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fake political news
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.
Re: Web of Trust add-on
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
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
Re: Web of Trust add-on - screen shot of page I get for Firefox install
Re: Web of Trust add-on - screen shot of page I get for Firefox install
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
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. :(