Bart Simpson reports on fake news…
WhatsApp Fuels India’s #FakeNews Fire
India has a long history of politically motivated hoaxes and guerrilla propaganda. A popular messenger app has thrown it into overdrive.
“Viral WhatsApp Hoaxes Are India”s Own Fake News Crisis”
by Pranav Dixit
Buzzfeed News
January 19. 2017
The United States is currently experiencing a fake news crisis “” bogus news articles disguised to look like real ones to mislead people, influence public opinion, and/or to simply use their massive reach to reap advertising profits. These operations are sophisticated, data-driven, and highly targeted. But in countries like India where internet penetration and literacy still lag far behind the US, misinformation tends to have a more grassroots quality. Twitter is a fertile ground for all kinds of rumormongering, but with just over 30 million users in the country, its impact is limited.
The primary vector for the spread of misinformation in India is WhatApp. The instant messenger is fast, free, and runs on nearly all of India”s 300 million smartphones. It”s also encrypted end-to-end, which means it”s nearly impossible to track what flows through it. Its real-world ramifications, nonetheless, can be brutal.
In November, WhatsApp rumors of a salt shortage sparked panic in at least four Indian states and caused stampedes outside grocery shops as people rushed to stock up. The government eventually debunked the rumours “” but not before a woman died.
India”s misinformation problem predates the internet. In the early “˜90s, rabble-rousers in northern India trying to stir up tensions in Hindu and Muslim communities would mass-produce cassette recordings full of fake gunfire, screams, and chants of “Allah-ho-Akbar,” and then play them in car stereos at full volume in the dead of the night to incite communal violence. Read more.
Fake Newsmaker Cameron Harris: Lying for Profit
Cameron Harris, a man without shame, fesses up to how he lied, cheated and stole when he created and published fake news that helped sway the national election. He had no reason to do it other than greed and he has no remorse.
From Headline to Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece, by Scott Shane, The New York Times, January 18, 2017
Cameron Harris
Reheating the Cold War: Blame it on the Ruskies
“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers has tracked Russian propaganda since 2014. “This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.”
Russian propaganda effort helped spread “˜fake news” during election, experts say
by Craig Timberg
The Washington Post
November 24, 2016
The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.
Russia”s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery “” including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts “” echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.
Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.
There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. Read the rest of the article here.
How Your Fake Right-Wing News Gets Made
Fake news sites have been booming this year, and well before that. But the name “RealTrueNews” probably should have tipped off someone.
“This ‘Conservative News Site’ Trended on Facebook, Showed Up on FOX News – and Duped the World”
by Ben Collins
The Daily Beast
October 27, 2016
Marco Chacon had only spent about $20 on his conservative news website, RealTrueNews, when he heard his words in prime time on Fox News” The Kelly File.
“Yeah,” Chacon said. “That was an accident.”
Just as he”d done for the last few months, Chacon had read the latest explosive conservative news””this time it was Hillary Clinton”s leaked speeches to Wall Street banks””and typed up an imagined transcript of his own.
“So in the transcript, she”s explaining Bronies to the Goldman Sachs board of directors,” said Chacon. “Do you know what Bronies are?”
Bronies are hard-core, usually adult fans of the cartoon My Little Pony.
“In this one, [Bronies] are part of a threat of subalterns who are going to take over the election. And people believe all this,” he said. “And I”m just”¦ I”m telling people, “˜How can you believe this!?””
Somewhere in the middle of that block of text about My Little Pony, Chacon”s transcript contained the phrase “bucket of losers,” attributed, falsely of course, to Clinton, which legitimate conservative news websites picked up as real.
Sure enough, by 9 p.m. that day, Trace Gallagher was on Fox News telling viewers that Clinton had “apparently called Bernie Sanders supporters a “˜bucket of losers.”” (Megyn Kelly later apologized after the Clinton campaign vehemently denied Clinton said it.)
Taking official-looking documents at face value isn”t just burgeoning among alt-right media. It”s a tactic now endorsed by the Republican candidate for president. Keep reading.