Articles about fake news

Dumpster fire against background of wooden fence with sad green recycling badged nailed to it

Grubby, tortuous, full of malware and deceit: Just call it Lionel because the internet is MESSY

Reg Lectures Trolls, fake news, Russian bots, radicals – there's plenty to put you off going online. And there's many a politician ready to clamp down on and control the internet, in an attempt to conquer these dark forces bruising our society, systems and discourse. But attempting to control the internet isn't just wrong – it's …
Team Register, 13 Aug 2018
imposter

UK 'fake news' inquiry calls for end to tech middleman excuses, election law overhaul

British lawmakers have been told to create tougher rules for social media giants claiming to be neutral platforms, establish a code of ethics for tech firms, and plump up the UK's self-styled "data sheriff"*. Eighteen months into an epic inquiry that was thrust into the spotlight after the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting …
Rebecca Hill, 30 Jul 2018
Saving-the-Internet-fake-news-warts-and-all-2

Saving the internet, fake news warts and all

Remember when the internet was a thing of beauty – connecting us to long-lost friends, the innocent pleasure of buying books using “e-commerce”, of sharing photos of cats? Since then we’ve seen the election of Donald Trump as US prez, Brexit, Cambridge Analytica, trolls and fake news. The internet has evolved into something …
Team Register, 26 Jul 2018

Google will vet political ads to ward off Phantom Menace of fake news

Google is overhauling its political advertising system in an effort to crack down on shady election ads. The Chocolate Factory says it will require additional verification and attribution for political ads that run on its search results page, including a new requirement that anyone paying for a political ad spot be a US …
Shaun Nichols, 4 May 2018

Fake news is fake data, 'which makes it our problem', info-slurpers told

Data-hungry organisations have been advised to get a better grip on the data they control and work on building trust. In a week when analytic technologies have had more press than ever, many of the discussions at the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit, which ran in London from 19-22 March, focused on dealing with the data …
Rebecca Hill, 23 Mar 2018
Man shouting the news from a rolled up newspaper

Tech giants should take the rap for enabling fake news, boffins tell EU

Giant US tech platforms are spreading misinformation and deliberately hiding their algorithms to evade scrutiny, according to a report for the European Commission. The expert working group on fake news and disinformation headed by law professor Dr Madeleine de Cock Buning warned there's no quick fix to the problem – and …
Andrew Orlowski, 12 Mar 2018
Lady Shouting into a megaphone with news sheets floating out of the mega phone

Bots don't spread fake news on Twitter, people do, say MIT eggheads

False news spreads faster and reaches more people than the truth on Twitter and humans are more to blame than bots, according to a paper published in Science on Thursday. As social media giants come under closer scrutiny by governments worldwide hoping to clamp down on the negative political and social effects of fake news, …
Thumbs down frownining emoticon

Reddit 'fesses up to just a little Russian reaming

Searchers for Russian influence on the United States 2016 presidential election have of late swung their searchlights towards Reddit, which has tried to explain its role in the affair. Co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman, aka "Spez", took to the site on Monday March 5th with a his thoughts on the matter. Titled "In response to …
man contemplating /meditating in silhouette against sunset

Twitter cries for help to solve existential crisis of whether it's Good

Twitter's decided the time is right to measure "our contribution to the overall health of the public conversation". The company on Thursday called for help to create "health metrics". If the company finds it promotes "healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking" it will feel it is healthy. A certain malaise would be …
Data_image_via_Shutterstock

Did somebody say Brexit? Cambridge Analytica grilled: Brit MPs' Fake News probe

The daughter of Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt interned at controversial data company Cambridge Analytica, the company’s CEO confirmed today to the UK's Culture Media and Sport select committee. MPs at Westminster, London, were turning Cambridge Analytica boss Alexander Nix upside-down today in the hope that evidence of a …
Andrew Orlowski, 27 Feb 2018

The YouTube crackdown on fake news: Promoting bonkers Florida school shooting conspiracies

Comment YouTube is under fire again for promoting fake news, despite promising repeatedly in recent weeks that it is improving its systems to limit the exposure to false information. On Wednesday, the number-one video on the web giant's "trending" page – where it spotlights the most current or relevant content – was a video claiming …
Kieren McCarthy, 21 Feb 2018
Donald trump reading fake news

A game to 'vaccinate' people against fake news? Umm... Fake news

Separating fact from fiction is a very different challenge in the fake news age, and there’s no end of people ready to opine on how to do it. Now boffins from famed Brit university Cambridge have decided to get in on the action by launching a game to "vaccinate" the public against it. The Bad News game puts players in the …
Rebecca Hill, 21 Feb 2018

Facebook gets Weed-whacked: Unilever exec may axe ads over social network's toxic posts

In a highly unusual public rebuke, monster-company Unilever gave Facebook both barrels over its "toxic content" – and threatened to pull its advertising from the antisocial network. Speaking today at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual leadership meeting in Palm Desert, California, Unilever's chief marketing officer …
Kieren McCarthy, 12 Feb 2018

Why aren't you being arbiters of truth? MPs scream at Facebook, YouTube, Twitter

No matter their protestations, the big tech firms will always be asked to do more to tackle the manifestations of society's problems on their platforms. And yesterday's four-hour evidence session in front of British parliamentarians was no different. In an intense hearing – for which the members of the digital, culture, media …
Rebecca Hill, 9 Feb 2018

As Facebook pushes yet more fake articles, one news editor tells Mark to get a grip – or Zuck off

Analysis If ever there was an argument for why journalism is not only important but a profession requiring a broad set of specific skills, then Facebook's seeming inability to do news is it. Despite the social media giant being hauled over the coals for several months for failing to limit – or even recognize – widespread abuse of its …
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Pope wants journalism like the Catholic church wants child sex abuse probes: Slow, aimless...

Take it easy with those hard-hitting exclusives and investigations, said the Pope this week, lumping inconvenient quality journalism with fake news and clickbait. We can't think why the head of a church mired in decades of globe-spanning child abuse scandals would have a problem with hacks doing their job and getting straight …
Shaun Nichols, 24 Jan 2018

Facebook grows a conscience, admits it corroded democracy

Facebook has admitted it was "far too slow" to recognize that its systems were being used to "spread misinformation and corrode democracy." In a blog post today by its manager of civic engagement Samidh Chakrabarti, the social media giant appears to have become self-aware following a year in which countless researchers, …
Kieren McCarthy, 22 Jan 2018
Photo by Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock

Facebook folds fake news flag: We're not disputing that

A year after deciding to fight fake news with a "Disputed" flag – backed, we were assured, by an army of fact-checkers – Facebook has decided it doesn't work, and will instead apply tweaks to how "Related Content" is handled. The "Disputed" flag came into being last December, less than a month after Mark Zuckerberg declared …

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