google. It turned up this [1] page, and pretty much only that page. But that seems to explain what this probably is. This looks like an amateur hour scam operation. Somebody sets up some sites that look vaguely passable (targeted at an audience who does not even speak the language on the site), auto-populates them with auto-translated Chinese newswire and blog stuff, local scraped stuff, etc. and then claims they're "major foreign media outlets", which they then sell access to for the riveting price of just 1.4 million won - about $1000. It looks like a modern take on something like a 419 scam, except I expect they probably do follow through on publishing whatever people submit! Granted not as exciting a discovery as a shadowy influence operation with a super sexy nickname, but probably more accurate. [1] - https://kmong.com/gig/497744 https://kmong.com/gig/497744
- imiric 3y agoDid you miss the part in the article where these sites contain blatant pro-China propaganda, and ad hominem attacks on CCP political dissidents? I did the same cursory look as you. Go to https://www[.]eiffelpost[.]com/?s=china https://www[.]eiffelpost[.]com/?s=china with a VPN. It shows 24 pages of CGTN greatest hits. How you can interpret this to be anything other than a CCP psyop is beyond me. It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum of highly educated people. It's common knowledge that the Chinese government has a history of censoring information that shows them in a bad light, promoting largely false self-aggrandizing narratives, and attacking anyone who challenges them. It shouldn't be surprising at all that the internet outside of their great firewall is a major focus of their operations. Given a lack of direct sources to determine the truth of the situation, I will always lean towards believing that this is part of their established modus operandi, rather than minimizing it by claiming it's just another "amateur hour scam operation".
- somenameforme 3y agoWhat do you think Chinese news and blogs are full of?
- whoswho 3y agoIs there a Chinese equivalent of HN (niche tech forum, not the Y combinator front)? How do we get access?
- dvfjsdhgfv 3y agoPutin's folks have been doing this for decades; I'm surprised China waited for so long.
- wolverine876 3y agoThe Internet is an absolute disaster; disinformation campaigns are everywhere, drowning people, with endless horrible consequences. Freedom, peace, prosperity, democracy, human rights, health, etc. are all at risk. Why are we putting up with it? We really need a solution. At this point, I'd love a walled garden where I know I'd get quality information. It doesn't have to be perfect, but not misinformation or disinformation. I'd love a search engine that restricted itself to quality sources. Even from a purely immediate self-interest perspective, why are all these intelligent people accepting such a trash product?
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoWho do you trust to provide that solution who is above using it to control narratives for their own benefit? And do you think they will forever be trustworthy and/or agree with your world view?
- wolverine876 3y agoIt's a theoretical problem, but it's a commonplace practical function. Everything you read was chosen and written by other people. There's no getting around it unless you are doing primary research. I'll have to choose carefully. For example, if DuckDuckGo offered a 'quality sources' search, I'd pay for it. I don't want to search the entire Internet - that's madness if you think about it. Why are we doing that?
- Dig1t 3y agomisinformation is "false or inaccurate information" Isn't this the same as asking for a source of information that is always correct? Has that ever actually existed in any form? What about lying by omission? It seems like we're all freaking out about something that has always been true: people lie, say half-truths, distort facts. It's pretty hard to convey only information that is 100% provably true and also tells a complete picture.
- wolverine876 3y ago> misinformation is "false or inaccurate information" / Isn't this the same as asking for a source of information that is always correct? Has that ever actually existed in any form? That's really taking that definition (if that's the precise definition) to a theoretical extreme! And then you say your extreme is impossible. Yes, I agree!