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Fake news ‘as a service’ booming among cybercrooks

theregister.co.uk

121–130 of 131 posts

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

#121

The fake news phenomenon is something that worries me at a local level: friends and family. I'm constantly bombarded by forwarded messages from them that don't pass a simple cursory review and are 99% fake if you dig further. I've tried to combat this by researching what's forwarded to me and pointing that out (including how I discovered it was false) but people either don't reply back or get hostile, assuming I'm on…

Superstition, gossip and rumours have been around since long before the internet.

I’d also doubt that half of the people spreading these stories believe half of what they’re saying. Some people just like the attention.

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

#122
post #58
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really not sure what kind of people are downvoting these kinds of comments. Anyone care to enlighten?

Usually the kind of people who esteem journalists as philosopher-kings, and the organizations who employ them as paragons of perfect, unassailable virtue. The Fourth Estate is not to be criticized.

Yikes.

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

#123

The fake news phenomenon is something that worries me at a local level: friends and family. I'm constantly bombarded by forwarded messages from them that don't pass a simple cursory review and are 99% fake if you dig further. I've tried to combat this by researching what's forwarded to me and pointing that out (including how I discovered it was false) but people either don't reply back or get hostile, assuming I'm on…

> I've left various chat groups and feel my energy is depleted to continue on this fight.

Basically the worst part about the fake news issue - the sheer volume of it makes it in effect impossible to deal with at an individual level.

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

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you are being downvoted for comparing secretive cannibalism to security/defense. But yes, supply will provide every legal thing in demand. Indeed, that is how the invisible hand is "supposed" to work.

Lockheed's involved in the maintenance (and previously, manufacture) of thermonuclear weapons. I'm pretty comfortable with my comparison.

So you are upset we won ww2 and think they are responsible somehow? Whats your reasoning?

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lockheed's involved in the maintenance (and previously, manufacture) of thermonuclear weapons. I'm pretty comfortable with my comparison.

So you are upset we won ww2 and think they are responsible somehow? Whats your reasoning?

Blatant straw man.

There are moral implications to building weapons of annihilation in exchange for wealth.

Also, Lockheed's role in Manhattan Project era nuclear weapons development was non-existent. And the delivery aircraft was manufactured by Boeing.

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

#126
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually the kind of people who esteem journalists as philosopher-kings, and the organizations who employ them as paragons of perfect, unassailable virtue. The Fourth Estate is not to be criticized.

Yikes.

Yikes! Not a good look! Ding ding ding, nope nope nope!

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

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking this idea. What would be the hypothetical flow for the recent Bloomberg chip article? I’m sure it would have been published with the cert since it’s from Bloomberg but later when it turns out to be less than true or more inflammatory than intended. Do they lose their cert? Or maybe just the article has to persist with the cert rating? I love the idea, just curious how it works logistically.

Maybe something like: Bloomberg registers with cert auth. They publish articles and each has a pending cert item (image?) on their page that is loaded from 3rd party cert auth. The cert auth uses algos to determine if it's fake or not and published results back to the placeholder. Edit: Forgot to mention, please do take the idea. And good luck!

Thx for the info. So could this possibly run as a browser plugin?

That way the site doesn’t need to assert its own trust? And you wouldn’t have to deal with the heavy lift of updating every news site.

Just thinking out loud typing... you could integrate this with an ad blocker so that only cert content could show an ad. This would create an incentive model not only for the publisher but the advertising partners to make sure content is good and certified. Sites and content with no cert or lost cert would block ads for that page and for repeat offenders you could escalate to say all ads are blocked for the sesssion.

While I’m not a fan of ads I understand their purpose and maybe with something like the above, the market could find equilibrium once again.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My parents called the police, a detective came out and interviewed my sister. And this is what is supposed to happen. Unfortunately, there wasn't a conviction (two of the proverbial 10 guilty free), but your sister has far, far, far more credibility than if she contacted law enforcement in 2040 when one of them was in the public spotlight, or about to be promoted. Everything about her and your parents behavior in t…

>And this is what is supposed to happen. Unfortunately, there wasn't a conviction (two of the proverbial 10 guilty free), but your sister has far, far, far more credibility than if she contacted law enforcement in 2040 when one of them was in the public spotlight, or about to be promoted. Everything about her and your parents behavior in that situation is very consistent. Yes she does. That's not the point of my stor…

> Now, DeVarney also said in her August conversation with Blasey Ford, Blasey Ford told her a story about how when she was remodeling her home with her husband, she sort of insisted to her husband that every bedroom had to have a door that led to the outside space because otherwise she would feel trapped.

> Now, just a disturbing and noteworthy detail from what she told me, she said that in the years of knowing Blasey Ford and being friends with her, she already knew that she had a hard time being in enclosed spaces and she also did not enjoy flying for this reason because, in her words, an airplane was the ultimate closed space where you cannot get away.

---

> Mitchell: When you were here in the mid — mid-Atlantic area back in August, end of July, August, how did you get here?

> Ford: Also by airplane. I come here once a year during the summer to visit my family.

> Mitchell: OK. In fact, you fly fairly frequently for your hobbies and your — you’ve had to fly for your work. Is that true?

> Ford: Correct, unfortunately.

> Mitchell: I also saw on your C.V. that you list the following interests of surf travel, and you, in parentheses” Hawaii, Costa Rica, South Pacific islands and French Polynesia.” Have you been all to those places?

> Ford: Correct.

> Mitchell: By airplane?

> Ford: Yes.

> Mitchell: And your interests also include oceanography, Hawaiian and Tahitian culture. Did you travel by air as a part of those interests?

> Ford: Correct.

Yes, of course you can be afraid of flying and still fly.

But to be so frightened to request that multiple Congressmen flys across the country to see you, when you already fly multiple times every year...

It's not impossible, just improbable, or spun. Like Renate Alumnius.

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

#130
post #96
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.

8 years ago I used NLP to generate fake user profile bios for a social media company (not one you've heard of). The SEO/marketing guys went nuts over it and started using it for everything. It was super effective and they had the money to scale it. Eventually Panda came out and hosed the rankings on the blogs/domains they used it for. Around the same time I discovered https://narrativescience.com/ and read about how…

Hate to be the one to tell you this...they're doing it domestically (in their own country) as well.
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