Fake News Archives - Page 3 of 3

NYT Has Seen Post-Election Surge in Subscriptions

November 30, 2016 Buck Banks

132,000

Number of paid subscriptions to online and print the New York Times has seen since the presidential election, the media giant said in an exclusive statement to CNBC.

Kids Can’t Tell Real from Fake News

November 23, 2016November 26, 2016 Buck Banks

82%

Of middle-schoolers failed to differentiate between news stories and “sponsored content,” according to a Stanford University study, reports Quartz. “According to the study, more than two-thirds of middle-school students failed to flag as biased a post written by a bank executive and arguing for young adults to pursue more financial-planning help. Likewise, some 40% of high-school students believed a photo and headline that suggested deformed daisies were evidence of toxic conditions near Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The photo included no source or location tag.”

Four Princeton Students Solved Facebook’s Fake-News Problem in a Weekend

November 18, 2016November 21, 2016 Buck Banks

The editors of Pensito Review take for granted that our sophisticated readers know the difference between real and fake news, fact and fiction, honest commentary and nativist propaganda. But maybe you know a less-sophisticated soul who has fallen prey to the fake news in their Facebook feed.

Tell him about fIB: Let’s Stop Living a Lie. It’s a Google Chrome extension that scrapes fake news from your Facebook feed that was created by four Princeton students engaged in a weekend hackathon. The extension works in two ways:

Content-consumption: Our chrome-extension goes through your facebook feed in real time as you browse it and verifies the authenticity of posts. These posts can be status updates, images or links. Our backend AI checks the facts within these posts and verifies them using image recognition, keyword extraction, and source verification and a twitter search to verify if a screenshot of a twitter update posted is authentic. The posts then are visually tagged on the top right corner in accordance with their trust score. If a post is found to be false, the AI tries to find the truth and shows it to you.

[…]

Did Chatbots Influence the Election?

November 18, 2016 Buck Banks

An automated army of pro-Donald Trump chatbots overwhelmed similar programs supporting Hillary Clinton five to one in the days leading up to the presidential election, according to a report published Thursday by researchers at Oxford University. … The chatbots — basic software programs with a bit of artificial intelligence and rudimentary communication skills — would send messages on Twitter based on a topic… Their purpose: to rant, confuse people on facts, or simply muddy discussions.

— New York Times

NY Times Sees Big Surge in Subscribers in the Age of Fake News

November 18, 2016 Buck Banks

41,000

The number of new paid subscriptions to the New York Times in the week since Election Day, the largest one-week subscription increase since the paper launched its digital pay model five years ago.

Fake News Writer Claims Responsibility for Trump Win

November 17, 2016 Buck Banks

Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it. … My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.

Tag: Fake News

NYT Has Seen Post-Election Surge in Subscriptions

132,000

Number of paid subscriptions to online and print the New York Times has seen since the presidential election, the media giant said in an exclusive statement to CNBC.

Kids Can’t Tell Real from Fake News

82%

Four Princeton Students Solved Facebook’s Fake-News Problem in a Weekend

Did Chatbots Influence the Election?

— New York Times

NY Times Sees Big Surge in Subscribers in the Age of Fake News

41,000

The number of new paid subscriptions to the New York Times in the week since Election Day, the largest one-week subscription increase since the paper launched its digital pay model five years ago.

Fake News Writer Claims Responsibility for Trump Win

— From an interview in the Washington Post with Paul Horner, a guy who makes $120K a year writing fake news that gets shared on social media.

Poetic Justice

Verbatim

“If you are committing fraud against the American people, all of us in public leadership should be trying to stop it and throw you in prison for enriching yourself off the American taxpayer.”

— Vice President JD Vance, on Fox News.

“Your generation has a great bullshit meter, because you’re fed bullshit online all day. And the Democratic Party brand right now is so bullshit.”

— Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D), quoted by The Atlantic, speaking to college students.

“We are done, Americans are done with endless conflict in the Middle East, spending trillions of dollars, American lives… this is insane and we have to call it for what it is.”

— Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), on CNN.

Numerati

+175,000

“The U.S. State Department announced on Monday that it has revoked more than 175,000 visas during President Donald Trump’s administration so far,” Fox News reports.

$4,600

11

30%

A new American Research Group poll finds just 30% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 67% say they disapprove.

61% to 35%

132,000

Number of paid subscriptions to online and print the New York Times has seen since the presidential election, the media giant said in an exclusive statement to CNBC.

82%

— New York Times

41,000

The number of new paid subscriptions to the New York Times in the week since Election Day, the largest one-week subscription increase since the paper launched its digital pay model five years ago.

8,711,000

— From an interview in the Washington Post with Paul Horner, a guy who makes $120K a year writing fake news that gets shared on social media.

Poetic Justice

Verbatim

“If you are committing fraud against the American people, all of us in public leadership should be trying to stop it and throw you in prison for enriching yourself off the American taxpayer.”

— Vice President JD Vance, on Fox News.

“Your generation has a great bullshit meter, because you’re fed bullshit online all day. And the Democratic Party brand right now is so bullshit.”

— Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D), quoted by The Atlantic, speaking to college students.

“We are done, Americans are done with endless conflict in the Middle East, spending trillions of dollars, American lives… this is insane and we have to call it for what it is.”

— Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), on CNN.

Numerati

+175,000

“The U.S. State Department announced on Monday that it has revoked more than 175,000 visas during President Donald Trump’s administration so far,” Fox News reports.

$4,600

11

30%

A new American Research Group poll finds just 30% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 67% say they disapprove.

61% to 35%