Fake news and mass disinformation in the European UnionWhoever controls the media controls the mind - Jim Morrison

www.robertomarchetto.com

Why mass disinformation

● Can manipulate referendums and elections● Is destabilising, weakens organisations from the inside, generates

confusion, normalises the public opinion about compromising facts● Cyberwar

○ Cheaper than traditional military actions

● Hard to track, hard to sanction● Promotes the interests of a minority of people without access to

mainstream media● Can easily target specific demographic and psychological profiles on

social networks

Main producers● Far right, far left parties

○ To win referendums or elections○ Normalisation of compromising facts

● Governments○ Promote wars or campaigns○ Change people’s opinion about a sensible question

● External countries willing to destabilise governments○ Divide et impera○ Avoid spread of society models, weakens military organisations○ Lift sanctions

● Billionaires and big corporates○ Willing to reduce business costs of human rights act, paid holidays, health care, etc○ Taking advantage of financial crisis

Why Europe and European Union?

● Internal and external entities and governments might question...○ Unresolved historical conflicts, nostalgia of the glorious past○ Workers rights, maternity leave, paid holidays, free healthcare, human rights act○ Successful democratic model○ Controlling organisations (Court of Justice, European Parliament, quality standards, etc.)○ NATO

Disinformation army● US elections 2016

○ Russia hired 1.000 people to spread anti-Hillary fake news in key US states (https://goo.gl/fnTq8I)

● France elections 2017○ Facebook cracks down on 30.000 fake accounts in France (https://goo.gl/OWVsFS)

○ Almost 1 in 4 links shared by French on social networks are related propaganda (pro left-right wings) showing traces of Russian influence (https://goo.gl/ZqX6nF)

● Swedish troll factory○ Trolls paid 110€ when they record a fake phone conversation and get enough likes○ 183 users posted 2.000 comments each in a sample of 500.000 comments

(https://goo.gl/YVVtQv)

● Russian troll factory○ People paid ~1400€/month for 20 posts and 200 comments every day (https://goo.gl/0dPDTr)

Robots and artificial intelligence

● It is estimated than 10-15% of Twitter accounts are robots (https://goo.gl/g0f1h6)

○ Some of them are good robots, for example weather forecasts

● Artificial intelligence and big data techniques can collect detailed psychological profiles (https://goo.gl/DTYnTY)

● Social networks make it easy to target those profiles

A Facebook Campaign can target well defined groups

How much disinformation is effective● Alternative, propagandist press can be

more or less visible and trusted● Disinformation can become effective

when○ Traditional press is contaminated by

propaganda○ Political opposition class makes big

mistakes■ Eg. US election 2016, Brexit

○ Traditional press spread disinformation itself

■ Eg. British press with Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Sun

● Younger generations can be more exposed to social networks propaganda

Non traditional outlets during French 2017 elections, source https://www.bakamosocial.com/frenchelection

Big players

Disinformation in Russia

● Control of the press and manifestations● Putin is a former KGB colonel● Very different cultural values than Western

democracies (https://goo.gl/7AqqVD)

○ Ideal of the strong man who leads the country rather than democracy

○ Good Russia and nazi, evil West○ LGBT intolerant (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,

Transexual)● After the collapse of Soviet Union Putin developed

new techniques, a relevant one is Hyper Normalisation (https://goo.gl/v8NE8K)

● Highly skilled hackers (wikileaks), extensive disinformation campaigns

Some facts

● Russia actively supported populist parties during elections and referendums pushing them to lift sanctions, leave NATO and the EU (https://goo.gl/ESCq3b)

Some effects

Is everything Russia’s fault?

● Ok.. we might have some Trump supporter here, that was for fun, sorry!● Not everything is Russia’s fault

○ For example Brexit and Trump were mostly due to political errors by the opposing parties and socio-political situations

○ Russia created and modernised some techniques, many of them have been used by Western countries as well

○ Press manipulation and mass disinformation is very old school○ Given the Russian reputation, countries and governments can use disinformation and

pretend that it was a Russian operation

British press

● Brexit: target low educated, less fortunate people who feel abandoned and frustrated by the current situation

● Create a common enemy and made up crysis

● Refuse “experts” and institutions● Use a mix of hate, fear, disinformation● Normalise hate and violence● Can produce an explosive mix

Some effects● During BBC Question

Time: ○ “I was voting Remain and at the

very last minute I changed my decision and I went to Leave.“

○ “The reason because of that is because I go to the supermarket and a banana is straight. “

○ “I’m just sick of the silly rules that come out of Europe.”

○ (https://goo.gl/zgs4A2)

More effects

● February 2017: Hate crimes rise by up to 100 per cent across England and Wales (https://goo.gl/oKGp65)

Some very bad effects

● Take a low educated man, teach him hate and a distorted version of religion and you will get a terrorist (“The poor’s man atomic bomb”, developed in Syria in ‘80s https://youtu.be/f9m2yReECak)

Disinformation techniques

Disinformation against EU

● Common narrative○ Globalisation○ Immigration○ Conspiracies○ Taking back national identity○ Support of populists and Russia○ Condemnation of banks and big corporates○ Condemnation of liberals○ Brexit, Frexit, Grexit, Italexit, Nexit etc etc○ Us (people) against them (elite)○ Bruxelles unelected dictatorship○ The will of the people○ Strong nationalism

Example of spreading strategy

● Information gathering, data theft● Create fake stories and memes

which follow a common narrative● Build spreading channels

(groups, fake accounts, blogs, press)

● Amplify the story with spreading channels, comments, shares

● Some minor outlets might quote the fake news

● In some cases major traditional outlets might pick up the story

Completely made up news

● Sometimes created even by viral agencies

Well presented inaccurate news

Opinion of experts

● Misleading titles, few people will read the whole content

Old news makeup and restyling

● Change the content of an old story to make it appear recent

● Create a title which does not match the content

● Play tetris with different quotes and add an image of a leader

Making it appear a reputable source

From Wikipedia (https://goo.gl/eksv4s):

“The Institute for Historical Review (IHR), founded in 1978, is an organization best known for publishing articles and books promoting Holocaust denial”

“IHR is widely regarded as antisemitic and as having links to neo-Nazi organizations.”

Art of photoshop

Identity theft and false flags

● USA 2016 elections○ Messages on Twitter tell Hillary’s supporters to vote via

text from home. Twitter reporte that this was not violating its Terms of Service (https://goo.gl/TzG6Zr)

● France 2017 elections○ Russian hackers began registering domain names such

as "onedrive-en-marche.fr" and "mail-en-marche.fr" in an attempt to trick members of Macron's campaign, download trojan horse applications (https://goo.gl/Pt8a4d)

Confusion

● April 2017, chemical weapons attack in Syria. Russia spread confusing and contradictory news followed by the more recurrent news “Syrian army had hit stockpiles of terrorists’ chemical weapons”

● In a second phase the conspiracy theory of a “false flag” operation (enemy pretending to be someone else) was spread by the following sources (https://goo.gl/M4GnZ1)

Information fog

There are so many contradictory news that people think

“We will never know what happened” and stop caring

(eg MH17 Ukraine plane crash)

Conspiracy theory

● Conspiracy theories are sometimes funny, and interesting enough some believe them...

Anyone is doing it

● When a compromising news comes up…

● ….well, deflect the attention by accusing somebody else of similar crimes!

Memes and slogans

● US elections: #killary, Clinton rapist, Hillary for prison

● Brexit: Turkey joining EU, Take back control

Strong images, often censored

More techniques

● Use of statistics○ Statistics can have different interpretations○ Just write a misleading title and some numbers, few people will read the whole article

● Brexit○ “We don’t need experts”. Any alert about the consequences is “project fear” (conspiracy)

● Leaks at the right time○ Few weeks before an important election Assange appears with hacked documents

■ Hillary emails scandal■ Fillon fake jobs scandal

● Newsletters○ The receiver thinks the email was sent to the wrong person however he / she reads the

content which is a compromising made up story (eg immigrants paid to do nothing)

Bad reputation? Anyone else is fake

● Russian government created a fact checker to prove that their fake news are not fake. Other outlets like Bloomberg spread fake news

● This will generate even more confusion

Danger of normalisation● Normalisation

○ A fact is not covered by the press enough or it is confused with other facts

○ Negative facts are so many and so unclear that people stop caring and just carry on

○ Trump■ Lawsuit against Trump University■ Uses Twitter for strategic

communications■ Sexist and racist affirmations and

behaviour■ 4 bankruptcies without paying

employees■ More at https://goo.gl/YI2bzV

● Exaggeration○ Use a single fact and repeat it again and

again making it appear a very bad thing○ Even mild facts become relevant to people

and shape strong opinions○ Hillary

■ Email scandal, she used a private server for confidential email and other email related stuff

■ “Killary” because of some scandals during her career (https://goo.gl/6nXjso)

Countries can behave and respond in different ways

● Czech Republic○ Frequently targeted by Russian propaganda

with websites and email campaign

● Hungary○ Government uses similar narrative to Russian

narrative, which makes difficult to understand where the news come from

○ People trust less traditional media and look for alternative media on social networks

● Slovakia○ Younger people prefer alternative media on

social networks

● Filand○ Low contamination of fake news and

disinformationSource: https://goo.gl/uY2FYc

Italian propaganda techniques

● Heavy use of Internet, social networks and proprietary platforms● Common themes

○ Immigration crisis, leaving € will be easy, improve image of Putin, globalisation (and treaties) linked to job losses, diffamation of opposing parties

● Proprietary blogs and websites for information● Proprietary, centralised platform for internal voting and elections● Use of common disinformation techniques

○ Old news makeup and restyling, misleading titles, statistics, opinion of experts○ Official looking like channels○ Conspiracies, create crysis

● Not very sophisticated by improving quickly○ Facebook and Google where shutting down their accounts○ Not many memes, few slogans

Monitoring dilemma

● When we monitor propaganda are we following distractions?○ A common idea is to spread confusion and distract people, while the real action it taken

elsewhere○ So what is the big picture?

● Forecasting the next moves of the propagandists and their plan is not always easy

Solutions?

Solution 1: Teach fact checking

Natural vaccine against fake news

● Exposing people to fake news and real version of the truth helps to develop an immune system (https://goo.gl/5rWky7)

● Fact checking can be taught in universities and schools

Fact check: Check the source

Suspicious sources

● Personal blogs like○ ...altervista.org○ ...blogspot.com○ etc

● Partisan sites like○ stopeuro.org

● On Twitter or FB stories without links to the source

Fact check: Learn to recognise authoritative press...

Fact check: ...and populist press

Fact check: Google for similar news

● An effective and quick check is a Google search to find similar results○ Even just the titles of other outlets can give a more accurate idea○ It might be an old news re-adapted

● Did he or she really said that? Once again just Google it and see if it is true

Fact check: Does it look like a Troll?

Fact check: How does it make you feel

● Propaganda is designed to make you feel strong emotions● The content is usually polarised towards a strong opinion with poor, not

objective argumentation

Fact check: Any reference?

● Does the text contain external references to external, trustworthy sources?● Or is just vague references?

Fact check: Who is the author?

● Anonymous, admin or without name does not look good● Sometimes names are fake, a profile search of the journalist on Linkedin

can help

Solution 2: Shut down account

Dilemma of free speech

● We love our democracy, free speech and different opinions● Is shutting down a profile against free speech?● Some countries already filter suspicious content, for example Ukraine bans

several Russian channels● Is mass disinformation and hate speech free speech?

○ For example web sites with pedophily and “how to make a bomb” tutorials are banned and persecuted in USA and EU (https://goo.gl/ZTHSLL)

Report button, does it work?● Twitter, Google and Facebook have some

disinformation policies● Usually posts are taken in consideration

when many people report them○ Social networks are very cautions to close

“wrong” accounts○ In addition “Angry people click”○ Action is taken when companies pull out ads or

governments push them to do so (https://goo.gl/VU1NY6)

● Technology to tackle propaganda exist but free speech and profitability dilemma

In 2014 Twitter introduces a new spam filter to reduce spam by 40% (but not fake new) https://goo.gl/hyjU2P

Solution 3: Counter propaganda

No more hate

If you fight hate with hate you risk to become the enemy you are trying to stop

Avoid conversations with Trolls and strongly opinionated people

● “Never argue with an idiot, they will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience” ~ George Carlin

● They will accuse you to be anti-democratic, racist, against “The will of the People”, etc etc

● Better to report to the admin of the group

● If you want to start a conversation (with a real user), be respectful, they have their reason to behave in the way they do

Create funny, entertaining content to make fun of haters

America First, Netherlands Secondhttps://youtu.be/ELD2AwFN9Nc

And Trump’s responsehttps://youtu.be/EWswcJyWpcc

Memes

Show history trying to repeat itself with a new name

Don't be silly, nationalism of '30s is over

● UK○ Fraudulent referendum○ Plans to convert EU human rights○ Hate crimes spike against EU nationals○ Attacks of press against judges○ May “ready to go on war” for Gibraltar

● Poland○ Attempt to restrict freedom of press○ Control of high court

Expose the spammers

● Trump Supporters Online Are Pretending To Be French To Manipulate France's Election

Expose the fake version

Attend manifestations

Show some history, great achievements are not achieved alone

Solution 4: Teach history

History repeats itself

Solution 5: Mind the (social) gap

People’s frustration can be canalised

Questions?

Resources

● euvsdisinfo.eu (EU organisation tracking East European propaganda)● www.stopfake.org (Fact checker in various languages)● www.bufale.net (Italian fact checker)● https://reporterslab.org/fact-checking (List of fact checkers by county)

My contacts

● www.robertomarchetto.com● www.linkedin.com/in/robertomarchetto