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+10 +1
Horrible Facebook Algorithm Accident Results In Exposure To New Ideas
Assuring users that the company’s entire team of engineers was working hard to make sure a glitch like this never happens again, Facebook executives confirmed during a press conference Tuesday that a horrible accident last night involving the website’s algorithm had resulted in thousands of users being exposed to new concepts. [Satire]
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+17 +1
Obama Signs Defense Bill, Establishing Anti-Propaganda Center
President Obama on Friday signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, providing nearly $619 billion for war and military spending. The measure passed both houses of Congress with a veto-proof majority and will bring troops a modest pay raise while increasing the number of active-duty soldiers to more than 1.3 million. The NDAA also restricts transfers from the Guantánamo Bay detention center, guaranteeing that Obama will leave office without fulfilling his pledge to close the prison.
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+7 +1
BBC Finally Admits Its Famous ‘Women Write Better Code’ Story Was Fake News
When the issue of “fake news” came to prominence at the end of this year’s election cycle, traditional media outlets were the firsts to engage in relentless finger-pointing. Journalists everywhere deplored the spread of misleading, lazily reported and, in some cases, totally fabricated stories that had been facilitated by social media. That’d be ignoring — of course — that in a competitive media climate where virality and accuracy go head-to-head...
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+45 +1
The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False
Those who want to combat Fake News should stop aggressively spreading it when it suits their agenda. Julian Assange is a deeply polarizing figure. Many admire him and many despise him (into which category one falls in any given year typically depends on one’s feelings about the subject of his most recent publication of leaked documents). But one’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article, which is not about Assange. This article, instead, is about a report published this week by The Guardian that recklessly attributed to Assange comments that he did not make.
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+21 +1
Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost Again
False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid. By Glenn Greenwald.
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+3 +1
Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost Again: False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid
The Washington Post on Friday reported a genuinely alarming event: Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. power system through an electrical grid in Vermont. The Post headline conveyed the seriousness of the threat: The first sentence of the article directly linked this cyberattack to alleged Russian hacking of the email accounts of the DNC and John Podesta — what is now routinely referred to as “Russian hacking of our election” — by referencing the code name revealed on Wednesday by the Obama administration when it announced sanctions on Russian officials...
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+3 +1
Report: Russia spread fake news and disinformation in Sweden
Russia has coordinated a campaign over the past two years to influence Sweden’s decision making by using disinformation, Russia has coordinated a campaign over the past two years to influence Sweden’s decision making by using disinformation, propaganda and false documents, according to a report by researchers at The Swedish Institute of International Affairs. One of the main tools for spreading false information was the Swedish language version of the state-funded news website, Sputnik News, one of the reports co-authors Sebastian Åsberg told Radio Sweden.
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+25 +1
BBC sets up team to debunk fake news
The BBC is to assemble a team to fact check and debunk deliberately misleading and false stories masquerading as real news. Amid growing concern among politicians and news organisations about the impact of false information online, news chief James Harding told staff on Thursday that the BBC would be “weighing in on the battle over lies, distortions and exaggerations”. The plans will see the corporation’s Reality Check series become permanent, backed by a dedicated team targeting false stories or facts being shared widely on social media.
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+44 +1
Before there was ‘fake news’ there was Judith Miller
Current theater critic and Fox News commentator Judith Miller is undoubtedly best known for her fact-free reporting on Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” for the New York Times that helped create the pretext for the 2003 war in Iraq. So it was rather odd yesterday when Miller criticized President Obama’s decision to commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning by wondering, “How many people died because of Manning’s leak?” The quick answer is none, but the internet wasn’t going to let Miller off that easy.
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+22 +1
Security researchers call for Guardian to retract false WhatsApp “backdoor” story
A thirty-strong group of security researchers have co-signed an open letter calling for the Guardian to retract a story it published last week that had claimed mobile messaging app WhatsApp contains a “backdoor”. “Unfortunately, your story was the equivalent of putting “VACCINES KILL PEOPLE” in a blaring headline over a poorly contextualized piece,” writes academic Zeynep Tufekci, who organized the open letter.
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+7 +1
Counter-Sting Catches James O’Keefe Network Attempting To Sow Chaos At Trump’s Inauguration
The stinger gets stung. By Ryan Grim.
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+23 +1
How the Fake News Crisis of 1896 Explains Trump
William Jennings Bryan, the Trump-like presidential hopeful, warned of an “epidemic of fake news.” By Adrienne LaFrance.
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+33 +1
Cambridge scientists consider fake news 'vaccine'
The appearance of fake news on websites and social media has inspired scientists to develop a "vaccine" to immunise people against the problem. A University of Cambridge study devised psychological tools to target fact distortion. Researchers suggest "pre-emptively exposing" readers to a small "dose" of the misinformation can help organisations cancel out bogus claims.
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+7 +1
Google has banned 200 publishers in the three months since it passed a new policy against fake news
Google kicked 200 publishers off one of its ad networks in the fourth quarter, partly in response to the proliferation of fake news sites. The company banned the publishers from its AdSense network, an ad placement service that automatically serves text and display ads on participating sites based on its audience. The ban was part of an update to an existing policy that prohibits sites that mislead users with their content.
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+40 +1
Conway makes up 'Bowling Green massacre' to defend Trump's ban
Perhaps it was an alternative massacre?
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0 +1
Kellyanne Conway blames refugees for 'Bowling Green massacre' that never happened
Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Donald Trump, has come in for criticism and ridicule after blaming two Iraqi refugees for a massacre that never happened. Conway, the US president’s former campaign manager who has frequently faced the press to defend his controversial moves, cited the fictitious “Bowling Green massacre” in an interview in which she backed the travel ban imposed on visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.
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+26 +1
Facebook launches fake news filter in France
Facebook has launched a campaign to crack down on fake news in France, ahead of the country’s presidential election later this year. As Reuters reports, the social network announced on Monday that it will work with eight French media companies to fact-check and filter news articles that have been reported by users. According to Le Monde, one of Facebook’s partners, the French campaign is similar to an initiative that Facebook launched in the US late last year...
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+32 +1
Apple CEO Tim Cook calls for "massive campaign" against fake news
Apple CEO Tim Cook wants the tech industry to take action against "fake news" stories that are polluting the web. "There has to be a massive campaign. We have to think through every demographic," Cook said in a rare interview. Speaking with The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Cook also said "all of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news."
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+23 +1
Mark Zuckerberg is worried about sensationalism in news. He should look in the mirror.
Until recently, Mark Zuckerberg liked to think of Facebook as a basically innocuous social utility. But that view has taken a beating in recent months, as news shared on Facebook had a huge — and, critics say, pernicious — effect on the presidential election. In an open letter released on Thursday, Zuckerberg grapples with the implications of Facebook’s growing power. “For the past decade, Facebook has focused on connecting friends and families,” he writes. “With that foundation, our next focus will be developing the social infrastructure for community.”
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+39 +1
Artificial Intelligence is Going to Destroy Fake News
But in the near term, it's going to create fake news, too.
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