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Ever since learning of these conservative fake "news" websites, I've wondered about them. There are many other similar sites, not only the ones mentioned on that page. I wondered whether there were also liberal fake news websites, and it turns out there are.
Some of main things I wonder:
Who is behind these sites?
Are many of the sites owned by the same people? How many people are there behind these sites?
Are some of the conservative and liberal leaning sites both owned by the same people?
What do they hope to accomplish by spreading fake news?
Is the purpose of the sites simply to earn advertising revenue, or something more sinister?
Do they hope to gain certain candidates more votes and support?
Do they hope to incite anger or violence?
Do they hope to destroy democracy in the United States? (Putting aside the question as to how much of a democracy we have at present, and how fair/just/etc our society is)
The more such fake news sites proliferate, the harder it may become to find reliable news. It may cause us to question any news we read, even on sites that we think are reliable. How can we know if what we read and hear is really true? Without knowing what is true or fake, how can we make good decisions? How can we have a good democracy, if the people do not have good information?
It seems obvious that the stories on many of these sites are not trustworthy, simply by the style of writing. But it wouldn't be hard to write fake news in a more convincing style. How many of the more convincing stories that I read on other sites, may actually be fake or misleading too?
People don't have time to do research on everything they read, to determine if it is trustworthy or not. They rely on other people to do that for them. If you read something on a "real" news site, you trust that it is at least somewhat reliable. You have to trust somewhat. And if multiple "real" news sites report the same thing, you have to trust that they did some research on their own, and aren't just all repeating the same story from a single source.
There have been tabloid magazines for a long time, with questionable stories. But it seems to me those were always more focused on Hollywood celebrities, not on politicians and politics. But maybe this has been going on a long long time already, and I just never noticed it much before now.
Ahah. These articles were posted just recently about the phenomenon:
Can Facebook Solve Its Macedonian Fake-News Problem?
A lot of your fake Donald Trump news is coming from millennials in Veles, Macedonia
Yet that can't explain the "conservative daily post" website described in my first link. Surely people in Macedonia wouldn't be hiring Americans to write fake news stories at $15 per article. Unless it is a scam and the writers don't get paid.
The plague of fake news is getting worse -- here's how to protect yourself - Oct 30, 2016.
Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine - Aug 24, 2016.
Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages Are Publishing False And Misleading Information At An Alarming Rate - Oct? 2016.
This is an older article about Russian-based misinformation programs:
The Agency - June 2015.
Some of main things I wonder:
Who is behind these sites?
Are many of the sites owned by the same people? How many people are there behind these sites?
Are some of the conservative and liberal leaning sites both owned by the same people?
What do they hope to accomplish by spreading fake news?
Is the purpose of the sites simply to earn advertising revenue, or something more sinister?
Do they hope to gain certain candidates more votes and support?
Do they hope to incite anger or violence?
Do they hope to destroy democracy in the United States? (Putting aside the question as to how much of a democracy we have at present, and how fair/just/etc our society is)
The more such fake news sites proliferate, the harder it may become to find reliable news. It may cause us to question any news we read, even on sites that we think are reliable. How can we know if what we read and hear is really true? Without knowing what is true or fake, how can we make good decisions? How can we have a good democracy, if the people do not have good information?
It seems obvious that the stories on many of these sites are not trustworthy, simply by the style of writing. But it wouldn't be hard to write fake news in a more convincing style. How many of the more convincing stories that I read on other sites, may actually be fake or misleading too?
People don't have time to do research on everything they read, to determine if it is trustworthy or not. They rely on other people to do that for them. If you read something on a "real" news site, you trust that it is at least somewhat reliable. You have to trust somewhat. And if multiple "real" news sites report the same thing, you have to trust that they did some research on their own, and aren't just all repeating the same story from a single source.
There have been tabloid magazines for a long time, with questionable stories. But it seems to me those were always more focused on Hollywood celebrities, not on politicians and politics. But maybe this has been going on a long long time already, and I just never noticed it much before now.
Ahah. These articles were posted just recently about the phenomenon:
Can Facebook Solve Its Macedonian Fake-News Problem?
A lot of your fake Donald Trump news is coming from millennials in Veles, Macedonia
Yet that can't explain the "conservative daily post" website described in my first link. Surely people in Macedonia wouldn't be hiring Americans to write fake news stories at $15 per article. Unless it is a scam and the writers don't get paid.
The plague of fake news is getting worse -- here's how to protect yourself - Oct 30, 2016.
Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine - Aug 24, 2016.
Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages Are Publishing False And Misleading Information At An Alarming Rate - Oct? 2016.
The bottom line is that people who regularly consume information from these pages — especially those on the right — are being fed false or misleading information.
The nature of the falsehoods is important to note. They often take the form of claims and accusations against people, companies, police, movements such as Black Lives Matter, Muslims, or "liberals" or "conservatives" as a whole. They drive division and polarization.
This is an older article about Russian-based misinformation programs:
The Agency - June 2015.
From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid "trolls" has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.
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no subject
Date: 2016-11-07 08:30 am (UTC)From:As an example, with WOT installed, the site https://conservativedailypost.com will come up "yellow circle". Yellow circles will also be displayed next to a web search: https://www.google.com/search?q=conservative+daily+post
The "click to view details" link seen by hovering on the circle gives you this: https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/conservativedailypost.com?utm_source=addon&utm_content=popup
While I won't do a full run-down (as the comments are many) the first one claims the site sends you to "virus-infected scripts". While I haven't clicked through in a while, I've been like a fly on a horse's ass there in the past just to see how fake their fake news was, but I doubt there was any danger at the time. Things might have changed since then, though.
Other comments are more illuminating, explaining the fake news, propaganda, and partisan nature of the site in some detail, without the user having to risk a clickthrough to find out for themselves.
While the tool was not originally designed with such reviews and ratings in mind, it's "evolved" over the years (to the outrage of many, for obvious reasons - competition for user's trust being among them) to allow for them, and to work those warnings into the same ratings that give a spam/scam site a "yellow circle" or even a known virus site a "red".
Hate sites probably get similar warnings (I don't visit enough of them to really know how that works across the board; when I do it's usually to see what some racist hater had to say about their good old pal Trump this time, so if it's a known site name I'm just in and out and don't really look at the WOT warning, though I probably should in the future, just for curiosity's sake).
That said, I wish there were more tools than WOT (which I consider rather weak in this sort of battle, at best, but still better than nothing) to discern what's at least not a complete waste of your time vs. what's fake news (as in manufactured "fan-fiction" - the pure baseless drivel no one of any political leaning should waste their time on) .
Web of Trust add-on
Date: 2016-11-19 08:04 am (UTC)From:Today I came across this recent news about the add-on, and thought I should let you know in case you hadn't heard about it yet - apparently they capture and sell your complete web browsing history to 3rd parties, and even though they claim to anonymize it, it isn't hard to figure out who the data belongs to.
http://www.pcmag.com/news/349328/web-of-trust-browser-extension-cannot-be-trusted
http://news.thewindowsclub.com/web-of-trust-wot-add-on-taken-down-86981/
Also, the add-on has "remote code execution capabilities" though "At the time of analysis, this functionality was not abused."
https://gist.github.com/Rob--W/bda5f28a0ac3b877780c6665bbed2e1b
This is the original news report in German:
http://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/netzwelt/Nackt-im-Netz-Millionen-Nutzer-ausgespaeht,nacktimnetz100.html
The video (also in German) has more details than the English reports. A German reporter made a fake Linked-In profile, and contacted (or was contacted by?) over 50 (data seller?) firms. One gave her a sample of a month's worth of data from 50 million German users. With the help of someone else, they analyzed the data and found a lot of names and personal information. The reporter contacted one of the persons whose names they had found, and showed that person the browsing history that had been collected. That person verified it was hers. They checked her browser add-ons, which included WOT.
Re: Web of Trust add-on
Date: 2016-11-24 06:51 am (UTC)From:I just don't get online much anymore, sorry (posted about it under lock; don't know if you saw, but I'll probably be a bad online correspondent for
perhaps the rest of my lifethe foreseeable future, because when I'm done, I'm done...).Anyhow, I installed McAfee's red light/green light thing in light of seeing the news today on WOT; it's here if you want to check it out: https://home.mcafee.com/root/landingpage.aspx?lpname=how-it-works&affid=0&cid=170790
I really loved WOT. You can't believe all the hype; yes, people will try to (and I'm sure, actually do) game it. And so it turns out WOT was selling my data, but so is every other site I consort with, except perhaps Dreamwidth, which is the last major site I still trust. I don't think what WOT did rises to the level of panic everyone's having over it, but if said panic-having leads to improvements in the add-on before it's re-released (assuming it ever is, as anything besides a mobile download) then all the better, I suppose.
Re: Web of Trust add-on
Date: 2016-11-24 03:17 pm (UTC)From:It sounds to me like the McAfee WebAdvisor isn't free, as it only says "Free Download", and this page:
https://home.mcafee.com/store/freeservices.aspx
only lists "FREE" by the first item. So the WebAdvisor may only be a 30 free trial. Which is fine, but I wish they'd be more obvious about it and say how much it actually costs after the free trial.
Re: Web of Trust add-on
Date: 2016-11-25 04:53 am (UTC)From:I've been using the add-on for a few days. It is free. You can upgrade to a more complete version (in their eyes; there is nothing in the paid version all that special from the free one). http://www.siteadvisor.com/download/ff.html (free version, specifically for Firefox)
http://www.siteadvisor.com/press/faqs.html#q2a (about Site Advisor Plus, the paid version...but you will never even see a nag to upgrade - at least I haven't, yet - if you choose the Firefox download, as opposed to the global installer)
My own antivirus program has something that pops up warnings and blocks known bad sites. I've seen it do that a few times. So I'll just keep on using that.
It slows down web browsing considerably to have your antivirus in your browser, checking every link for you. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It sucks. You're actually - if you're as concerned about slowed-down browsing as you mentioned in an earlier comment - better off using an add-on, which doesn't seem to slow down browsing as much.
That said, not only is McAfee's website horrible, but the installer is even more convoluted. Two pages to get to the download. Second one, a clickwrap agreement, then the download starts. When it finishes, you have what looks like a program to install, so you run the installer, finish installing, quit it, and the tool is not installed in Firefox and you're given no warning that it's not.
Close Firefox, reopen it, and Firefox will pop an .xpi installer page open at you. Click install, restart your browser, and you'll see a red box in the lower right corner saying SafeSearch is not on, and to click to turn it on the next time Firefox restarts! Whee, is this not nearly as much fun as eating turkey was for most people last night?
So, restart again, and finally you'll see the green checkmarks and McAfee Secure signature next to links deemed safe, and red checkmarks for those deemed unsafe. There seems to be no yellow/in the middle warnings, as there were in WOT, and McAfee's ratings are not crowd-sourced, so you're at their mercy, which makes me squirm, but which still might be, depending on how much trust you have in any company to do the right thing (mine is at historic lows!) better than nothing.
I wouldn't put myself through all this when I quite loudly knocked McAfee in general years ago on my other blog as not good enough for anyone to use, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and I was more piqued at McAfee being in AOL's back pocket and the things they'd do to support each other through that deal (like fake viruses to make you think you were protected - actually endured that, myself) than I was thinking McAfee was a horrible product overall, but it was a horrible product overall, don't get me wrong.
I'm assuming they've tried to save their rep since then, and the reviews don't look too bad in that regard, but who knows.
I really just want WOT back. A nice, cleaned-up, open-sourced, truly cool version of WOT.
And so I might do a KickStarter (or see if someone else will, perhaps someone from WOT) to see if at least some of us can maybe get that to happen.
Re: Web of Trust add-on
Date: 2016-11-25 05:32 am (UTC)From:it redirects to this page, titled "McAfee WebAdvisor by Intel Security": https://home.mcafee.com/root/landingpage.aspx?lpname=get-it-now&affid=0&cid=170789
Is that the page you are talking about? I still don't plan to install it at this time, but am just wondering if you get the same page as I do, as it doesn't mention anything about being specific for Firefox.
Re: Web of Trust add-on
Date: 2016-11-25 06:15 am (UTC)From:Re: Web of Trust add-on - screen shot of page I get for Firefox install
Date: 2016-11-25 06:20 am (UTC)From:Re: Web of Trust add-on - screen shot of page I get for Firefox install
Date: 2016-11-25 06:33 am (UTC)From:I tried bringing up the page on Safari on the iPad, and there it redirects to: www.siteadvisor.com/final/mac.html
Re: Web of Trust add-on - screen shot of page I get for Firefox install
Date: 2016-11-26 03:20 am (UTC)From:Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow
On my Windows phone I get the same redirect you do, to www.siteadvisor.com/final/mac.html. On my Windows phone, LOL.
OMG, OK. I also tried the /ff.html link on my laptop (before trying it on my phone just now) in latest Opera, Firefox 50.0, Edge, and IE 11, and it did not redirect and worked flawlessly to show the same page I screencapped for you last night. But my laptop runs Windows 10, so that might be the difference. Although there is no logical reason for it to redirect and show different pages to different operating systems unless the operating system itself is clearly in conflict. Also, how much info are they gathering just to be able to do that, if you're visiting not signed in? (I wasn't signed in on my phone, which has no such apps on it anyhow, so how they interpreted my phone as a Mac is another question, since they are so wrong).
So their website is even more "horrible" than I thought when I said it was, uh, horrible. If you want to see the page just for curiosity's sake your best bet *might* (and I say "might" because after seeing what happened on my Windows phone just now, I really don't know) trying the link from a copy of Opera or something-something WebKit, because I dunno, I'm out of answers, sorry about that. :(
no subject
Date: 2016-11-05 08:50 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-11-05 08:12 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-11-06 03:45 pm (UTC)From: