{"id":380171,"date":"2018-10-08T17:50:29","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T16:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-algorithms-inflate-profiles-spread-disinfo-and-disrupt-democracy\/"},"modified":"2018-10-08T17:50:29","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T16:50:29","slug":"how-algorithms-inflate-profiles-spread-disinfo-and-disrupt-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-algorithms-inflate-profiles-spread-disinfo-and-disrupt-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"How Algorithms Inflate Profiles, Spread Disinfo and Disrupt Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_106001\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-106001\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/10\/30658824128_2c0ee2a3cb_z.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"379\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/10\/30658824128_2c0ee2a3cb_z.jpg 510w, https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/10\/30658824128_2c0ee2a3cb_z-300x223.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo Source Mike Corbett | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Algorithms are getting so sophisticated that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell which online comments are real and which are generated by \u201cbots\u201d; which sites are genuinely popular and which are generating fake hits. In my new book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/069219617X\/counterpunchmaga\">Real Fake News<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(Red Pill Press), I argue that fake news can be traced back to ancient Babylon (at least) and that today\u2019s hi-tech fakery is merely a continuation of policies designed to reinforce elite domination, be the given elite \u201cright-wing\u201d or \u201cleft-wing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>DO BOTS AFFECT PERCEPTIONS?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Online fake news has become a phenomenon. By the time President Trump came to power, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2016\/12\/12\/most-americans-havent-heard-of-the-alt-right\/\">few Americans<\/a> had heard of the \u201calt-right,\u201d the ideological grouping partly responsible for Trump\u2019s electoral success. Trump lost the popular vote by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/americas\/us-elections\/hillary-clinton-right-to-be-president-george-bush-al-gore-donald-trump-law-professor-a7457046.html\">2.6 million<\/a>, but he won the Electoral College vote. In other words, \u201calt-right\u201d voters were numerous enough to give Trump a plurality in the overall vote and thus the Electoral College. How do we explain this discrepancy, that online fake news is a phenomenon, yet its main champions remain obscure to most Americans?<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that bots are pushing fake news to make stories go \u201cviral\u201d by sharing them among fake bot accounts (\u201csock puppets\u201d) on social media. In 2011, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aaai.org\/ocs\/index.php\/ICWSM\/ICWSM11\/paper\/view\/2780\">a team<\/a> at Texas A&amp;M University \u00a0created gibberish-spewing Twitter accounts. Their nonsense could not have possibly interested anyone, yet soon they had thousands of followers. They&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/10\/08\/fake-news-and-weaponized-bots-how-algorithms-inflate-profiles-spread-disinfo-and-disrupt-democracy\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo Source Mike Corbett | CC BY 2.0 Algorithms are getting so sophisticated that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell which online comments are real and which are generated by \u201cbots\u201d; which sites are genuinely popular and which are generating fake hits. In my new book Real Fake News\u00a0(Red Pill Press), I argue that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-380171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}