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Communications The Internet Games News Science

Researchers Develop Online Game That Teaches Players How To Spread Misinformation 148

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Cambridge researchers have built an online game, simply titled Bad News, in which players compete to become "a disinformation and fake news tycoon." By shedding light on the shady practices, they hope the game will "vaccinate" the public, and make people immune to the spread of untruths. Players of the fake news game must amass virtual Twitter followers by distorting the truth, planting falsehoods, dividing the united, and deflecting attention when rumbled. All the while, they must maintain credibility in the eyes of their audience. The game distills the art of undermining the truth into six key strategies. Once a player has demonstrated a knack for each, they are rewarded with a badge. In one round, players can opt to impersonate the president of the United States and fire off a tweet from a fake account. It declares war on North Korea complete with a #KimJongDone hashtag. At every step, players are asked if they are happy with their actions or feel, perhaps, the twinge of shame, an emotion that leads to the swift reminder that "if you want to become a master of disinformation, you've got to lose the goody two-shoes attitude." The work is due to be published in the Journal of Risk Research.
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Researchers Develop Online Game That Teaches Players How To Spread Misinformation

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  • People are simply too stupid. The human species developed technology without wisdom, and killed itself. It's all over.
    • People are simply too stupid. The human species developed technology without wisdom, and killed itself. It's all over.

      It's not over yet. Those who manage to survive will learn from our mistakes. Humanity is the ultimate weed: killing all of us is quite a task. Just to hedge our bets, hopefully, Mars colonization and terraforming will take off in this century.

      • "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history." -A. Huxley
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • You're simply too stupid. Things have never, ever been so good for the human race, in all of history going back to the Dawn of Man. It's not just great, but it's getting better every day. "It's all over" LOL. You're not just stupid, you're a drama queen too.
  • Soooo ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by c6gunner ( 950153 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @10:44PM (#56161655) Homepage

    They reinvented twitter?

  • by StevenMaurer ( 115071 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @10:59PM (#56161707) Homepage

    ...aren't the ones who need "vaccination".

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Maybe it could appeal to those types with some sort of re-skinning? Make it a game where you're a dastardly lib'rul media organization trying to trick people into voting for Hillary with misinformation? The hard part would be slyly working a concept of objective reality into the game without turning them off.

  • The game is called EvE Online

    If it is good enough for economic modelling, it sure is good enough for modelling "Fake News"
  • for infringing on their business model and trade secrets.

  • Players of the fake news game must amass virtual Twitter followers by distorting the truth, planting falsehoods, dividing the united, and deflecting attention when rumbled. All the while, they must maintain credibility in the eyes of their audience. The game distills the art of undermining the truth into six key strategies. Once a player has demonstrated a knack for each, they are rewarded with a badge.

    This game is a shameless ripoff, I already got my badge [wikipedia.org] a year ago.

    In one round, players can opt to impersonate the president of the United States and fire off a tweet from a fake account. It declares war on North Korea complete with a #KimJongDone hashtag.

    I just one-upped your game by hacking the real account and sending it from there, oddly enough the combination is the same as on my luggage.

    At every step, players are asked if they are happy with their actions or feel, perhaps, the twinge of shame

    That's strange, my game kept insisting that "the only way to win is not to play", that's a silly game. Game on!

    By shedding light on the shady practices, they hope the game will "vaccinate" the public, and make people immune to the spread of untruths.

    Mission accomplished, I see so many untruths written about my presidency and I don't believe any of it, it's all fake news.

    (this review may not actually be written by Donald Trump... or is it? #

  • Gamers already know how to manipulate people, that's what multiplayer gaming is all about.
  • by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @01:21AM (#56162015)

    The original game was created by anti-monopolist Elizabeth Magie to awaken people to the danger of uncontrolled capitalism -- in the game money always goes to money. But the effect was exactly the opposite, it encouraged capitalistic thinking.

    This game should be called "the Joy of Fake News".

    Incidentally, I wish the SJWs would never have coined the term, and would stop using it. Trump et. al. has done an excellent job of turning it around to mean anything they disagree with.

    • by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @06:41AM (#56162585) Homepage

      No, it is a reaction to the mainstream media outright lying. They've been caught so many times it's ridiculous, and here you are parroting the line that it doesn't exist. Glenn Thrush, the former senior staff writer at Politico was exposed by WikiLeaks as he ran an article by Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta prior to publishing. What was his punishment? He was hired by The New York Times as a political correspondent.

      Calling fake news fake news is fake news, according to the fake news. [twimg.com] Journalists spread fake news all the time, whenever it satisfies their emotional needs and validates their pre-existing political biases. It's very menacing if journalists with the loudest claim to authoritative credibility are abusing their positions constantly to entrench falsehoods in the public's mind. Four Viral Claims Spread by Journalists on Twitter in the Last Week Alone That Are False [theintercept.com].

      Recently, four big scoops were run by major news organizations â" written by top reporters and presumably churned through layers of scrupulous editing â" that turned out to be completely wrong: Reuters, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and others reported that the special counsel's office had subpoenaed Donald Trump's records from Deutsche Bank. They weren't. ABC reported that Trump had directed Michael Flynn to make contact with Russian officials before the election. He didn't. The New York Times ran a story that showed K.T. McFarland had acknowledged collusion. She didn't. Then CNN topped off the week by falsely reporting that the Trump campaign had been offered access to hacked Democratic National Committee emails before they were published.

      Forget your routine bias, these were four bombshells disseminated to millions of Americans by breathless anchors, pundits, and analysts, all of them feeding frenzied expectations about collusion that have now been internalized as indisputable truths by many. All four pieces, incidentally, are useless without their central faulty claims. Yet there they sit. And these are only four of dozens of other stories that have fizzled over the year.

      If we are to accept the special pleadings of journalists we have to believe these were all honest mistakes. They may be. But a person might then ask, why is it that every one of the dozens of honest mistakes are prejudiced in the very same way? Why hasn't there been a single major honest mistake that diminishes the Trump-Russia collusion story? Why is there never an honest mistake that indicts Democrats?

      When all the errors are in the bank's favor, you can be forgiven for thinking there's more at work than sloppy arithmetic.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Wow, SJWs coined the term fake news? Is there anything you can't blame them for?

      Of course there isn't, because the definition of SJW is "someone I disagree with", i.e. it's a tool for allocating blame to whoever the reader despises. It's brilliant because it doesn't matter who the reader is, you don't have to guess what their political leanings are.

      They just assume the SJWs you were speaking of are whoever they blame for everything, and you get a knowing nod from all sides.

  • by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @01:36AM (#56162027) Homepage

    Someone went and actually built a better idiot.

  • Wow, if the kids could only practice long enough, they might become half as good at it as the mass media and U.S. government itself!

    I mean, how else are you going to cover up the pedophilia of your leading ranks and convince the public to risk vaccinating their own children, for nothing?

    Indoctrinate yourselves while you still can!

  • by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @03:09AM (#56162193)

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/p... [cbsnews.com]

    Horner was known for writing false stories and disseminating internet hoaxes that often went viral on Facebook and hoodwinked thousands of people.

    They included a story falsely claiming former President Obama was gay and a radical Muslim, and another saying protesters were being paid thousands of dollars to demonstrate at Donald Trump's campaign rallies.

    Horner took on greater prominence during the presidential election when false stories were widely shared on social media during the race between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

    In an interview with The Washington Post in 2016, Horner said he thought Trump won the White House because of him. Horner said Trump's supporters didn't fact-check his stories before posting them. ...

    The fake news mill over seas said the same thing. Liberals fact checked stories so the stories couldn't get traction. So after a short time, all their stories were targeted at convervatives.

    Like Mulder, conservatives wanted to believe.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by _Sharp'r_ ( 649297 )

      Liberals fact checked stories so the stories couldn't get traction.

      Quick, how many school shootings have there been this year so far? What would you believe if you just looked at Facebook and Twitter postings int he last few days?

      • Interesting you brought that up. The graphic showing an incredible number of school shootings came thru our political discussion site and was *immediately* fact checked.

        https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DW... [twimg.com]

        The data behind that graphic was posted within minutes...

        https://www.snopes.com/2018/02... [snopes.com]

        [q]Firearm attacks during school hours: 7 (incidents resulting in injuries or deaths: 5)

        22 January: Italy High School, Italy, Texas â" A 16-year-old student opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun in the school c

  • OK, I see right through this, CNN and MSNBC are teaming up to get a little free training for their next generation of muckrakers, race-baiters, and conspiracy theorist they call "anchors"

  • Until you get capitalism to stop recognizing Bullshit Click-Bait Artist as a valid job skill for any "news" agency, this little game of yours is nothing more than job training for a lucrative future career. Teaching kids to maintain credibility by lying, with a POTUS bonus round to try and incite a war against another country? What's next, Pipe Bombs in the Kitchen with Barney the Dinosaur? The sick irony of teaching violence as we have a nation marching against it right now.

    And no, you aren't going to "

  • Good gravy (Score:2, Interesting)

    At least in 1984 it's only the Two Minutes Hate [wikipedia.org]. Don't you people ever get tired of this stuff?

    I've seen some sore losers in my life, but you are the sorest. Give ... it ... a ... rest.

    You lost because you sucked. Nobody cared about this "fake news", because there was more than enough real news that was highly unfavorable to you, despite the fervent loyalty (to you) of the news readers.

    BTW, if you really think these 8o Russians and their tiny Facebook ad buy decided the election, then I highly recommend

    • by zifn4b ( 1040588 )

      BTW, if you really think these 8o Russians and their tiny Facebook ad buy decided the election, then I highly recommend that you hire them. They are the most amazing marketers ever.

      You really think these 80 russians were posting propaganda to Facebook in the same manner that Indians run scam call centers? Nay. They wrote software to spread the propaganda for them in a very highly efficient manner... botnet style...

      • BTW, if you really think these 8o Russians and their tiny Facebook ad buy decided the election, then I highly recommend that you hire them. They are the most amazing marketers ever.

        You really think these 80 russians were posting propaganda to Facebook in the same manner that Indians run scam call centers? Nay. They wrote software to spread the propaganda for them in a very highly efficient manner... botnet style...

        Then the Dems should hire them to do botnets. However they did it, it's the most amazing and cost effective campaign the world has ever seen, apparently.

        • by zifn4b ( 1040588 )

          Then the Dems should hire them to do botnets. However they did it, it's the most amazing and cost effective campaign the world has ever seen, apparently.

          I'm not saying the Russians actually did that. I think that claim is probably is absurd. But IF they did do it, they certainly wouldn't do it in the manner you described. That would be stupid. The Russians aren't stupid. Their educational system in terms of STEM fields is much better than ours.

      • Their techniques are amazingly powerful and they are the world's best persuaders. We need to give them jobs, they are head and shoulders better at their jobs than anyone in our society. Right?

        When even the New Yorker is ridiculing the idea that there is some great Russia conspiracy, you know it's all over but the crying: https://www.newyorker.com/news... [newyorker.com]

  • So it's a game about a fictitious social media site full of memes... you don't need a game for that...
  • A game about spreading miss information? Where do I sign up?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This game is revealing private trade practices which give competitive advantage to MSM. Is noone suing them?

  • All the top players will receive employment offers from the Banana Republicans!

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