YouTube's Algorithm Made Fake CNN Reports Go Viral (cnn.com) 63
"YouTube channels posing as American news outlets racked up millions of views on false and inflammatory videos over several months this year," reports CNN.
"All with the help of YouTube's recommendation engine." Many of the accounts, which mostly used footage from CNN, but also employed some video from Fox News, exploited a YouTube feature that automatically creates channels on certain topics. Those topic channels are then automatically populated by videos related to the topic -- including, in this case, blatant misinformation.
YouTube has now shut down many of the accounts.
YouTube's own algorithms also recommended videos from the channels to American users who watched videos about U.S. politics. That the channels could achieve such virality -- one channel was viewed more than two million times over one weekend in October -- raises questions about YouTube's preparedness for tackling misinformation on its platform just weeks before the Iowa caucuses and points to the continuing challenge platforms face as people try to game their systems....
Responding to the findings on Thursday, a CNN spokesperson said YouTube needs to take responsibility.
"When accounts were deleted or banned, they were able to spin up new accounts within hours," added Plasticity, a natural language processing and AI startup which analyzed the data and identified at least 25 different accounts which YouTube then shut down.
"The tactics they used to game the YouTube algorithm were executed perfectly. They knew what they were doing."
"All with the help of YouTube's recommendation engine." Many of the accounts, which mostly used footage from CNN, but also employed some video from Fox News, exploited a YouTube feature that automatically creates channels on certain topics. Those topic channels are then automatically populated by videos related to the topic -- including, in this case, blatant misinformation.
YouTube has now shut down many of the accounts.
YouTube's own algorithms also recommended videos from the channels to American users who watched videos about U.S. politics. That the channels could achieve such virality -- one channel was viewed more than two million times over one weekend in October -- raises questions about YouTube's preparedness for tackling misinformation on its platform just weeks before the Iowa caucuses and points to the continuing challenge platforms face as people try to game their systems....
Responding to the findings on Thursday, a CNN spokesperson said YouTube needs to take responsibility.
"When accounts were deleted or banned, they were able to spin up new accounts within hours," added Plasticity, a natural language processing and AI startup which analyzed the data and identified at least 25 different accounts which YouTube then shut down.
"The tactics they used to game the YouTube algorithm were executed perfectly. They knew what they were doing."
Well that's kind of understandable (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Well that's kind of understandable (Score:1, Flamebait)
It could very well cause the MSM's reputation in general to become sullied!
People no longer relying on 'The News'??? We can't have that!!!
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Bullshit. I look at CNN's site several times a day and no, not half the page is paid content. One has to go almost to the bottom of the page where stories from paid content reside, and are labeled as such.
Meanwhile, on the Fox tabloid web page, not a single article about articles of impeachment against the con artist. Sure, there are "stories" about elected officials responding to the upcoming impeachment vote, but not one about what the articles present such as the con artist's abuse of power or obstruc
Re: Well that's kind of understandable (Score:1)
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What in the name of sweet fuck are you talking about? I just did, and it is plastered with actual news links. "Paid content"?
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It looks like it varies from one person to the next, I just visited CNN, there was obvious paid content which was not labelled as such anywhere (visited with IE to avoid ad-blocking).
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This is a blatant lie. Why is it modded "insightful"?
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Given this... how is it possible to tell whats "real cnn sensationalism" and "real not-cnn sensationalism"
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The headline is wrong but the content of the article is not. The latter clearly indicates that math is used to profile people, sometimes unintentionally(?) along racial lines. That's not the same as saying math is racist.
Technical and scientific reporters, like all reporters, do sometimes get things wrong, or let hyperbole get the better of them. But that's not the same as creating fake news.
Fake news is not news with errors, or even news with a bias. Fake news is written by fake reporters, using fake "fact
Re: Well that's kind of understandable (Score:1)
You can say that about MSNBC and Fox News while you're at it. Straight up hear lies from them all.
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So YouTube started demoting (Score:4, Insightful)
I should have known this would be the inevitable result. But promoting "real" news was never the point, the point was promoting the establishment viewpoint. Good 'ole "Manufactured Consent" (google it, ironically).
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White Nationalism propaganda remains because it's preferred policies for a number of elected politicians.
As Lions for Lambs (2007) suggests, the government is the news: IMO, all corporate broadcasters go easy on the politicians they agree with and mercilessly criticize the rest. Since all laws, divide the people into winners and losers, the big question becomes: Is this class warfare? In the USA, too often the answer is yes. Most times, Fox News doesn't explain how policies and laws punish the poor and
Re: So YouTube started demoting (Score:1)
When the Corporate Progressives started their crazy for censorship and deplatforming, conservatives warned liberals that they would be next. But the Progressive called themselves "leftists" and spewed endless sophomoric blather about intersectionality. So many otherwise sensible liberals went along with them. Now the Progressives are showing their reactionary true colors. Suppressing "leftist" content with the same eagerness they suppress "rightist" content.
It's time to stand up together for Freedom of Spe
Of course it did (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Of course it did (Score:1)
"are going to have to hire enough human beings to go through everything by hand, or they're going to eventually get their asses sued off."
Or, you know, we as a nation - including our elected and unelected masters - could embrace Freedom of Speech.
Yeah, blame youtube and google (Score:5, Interesting)
After we refused to pay for the cost of vetting the news stories, we blame Google's Algorithms for being gamed.
As usual people who can afford it will pay for vetted and verified news. And they will manipulate the "news" available for the masses.
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So technological change left dinosaur business models in the dirt, and an industry that failed to adjust is being sidelined?
That's one way to put it, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Society is failing to adjust to the normal means of maintaining at least a basic standard of veracity in media. After Clinton made it possible for conglomerates to dominate the news media [billmoyers.com], it's all been a downhill slide for The People's interest in news.
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News papers could not fight back and they have largely folded.
Now Google is the new master of all the ad revenue of all the net. Now, may be, if Google has some sense, it will invest in some human being journalists to actually read, check, verify and post authenticated news stories. Yes, it would be trivially eas
Re: Yeah, blame youtube and google (Score:1)
Here's the thing: even back in the good ol' days when the New York Times was black & white and delivered in dead tree format, it wasn't really trustworthy. I realized as a college kid (NYT subscriber & daily reader back then) that the really interesting part if many news stories was what the Times chose _not_ to write.
That was back when there was plenty of money in the newspaper business, higher professional standards, and most importantly real competition. Do we really expect a monopoly like Big Br
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It was trivially easy to replicate the content of all the news papers. The business model was to redistribute expensively gathered news for free and collect the ad revenue. Now what you would have done?
So, in sum, POTUS was right? (Score:1)
...Fake CNN Reports Go Viral...
So the POTUS was right in asserting that CNN publishes fake news.
What I'd like to see is just one classic example of some piece of fake news that CNN perpetrated. Anyone?
Here are five obvious ones (Score:5, Informative)
> What I'd like to see is just one classic example of some piece of fake news that CNN perpetrated. Anyone?
Well, the Anthony Scaramucci story is one example of one that you can't possibly claim was anything less than fake.
There's the dead "Chinese" (not) people in the Lorry at Essex and Culver's entirely inappropriate reporting of the story.
Their completely made-up Operation Tailwind story that isn't logically possible.
They reported that a black guy had been arrested for the Boston marathon bombing.
They had Lou Dobbs pushing the birther crap long after practically everyone else had moved on.
There are of course plenty more, which likely include many that you'd like to believe, so I won't keep going. You asked for one, that's five.
If you want actual news, ABC doesn't suck too bad.
With CNN, even when they are reporting on a store that's true they are also pushing an agenda. For example, James Boulware really did attack the Dallas police headquarters, shooting frim an armored van. CNN called him "courageous and brave" for doing so.
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Links please?
And as for Lou Dobbs, he left CNN 10 years ago. [npr.org] He clashed with executives over his inflammatory views. They waved goodbye to him nicely, but it seems they weren't sad to see the back of him.
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https://www.cernovich.com/mike-cernovich-is-more-reliable-than-cnn/
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-worst-most-embarrassing-u-s-media-failures-on-the-trumprussia-story/
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/cnn-trump-derangement-everything-but-news/
https://www.taskade.com/v/ByzMWWQkql
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https://www.cernovich.com/mike-cernovich-is-more-reliable-than-cnn/
Oh well, I'm sure www.cernovich.com is entirely unbiased on the topic of one Mike Cernovich. I believe everything they say about him.
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No, it's talking about fake stories claiming to be from CNN, not about CNN themselves making them (although it may feature real snippets). In other words, unauthorized trademark use.
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No, it's talking about fake stories claiming to be from CNN, not about CNN themselves making them (although it may feature real snippets). In other words, unauthorized trademark use.
The problem for consumers is identifying which CNN (or fake CNN) article is fake. CNN lost its credibility years ago and I see no evidence it will do anything to improve.
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Whenever I looked up alleged lies they told, it either turned out to be bullshit, a mistake they apologized for, or un-confirmable. Perhaps they are biased via what they focus on, but I haven't seen any direct studies on the focus angle.
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> looked up alleged lies they told, it either turned out to be bullshit, a mistake they apologized for, or un-confirmable.
That's true, they do often apologize when it's absolutely unquestionable that they straight-up lied and they get called out on it.
> Perhaps they are biased via what they focus on, but I haven't seen any direct studies on the focus angle.
For sure.
Just switch back and forth between the CNN.com and Foxnews.com front pages and you'll see a big difference in focus. One thing I've not
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I have found this chart to be very interesting. [adfontesmedia.com] It gets updated regularly. Ad Fontes describes their methodology here. [adfontesmedia.com]
Since CNN is the current topic, I'll point out that they have been in the 'skews left' column for the time I have watched this chart. In the past they have been slightly lower in the vertical (reliability) direction, but have risen in more recent publications of the chart. Note that cnn.com (as opposed to CNN) is somewhat higher in reliability and more centric.
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It sounds like a catch-22 here. How does one know if they are "getting away with" lies if they are not unquestionable lies? One either verifies or they don't; there generally is no half verify. "Looks suspicious" is often in the eye of the beholder; people inject their bias into the grey areas.
That's kind of off-topic or
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> How does one know if they are "getting away with" lies if they are not unquestionable lies?
One uses one's judgement after looking at both the article in question and other sources.
If some third-party is a fan of a particular political party, you may not be able to convince that other person. For yourself, you can use your own wise judgement, making an effort to put aside your own biases and look at the available facts, as well as what is likely and not likely.
One can also note the tone and other eleme
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Is there a good source of such analysis? Often it comes down to a he-said-she-said situation. If you are somebody who wants to convince everyone that CNN are slimebags, then careful documentation of their foul-ups and bias would be helpful. I did spot-check anti-CNN claims myself and didn't find anything clearly sinister.
Headlines are designed to grab attention. They are often written by a diffe
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> If you are somebody who wants to convince everyone that CNN are slimebags
I have no interest in trying to convince you of anything.
If you want to pretend that Fox, CNN, Comedy Central, MSNBC, and Breitbart are news, rather than politainment, it's no skin off my nose.
If you ask me about reasonably reliable news sources, I'd suggest checking out WSJ, ABC, and csmonitor.com . On those sites you'll probably find some news that makes you smile because it's not favorable to the "rival time", the political p
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Just because a weaving car turns out not to have drunks doesn't meaning checking is a "hoax". In this case, the driver is just bad at driving.
CNN says Youtube should take responsibility (Score:2)
The USA learned from the bestest of the best. (Score:2)
The USA learned from the bestest of the best.
Somewhere, Goebbels is smiling at what his particular brand of print, film and radio brainwashing has done here since WWII.
I'm gobsmacked at how thorough, pervasive and effective it has been.
I ache for the day people realize they've been played since the late 40's, maybe the late 30's.
Won't happen soon unless it's viscerally demonstrated to them. Breads and Circuses go a long way to keep the hoi polloi happy, content and stupid.
Have you visited cnn.com lately? (Score:2)
YouTube's Algorithm Made Fake CNN Reports Go Viral (Score:2, Funny)
Accidents happen... (Score:2)
Sometimes you sprad some fake propaganda... and then the damn thing actually happens! Now you won't even get your kickback!
Satan, I wish I would work for FOX, where that don't matter and they are only paid and judged by the Rage-O-Meter.
How did they tell them from real CNN news? (Score:2)
Of FOX or whatever. . .
Cause I can't tell the difference. And that is not due to the faking skill of those fake channels.
CNN Fake reports (Score:1)
Who is paying YouTube's blackmail? (Score:2)
If you don't watch YouTube, then more power to you, but if you do watch it, then I bet you have noticed more and more intrusive and noisy and much longer ads along with frequent reminders that you can pay up and make the noise go away. Feels like extortion to me and I'm not going to pay a blackmailer. But someone must be paying up. Is it you? Or do you even know anyone who is paying?
Don't forget that the google didn't create the content. Don't forget the google has control over ads and over any money that t
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The safe harbor distortion of copyright is an amazing excuse. NOT free speech. Just theft and profitable exploitation of other people's creative work.
Not theft, copyright infringement.
And you know what fuck'em. Those assholes paid for the DMCA so they can live by it's fucking rules. Aboslutely 100% not theft on youtube's part, merely sticking to the letter of the law as written and paid for by the big interests of the copyright industry. Those people are beyond scum and anything that hurts their interests i
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Rationalization for your own abuse of copyright. Reminds me of a discussion I once had who was proud of knowing how to buy stolen merchandise. He got all upset when I pointed out that the thieves would be less motivated to steal stuff if it wasn't for people like him.
And apparently like you.
But me, too. It doesn't matter that I'm treating YouTube like an appliance. They get to count my visits.
Thought of a couple of worse aspects of YouTube, but there might be a new YouTube story for them...
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Rationalization for your own abuse of copyright.
Nice projection there bud, but no dice.
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I call BS. Or are you going to send me an image of your HDD to "prove" your innocence?
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Or are you going to send me an image of your HDD to "prove" your innocence?
Hmm guilty on the accusation of an internet rando until proven innocent. Sure sounds like a good system to me. Would you like me to accuse you of anything?
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Obviously a failed and terminated attempt at "conversation".
Name and shame (Score:2)
So long as you don't even name the culprits this will obviously continue. Who is they - Russia? Or someone else? Is this done for political reasons or for profit? Youtube must have some idea of who they are if they are eligible to receive advertising revenue.