Category: Fake news

Robot videos

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Trending FOX BUSINESS News: Google takes on Apple with YouTube Music service

I’ve been seeing these all over the place. I figured it was something like this:

A network of dozens of automated, robot-driven YouTube channels are pumping out thousands of right-wing propaganda videos that have racked up hundreds of millions of views — and it seems Google isn’t doing anything to stop it.

With the November midterms looming and worries growing that disinformation campaigns will undermine the outcome of the elections, channels with names like World Broadcast, Breaking News Today, Latest News Today, Breaking News 24h, Hot News Today 365, USA News Feeder, or simply Hot News are popping up all over YouTube, with one clear strategy: to turn fringe right-wing blog posts into machine-narrated videos they can promote as breaking news.

“They upload thousands of new videos every month and are getting tens of millions of views each month,” said Christoph Burseg, an online marketing expert who specializes in video trends on YouTube.

For years, YouTube has been plagued with conspiracy theories and fake news, but these automated accounts that pump out pro-Trump propaganda present a new problem for the company — and it appears there’s little they can do about it.

A fictionalized Trump? Too cliche

~ odd man out

Does anyone doubt that Donald Trump, if elected president of a country with no democratic traditions, would have quickly muzzled any news organizations that didn’t suck up to him the same way Mike Pence does?

I asked my friend Swamp Rabbit, only because the answer is so obvious. Trump’s tweets remind us that the leader of the so-called free world has no sense of irony, no self-awareness, no tolerance for viewpoints that challenge his delusions of grandeur.

Trump’s favorite put-down is “fake news,” but he can’t get through a public statement without telling a lie, or a series of lies, depending on how long he talks. He accuses reporters of being negative but built his whole campaign on the (correct) assumption that he could win by exploiting the fears and resentments of working-class whites.

“Blah, blah,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Let it go, dude. Get on with your miserable life.”

He was right. Bitching about the malicious fraud in the White House won’t change anything. It might not even be therapeutic.

The problem is I write fiction and consider Trump an affront to good fiction, just as he is to good government. I take it personally. He’s an insult to countless fiction writers who labor to make their characters come alive on the page.

“That don’t make no sense,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Just ’cause you don’t like him don’t mean he ain’t alive.”

I tried to explain: Fictional characters don’t have to be likable, but they do have to seem genuine and show some glimmer of inner life. They needn’t evolve into full-fledged heroes or villains, but they must change, or at least learn something new about themselves, in order to fully engage smart readers.

Trump seems neither genuine nor capable of change. He’s a villain, but a predictable villain, greedy, vulgar and vain. Incapable of self-examination. The presidential Trump is as mean and contemptible as the pre-presidential Trump. He’s a cartoon villain — a character drawn from reality TV, not from reality.

“What you sayin’?” Swamp Rabbit said. “What’s wrong with Trump being a cartoon? Most people like cartoons.”

I like cartoons,” I replied. “I just don’t like cartoons that become President of the United States.”

Clarification: Trump would fail as a primary character in realistic fiction, but he’s a good fit for satiric fiction, or for the theater of the absurd. He’s a dead ringer for the cartoonish title character in Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi.

Fool me once… OK, now fool me again

~ odd man out ~ 2 Comments

The race is on. In one lane we have Donald Trump using false evidence from Benjamin Netanyahu as an excuse to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, a first step in drumming up support for another Mideast war.

In the other, a diverse crew of investigators sifting through a trove of Trump lies, sorting them out, preparing a case that might topple our home-grown Mussolini.

So far Trump is winning, and each day brings more evidence that we’re right to worry — that Trump really might start a major war if that’s what it takes to keep Robert Mueller from overtaking him and making an airtight case.

This morning I visited my friend Swamp Rabbit, who is totally opposed to worrying. He thinks taking deep breaths and letting time pass is the best way to deal with situations you can’t control.

“But this is like the Iraq War in 2003, Rabbit. The chief and his minions let loose a stream of lies about a nonexistent threat, the media plays along with the lies, or do a halfhearted job of debunking them. Propaganda tamps down potential public outrage. The bombs start falling.”

“That’s just your ‘magination,” the Rabbit said. “Ain’t no way we gonna get fooled into fighting another of them disaster wars.”

“That’s what they said after Vietnam, you dumb rodent.”

My insult pissed him off. “You’re projecting, Odd Man. You got a shitty part-time job and can’t keep up with your bills or support your writing habit. Just because you in a downward spiral don’t mean the world is, too.”

I saw his point but resented his insistence that my bleak personal situation belied evidence that the world was in trouble.

“Trump is an existential threat,” I said. “He’s a monster con man with no redeeming qualities.”

“No shit,” the Rabbit replied. “But it took an army of morons to create the monster. It’s a little late to talk them into changing their minds, doncha think?”

“Maybe not. If public opinion can’t stop him, what will?”

The Rabbit broke the seal on a bottle of Wild Turkey and took a quick drink. “There’s Congress,” he said. “And then there’s the courts.”

I groaned and almost said something nasty, but in the end I just asked him to pass the bottle.

Footnote: As George W. Bush once said, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me you can’t get fooled again.”

Trey Gowdy dismisses the GOP intelligence report

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Trey Gowdy Just Sealed Robert Mueller’s Fate With One Shocking Reveal!

Trey’s so much more honest since he decided not to run for reelection. Plus, any time anyone uses the words “GOP” and “intelligence” in the same sentence, I get the giggles:

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said Sunday that he places more faith in federal investigators’ conclusions on Russian election meddling than those of Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, of which he is a member.

“The President, when he looks at your report, feels vindicated,” CBS’ “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan told Gowdy in an interview. “Are you saying he should not?”

“I want to be careful how I phrase this,” Gowdy responded. “No report— The best we can do is say what we’ve learned.”

“I can’t say what’s in the universe of witnesses we have not talked to,” he continued. “And I have always maintained I am awaiting the Mueller investigation. They get to use a grand jury. They have investigative tools that we don’t have.”

“Executive branch investigations are just better than congressional ones. So we found no evidence of collusion. Whether or not it exists or not, I can’t speak to, because I haven’t interviewed the full panoply of witnesses.”

Republicans on the Intelligence Committee released a heavily redacted report on Friday clearing Trump of accusations that his campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 election. Democrats on the committee released a counter-report and have long claimed that their GOP colleagues did not sufficiently pursue relevant questions and witnesses.

‘In order to keep our editorial page completely balanced, we are hiring more dipshits’

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

McSweeney’s with what is meant to be a parody, but maybe not. After all, the Washington Post just hired the horrible Megan McArdle:

Here at the New York Times, we believe that all sides of the story should be tolerated and explored, from white supremacists being actually kinda cool if you think about it to people who believe that saying college campuses should be less PC is somehow an interesting use of 1,000 words. That’s why we’re expanding our editorial staff to include more dipshits. Because everyone, no matter how intellectually lazy their conservatism, deserves a column in our newspaper.

By the end of the year, we aim to have 200% more dipshits writing columns for us. As long as you are a Ben Shapiro knockoff who can string together the words ‘the intolerant left’ and occasionally criticize Trump, you have a home here on our opinion pages. Because this is what conservatism is now, and we have to respect that.

Why do we hire dipshits? It’s simple. After the 2016 election, we got yelled at a lot by right-wingers. How could you report such negative stories about President Trump by printing the words he says? Why don’t 100% of your stories talk about Hillary Clinton’s emails, rather than just the ones on the front page? They had a point. So, despite the fact that throughout the last year the right has decided they hate everything from Keurig to the NFL, we have decided to do the journalistically correct thing and capitulate entirely.

So today we make a promise. A promise to every moron that was a little too intelligent to for the Wall Street Journal, to every idiot that will go write for the Federalist if they don’t get hired by us. To you, we say welcome.

Go read the rest. Sigh.

Most fake news shared by right wing, study finds. Also, water is wet.

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

No Value in Fake Followers

Keep in mind, these are the same people who announced that Crooks and Liars was a fake news site, even though we met none of their stated criteria.

Fake news published in the U.S. were overwhelmingly consumed and shared by right-wing social media users, a new study from the University of Oxford has revealed. Research from Oxford’s “computational propaganda project” investigated into the sources of “junk news” shared in the three months leading up to President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address last month. Continue reading “Most fake news shared by right wing, study finds. Also, water is wet.” →

The real story behind that text

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Vladimir Putin

Oh, this is hilarious:

One text that Page sent Strzok early on the morning of Nov. 9, 2016, has dominated the conservative media world this week, serving as a springboard for a Republican conspiracy theory suggesting that the nation’s premier law enforcement organization was plotting a coup against Trump within hours of his stunning victory.

“Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing,” Page, a FBI lawyer, wrote in the text to Strzok from her FBI-issued phone. “Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.”

Republican lawmakers seized upon the “secret society” reference this week, claiming to see sinister motives, and it started popping up all over cable news chyrons. But, in fact, it was almost certainly a joke, a bit of gallows humor after an election that featured Russian interference.

So what was that “calendars” reference all about? Out of context, it’s a bit confusing. But the backstory is actually kind of funny. The New York Times first reported that the “calendars,” which the Times said had a “Russia theme,” were a gag gift for those working on the early Russia probe.

A source familiar with the text messages filled HuffPost in on the details. It turns out that, as a joke, Strzok had purchased calendars featuring “beefcake” photos of Vladimir Putin doing manly, tough-guy things like riding a horse.

Fake documents about Schumer almost became fake news

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Chuck Schumer - Caricature

So it turns out that Mike Cernovich, the same person who tried to get Sam Seder fired, is also connected to this manufactured smear against Chuck Schumer!

A story that had been teased out seductively on social media as being true abruptly sank into a fiery fake news wreck before ever reaching orbit on Tuesday. … in exchange for answers about what went haywire with the promised scoop. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office told Newsweek that he was to have been the victim of the fake news story—one purporting … Continue reading “Fake documents about Schumer almost became fake news” →