Then we got the Mueller indictment detailing how Russian posts stoked societal divisions during and after the election with fake news. And the white supremacist group in Florida using the shooting to get press for itself by saying the shooter trained with them, and more.
Other than urging people to check sources before they share, to do reverse google image searches - which let’s face it most people will never do - what can we do about this? Anything?
I read an article last week about how easy it has become for most anyone to manipulate video to show things and people that aren’t real, which is frankly terrifying.
I read that too. Those Russians have been excelling in fomenting dissent. It’s just disgusting. Maybe Twitter should start having little buttons that display what country the incoming IP is from.
Most of the outrageous political images shared on social media are false or misleading, whether or not any Russians were involved.
It does not take much web searching to find a more complete story. Even among strongly biased or partisan media, there are outlets that do not stoop to outright lying, but those seem to be largely ignored by most people in favor of those who care little about accuracy.
Alarmist non political images shared on social media tend to have a similar disregard for accuracy.
I’m not sure why this is surprising at all. I lost plenty of facebook friends during the election because I constantly posted Snopes and other fact-checker websites on people’s bs. I obnoxiously fact check people on here all the time- especially on the anti-vaxxers and HPV threads. I cannot let any small lie go. I just can’t do it after the last few years.
Fake crap has managed to make an entire “thing” that barely exists in the real world- antifa.
I don’t think there’s anything we can do to be honest. Unfortunately, there has been a systematic effort for decades by certain groups and “news” orgs to slowly but surely brainwash tens of millions into believing that anything that doesn’t jive with their view of the world is “fake news.”
During the election, I noticed a lot of activity by Russian bots (or more likely, employees in charge of many accounts) on the mommy board urbanbaby.com. It was so much that I logged off and never used it again.
The sentence structure was one thing–it suddenly became very Boris and Natasha-sounding. But okay, not everyone who lives here is a native speaker. But there were lots of other tells: a “suburban, 100% American mom” forgot the word for “Halloween” and called it “the dress up holiday” – lots of stuff like that. Not to mention that the discussion went from the perks of an UppaBaby stroller and kindergarten admissions to the evils of NATO and Bulgarian-Russian relations! Hmmmm! Always top of mind for busy urban moms, sure!
@romanigypsyeyes, I did the same as you, when friends posted outraged articles on face book. I would check snopes and other sources then prove the article was wrong. At first I was surprised how many people kept the article up on their page (just because it aligned with their core belief system) but then I got used to it. As long as these stories and articles cement their feelings they didn’t care that the story was fake.
I feel like it’s going to take more than a few people taking the time to look things up. These attacks, if you will, seem very organized and effective. I have no doubt that a lot of people believe that black people are beating up white people at this movie. After all, there are PICTURES.
If I can get even one person to realize they’re wrong and throw aside the propaganda, it’ll be worth it. I don’t care how many people defriend and block me in the mean time.
I should add that it is personal to me because a relative is one of those at the national level producing/pushing the propaganda. I feel it’s my duty to try and undo some of the damage he causes.
You can’t trust the MSM, Google, Facebook etc. because of their hidden motives. All of them make money by posting or linking ‘information’ to get you to spend more time on their pages or apps. All have internal biases which they do not reveal. This is true regardless of your political leanings. You are best off referencing the source content yourself to form your own opinions.
Yellow journalism has been around for a long time. We just have a lot more of it now due to the internet where anyone can make a site and post fake news.
This article paints a pretty disturbing picture of how things are only going to get much, much worse, what they call an “infocalypse”.
“Alarmism can be good — you should be alarmist about this stuff,” “We are so screwed it’s beyond what most of us can imagine,”
The article outlines all kinds of different technologies, devices, and ways it is predicted to get much more severe and will rip apart the boundaries between reality and the fake - ways in which bad actors will be able to manipulate everything to such a degree using AI that you will no longer be able to distinguish between what is real and what isn’t leading to “reality apathy”. “People stop paying attention to news and that fundamental level of informedness required for functional democracy becomes unstable.”
I’m no technology expert but this sounds pretty terrifying. Very dystopian.
They could invade us here, maybe some have even tried already. A local city neighborhood online newspaper received more than 16,000 new subscribers last summer, all of them with foreign, mostly Russian, email addresses. Why would they bother? It’s a new sort of invasion.
I saw last night on Twitter that some people were posting (WRONGLY) that the Florida shooter was a DACA recipient. They are suspected Russian t-words too.
My favorite is the people (and they are real people I know, Not Russian bots) whose response to me posting snopes refuting their posting is “snopes has a liberal bias”
That’s how brainwashed some people have become.
Right. Legitimate media uses and supplies sources, which is what sets it apart from media-manipulators. That doesn’t mean legit media doesn’t ever get it wrong, or doesn’t have a bias. But sources can be checked, logical fallacies can be recognized.
Snopes does that–shows where evidence is lacking, or fake, or used wrongly. And shows all its sources. It’s completely transparent.