Tag: fake news

Google fact-checking now applies to image searches

simonmackay 02/07/2020 Current and Future Trends, Fake News, Disinformation and Propaganda, Network Lifestyle And Activities, Social issues involving home computing No Comments

Articles

Google search about Dan Andrews - Chrome browser in Windows 10

Google to add fact checking to images in its search user interfaces

Google adds a fact check feature for images | CNet

From the horse’s mouth

Google

Bringing fact check information to Google Images (Blog Post)

My Comments

Increasingly, images and video are being seen as integral to news coverage with most of us seeing them, especially photographs, of importance when corroborating a fact or news story.

But these are becoming weaponised to tell a different truth compared to what is actually captured by the camera. One way is to use the same or a similar image to corroborate a different fact, with this including the use of image-editing tools to doctor the image so it tells a different story.

I have covered this previously when talking about the use of reverse-image-search tools like Tineye or Google Image Search to verify the authenticity of an image and . It will be the same kind of feature that Google has enabled in its search interface when you “google” for something, or in its news-aggregation platforms.

Google is taking this further for people who search for images using their search tools. Here, they are adding images to their fact-check processes so it is easy to see whether an image has been used to corroborate questionable information. You will see a “fact-check” indicator near the image thumbnail and when you click or tap on the image for a larger view or more details, you will see some details about whether the image is true or not.

A similar feature appears on the YouTube platform for exhibiting details about the veracity of video content posted there. But this feature currently is available to users based in Brazil, India and the USA and I am not sure whether it will be available across all YouTube user interfaces, especially native clients for mobile and set-top platforms.

It is in addition to Alphabet, their parent company, offering a free tool to check whether an image has been doctored. This is because meddling with an image to constitute something else using something like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP is being seen as a way to convey a message that isn’t true. The tool, called Assembler, uses artificial intelligence and algorithms that detect particular forms of image manipulation to indicate the veracity of an image.

But I would also see the rise of tools that analyse audio and video material to identify deepfake activity, or video sites, podcast directories and the like using a range of tools to identify the authenticity of content made available through them. This may include “fact-check” labels with facts being verified by multiple newsrooms and universities; or the content checked for out-of-the-ordinary editing techniques. It can also include these sites and directories implementing a feedback loop so that users can have questionable content verified.

What can be done about taming political rhetoric on online services?

simonmackay 24/06/2020 Current and Future Trends, Government-Citizen Online Activity, Social Web No Comments

Article

Australian House of Representatives ballot box - press picture courtesy of Australian Electoral Commission

Online services may have to observe similar rules to traditional media and postal services when it comes to handling election and referendum campaigns

There’s a simple way to reduce extreme political rhetoric on Facebook and Twitter | FastCompany

My Comments

In this day and age, a key issue that is being raised regarding the management of elections and referenda is the existence of extreme political rhetoric on social media and other online services.

But the main cause of this problem is the algorithmic nature associated with most online services. This can affect what appears in a user’s default news feed when they start a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram session; whether a bulk-distributed email ends up in the user’s email inbox or spam folder; whether the advertising associated with a campaign appears in search-driven or display online advertising; or if the link appears on the first page of a search-engine user experience.

This is compared to what happens with traditional media or postal services while there is an election or referendum. In most of the democracies around the world, there are regulations overseen by the electoral-oversight, broadcasting and postal authorities regarding equal access to airtime, media space and the postal system by candidates or political parties in an election or organisations defending each option available in a referendum. If the medium or platform isn’t regulated by the government such as what happens with out-of-home advertising or print media, the peak bodies associated with that space establish equal lowest-cost access to these platforms through various policies.

Examples of this include an equal number of TV or radio commercial spots made available at the cheapest advertising rate for candidates or political parties contesting a poll, including the same level of access to prime-time advertising spaces; scheduled broadcast debates or policy statements on free-to-air TV with equal access for candidates; or the postal service guaranteeing priority throughput of election matter for each contestant at the same low cost.

These regulations or policies are to make it hard for a candidate, political party or similar organisation to “game” the system but allow voters to make an informed choice about whom or what they vote for. But the algorithmic approach associated with the online services doesn’t guarantee the candidates equal access to the voters’ eyeballs thus requiring the creation of incendiary content that can go viral and be shared amongst many people.

What needs to happen is that online services have to establish a set of policies regarding advertising and editorial content tendered by candidates, political parties and allied organisations in order to guarantee equal delivery of the content. This means marking such content so as to gain equal rotation in an online-advertising platform; using “override markers” that provide guaranteed recorded delivery of election matter to one’s email inbox or masking interaction details associated with election matter posted on a Facebook news feed.

But the most important requirement is that the online platforms cannot censor or interfere with the editorial content of the message that is being delivered to the voters by them. It is being seen as important especially in a hyper-partisan USA where it is perceived by conservative thinkers that Silicon Valley is imposing Northern-Californian / Bay-Area values upon people who use or publish through their online services.

A question that can easily crop up is the delivery of election matter beyond the jurisdiction that is affected by the poll. Internet-based platforms can make this very feasible and it may be considered of importance for, say, a country’s expats who want to cast their vote in their homeland’s elections. But people who don’t live within or have ties to the affected jurisdiction may see it as material of little value if there is a requirement to provide electoral material beyond a jurisdiction’s borders. This could be answered through social-media and email users, or online publishers having configurable options to receive and show material from multiple jurisdictions rather than the end-user’s current jurisdiction.

What is being realised here is that online services will need to take a leaf out of traditional regulated media and communication’s playbook to guarantee election candidates’ fair equal access to the voters through these platforms.

Safe computing practices in the coronavirus age

simonmackay 14/04/2020 Current events, Data security, Fake News, Disinformation and Propaganda, Feature Article, Social issues involving home computing No Comments

The coronavirus plague is having us at home, inside and online more….
(iStock by Getty Images)

The Covid-19 coronavirus plague is changing our habits more and more as we stay at home to avoid the virus or avoid spreading it onwards. Now we are strongly relying on our home networks and the Internet to perform our work, continue studying and connect with others in our social circles.

But this state of affairs is drawing out its own cyber-security risks, with computing devices being vulnerable to malware and the existence of hastily-written software being preferred of tasks like videoconferencing. Not to mention the risk of an increasing flow of fake news and disinformation about this disease.

What can we do?

General IT security

But we need to be extra vigilant about our data security and personal privacy

The general IT security measures are very important even in this coronavirus age. Here, you need to make sure that all the software on your computing devices, including their operating systems are up-to-date and have the latest patches. It also applies to your network, TV set-top and Internet-of-Things hardware where you need to make sure the firmware is up-to-date. The best way to achieve this is to have the devices automatically download and install the revised software themselves.

As well, managing the passwords for our online services and our devices properly prevents the risk of data and identity theft. It may even be a good idea to use a password vault program to manage our passwords which may prevent us from reusing them across services. Similarly using a word processor to keep a list of your passwords which is saved on removeable media and printed out, with both the hard and electronic copy kept in a secure location may also work wonders here.

Make sure that your computer is running a desktop / endpoint security program, even if it is the one that is part of the operating system. Similarly, using an on-demand scanning tool like Malwarebytes can work as a way to check for questionable software. As well, you may have to check the software that is installed on all of the computing devices is what you are using and even verify with multiple knowledgeable people if that program that is the “talk of the town” should be on your computer.

If you are signing up with new online services, it may even be a better idea to implement social sign-on with established credential pools like Google, Facebook or Microsoft. These setups implement a token between the credential pool and the online service as the authentication factor rather than a separate username and password that you create.

As well, you will be using the Webcam more frequently on your computing devices. The security issue with the Webcam and microphone is more important with computing setups that have the Webcam integrated in the computer or monitor, like with portable computing devices, “all-in-one” computers or monitors equipped with Webcams.

Here, you need to be careful of which programs are having access to the Webcam and microphone on your device. Here, if newly-installed software asks for use of your camera or microphone and it is out of touch with the way the software works, deny access to the camera or microphone when it asks for their use.

If you install a health-department-supplied tracking app as part of your government’s contact-tracing and disease-management efforts, remember to remove this app as soon as the coronavirus crisis is over. Doing this will protect your privacy once there is no real need to manage the disease.

Email and messaging security

Your email and messaging platforms will become an increased security risk at this time thanks to phishing including business email compromise. I have covered this issue in a previous article after helping someone reclaim their email service account after a successful phishing attempt.

An email or message would be a phishing attempt if the email isn’t commensurate with proper business writing standards for your country, has a sense of urgency about it and is too good to be true. Once you receive these emails, it is prudent to report them then delete them forthwith.

In the case of email addresses from official organisations, make sure that the domain name represents the organisation’s proper domain name. This is something that is exactly like the domain name they would use for their Web presence, although email addresses may have the domain name part of the address following the “ @ “ symbol prepended with a server identifier like “mail” or “email”. As well, there should be nothing appended to the domain name.

Also, be familiar with particular domain-name structures for official organisation clusters like the civil / public service, international organisations and academia when you open email or surf the Web. These will typically use protected high-level domain name suffixes like “.gov”, “.int” or “.edu” and won’t use common domain name suffixes like “ .com “. This will help with identifying whether a site or a sender is the proper authority or not.

Messaging and video-conferencing

Increasingly as we stay home due to the risk of catching or spreading the coronavirus plague, we are relying on messaging and video-conferencing software more frequently to communicate with each other. For example, families and communities are using video-conferencing software like Zoom or Skype to make a virtual “get-together” with each other thanks to these platforms’ support for many-to-many videocalls.

But as we rely on this software more, we need to make sure that our privacy, business confidentiality and data security is protected. This is becoming more important as we engage with our doctors, whether they be general practitioners or specialists, “over the wire” and reveal our medical issues to them that way.

If you value privacy, look towards using an online communications platform that implements end-to-end encryption. Infact, most of the respected “over-the-top” communications platforms like WhatsApp, Viber, Skype and iMessage offer this feature for 1:1 conversations between users on the same platform. Some, like WhatsApp and Viber offer this same feature for group conversations between users on that same platform.

Video-conferencing software like Zoom and Skype

When you are hosting a video-conference using Zoom, Skype or similar platforms, be familiar with any meeting-setup and meeting-management features that the platform offers. If the platform uses a Weblink to join a video-conference that you can share, use email or a messaging platform to share that link with potential participants. Avoid posting this on the Social Web so you keep gatecrashers from your meeting or class.

As well, if the platform supports password-protected meeting entry, use this feature to limit who can join the meeting. Here, it is also a good idea to send the password as a separate message from the meeting’s Weblink.

Some platforms like Zoom offer a waiting-room function which requires potential participants to wait and be vetted by the conference’s moderator before they can participate. As well these platforms may have a meeting-lockout so no more people can participate in the video-conference. Here, you use this function when all the participants that you expect are present in the meeting.

You need to regulate the screen sharing feature that your platform offers which allows meeting participants to share currently-running app or desktop user interfaces. Here, you may have the ability to limit this function to the moderator’s computer or a specified participant’s computer. Here this will prevent people from showing offensive imagery or videos to all the meeting’s participants. As well, you may also need to regulate access to any file-sharing functionality that the platform offers in order to prevent the video conference becoming a vector for spreading malware or offensive material.

Fake news and disinformation

Just like with the elections that count, the coronavirus issue has brought about its fair share of fake news and disinformation.

Here, I would recommend that you use trusted news sources like the respected public-service broadcasters for information about this plague. As well, I would recommend that you visit respected health-information sites including those offered “from the horse’s mouth” by local, regional or national government agencies for the latest information.

As well, trust your “gut reaction” when it comes to material that is posted online about the coronavirus plague, including the availability of necessary food or medical supplies. Here, he careful of content that is “out of reality” or plays on your emotions. The same attitude should also apply when it comes to buying essential supplies online and you are concerned about the availability and price of these supplies.

Conclusion

As we spend more time indoors and online thanks to the coronavirus, we need to keep our computing equipment including our tablets and smartphones running securely to protect our data and our privacy.

Reverse image searching–a very useful tool for verifying the authenticity of content

simonmackay 27/02/2020 Computing Tips, Current and Future Trends, Data security, Fake News, Disinformation and Propaganda, Mobile Computing, Social issues involving home computing No Comments

Tineye – one of the most popular and useful reverse image search tools

Article

How To Do A Reverse Image Search From Your Phone | PCMag

My Comments and further information

Increasingly, most of us who regularly interact with the Internet will be encouraged to perform reverse-image searches.

This is where you use an image you supply or reference as a search term for the same or similar images on other Internet resources. It can also be about identifying a person or other object that is in the image.

Increasingly this is being used by people who engage in online dating to verify the authenticity of the person whom they “hit” on in an online-dating or social-media platform. It is due to romance scams where “catfishing” (pretending to be someone else in order to attract people of a particular kind) is part of the game. Here, part of the modus operandi is for the perpetrator to steal pictures of other people that match a particular look from photo-sharing or social-media sites and use these images in their profile.

It also is being used as a way to verify the authenticity of a product being offered for sale through an online second-hand-goods marketplace like eBay, Craigslist or Gumtree. It also extends to short-term house rentals including AirBnB where the potential tenant wants to verify the authenticity of the premises that is available to let.

As well, reverse image searching is being considered more relevant when it comes to checking the veracity of a news item that is posted online. This is very important in the era of fake news and disinformation where online images including doctored images are being used to corroborate questionable news articles.

How do you do a reverse image search?

At the moment, there are a few reverse-image-search engines that are available to use by the ordinary computer user. These include Tineye, Google Image Search, Bing Visual Search, Yandex’s image search function and Social Catfish’s reverse-image-search function.

Dell Inspiron 14 5000 2-in-1 at Rydges Melbourne (Locanda)

A regular computer like this Dell Inspiron 14 5000 2-in-1 makes it easier to do a reverse image search thanks to established operating system and browser code and its user interface.

The process of using these services involves you uploading the image to the service including using “copy-and-paste” techniques or passing the image’s URL to an address box in the search engine’s user interface. The latter method implies a “search-by-reference” method with the reverse-image-search site loading the image associated with that link into itself as its search term.

Using a regular desktop or laptop computer that runs the common desktop operating systems makes this job easier. This is because the browsers offered on these platforms implement tabs or allow multiple sessions so you can run the site in question in one tab or window and one or two reverse-image-search engines in other tabs or windows.

These operating systems also maintain well-developed file systems and copy-paste transfer algorithms that facilitate the transfer of URLs or image data to these reverse-image-search engines. That will also apply if you are dealing with a native app for that online service such as the client app offered by Facebook or LinkedIn for Windows. As well, Chrome and Firefox provide drag-and-drop support so you can drag the image from that Tinder or Facebook profile in one browser session to Tineye running in the other browser session.

But mobile users may find this process very daunting. Typically it requires the site to be opened and logged in to in Chrome or Safari then opened as a desktop version which is the equivalent of viewing it on a regular computer. For Chrome, you have to tap on the three-dot menu and select “Request Desktop Site”. For Safari, you have to tap the upward-facing arrow to show the “desktop view” option and select that option.

Then you open the image in a new tab and copy the image’s URL from the address bar. That is before you visit Google Image Search or Tineye to paste the URL in that app’s interface.

Google has built in to recent mobile versions of Chrome a shortcut to their reverse-image-search function. Here, you “dwell” on the image with your finger to expose a pop-up menu which has the “Search Google For This Image” option. The Bing app has the ability for you to upload images or screenshots for searching.

Share option in Google Chrome on Android

If you use an app like the Facebook, Instagram or Tinder mobile clients, you may have to take a screenshot of the image you want to search on. Recent iOS and Android versions also provide the ability to edit a screenshot before you save it thus cutting out the unnecessary user-interface stuff from what you want to submit. Then you open up Tineye or Google Image Search in your browser and upload the image to the reverse-image-search engine.

How can reverse image searching on the mobile platforms be improved

What can be done to facilitate reverse image searching on the mobile platforms is for reverse-image-search engines to create lightweight apps for each mobile platform. This app would make use of the mobile platform’s “Share” function for you to upload the image or its URL to the reverse-image-search engine as a search term. Then the app would show you the results of your search through a native interface or a view of the appropriate Web interface.

A reverse-image-search tool like Tineye could be a share-to destination for mobile platforms like iOS or Android

Why have this app work as a “share to” destination? This is because most mobile-platform apps and Web browsers make use of the “share to” function as a way to take a local or online resource further. It doesn’t matter whether it is to send to someone else via a messaging platform including email; obtain a printout or, in some cases, stream it on the big screen via AirPlay or Chromecast.

The lightweight mobile app that works with a reverse-image-search engine answers the reality that most of us use smartphones or mobile-platform tablets for personal online activity. This is more so with social media, online dating and online news sources, thanks to the “personal” size of these devices.

Conclusion

What is becoming real is reverse image searching, whether of particular images or Webpages, is being seen as important for our security and privacy and for our society’s stability.

NewsGuard to indicate online news sources’ trustworthiness

simonmackay 24/05/2019 Consumer Protection, Current and Future Trends, Fake News, Disinformation and Propaganda, Government-Citizen Online Activity, Network Lifestyle And Activities, Social issues involving home computing No Comments

Articles

Untrustworthy news sites could be flagged automatically in UK | The Guardian

From the horse’s mouth

NewsGuard

Home Page

My Comments

Google News – one of the way we are reading our news nowadays

Since 2016 with the Brexit referendum and the US Presidential Election that caused outcomes that were “off the beaten track”, a strong conversation has risen up about the quality of news sources, especially online sources.

This is because most of us are gaining our news through online resources like online-news aggregators like Google News, search engines like Google or Bing, or social networks like Facebook or Twitter. It is while traditional media like the newspapers, radio or TV are being seen by younger generations as irrelevant which is leading to these outlets reducing the staff numbers in their newsrooms or even shutting down newsrooms completely.

What has been found is that this reliance on online news and information has had us become more susceptible to fake news, disinformation and propaganda which has been found to distort election outcomes and draw in populist political outcomes.

Increasingly we are seeing the rise of fact-checking groups that are operated by newsrooms and universities who verify the kind of information that is being run as news. We are also seeing the electoral authorities like the Australian Electoral Commission engage in public-education campaigns regarding what we pass around on social media. This is while the Silicon-Valley platforms are taking steps to deal with fake news and propaganda by maintaining robust account management and system-security policies, sustaining strong end-user feedback loops, engaging with the abovementioned fact-check organisations and disallowing monetisation for sites and apps that spread misinformation.

Let’s not forget that libraries and the education sector are taking action to encourage media literacy amongst students and library patrons. With this site, I even wrote articles about being aware of fake news and misinformation during the run-up to the UK general election and the critical general elections in Australia i.e. the NSW and Victoria state elections and the Federal election which were running consecutively over six months.

Google News on Chrome with NewsGuard in place

NewsGuard highlighting the credibility of online news sources it knows about on Google News

But a group of journalists recently worked on an online resource to make it easy for end-users to verify the authenticity and trustworthiness of online news resources. NewsGuard, by which this resource is named, assesses the online news resources on factors like the frequency it runs with false content; responsible gathering and presentation of information; distinguishing between news and opinion / commentary; use of deceptive headlines and proper error handling. Even factors that affect transparency like ownership and financing of the resource including ideological or political leanings of those in effective control; who has effective control and any possible conflicts of interest; distinction between editorial and advertising / paid content; and the names of the content creators and their contact or biographical information.

NewsGuard in action on Google Chrome - detail with the Guardian

The NewsGuard “pilot light” on Chrome’s address bar indicating the trustworthiness of a news site

End-users can use a plug-in or extension for the popular desktop browsers which will insert a “shield” behind a Weblink to a news resource indicating whether it is credible or not, including whether you are simply dealing with a platform or general-info site or a satire page. They can click on the shield icon to see more about the resource and this resource is even described in an analogous form to a nutrition label on packaged foodstuffs.

For the Google Chrome extension, there is also the shield which appears on the address bar and changes colour according to how the Web resource you are reading has been assessed by NewsGuard. It is effectively like a “pilot light” on a piece of equipment that indicates the equipment’s status such as when a sandwich toaster is on or has heated up fully.

NewsGuard basic details screen about the news site you are viewing

Basic details being shown about the trrustworthiness of online news site if you click on NewsGuard “pilot light”

It is also part of the package for the iOS and Android versions of Microsoft Edge but it will take time for other mobile browsers to provide this as an option.

NewsGuard is a free service with it gaining a significant amount of funding from the Microsoft’s Defending Democracy program. This is a program that is about protecting democratic values like honest and fair elections.

It is also being pitched towards the online advertising industry as a tool to achieve a brand-safe environment for brands and advertisers who don’t want anything to do with fake news and disinformation. This will be positioned as a licensable data source and application-programming interface for this user group to benefit from. Libraries, educational facilities, students and parents are also being encouraged to benefit from the NewsGuard browser add-ons as part of their media-literacy program and curriculum resources.

Detailed "Nutrition Label" report from NewsGuard about The Guardian

Click further to see a detailed “nutrition label” report about the quality and trustworthiness of that online news resource

But I see it also of benefit towards small newsrooms like music radio stations who want to maintain some credibility in their national or international news coverage. Here, they can make sure that they use news from trusted media resources for their news output like the “top-of-the-hour” newscast. Students, researchers, bloggers and similar users may find this of use to make sure that any media coverage that they cite are from trustworthy sources.

The UK government are even considering this tool as a “must-have” for Internet service providers to provide so that British citizens are easily warned about fake news and propaganda. It is in the same approach to how users there can have their ISPs provide a family-friendly “clean feed” free of pornography or hate speech.

It is now being rolled out around the rest of Europe with France and Italy already on board with this service for their mastheads. Germany is yet to come on board but it could be a feasible way to have other countries speaking the same language climbing on board very quickly such as having Germany, Austria and Switzerland come on board very quickly once German presence is established.

As NewsGuard rolls out around the world, it could effectively become one of the main “go-to” points to perform due-diligence research on that news outlet or its content. It will also become very relevant as our news and information is delivered through podcasts and Internet-delivered radio and TV broadcasts or we use Internet-connected devices to receive our news and information.

Australian Electoral Commission weighs in on online misinformation

simonmackay 17/04/2019 Current and Future Trends, Current events, Data security, Fake News, Disinformation and Propaganda, Government-Citizen Online Activity, Social issues involving home computing No Comments

Article

Are you sure you are casting your vote or able to cast your vote without undue influence?

Australian Electoral Commission boots online blitz to counter fake news | ITNews

Previous coverage

Being cautious about fake news and misinformation in Australia

From the horse’s mouth

Australian Electoral Commission

Awareness Page

Press Release

My Comments

I regularly cover the issue of fake news and misinformation especially when this happens around election cycles. This is because it can be used as a way to effectively distort what makes up a democratically-elected government.

When the Victorian state government went to the polls last year, I ran an article about the issue of fake news and how we can defend ourselves against it during election time. This was because of Australia hosting a run of elections that are ripe for a concerted fake-news campaign – state elections for the two most-populous states in the country and a federal election.

It is being seen as of importance due to fact that the IT systems maintained by the Australian Parliament House and the main Australian political parties fell victim to a cyber attack close to February 2019 with this hack being attributed to a nation-state. This can lead to the discovered information being weaponised against the candidates or their political parties similar to the email attack against the Democrat party in the USA during early 2016 which skewed the US election towards Donald Trump and America towards a highly-divided nation.

The issue of fake news, misinformation and propaganda has been on our lips over the last few years due to us switching away from traditional news-media sources to social media and online search and news-aggregation sites. Similarly, the size of well-respected newsrooms is becoming smaller due to reduced circulation and ratings for newspapers and TV/radio stations driven by our use of online resources. This leads to poorer-quality news reporting that is a similar standard to entertainment-focused media like music radio.

A simplified low-cost no-questions-asked path has been facilitated by personal computing and the Internet to create and present material, some of which can be questionable. It is now augmented by the ability to create deepfake image and audio-visual content that uses still images, audio or video clips to represent a very convincing falsehood thanks to artificial-intelligence. Then this content can be easily promoted through popular social-media platforms or paid positioning in search engines.

Such content takes advantage of the border-free nature of the Internet to allow for an actor in one jurisdiction to target others in another jurisdiction without oversight of the various election-oversight or other authorities in either jurisdiction.

I mentioned what Silicon Valley’s online platforms are doing in relation to this problem such as restricting access to online advertising networks; interlinking with fact-check organisations to identify fake news; maintaining a strong feedback loop with end-users; and operating robust user-account-management and system-security policies, procedures and protocols. Extant newsrooms are even offering fact-check services to end-users, online services and election-oversight authorities to build up a defence against misinformation.

But the Australian Electoral Commission is taking action through a public-education campaign regarding fake news and misinformation during the Federal election. They outlined that their legal remit doesn’t cover the truthfulness of news content but it outlines whether the information comes from a reliable or recognised source, how current it is and whether it could be a scam. Of course there is the issue of cross-border jurisdictional issues especially where material comes in from overseas sources.

They outlined that their remit covers the “authorisation” or provenance of the electoral communications that appear through advertising platforms. As well, they underscore the role of other Australian government agencies like the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission who oversee advertising issues and the Australian Communications And Media Authority who oversee broadcast media. They also have provided links to the feedback and terms-and-conditions pages of the main online services in relationship to this issue.

These Federal agencies are also working on the issue of electoral integrity in the context of advertising and other communication to the voters by candidates, political parties or other entities; along with the “elephant in the room” that is foreign interference; and security of these polls including cyber-security.

But what I have outlined in the previous coverage is to look for information that qualifies the kind of story being published especially if you use a search engine or aggregated news view; to trust your “gut reaction” to the information being shared especially if it is out-of-touch with reality or is sensationalist or lurid; checking the facts against established media that you trust or other trusted resources; or even checking for facts “from the horse’s mouth” such as official press releases.

Inspecting the URL in your Web browser’s address bar before the first “/” to see if there is more that what is expected for a news source’s Web site can also pay dividends. But this can be a difficult task if you are using your smartphone or a similarly-difficult user interface.

I also even encourage making more use of established trusted news sources including their online presence as a primary news source during these critical times. Even the simple act of picking up and reading that newspaper or turning on the radio or telly can be a step towards authoritative news sources.

As well, I also encourage the use of the reporting functionality or feedback loop offered by social media platforms, search engines or other online services to draw attention to contravening content This was an action I took as a publisher regarding an ad that appeared on this site which had the kind of sensationalist headline that is associated with fake news.

The issue of online misinformation especially during general elections is still a valid concern. This is more so where the online space is not subject to the kinds of regulation associated with traditional media in one’s home country and it becomes easy for foreign operators to launch campaigns to target other countries. What needs to happen is a strong information-sharing protocol in order to place public and private stakeholders on alert about potential election manipulation.

WhatsApp now highlights messaging services as a fake-news vector

simonmackay 03/04/2019 Current and Future Trends, Fake News, Disinformation and Propaganda, Network Lifestyle And Activities, Social issues involving home computing, Social Web No Comments

Articles

WhatsApp debuts fact-checking service to counter fake news in India | Engadget

India: WhatsApp launches fact-check service to fight fake news | Al Jazeera

From the horse’s mouth

Tips to help prevent the spread of rumors and fake news {User Advice)

Video – Click or tap to play

My Comments

As old as the World-Wide-Web has been, email has been used as a way to share online news amongst people in your social circle.

Typically this has shown up in the form of jokes, articles and the like appearing in your email inbox from friends, colleagues or relatives, sometimes with these articles forwarded on from someone else. It also has been simplified through the ability to add multiple contacts from your contact list to the “To”, “Cc” or “Bcc” fields in the email form or create contact lists or “virtual contacts” from multiple contacts.

The various instant-messaging platforms have also become a vector to share links to articles hosted somewhere on the Internet in the same manner as email, as has the carrier-based SMS and MMS texting platforms when used with a smartphone.

But the concern raised about the distribution of misinformation and fake news has been focused on the popular social media and image / video sharing platforms. This is while fake news and misinformation creep in to your Inbox or instant-messaging client thanks to one or more of your friends who like passing on this kind of information.

WhatsApp, a secure instant-messaging platform owned by Facebook, is starting to tackle this issue head-on with its Indian userbase as that country enters its election cycle for the main general elections. They are picking up on the issue of fake news and misinformation thanks to the Facebook Group being brought in to the public limelight due to this issue. As well, Facebook have been recently clamping down on inauthentic behaviour that was targeting India and Pakistan.

WhatsApp now highlighting fake news problem in India, especially as this platform is seen as a popular instant-messenger within that country. They are working with a local fact-checking startup called Proto to create the Checkpoint Tipline to allow users to have links that are sent to them verified. It is driven on the base of a “virtual contact” that the WhatsApp users forward questionable links or imagery to.

But due to the nature of its end-to-end encryption and the fact that service is purely a messaging service, there isn’t the ability to verify or highlight questionable content. But they also have placed limits on the number of users one can broadcast a message to in order to tame the spread of rumours.

It is also being used as a tool to identify the level of fake news and misinformation taking place on the messenger platform and to see how much of a vector these platforms are.

Personally, I would like to see the various fact-checking agencies have an email mailbox where you can forward emails with questionable links and imagery to so they can verify that rumour mail doing the rounds. It could operate in a similar vein to how the banks, tax offices and the like have set up mailboxes for people to forward phishing email to so these organisations can be aware of the phishing problem they are facing.

The only problem with this kind of service is that people who are astute and savvy are more likely to use it. This may not affect those of us who just end up passing on whatever comes our way.

Being cautious about fake news and misinformation in Australia

simonmackay 07/11/2018 Current and Future Trends, Current events, Fake News, Disinformation and Propaganda, Government-Citizen Online Activity, Network Lifestyle And Activities, Online News Services, Social issues involving home computing, Social Web No Comments

Previous Coverage

Are you sure you are casting your vote or able to cast your vote without undue influence?

Being aware of fake news in the UK

Fact-checking now part of the online media-aggregation function

Useful Australian-based resources

ABC Fact Check – ran in conjunction with RMIT University

Political Parties

Australian Labor Party (VIC, NSW)

Liberal Party – work as a coalition with National Party (VIC, NSW)

National Party – work as a coalition with Liberal Party (VIC, NSW)

Australian Greens – state branches link from main page

One Nation (Pauline Hanson)

Katter’s Australia Party

Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party

Australian Conservatives

Liberal Democratic Party

United Australia Party

My Comments

Over the next six months, Australia will see some very critical general elections come to pass both on a federal level and in the two most-highly-populated states that host most of that country’s economic and political activity. On October 30 2018, the election writs were recently served in the state of Victoria for its general election to take place on November 24 2018. Then, on the 23 March 2019, New South Wales will expect to go to the polls for its general election. Then the whole country will expect to go to the polls for the federal general election by 18 May 2019.

As these election cycles take place over a relatively short space of time and affecting , there is a high risk that Australians could fall victim to misinformation campaigns. This can subsequently lead to state and federal ballots being cast that steer the country against the grain like what happened in 2016 with the USA voting in Donald Trump as their President and the UK voting to leave the European Union.

Look for tags within Google News that describe the context of the story

The issue of fake news and misinformation is being seen as increasingly relevant as we switch away from traditional media towards social media and our smartphones, tablets and computers for our daily news consumption. This is thanks to the use of online search and news-aggregation services like Google News; or social media like Facebook or Twitter which can be seen by most of us as an “at-a-glance” view of the news.

As well, a significant number of well-known newsrooms are becoming smaller due to the reduced circulation and ratings for their newspaper or radio / TV broadcast thanks to the use of online resources for our news. It can subsequently lead to poor-quality news reporting and presentation with a calibre equivalent to the hourly news bulletin offered by a music-focused radio station. It also leads to various mastheads plagiarising content from other newsrooms that place more value on their reporting.

The availability of low-cost or free no-questions-asked Web and video hosting along with easy-to-use Web-authoring, desktop-publishing and desktop-video platforms make it feasible for most people to create a Web site or online video channel. It has led to an increased number of Websites and video channels that yield propaganda and information that is dressed up as news but with questionable accuracy.

Another factor that has recently been raised in the context of fake news, misinformation and propaganda is the creation and use of deepfake image and audio-visual content. This is where still images, audio or video clips that are in the digital domain are altered to show a falsehood using artificial-intelligence technology in order to convince viewers that they are dealing with original audio-visual resource. The audio content can be made to mimic an actual speaker’s voice and intonation as part of creating a deepfake soundbite or video clip.

It then becomes easy to place fake news, propaganda and misinformation onto easily-accessible Web hosts including YouTube in the case of videos. Then this content would be propagated around the Internet through the likes of Twitter, Facebook or online bulletin boards. It is more so if this content supports our beliefs and enhances the so-called “filter bubble” associated with our beliefs and media use.

There is also the fact that newsrooms without the resources to rigorously scrutinise incoming news could pick this kind of content up and publish or broadcast this content. This can also be magnified with media that engages in tabloid journalism that depends on sensationalism to get the readership or keep listeners and viewers from switching away.

The borderless nature of the Internet makes it easy to set up presence in one jurisdiction to target the citizens of another jurisdiction in a manner to avoid being caught by that jurisdiction’s election-oversight, broadcast-standards or advertising-standards authority. Along with that, a significant number of jurisdictions focus their political-advertising regulation towards the traditional media platforms even though we are making more use of online platforms.

Recently, the Australian Electoral Commission along with the Department of Home Affairs, Australian Federal Police and ASIO have taken action on an Electoral Integrity Assurance Task Force. It was in advance of recent federal byelections such as the Super Saturday byelections, where there was the risk of clandestine foreign interference taking place that could affect the integrity of those polls.

But the issue I am drawing attention to here is the use of social media or other online resources to run fake-news campaigns to sway the populace’s opinion for or against certain politicians. This is exacerbated by the use of under-resourced newsrooms that could get such material seen as credible in the public’s eyes.

But most of Silicon Valley’s online platforms are taking various steps to counter fake news, propaganda and disinformation using these following steps.

Firstly, they are turning off the money-supply tap by keeping their online advertising networks away from sites or apps that spread misinformation.

They also are engaging with various fact-check organisations to identify fake news that is doing the rounds and tuning their search and trending-articles algorithms to bury this kind of content.

Autocomplete list in Google Search Web user interface

Google users can report Autocomplete suggestions that they come across in their search-engine experience/

They are also maintaining a feedback loop with their end-users by allowing them to report fake-news entries in their home page or default view. This includes search results or autocomplete entries in Google’s search-engine user interface. This is facilitated through a “report this” option that is part of the service’s user interface or help pages.

Most of the social networks and online-advertising services are also implementing robust user-account-management and system-security protocols. This includes eliminating or suspending accounts that are used for misinformation. It also includes checking the authenticity of accounts running pages or advertising campaigns that are politically-targeted through methods like street-address verification.

In the case of political content, social networks and online-advertising networks are implementing easily-accessible archives of all political advertising or material that is being published including where the material is being targeted at.

ABC FactCheck – the ABC’s fact-checking resource that is part of their newsroom

Initially these efforts are taking place within the USA but Silicon Valley is rolling them out across the world at varying timeframes and with local adaptations.

Personally, I would still like to see a strong dialogue between the various Social Web, search, online-advertising and other online platforms; and the various government and non-government entities overseeing election and campaign integrity and allied issues. This can be about oversight and standards regarding political communications in the online space along with data security for each stakeholder.

What can you do?

Look for any information that qualifies the kind of story if you are viewing a collection of headlines like a search or news-aggregation site or app. Here you pay attention to tags or other metadata like “satire”, “fact checking” or “news” that describe the context of the story or other attributes.

Most search engines and news-aggregation Websites will show up this information in their desktop or mobile user interface and are being engineered to show a richer set of details. You may find that you have to do something extra like click a “more” icon or dwell on the heading to bring up this extra detail on some user interfaces.

Trust your gut reaction to that claim being shared around social media. You may realise that a claim associated with fake news may be out of touch with reality. Sensationalised or lurid headlines are a usual giveaway, along with missing information or copy that whips up immediate emotional responses from the reader.

Check the host Website or use a search engine like Google to see if the news sources you trust do cover that story. You may come across one or more tools that identify questionable news easily, typically in the form of a plug-in or extension that works with your browser if its functionality can be expanded with these kind of add-ons. It is something that is more established with browsers that run on regular Windows, Mac or Linux computers.

It is also a good idea to check for official press releases or similar material offered “from the horse’s mouth” by the candidates, political parties, government departments or similar organisations themselves. In some cases during elections, some of the candidates may run their own Web sites or they may run a Website that links from the political party’s Website. Here, you will find them on the Websites ran by these organisations and may indicate if you are dealing with a “beat-up” or exaggeration of the facts.

As you do your online research in to a topic, make sure that you are familiar with how the URLs are represented on your browser’s address bar for the various online resources that you visit. Here, be careful if a resource has more than is expected between the “.com”, “.gov.au” or similar domain-name ending and the first “/” leading to the actual online resource.

Sometimes the good ol’ radio can be the trusted news source

You may have to rely on getting your news from one or more trusted sources. This would include the online presence offered by these sources. Or it may be about switching on the radio or telly for the news or visiting your local newsagent to get the latest newspaper.

Examples of these are: the ABC (Radio National, Local radio, News Radio, the main TV channel and News 24 TV channel), SBS TV, or the Fairfax newspapers. Some of the music radio stations that are part of a family run by a talk-radio network like the ABC with their ABC Classic FM or Triple J services will have their hourly newscast with news from that network. But be careful when dealing with tabloid journalism or commercial talkback radio because you may be exposed to unnecessary exaggeration or distortion of facts.

As well, use the social-network platform’s or search engine’s reporting functionality to draw attention to fake news, propaganda or misinformation that is being shared or highlighted on that online service. In some cases like reporting inappropriate autocomplete predictions to Google, you may have to use the platform’s help options to hunt for the necessary resources.

Here, as we Australians faces a run of general-election cycles that can be very tantalising for clandestine foreign interference, we have to be on our guard regarding fake news, propaganda and misinformation that could affect the polls.

Facebook clamps down on voter-suppression misinformation

simonmackay 18/10/2018 Commentary, Current and Future Trends, Fake News, Disinformation and Propaganda, Social issues involving home computing, Social Web No Comments

Article

Are you sure you are casting your vote or able to cast your vote without undue influence?

Facebook Extends Ban On Election Fakery To Include Lies About Voting Requirements | Gizmodo

From the horse’s mouth

Facebook

Expanding Our Policies on Voter Suppression (Press Release)

My Comments

Over recent years, misinformation and fake news has been used as a tool to attack the electoral process in order to steer the vote towards candidates or political parties preferred by powerful interests. This has been demonstrated through the UK Brexit referendum and the the USA Presidential Election in 2016 with out-of-character results emanating from the elections. It has therefore made us more sensitive to the power of misinformation and its use in influencing an election cycle, with most of us looking towards established news outlets for our political news.

Another attack on the electoral process in a democracy is the use of misinformation or intimidation to discourage people from registering on the electoral rolls including updating their electoral-roll details or turning up to vote. This underhand tactic is typically to prevent certain communities from casting votes that would sway the vote away from an area-preferred candidate.

Even Australia, with its compulsory voting and universal suffrage laws, isn’t immune from this kind of activity as demonstrated in the recent federal byelection for the Batman (now Cooper) electorate. Here, close to the election day, there was a robocall campaign targeted at older people north of the electorate who were likely to vote in an Australian Labour Party candidate rather than the area-preferred Greens candidate.

But this is a very common trick performed in the USA against minority, student or other voters to prevent them casting votes towards liberal candidates. This manifests in accusations about non-citizens casting votes or the same people casting votes in multiple electorates.

Facebook have taken further action against voter-suppression misinformation by including it in their remit against fake news and misinformation. This action has been taken as part of Silicon Valley’s efforts to work against fake news during the US midterm Congressional elections.

At the moment, this effort applies to information regarding exaggerated identification or procedural requirements concerning enrolment on the electoral rolls or casting your vote. It doesn’t yet apply to reports about conditions at the polling booths like opening hours, overcrowding or violence. Nor does this effort approach the distribution of other misinformation or propaganda to discourage enrolment and voting.

US-based Facebook end-users can use the reporting workflow to report voter-suppression posts to Facebook. This is through the use of an “Incorrect Voting Info” option that you select when reporting posted content to Facebook. Here, it will allow this kind of information to be verified by fact-checkers that are engaged by Facebook, with false content “buried” in the News Feed along with additional relevant content being supplied with the article when people discover it.

This is alongside a constant Facebook effort to detect and remove fake accounts existing on the Facebook platform along with increased political-content transparency across its advertising platforms.

As I have always said, the issue regarding misleading information that influences the election cycle can’t just be handled by social-media and advertising platforms themselves. These platforms need to work alongside the government-run electoral-oversight authorities and similar organisations that work on an international level to exchange the necessary intelligence to effectively identify and take action against electoral fraud and corruption.

YouTube to share fact-checking resources when showing conspiracy videos

simonmackay 16/03/2018 Current and Future Trends, Fake News, Disinformation and Propaganda, Social issues involving home computing No Comments

Articles

YouTube will use Wikipedia to fact-check internet hoaxes | FastCompany

YouTube plans ‘information cues’ to combat hoaxes | Engadget

YouTube will add Wikipedia snippets to conspiracy videos | CNet

My Comments

YouTube – now also being used to distribute conspiracy theory material

Ever since the mid-1990s when the Internet became common, conspiracy theorists used various Internet resources to push their weird and questionable “facts” upon the public. One of the methods being used of late is to “knock together” videos and run these as a “channel” on the common video sharing platform that is YouTube.

But Google who owns YouTube now announced at the SXSW “geek-fest” in Austin, Texas that they will be providing visual cues on the YouTube interface to highlight fact-checking resources like Wikipedia, everyone’s favourite “argument-settling” online encyclopaedia. These will appear when known conspiracy-theory videos or channels are playing and most likely will accompany the Web-based “regular-computer” experience or the mobile experience.

Wikipedia no being seen as a tool for providing clear facts

It is part of an effort that Silicon Valley is undertaking to combat the spread of fake news and misinformation, something that has become stronger over the last few years due to Facebook and co being used as a vector for spreading this kind of information. Infact, Google’s “news-aggregation” services like Google News (news.google.com) implements tagging of resources that come up regarding a news event and they even call out “fact-check” resources as a way to help with debunking fake news.