Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation • Hacker News Board

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#81

Post by jfim » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

est wrote: post #38

China had an extensive system to delete disinformation. Every IM, UGC website or app are required by law to provide a report button and ICPs are required to response to user complaints immediately. There's also national wide hotline 12377 or website 12377.gov.cn to submit all categories of information you want to disappear. Any bad content esp. those against-govn't ones contained pretty quickly, which means not only…

It could be done differently. The social networks already track engagement with posts and ads, and already use that to recommend new content (eg. engage with fluffy cat pictures, get more fluffy cat pictures in the feed).

The only thing they need to do is that if a post that went viral is debunked, they need to show a retraction to users that have engaged with the fake content.

Deleting the content means some people think that it's a conspiracy ("they don't want you to know"), whereas giving corrective information allows people to revisit their beliefs.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#82

Post by batty_alex » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

aianus wrote: post #55

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the recent protests it's been difficult to find local news coverage. But I found tweets, I found livestreams, but I couldn't find any reporters covering some of the most impactful demonstrations in my city in decades. In that moment, Twitter was critical. There is a lot of bots and trash, but it has it moments where it is a wonderful tool. This is one of them. Show me a believable bot that's going to fake a live…

They don’t have to fake it, they can just film (or filter through) 500 scenes and only retweet the ones that fit their narrative while discarding the rest.

I feel like the irony of your comment might be lost on you

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#83

Post by dependenttypes » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

jachee wrote: post #74

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, literally the latter what? Violence aimed at protesters? Or accelerationists?

False-flag instigators, intentionally escalating in bad faith to provoke a violent response from protesters and police alike. EDIT - Watch the instigating jerk flip off the protesters who dared confront him as he triggers what would become a failure cascade of protests that had been peaceful for hours . https://reddit.com/r/pittsburgh/comments/gtn3ps/video_of_the...

What exactly makes you think that this person was a false-flag instigator?

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#84

Post by zaroth » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

brenden2 wrote: post #21

I keep hearing this from the mainstream, while at the same time politicians keep going on TV saying things that aren't true, or are misleading. I think the politicians are using tactics from the "how to stop riots" playbook, but they don't work in a world where information flows freely. Probably the best example of this is how the authorities in Minnesota lied about 80% of protestors being from out of state, and when…

I agree with a lot of what you said and think you did a good job saying it!

> Every night I've watched thousands of unarmed peaceful protestors march by, demanding action. Meanwhile the NYPD is out in full military gear firing chemical weapons and rubber bullets indiscriminately at anyone who looks at them the wrong way.

I was forwarded an interesting newsletter today from Mark Manson. He talks about holding contradictory ideas in our minds and how uncomfortable that can make us. How much easier is can be to fall back on confirmation bias and fallacies of composition/division.

It’s much easier to think of the protestors as all peaceful and the cops as indiscriminate thugs than to wrestle with the messy middle of some rioting looters causing mayhem and mostly peace loving officers trying to deescalate.

I recommend reading it and I found it thoughtful and basically apolitical until the left learning ending.

https://markmanson.net/newsletters/mindfck-monday-33

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#85

Post by bregma » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:26 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #35

jachee wrote: post #11

I'm seeing false accusations of Antifa starting violence all over the place. It's the right-wing's boogieman-du-jours, and likely false-flag representation at best. Edit: Downvoters– tell me why you're downvoting this? Why would Antifa purposefully take actions that would deliberately cause an armed police response to otherwise-peaceful protests? Edit 2 since I can no longer post responses: Clearly the misinformation…

It all depends on where the violence is directed. People are protesting police killing a black civilian. Now, if Antifa were to show up, who would they attack, the protesters or the police? The police. If the alt-right showed up, who would they attack? The protesters. Well, who's getting attacked? Not the protesters. So that fits with it being Antifa rather than the alt-right... ... unless it's a false flag, or alt-r…

I believe the phrase you're looking for is "agents provocateur."

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#86

Post by est » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:28 AM UTC

jfim wrote: post #81

est wrote: post #38

China had an extensive system to delete disinformation. Every IM, UGC website or app are required by law to provide a report button and ICPs are required to response to user complaints immediately. There's also national wide hotline 12377 or website 12377.gov.cn to submit all categories of information you want to disappear. Any bad content esp. those against-govn't ones contained pretty quickly, which means not only…

It could be done differently. The social networks already track engagement with posts and ads, and already use that to recommend new content (eg. engage with fluffy cat pictures, get more fluffy cat pictures in the feed). The only thing they need to do is that if a post that went viral is debunked, they need to show a retraction to users that have engaged with the fake content. Deleting the content means some people…

> The only thing they need to do is that if a post that went viral is debunked, they need to show a retraction to users that have engaged with the fake content.

The difficulty is the latter part. How to make sure the user see the retraction? CTR is hard man.

And China already do that, on Weibo it's a promoted feature. During its course over the years, authorities and private companies are abusing the feature, they provide half-assed debunks without further explanation, or even debunk with blatant lies. Since the retraction is a small text and often read-only, there is no proper way to debunk the debunk. PR firms use this feature to spread even more propaganda and shutdown rival messages. For example company A says ingredient X is bad for your health, company B shut it down by pointing out a tiny non-relevant loophole in the grammar, then says the research by company A is a lie, please continue to buy our product.

What to do at this point? It's a vicious circle.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#87

Post by vharuck » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:30 AM UTC

olivermarks wrote: post #77

Unfortunately I no longer find NPR credible, they are too reliant on donations from large corporate donors and are openly partisan in their politics. I occasionally listen to their radio shows to get 'the establishment view' but that' about it...

I've found their bias mostly comes through in word choice (which is actually a big problem if you aren't actively questioning it) and stories on certain topics. I avoid any articles by Code Switch or Goats and Soda (they often focus on those topics). They've recently been leaving info out of headlines, which annoys me. Feels like the "click to find out more" behavior on ad-supported news sites.

Otherwise, I still like NPR. They write concisely, interview plenty of experts who provide reasoning, and will often share whole documents. They're very reluctant to post stories they haven't personally verified. I remember during the first few months of Trump's presidency, when so many "leaks" came out of the White House, they loosed this rule by saying the general topic and that it was unverified. They then explained the history of that topic.

Also, because they're not trying to maximize ad impressions, they don't bury the lead.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#88

Post by jfim » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:35 AM UTC

est wrote: post #86

jfim wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be done differently. The social networks already track engagement with posts and ads, and already use that to recommend new content (eg. engage with fluffy cat pictures, get more fluffy cat pictures in the feed). The only thing they need to do is that if a post that went viral is debunked, they need to show a retraction to users that have engaged with the fake content. Deleting the content means some people…

> The only thing they need to do is that if a post that went viral is debunked, they need to show a retraction to users that have engaged with the fake content. The difficulty is the latter part. How to make sure the user see the retraction? CTR is hard man. And China already do that, on Weibo it's a promoted feature. During its course over the years, authorities and private companies are abusing the feature, they pr…

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that already happening on Chinese social media. Thanks for the info.

I'm not sure that I agree with you that it's hard to make users see the retraction, but as you point out there's clearly ways to abuse a retraction system. It would also likely cause all of the metrics that social networks have spent years optimizing to go down.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#89

Post by at-fates-hands » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:35 AM UTC

schalab wrote: post #30

I have found if you have nothing constructive to do, then twitter sucks you in and is very addictive. But after a few years or so of constant nonsense, you become adapted to the addiction and just ignore everything on it. Atleast thats what happened to me. I went from constantly checking twitter to deleting my account and just going to the feed of one or two people once a day to keep informed. I now laugh at how work…

I spent the better have of my life studying cultures and how people interact within those cultures. Twitter has been a very interesting petri dish for me to see how people interact with each other when they feel like they can say and behave any way they want.

Its interesting to see how Twitter (and social media in general) transformed from something positive where you could find community within a large subset of people and then all patted each other on the back and it was really cool place to hang out but then it slowly became this cesspool of negativity. Twitter just let it happen and now we're at at a tipping point where you have to decide if you want the government to intervene and regulate, or simply let it slide into oblivion.

The even more interesting thing is all of the people I know and worked with in those early days fled Twitter for Mastondon. Now they're saying the same thing is already happening on that platform as well.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#90

Post by djaque » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

schalab wrote: post #30

I have found if you have nothing constructive to do, then twitter sucks you in and is very addictive. But after a few years or so of constant nonsense, you become adapted to the addiction and just ignore everything on it. Atleast thats what happened to me. I went from constantly checking twitter to deleting my account and just going to the feed of one or two people once a day to keep informed. I now laugh at how work…

I've mostly avoided the really bad platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but I caved and started going on some of them for the past week.

They are so awful. It feels like they were built from the ground up to discourage thoughtful conversation and to just create outrage. On all of these (and with youtube comments as I recently realized, although they have a placebo downvote) there is no way to downvote trolls (or bad/misinformed/useless opinions) and there is no real moderation. The only way to deal with it is to create your own angry response and then it shows up on peoples feeds as so-and-so vs so-and-so... pick your side. It is terrible.

Like in the article, one of the people tweets "stop retweeting #dcblackout" which promotes it further. These platforms feel like they are designed to profit off of humanities worst impulses and I wish there was something I could do to stop them.