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Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

theregister.co.uk

11–20 of 131 posts

Re: Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

#11
post #6

I gave a talk at Denver startup week last year about the underlying profit incentives tied to fake news and how industry reforms in the way media companies do business could not only benefit the advertisers but also stop Fake news. At the end of the talk I had 3 people ask how they could make fake news to promote their startups. That this has turned into a booming industry surprises me 0%, though it is depressing.

Is your talk or similar online anywhere?

Re: Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

#12
I've been working on some algorithms I think can identify fake news easily and reliably.

The key part is you have to have a massive dataset of historical information.

With Datastreamer (my company) we have about 1PB of news, blogs, and social media from the last 4-5 years.

I'm curious if it would make sense to ship an open/public API that would allow people both to report AND check on whether something is fake news.

Sort of like Hacker News but a browser extension that allows you to flag whether you think something is fake.

Re: Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

#13
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Internet anonymity is a thing though. Even if you make a fully unrelated identity, smearing that identity is enough to discredit your ability to engage online. Sure, you can make another and another, but starting over with zero online credibility is the same thing as losing all your credibility.

One of the components of online anonymity is having different identites for different communities. That way if your expiremental political blog goes horribly wrong it doesn't take your professional life or hobby group with it

Well sure, you can treat being online as an advanced form of roleplaying, but then that just limits your ability to really engage in serious discussion, because you're just talking to other roleplayers.

And that's fine for most topics, but when you talk about certain issues, I feel that speaking in an honest manner (and assuming everyone who isn't obviously trolling is doing the same) is the only way to really have a discussion, otherwise it just makes all online discourse totally meaningless.

Re: Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

#14
post #3

Direct link without lead harvesting nonsense: http://info.digitalshadows.com/rs/457-XEY-671/images/Digital... This is super lazy, the paper seems like it was produced by a PR drone whose knowledge on the subject was limited to a list of keywords to google.

The article itself is pretty lazy too, like it was a paid placement. It mentions "Digital Shadows" nine times.

Re: Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

#15

I've been working on some algorithms I think can identify fake news easily and reliably. The key part is you have to have a massive dataset of historical information. With Datastreamer (my company) we have about 1PB of news, blogs, and social media from the last 4-5 years. I'm curious if it would make sense to ship an open/public API that would allow people both to report AND check on whether something is fake news.…

Hi I am interested in this sort of service. I have 2 concerns. First is I don't install browser extensions unless I really trust them. Too many are pumped up and then sold to some malware company, one update later and you're owned. My second concern is that if this works well eventually the fake news producers will become aware of it, reverse engineer it and then attempt to game the detection.

Re: Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

#16
If you haven't seen Century of the Self[1] I recommend it. It is a documentary about the history, and rise of PR. We are now, perhaps, at the end of the century of the self - as the trustworthiness (and hence value) of broadcast information drops to zero (not that it has yet, but it will). How our current news/media copes, and what replaces it are still unknown.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04

Re: Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

#18
post #6

I gave a talk at Denver startup week last year about the underlying profit incentives tied to fake news and how industry reforms in the way media companies do business could not only benefit the advertisers but also stop Fake news. At the end of the talk I had 3 people ask how they could make fake news to promote their startups. That this has turned into a booming industry surprises me 0%, though it is depressing.

Is your talk or similar online anywhere?

Unfortunately, I don't believe it was recorded. That said I've been submitting it to some local TedXs so hopefully, I can get a recording in the near future.

Re: Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

#19
post #6

I gave a talk at Denver startup week last year about the underlying profit incentives tied to fake news and how industry reforms in the way media companies do business could not only benefit the advertisers but also stop Fake news. At the end of the talk I had 3 people ask how they could make fake news to promote their startups. That this has turned into a booming industry surprises me 0%, though it is depressing.

Can you recommend some material on this and how to design the incentives properly?

Yeah let me try and find some good articles. As for my talk, the tl;dr is that the lack of inventory transparency by ad networks coupled with the way that the CPM pricing model is currently administered incentivizes a system where the only that matters is clicks and not context or outcomes. Fake news is an extreme example, but a less sinister one is the Buzzfeeds and Upworthys of the world.

Re: Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

#20
post #3

Direct link without lead harvesting nonsense: http://info.digitalshadows.com/rs/457-XEY-671/images/Digital... This is super lazy, the paper seems like it was produced by a PR drone whose knowledge on the subject was limited to a list of keywords to google.

The article itself is pretty lazy too, like it was a paid placement. It mentions "Digital Shadows" nine times.

It could be very meta if it turned out that the story about fake news is fake itself ;)
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