Source: German Marshall Fund’s Digital New Deal. Graphic by The New York Times.
In 2016, fake news outperformed real news. Fabricated stories, many of which came from a Russian misinformation campaign to help Donald Trump, spread across Facebook. People shared it, happy to have their outdated, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and Islamophobic views confirmed. It was enough to radicalize and charge Donald Trump’s base, while demoralizing moderate voters. The end result is obvious: Donald Trump became President of the United States.
Now, in 2020, misinformation campaigns are spreading on Facebook with greater volume than they did in 2016. Even more worrying is the fact that mainstream news outlets are reporting on it.
In This Article:
2016 vs 2020
According to a study from the German Marshall Fund Digital (GMF Digital), interactions with fake news have been up since 2016. In fact, starting in 2020—due to the election and COVID-19—interactions with fake news have skyrocketed. These misinformation interactions have roughly tripled since 2016. Nearly 2/3 of those interactions were with just 10 outlets for fake news.
“We have these sites that masquerade as news outlets online. They’re allowed to. It’s infecting our discourse and it’s affecting the long-term health of the democracy.”
– Karen Kornbluh, director of GMF Digital
In 2016, people shared and interacted with fake news more than real news on Facebook. 2020 is no different, in fact, it’s far worse. However, it is comforting to know that the study also showed an increase in legitimate content as well. It just doesn’t match the fake news Facebook users are sharing.
Karen Kornbluh pointed out that combating fake news “just runs against their economic incentives.” Social networks like Facebook make money when people interact with their site more. Fake news stirs controversy which drives interactions and ad revenue. Facebook doesn’t want to put an end to misinformation online—even if it’s undermining our democracy—because it is profitable.
Troubling Study Sources and Methods
German Marshall’s study used the right-leaning news validation service NewsGuard. While NewsGuard is largely a safe source, it does have troubling right-wing ties, even to hate groups. We can trust that this right-leaning service would be able to criticize the largely right-leaning fake news spreading on Facebook. In fact, they would understate the problem. In my previous testing of the service, I found they rated fake news sites, such as the Daily Wire, as trustworthy, even though it failed to meet their own criteria, by their own admission.
Considering that the study would likely understate the issue due to the use of NewsGuard, the results are even more troubling. Still, GMF Digital attempted to remove NewsGuard’s bias by creating their own analysis of the sources and infractions.
Mainstream Misinformation
Press: Shares an unverified NY Post
Intel: It’s Russian disinformation.
Press: Our bad! We didn’t know.
…
Press: Ooo now look at these new texts!
— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) October 17, 2020
The NY Post shared an obviously fake story, clearly designed by Russia in coordination with Rudy Giuliani and the Trump campaign. The same Russian hacking and misinformation group responsible for 2016 is at it again, and they went back to an old trick: emails. They’re claiming meetings and emails between Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, and a Ukrainian company show clear signs of corruption.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same story Donald Trump has been peddling for years. He attempted to illegally force Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden’s son for political gain. He even suggested that they didn’t even have to do an investigation, just say they were. Trump withheld military aid from an ally simply to get them to pretend that they were doing this investigation. He just wanted the political ammunition. It’s bribery, and he was impeached, but Senate Republicans decided they were okay with it.
The emails supposedly were captured by a lone laptop repair man, who, after realizing that a laptop he had was Hunter Biden’s because of a sticker on it in support of the charity named for his late brother Beau Biden, decided to… violate U.S. law with great ease to access the contents of the supposedly water damaged drive. Yes, the story hinges on a lone IT service guy committing a felony to get into a laptop that was clearly modified and filled with a mix of some hacked and mostly faked content.
In fact, even in the official document provided by the obviously false NY Post article, you can very clearly see the photo manipulation on the “VP” line at the top of their PDF. The NY Post themselves shared a clearly edited document as proof of the wrongdoing, along with a few hacked photos. What more proof does anyone need to know this is a fake story? Well, here’s a whole lot more you can find courtesy of Business Insider.
Mainstream Runs with Scandalous Story
This wouldn’t have been such a big deal. We’ve been dealing with and ignoring Russian bot accounts for the past four years. But mainstream media picked up on the “censorship” story and spread it. Journalism is a tough business. People aren’t paying for news anymore, and they’re blocking ads. Journalism is becoming clickbait, and that’s dangerous in a society that often doesn’t read past the headline.
For most of the past four years, we’ve been able to tell people to rely on mainstream media. Now they’re the ones picking up Russian propaganda and helping it spread.
All Hope Isn’t Lost
Listen, all of these stories, all of the propaganda, everything relies on one thing: you. All you have to do is read the stories. No, not just the sensationalist headlines, the stories. Read multiple sources, figure out what they’re claiming, and then sit back and ask yourself, “is this realistic?” Would a hacker’s first stop really be Rudy Giuliani? Rudy accidentally uploaded a video of him being racist to YouTube, and butt-dialed journalists. Do you really think any security expert is going to look to him instead of going directly to the media? Do you know who would go directly to Rudy? The very same Russians he’s been working with for the past four years. This isn’t even conjecture, it’s a known fact, Rudy Giuliani has been closely tied to Russian operatives.
Piece stories together. No story exists in a vacuum. Knowing that Rudy Giuliani has been the go-to person for Russian misinformation campaigns in the past due to his connections with Russia is a key part to understanding where this story was birthed. Being able to see that it’s a falsehood takes critical thinking.
But most importantly, these stories rely on real people spreading them. Misinformation cannot travel by bot alone. It takes real people seeing that bot behavior, thinking it’s true. You can be the place where propaganda and misinformation stops. This is how misinformation has spread on Facebook more than real stories. It also means you can put a stop to it.
The country has been under sustained assault for years. Make yourself informed and fight back.
Sources:
- Davey Alba, The New York Times
- Karen Kornbluh, Adrienne Goldstein, Eli Weiner, The German Marshall Fund of the Untied States
- Mitch Prothero, Business Insider
- Sonam Sheth, Business Insider
- And finally, yes, a piece of fake news from Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge of the New York Post