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.
People are too stupid (Score:1)
Re: People are too stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
"If you're not reading news, you're uninformed.
If you're reading news, you're misinformed."
I assume the message is to make your own determinations from aggregate data, to not simply parrot like a mental human centipede.
Ironically, a Retweet does exactly that.
Re: People are too stupid (Score:1, Insightful)
This is exactly the attitude the assholes are looking to create. No, you don't have to discount everything you haven't seen with your own eyes.
Actual fake news, the bad shit, was the "Obama is a secret Muslim", "Clinton pedophile ring," horse shit that got spread around by conspiracy nuts.
Trump took the description and made it his catchphrase to discredit stories he doesn't like.
Just don't share conspiracy theories, for God's sake never watch Fox News, understand that MSNBC and the Daily Show will show you
Re: People are too stupid (Score:1)
But it is not better to think every person is a conspirator.
There was a study that showed that Americans trust each other a lot more than Russians trust each other and that impedes Russian growth.
The study is the basis for the Russian strategy now -- cripple the US by making them distrust each other as much as Russians do.
It's a really good strategy. It'll work, and there's nothing we can do about it.
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But it is not better to think every person is a conspirator.
There was a study that showed that Americans trust each other a lot more than Russians trust each other and that impedes Russian growth.
The study is the basis for the Russian strategy now -- cripple the US by making them distrust each other as much as Russians do.
It's a really good strategy. It'll work, and there's nothing we can do about it.
The Russians have the help of the 1%, and the left, which are both always pushing for diversity and mass immigration. Both lower social cohesion as shown even by left leaning sociologists. Want to fragment America, just let enough Spanish speakers who won't assimilate and you'll get your wish.
Citation
http://archive.boston.com/news... [boston.com]
Re: People are too stupid (Score:1)
Yup. Thanks for demonstrating that it definitely works and you're already seeing your countrymen as enemies.
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Russia used misinformation to install Trump and look what we have: mass shooting after mass shooting. At this rate all humanity will be gone in years. It is too bad Hillary has not yet gotten into power, she would be our savior from this kind of misinformation Russian tyranny.
Ironically what you said is the definition of fake news.
"Russia used misinformation to install Trump"
There's no evidence this is true
In fact Rosenstein said it wasn't true
https://www.realclearpolitics.... [realclearpolitics.com]
Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.
"and look what we have: mass shooting after mass shooting. "
Mass shootings account for less than 1% of homicides in the US. They are a bad way to understand gun violence [fivethirtyeight.com].
A more typical example of gun violence is deaths from gun violence. And most of those happen in places that already have gun control.
http [wikipedia.org]
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http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/738025-i-was-only-pretending-to-be-retarded [knowyourmeme.com]
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Exactly, I tend to agreed with answer, and it really is all over for humankind. Russia used misinformation to install Trump and look what we have: mass shooting after mass shooting. At this rate all humanity will be gone in years. It is too bad Hillary has not yet gotten into power, she would be our savior from this kind of misinformation Russian tyranny.
That's how you level up in the game, folks!
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Re: People are too stupid (Score:1)
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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.
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We're much more advanced than those silly Greeks. Everyone knows that men and women are absolutely indistinguishable, there's no point getting married or having kids and telling everyone that sleeping around won't cause any problems at all. What's that you say? The rate of sexual assault is going up and the birth rate is going down because telling everyone to stay single means they spend their adult lives having drunken one night stands instead of having a family? Slut shaming! Sexist nonsense! We just need
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The rate of sexual assault is going up and the birth rate is going down because telling everyone to stay single means they spend their adult lives having drunken one night stands instead of having a family? ... We just need to import third worlders to get the birth rate up!
You're worried about the birth rate? We're just a little under 2 children per mother, which seems just fine to me. Also, what do drunken one-night-stands have to do with sexual assault?
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We're just a little under 2 children per mother, which seems just fine to me.
In Europe you'll find it depends a lot on ethnic groups. The white people have a low birth rate and the immigrants have a high one.
In the US from what I can tell the religious conservatives have a higher birth rate than secular liberals.
E.g.
http://anepigone.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
The immigrants have larger families and may vote for the left but they despise its social agenda as much as I do. Probably more so.
All this tells me the left's social deconstructivism is not going to be an issue long term. In the US that
Re:People are too stupid (Score:4, Funny)
...The white people have a low birth rate and the immigrants have a high one...the religious conservatives have a higher birth rate than secular liberals...The immigrants have larger families and may vote for the left...you've got fast breeding conservative Christians...In Europe the fast breeding religious conservatives are Muslim, and that is an issue.
You seem to be saying that the problem isn't that there aren't enough children, just not the right type of children. I asked why you thought the rate needed to be higher and you responded by describing the breeders.
If both parties are wasted it's much harder to negotiate consent.
Maybe, but I've had drunken sex that I wouldn't trade for the world.
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You seem to be saying that the problem isn't that there aren't enough children, just not the right type of children. I asked why you thought the rate needed to be higher and you responded by describing the breeders.
If the end result of SJW culture is that the SJWs don't have enough kids to be survive that's not a problem with me. Well it's not in the US at least because US Christian religious conservatives will replace them. If they get replaced with Muslim religious conservatives - and that's the most likely outcome in Europe - that's a huge problem.
Not least for the SJWs because Muslims are a lot less tolerant of their social agenda than I am. All those LGBT types are going to end up getting the ISIS Free Water sl
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So your solution to the rise of segments of the population that you find undesirable is to have a breeding race? To quote some words of wisdom that may help your strategy, "Where all the white women at?"
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Natural selection is inherently 'a breeding race'. It doesn't matter whether you think you're in one or not - groups that breed above the replacement rate will end up outnumbering ones who don't.
Or, as someone put it 'demographics is destiny'. At current trends Germany in 50-100 years time will look at lot different from Germany now. Of course if you don't have kids, that doesn't affect you. But if you do have kids it will affect them, or their kids.
Re: People are too stupid (Score:1)
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Yesterday, a friend of mine posted a meme on FB accusing one of the Parkland survivors of being a “crisis actor”. I talked reason to him and he took it down. An alternate strategy would have been to ignore it, but have an extra child that I raise not to do things like that. I like my strategy better.
You’re probably not going to talk a Muslim out of being a Muslim, but I’m not sure why you would. Most American Muslims are not trying to implement Sharia law. You’re definitely not
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Vote Conservative Christian! We don't murder as many gays as Conservative Muslims do!
--
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Soooo ... (Score:5, Funny)
They reinvented twitter?
Re:Soooo ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The people playing this game... (Score:5, Insightful)
...aren't the ones who need "vaccination".
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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.
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"So, it's a politics simulator then?"
It's called FoxSim.
They have had this since 2003 (Score:2)
If it is good enough for economic modelling, it sure is good enough for modelling "Fake News"
Facebook will sue them (Score:2)
for infringing on their business model and trade secrets.
Donald Trump's review (Score:1)
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? #
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When multiple sitting senators don't count as confirmation there is no longer any such thing as confirmation. Any and everything can be discounted as 'they're lying'.
Flawed Premise (Score:1)
Monopoly was created like this, and failed (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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That poll has 14% of Republicans trusting the media
That's a higher percentage of journalists that were Republicans in 2014
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
What's happened is that the media have essentially given up on the pretense that they're objectively report on the news and instead decide to report on stories that fit their narrative as emotionally as possible and ignore ones that don't.
So after a mass shooting CNN will get a bunch of kids on to demand gun control. They don't do the analogous think when
Re:Monopoly was created like this, and failed (Score:4, Insightful)
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].
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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.
It was bound to happen (Score:3)
Someone went and actually built a better idiot.
Practice Makes Perfect (Score:1)
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!
Liberals fact check, Conservatives don't. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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The story I was mentioning above.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/1... [nytimes.com]
TBILISI, Georgia â" Jobless and with graduation looming, a computer science student at the premier university in the nation of Georgia decided early this year that money could be made from Americaâ(TM)s voracious appetite for passionately partisan political news. He set up a website, posted gushing stories about Hillary Clinton and waited for ad sales to soar.
âoeI donâ(TM)t know why, but it did not work,â said the stu
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True, false?
No clue since it ias an AC who I'm promoting to visible level....
"Disclaimer: I run a conservative leaning fake news site that makes well over $15k a month in crypto mining and ad revenue. I donate roughly $10k a month to local antifa groups around the country. I have a heavily decentralized network of authors that get paid handsomely writing for my sites.
As much as reality hurts to acknowledge, the right is deeply mired in fiction. I too tried to play on the liberals, but I received the same tr
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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?
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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
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Your statement is in direct contradiction to what I just did above which was to post the misleading news and then post the actual data.
I also recommend watching and listening to a wide range of media. However, Fox has basically descended to a propaganda arm.. Frequently, when the entire world is presenting a news story, they completely ignore it (suppress it really) so people who rely on Fox only are not even aware the event occured.
Wapo, The Economist, and the NY times are better sources than CNN and MSN
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A more nuanced position would be...
Enough conservatives pass on stories without fact checking them that demonstrably false stories proliferate.
Enough liberals fact check stories demonstrably false stories die out.
Some conservatives do fact check. But not enough (please fact check more if you are conservative).
Some liberals do not fact check. (please fact check more if you are liberal).
Snopes and Politifact are good starting locations.
Stay clear of Nunez new fake site.
Here's a list of fact checking sites.
h [berkeley.edu]
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I prefer your more nuanced position, but still don't believe "Enough liberals fact check stories demonstrably false stories die out." What I find instead (and according to a Chrome plugin, my Facebook feed from about 1K people is pretty balanced along the political spectrum, so I see examples of 'em all) is that all sides post stupid stories, most of the misleading stories have some kernel of truth to them which allows an extreme partisan to argue it's accurate, but most of the lies are a matter of slanting
Job Training (Score:1)
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"
We REWARD Bullshit Click-Bait Artists. (Score:2)
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
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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]
A game? (Score:2)
Spread Misinformation? (Score:2)
A game about spreading miss information? Where do I sign up?
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Is CNN suing for copyright infringement? (Score:2)
This game is revealing private trade practices which give competitive advantage to MSM. Is noone suing them?
Recruiting tactic (Score:2)