The Briefing Room
General Category => Politics/Government => Topic started by: jmyrlefuller on November 25, 2016, 05:29:55 pm
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http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social
by Laura Sydell
November 23, 2016
A lot of fake and misleading news stories were shared across social media during the election. One that got a lot of traffic had this headline: "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide." The story is completely false, but it was shared on Facebook over half a million times.
We wondered who was behind that story and why it was written. It appeared on a site that had the look and feel of a local newspaper. Denverguardian.com even had the local weather. But it had only one news story — the fake one.
We tried to look up who owned it and hit a wall. The site was registered anonymously. So we brought in some professional help.
(excerpt)
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http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social
by Laura Sydell
November 23, 2016
A lot of fake and misleading news stories were shared across social media during the election. One that got a lot of traffic had this headline: "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide." The story is completely false, but it was shared on Facebook over half a million times.
We wondered who was behind that story and why it was written. It appeared on a site that had the look and feel of a local newspaper. Denverguardian.com even had the local weather. But it had only one news story — the fake one.
We tried to look up who owned it and hit a wall. The site was registered anonymously. So we brought in some professional help.
(excerpt)
Its time to face the fact that the propagandists on both sides are wildly out of control.
Just this morning my cousin on vacation in NYC texted me and said he saw a ad promoting Russian state media because the American media lies about Trump.
Seems that William Ayers and the weather underground only needed to wait for conservatism to give up.
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We had several from Denverguardian.com come through here, luckily members here saw through them. Other sites, notsomuch. I think Conservative Treehouse, InfoWars, and Gateway Pundit still link to some of their stories.
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"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says.
As I've spoken of many times before, this is a tactic Cass Sunstein wrote of years ago. Promote conspiracy theories to get your opposition to chese them and look like fools.
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Very interesting article.
I don't buy this for a minute: We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.
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Very interesting article.
I don't buy this for a minute:
I believe they probably did because it is hard to troll oneself and they are liberals. They probably saw extremism on their side as normal so when trying to create fake news stories that tricked the left, they couldn't be subtle but over-the-top. They (as other similar sites) were successful with the right because they were subtle in their approach. Making the fake stories sound believable.
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I believe they probably did because it is hard to troll oneself and they are liberals. They probably saw extremism on their side as normal so when trying to create fake news stories that tricked the left, they couldn't be subtle but over-the-top. They (as other similar sites) were successful with the right because they were subtle in their approach. Making the fake stories sound believable.
There were a few that targeted Bernie supporters that I see get tossed around... like one that tried to convince Bernie supporters that they could write him in on the general election ballot.
That was part of the problem; most of the grassroots supported Bernie, and it was the political machine that foisted Clinton upon the Democratic Party. Another part was that Trump really didn't have much of a network to attack the way Clinton did... plus, most of the dastardly stuff about Trump was, in fact, true.
The last part, I think, speaks to differences in the way liberals and conservatives consume social media. When it comes to news stories, conservatives seem to prefer mid-length, fully written news articles. Liberals prefer to put their falsehoods into memes and shareable images. Take a look at the Standing Rock temper tantrum, and all the lies being spread about that. Or, perhaps, Occupy Democrats, a notorious Facebook fan page.
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Very interesting article.
I don't buy this for a minute:
I would think that the anti-vaxxer movement was a direct result of leftist fake news believed by leftists.