Month: December 2020

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Readers: Happy New Year! Today, we present some fake news. But we’re identifying it as such. Here’s more from a feature by yours truly, all the way back in May 1988. And that’s no lie!

Lake Mystic, near Tallahassee, has no bottom. A headless horseman rides the trail near Canoe Creek. A non-aggression pact struck between Seminoles and snakes protects both to this day.

These tall tales, superstitions, and folklore all stem from a state that was largely unsettled just a few generations ago, but whose roots and lore go back more than 400 years.

They were gathered by J. Russell Reaver, professor emeritus of 19th- and 20th-century American literature and folklore at Florida State University, in a celebration of Florida’s colorful past titled “Florida Folktales.” (Reaver died at age 86 in 2002.)

Read more Florida history: Here are Florida’s top 25 stories of all time

For more than 40 years, Reaver gathered stories from people in big cities and backwater towns. Some go back to British, German, Spanish and other European roots. Many told by slaves or their descendants come from Africa. Some come from old-timers who now are long gone, their voices stilled forever, but preserved by Reaver.

“Florida has had marvelous storytellers, and they have helped keep alive this tremendously  rich heritage in this state, which is one of the most fascinating places
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Online Desk

The year 2020 was a testing time for many across the globe, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. While we had to mark ourselves safe from the deadly virus by taking precautions and necessary safety protocols but many did fall prey to this invisible predator in this internet friendly network that we live in, which is the ‘fake news’.

As much as people tried to restrain themselves from being struck with the ‘fake news’ fireballs, some too convincing news which spread like wildfire could not be helped with. 

Amit Malviya

Bharatiya Janata Party’s social media chief Amit Malviya’s tweet on the farmers’ protest against the contentious farm laws was flagged as “manipulated media” by Twitter.

In February, the social media website had announced that it would start labelling tweets with false claims and issue a warning to the user, to combat misinformation and fake news. 

So what was the tweet all about? On November 28, BJP leader Amit Malviya shared a video stating ‘propaganda vs reality’ from the farmers’ protest.

He posted the video in response to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi which showed a cop raising the baton to hit a farmer at the protest site.

Rahul Gandhi must be the most discredited opposition leader India has seen in a long long time. https://t.co/9wQeNE5xAP pic.twitter.com/b4HjXTHPSx

— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) November 28, 2020

He claimed that the farmer was escaped unhurt. But BoomLive and AltNews identified the farmer and posted a longer version
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Boy was I wrong, and there’s only one person to thank for the five-year anniversary of the Fake News Freakout — Donald John Trump. 

Trump has done more to promulgate the concept of fake news more than possibly anyone, both through his denigration of real news that he deems fake news, and his promotion of actual fake news that he believes is real.

Counterintuitively, that makes my job much more difficult because fake news is far more common now and therefore not as funny as it used to be.

I even thought about not doing the Fake News Freakout this year, worried that I wouldn’t be able to measure up to the ridiculousness that was reality in 2020. 

But, as a red-blooded American man, I decided that to deprive you, my friends, of the Fake News Freakout — on its fifth anniversary no less — would be nothing short of tyranny. 

Now then, submitted for your perusal is another fresh batch of fake news stories, which are fake. Thanks Don! 

SMN Staff Writer/Outdoors editor Holly Kays contributed to this fake news report, which is fake.

Area man Chad McGee supports the right to bare arms. And hands. Donated photo

Area man refuses to wear oven mitt 

Nursing pus-weeping third-degree burns on more than 50 percent of each of his hands, one area man still refuses to wear an oven mitt when handling
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The year 2020 will be remembered for a lot of things – not the least of which is “fake news.” The term “spin,” referring to slanting a news story to fit a particular political ideology, has been commonly used for years, but terms like “fake news” and “false narratives” have been a more accurate way to describe the evolution of spin.

Spin was the act of directing the facts of a news story.  Spin has evolved into fake news and false narratives that actually ignore the facts for the purpose of crafting a news story to support a political tribe.

On my radio talk show on WWL-AM-FM-Radio.com in New Orleans, I witness the growing tendency to ignore facts in favor of a news story that appears to be a factual representation of reality.  The sad truth is that many Americans seek confirmation bias over the truth.  Confirmation bias is the process of finding only the media outlets that confirm one’s bias, rather than honestly looking for the truth.

People believe what they want to believe and not what is real.

How do these fake news stories and false narratives begin?  Well, there are several ways.  At times, a news story is just concocted with disregard for the facts.  If these stories support a particular agenda or ideology then people choose to believe they are true with
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Elizabeth II is among the longest-serving constitutional monarchs in history (1953–). Britain’s edgy Channel 4 tested the waters with a deepfake Christmas address:

In Commonwealth countries like Canada, it is a longstanding custom to listen to Elizabeth’s Christmas Address. So how did the fake fare?:

If you have bad eyesight and limited hearing, you might, might, be fooled by the fake Queen on a busy Christmas day. But by the time she starts talking about Netflix and launches into a dance routine, you’d surely know something’s up. Channel 4 makes little effort to hide its deception, but that hasn’t stopped some critics from expressing discomfort with the stunt.

Rhett Jones, “First Deepfake Address from the Queen of England Makes Its Debut on British TV” at Gizmodo

Well, for one thing, the behavior was utterly unlike the Elizabeth of the past seven decades.

Okay, but deepfakes are getting better. They will be among us for some time—and so will efforts to detect them. For example, there is actually an industry challenge out there:

A climax of these efforts is this year’s Deepfake Detection Challenge. Overall, the winning solutions are a tour de force of advanced DNNs (an average precision of 82.56 percent by the top performer). These provide us effective tools to expose deepfakes that are automated and mass-produced by AI algorithms.
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On May 5, 2017, the French political scene was upended by what became known as MacronLeaks, a cache of more than 21,000 emails hacked from Emmanuel Macron’s political associates. It was two days before the final round of voting in the presidential election and just hours before a legally mandated election-news blackout was set to begin: prime time to try to spread rumor and scandal on French social media. Attributed to Russian hackers, who used bots to promote the material on Twitter, Facebook, and 4chan, the leak was seized upon by supporters of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. The leak, which helped spread unsubstantiated rumors of financial impropriety by Macron, didn’t help Le Pen close her substantial gap with Macron, but it became an important event in the fight over online disinformation. After winning the presidency, Macron promised a regulatory crackdown, pushing through a law that allowed judges to order the removal of “fake news” during elections. But France, at that time, was also busy pushing disinformation of its own—albeit in another continent.

When Macron was elected, France was three years into Operation Barkhane, a wide-reaching military campaign to rid Mali and other countries in Africa’s Sahel region of jihadists loyal to the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups. Like any counterinsurgency campaign, dealing with propaganda and disinformation are core parts of Barkhane. But in this case, the producer of fake news appears to be members of the French
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Misinformation and fake news are now threatening public health and endangering democracy itself. What might help contain the problem? Part of the answer lies in a very old remedy: the law of defamation.

To see how this
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New Delhi, December 25

As the social media platforms and governments battle the spread of coronavirus-related fake news, a new study has revealed that information on Covid-19 spreads quickly and misinformation or misleading information can take on a life of its own in social media channels.

The consequences can be fatal, since often during a crisis, people are forced to make snap decisions while trying to take care of their mental health, said the researchers from an Estonian-led international network.

The scientists agreed that governments should not be afraid to distribute official announcements on social media but rather make the most of social media for effective communication.

“In the context of the pandemic, information with varying levels of proof and verifiability is being spread, and often this information is distributed via social media,” explained network head Mart Susi, a professor of human rights at Tallinn University in Estonia.

The main recommendation to both civil society and social media channels, Susi added, is to create methods for fact-checking and to release the results of such checks consistently.

“Deleting information indiscriminately might seem like an easy way out, but in reality, it’s a slippery slope,” he said in a statement.

Up to this point, the focus of attention among scientists and practitioners has been on critiquing the relaying of information on what’s going on in online media portals and the process of users assessing posts – and blame is being cast on the lack of clear standards and transparency.

Now the focus has shifted from process to outcome:
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A deepfake version of the Queen Elizabeth II is set to deliver an alternative Christmas day message this year in which she will issue a “stark warning” about the rapid spread of fake news and disinformation in a digital age.

The four-minute film will be broadcast on Channel 4 while the Queen gives her traditional Christmas speech on the BBC and ITV ITV, -0.09%.