Thursday, November 29, 2018

Show and Tell of fake news

Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement - and we will make the goal.
~Robert Collier

"Get your act together, stand up in the world. Make something of yourself. Set your own house in order,before you criticise the world.

Life is hard and it’s full of malevolence. You can tell a story where everyone is a victim, because we all die, we all get sick and things happen to us that are bitter and terrible: betrayal, deceit, lies, like people hurt us on purpose.

You know it’s not just the tragedy of life, it’s malevolence as well, everyone is a victim. You can tell that story, the problem is you tell that story, you start to act it out, you make it worse, that’s the problem.

Pick up your goddamn cross and walk up the hill.

You’ve got a heavy load of suffering to bare, and a fair bit of is going to be unjust. So what are you going to do about it?  Accept it voluntarily, and try to transform as a consequence, that’s the right answer.

~Jordan B Peterson Via BC


https://twitter.com/TurnbullMalcolm/status/1067862504032763905


In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors.


Malcolm Turnbull accuses critics of paranoia amid meddling claims

 Deutsche Bank headquarters raided in money laundering probe
The main suspects in the probe focused on a unit in the British Virgin Islands that processed $484 million in 2016 alone are two bank employees

Property porn gives glimpse into the Aussie dream of home ownership

About 40,000 historic subdivision maps showing the sale of land for homes in Sydney have been digitised by the State Library of NSW.

How Archivists Could Stop Deepfakes From Rewriting History by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Nov 22, 2018 - Gizmodo – “…While many have feared the potential of deepfakes to spread misinformation in the here and now, these videos could distort reality long after today’s fake news goes viral if they’re improperly archived as legitimate. Gizmodo spoke with several historians, archivists, and professors who were familiar with the deepfakes phenomenon, some of whom had pragmatic concerns about it. Fortunately, archivists have rigidly established principles meant to catch forgeries and screw-ups, but these protections are only as strong as the institutions that provide them. Roger Macdonald, the director of the television archive at the Internet Archive, characterized deepfakes as “a looming threat” since last year, when researchers showed they could create realistic fake videos of former president Obama synced to audio clips…”


Goodbye, Dulce!

Dulce was instrumental in a million different things the IFCN did over the past 14 months, but above all for her work on the verification process for the code of principles. Besides launching an entirely new workflow, Dulce took a hard look at how consistent the process had been in its first year. So thorough was her assessment that it (almost?) won over a frequent critic of fact-checkers.
We know she’ll remain an advocate for more and better fact-checking in her next gig. ¡Suerte!

This is new

  • France passed a law that gives judges the power to remove misinformation from websites during election periods.
  • The Facebook fact-checking product is coming to Australia.
  • Instagram is cracking down on fake likes, follows and comments.
(Shutterstock)

Welcome to the future

  • On Nieman Lab, the Wall Street Journal’s R&D boss and a research fellow dissect the state of affairs with deepfakes and how the WSJ is thinking about detecting doctored videos in various forms.
  • But who needs deepfakes when you can create havoc with a right click?
  • Faking fingerprints is easier than you might think.

Show and tell

  • The dramatic flight of a former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski from Skopje to Budapest was shrouded in rumors about his vehicle and disguise. Many of these have been debunked by fact-checkers on his path.
  • In its post-evaluation of Comprova, the coalition of media outlets that fact-checked the Brazilian election, First Draft called for more collaboration between newsrooms and fact-checkers.
  • Pacific Standard is doing a recurring series on how it researches and fact-checks its stories before publication.
(AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

The Bad Place

  • A video allegedly showing European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker wearing one brown shoe and a black shoe spread from a Eurosceptic Twitter account straight to top Italian dailies, via Russia Today. The ensuing “correction” was worse than the mistake.
  • China’s Tencent is fact-checking content circulating on its messaging app WeChat — but seems to have also conveniently flagged unflattering an article about its business prospects.
  • YouTube’s automatic recommendations are sending people to conspiracy theory videos about the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa, which killed 43 people.

Research you can use

  • Bots had a disproportionate role in spreading misinformation on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. election, according to a new study from Indiana University. But not all bots are bad: Fact-checkers are using them to automatically correct fake news stories.
  • Enough. With. The. Backfire. Effect. (Here’s why.)
  • People who dislike the media are more likely to be fooled by a fake headline online — but  more confident in their ability to find credible information, according to a new study from News Co/Lab at Arizona State University.
  •  
  • Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement - and we will make the goal. Robert Collier
    Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/praise
     
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

WTF

  • It’s not just QAnon or Pizzagate — satanic pedophile conspiracies go back to the Middle Ages.
  • Hackers are stealing Instagram influencers’ accounts to spam their followers with bogus iPhone deals.
  • Cryptocurrency scammers have been hacking verified accounts on Twitter to spread their scheme — and BuzzFeed News reported that they’re probably coming from Russia.

A closer look

  • Journalists have been debating how to report on notable public claims that are known to be false for the past couple of years. Here’s a proposal.
  • It’s been almost a month since Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil. Here’s how fact-checkers are adapting to the new administration.
  • The New Yorker published a deep dive about how artificial intelligence and advances in digital imagery could make misinformation much harder to deal with.
(Screenshot from Facebook)

If you read one more thing

The liberal troll who publishes fake news for the hyperpartisan right — and one of his readers — got a profile on The Washington Post

16 quick fact-checking links

  1. ICYMI: Applications for Global Fact 6 opened last week.
  2. Help Alexios make Wikipedia more representative by sending suggestions for notable women in the field of fact-checking.
  3. Adweek wrote about how NewsGuard is using its fake news labeling system to help advertisers avoid funding misinformation. But not all of the startup’s grades make a lot of sense.
  4. This tweet nails the problem with Facebook’s former PR firm.
  5. CJR’s Mathew Ingram talked to Jimmy Wales about what went wrong with WikiTribune, the Wikipedia founder’s crowdsourced news site.
  6. A New Zealand paper confused Stan Lee and Spike Lee. But they also got the wrong winner of the “people’s choice award for dogs that look like their owners” so it was a really bad day for editors.
  7. There have been a lot of conspiracy theories floating around about the ongoing wildfires in California.
  8. Not a correction, just creepy.
  9. Child kidnapping rumors have been revived on WhatsApp in India, Boom reported.
  10. Facebook revealed last week that it had removed 1.5 billion fake accounts in the past six months, and that 3-4 percent of its monthly users were bogus. That’s still more than 68 million accounts.
  11. In a blog post, Witness shared some ideas for how WhatsApp could address misinformation without disrupting its encryption.
  12. Maldita.es is crowdfunding!
  13. Les Décodeurs uncovered a single man behind about 30 fake news sites.
  14. This story is a hot mess.
  15. In Nigeria, the army is now using radio broadcasts to debunk misinformation.
  16. Tim Berners-Lee has weighed in on fake news.
by Daniel and Alexios