Author: Fake News Fighter

Simply put, fake news is false or misleading information.

Whether you heard it from former President Donald Trump’s coining of the term to describe negative press of himself or you saw it on social media, it’s everywhere. It becomes especially prominent during times of division among Americans, like during election cycles. With the reappearance of fake news due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent election, who keeps posting fake news?

Turns out there are troll farms, or businesses rather, that consist of writers who intentionally publish harmful social media posts in order to cause social division and/or spread propaganda. These troll farms have been found in Albania, the Philippines, and most importantly, Russia.

In 2014, a Finnish journalist, Jessika Aro, started investigating a “troll farm” named Internet Research Agency (IRA) located in St. Petersburg, Russia. Aro interviewed those who were connected to the IRA and released an article about what she uncovered. It was titled, “Yle Kioski Traces the Origins of Russian Social Media Propaganda – Never-before-seen Material from the Troll Factory.” In summary, the IRA hires copywriters and editors to manage social media accounts and spread fake news, whether it be locally or worldwide. One of the recruiters that Aro interviewed said that they primarily work in English.

This connects to how the
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Manipulating videos to persuade an audience is nothing new; however, technology is making it harder and harder to tell what’s real and what’s not.

As of 2020, there are 100 million deep fake videos online. And the economic cost of disinformation is as high as $78 billion a year.

In July 2019, U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff asked the CEO’s of Facebook, Twitter, and Google about their formal policies on deep fakes and how they plan to detect them. And unfortunately, few have responded.

They can be funny, disturbing, or down-right alarming. The term deep fake comes from deep-learning artificial intelligence, which is what gives these videos their uncanny realism. The AI analyzes several different videos, learning someone’s mannerisms, facial structure, and voice.

So, when debating real news versus fake news, always ask questions. Look for unusual URLs or website names, weird lighting or missing shadows, audio that seems out of sync, and face discolorations or blurriness where the face meets the neck or hair.

Recognizing deep fakes is a part of what is called media literacy skills and they are becoming essential as 2020 has pushed so much of our culture and society into online environments.

Kids may actually be the savviest of us all as they spend more time on social media using editing tools like snapchat filters and Facetune to create their own synthetic media, making them personally aware they can’t trust everything
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By Robert W. Flowers

In the summer of 2018, rumors began circulating on WhatsApp groups about a kidnapping gang operating in India’s western state of Maharashtra.

The rumors eventually inspired a lynch mob that killed five migrant workers who were suspected of being kidnappers after they arrived at a village in the state’s Dhule district.

This wasn’t an isolated case. Child-abduction rumors spread by viral WhatsApp messages were connected to at least 17 murders across India in 2018. Rumors of cattle traders and organ harvesters also resulted in violent attacks on innocent people.

Since then, India’s fake news problem has continued to grow. More than 400 million Indians now use the internet, but digital literacy and social media regulation have yet to catch up.

“People get cheap internet-based tech on their smartphones, but they don’t have the necessary education on how to assess the veracity of claims made in the messages,” said Rajneil Kamath a publisher at the Indian fact-checking portal NewscheckerIn.

“Sometimes they are duped by fake job schemes or fake mobile recharge schemes through forwarded messages they receive,” Kamath told DW.

More recently during the coronavirus pandemic, credible news was often drowned out by unverified information online. Misinformation related to false cures and conspiracy theories caused panic, anxiety and fear as the virus was spreading.

“India’s first wave of COVID misinformation revolved around the origin, causes, spread, and treatment of the virus. Then it quickly converted to propaganda and disinformation,” said Shalini Joshi, a program director at
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed outrage at officials and politicians delegitimizing coronavirus vaccinations on Monday, stating “I have zero patience for fake news while I fight to save lives.”

Former President TrumpDonald TrumpSacha Baron Cohen calls out ‘danger of lies, hate and conspiracies’ in Golden Globes speech Sorkin uses Abbie Hoffman quote to condemn Capitol violence: Democracy is ‘something you do’ Ex-Trump aide Pierson planning run for Congress MORE ruled out the possibility of forming a new political party during his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Sunday.

In his speech, the former president lambasted the media for reports that he was in discussions with advisers about possibly forming a new political party. According to The Wall Street Journal in January, Trump floated calling such a party the “Patriot Party.”

“You know, they kept saying, ‘he’s going to start a brand new party,'” Trump said, before adding: “That was fake news. Fake News.”

“We have the Republican Party. It’s going to unite and be stronger than ever before. I am not starting a new party,” he continued.

The former president indicated that forming a new party would divide the GOP electorate as the party seeks to reclaim majorities in the House and Senate.

“Wouldn’t that be brilliant? Let’s start a new party and let’s divide our vote, so that you can never win. No, we’re not interested in that,” Trump said.

The former president’s speech is his first major public address since his departure from the White House, and comes amid continued unsubstantiated claims that he was the legitimate victor of
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A spokesperson for Mercola disputed that his website published misinformation, adding: “Dr. Mercola has been subjected to harassment from Bill Gates’ front groups like TBIJ for some time, and your direct conflict of interest and self-appointed title of ‘Ministry of Truth’ is ridiculous.”

The work of the Bureau is funded by 20 organisations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Bureau has never given itself the title “Ministry of Truth”.

Alex Kasprak, a senior writer at the fact-checking site Snopes who covers science, believes Mercola’s influence goes far beyond his owned and operated pages on social media.

“Ultimately if you follow the claims back, it has its origins in a Mercola article,” he said. “The talking point emerges even when he himself does not emerge as the source on Facebook. It’s an indication of his power … or it’s an indication of Facebook’s inability to act in a way that is effective.”

Mercola appears to have done quite well from spreading misinformation. According to a 2017 affidavit cited in The Washington Post, Mercola was worth more than $100m, derived mainly from his network of private companies.

The financial benefits of Nepute’s activities online are less clear. But his success in building an online presence is easy to see. Nepute had just 8,000 followers at the end of February last year. Over the course of April 2020, when his misinformation first caught the attention of fact checkers, he added more than 335,000 followers. Despite the fact checks and FTC warning,
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I suggest a new slogan for our time:  “It is important to recognize when you are being lied to — even by your friends.”

President Donald Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims while in office (Veracity of statements by Donald Trump—Wikipedia).  While politicians have long made false and misleading statements, Donald Trump is like no other.

To protect ourselves from disinformation and “fake news” a good resource is a book: “Don’t be fooled, a citizen’s guide to news and information in the digital age,} second edition, by John McManus, PH.D.  This book addresses a number of forms of bias in news and media and clearly describes how to defend against it.  Other resources include fact checking organizations: FactCheck.org; PolitiFact.com; and snopes.com.

— Mike Schultz, Chico

They can be funny, disturbing, or down-right alarming. The term deep fake comes from deep-learning artificial intelligence which is what gives these videos their uncanny realism. The AI analyzes several different videos, learning someone’s mannerisms, facial structure, and voice. So, when debating real news versus fake news, always ask questions. Look for unusual URLs or website names, weird lighting or missing shadows, audio that seems out of sync, and face discolorations or blurriness where the face meets the neck or hair.