You Think You Know How Misinformation Spreads?

[mikegalbicka]

This very long and detailed article on Wired taught me a lot about how the online advertising juggernaut operates today. If you think there is any resemblance to how advertising was done 20 years ago you will be surprised. You will also be surprised to learn how it helps facilitate the spread of disinformation.

You Think You Know How Misinformation Spreads? Welcome to the Hellhole of Programatic Advertising​

The internet is a cesspool of misinformation, and the biggest blue-chip brands and their ad agencies are the ones funding it—by stuffing money into a Rube Goldberg machine no one really understands.

Disclosure: Longtime journalist Steven Brill is the founder or cofounder of a number of publications and companies, including NewsGuard, where he is the co-CEO and coeditor in chief. Among other services, NewsGuard offers advertisers brand-safety services aimed at countering the pitfalls of unvetted programmatic advertising. This story is excerpted from his new book, The Death of Truth.

(note: Wired allows only a limited number of article views per month as do many online news sites. Usually if you clear your cache those web visit counts start over. If you are blocked from viewing the article try that first if still interested.)

 

[omega man]

Doesn’t surprise me at all. One of my favorite sales pitches is “US Based Customer Service”. CS may be based in the US but they never mention where the CS representative you are trying to contact is actually located.

BTW- I don’t care where The CS representative is located as long as I can understand them and they can (allowed) to actually assist me.
OM

 

[pauls1150]

Quote: "You can't believe everything you read on the internet." - Abraham Lincoln

 

[akbeemer]

The world has gone to hell ever since they put the internet on computers.

 

[kbasa]

Humans are gullible and easily led. We are often bad at assessing information well if we agree with it. That's pretty universal, in my experience.

Combine this shortcoming as a species with a tendency to believe people we know more than some expert we don't and we have an environment where disinformation can flourish.

Mechanisms like Facebook, which can be fed misinformation by nefarious actors and then allow peer to peer sharing are damaging and destructive to democracy. Because we're bad at assessing information as a species, we'll start believing lies if we hear them often enough - especially if we don't have the personal rigor to question what we're told.

I feed ants boric acid when I see them in the house. They love it. It's sweet, so they line up and consume it all. They won't stop until they're nearly bursting with the poison. They then take it back to the colony and feed it to the rest of the ants and it kills them all.

That's the model for how disinformation works in this country. IMHO, tools like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms basically turn people into ants, collecting and feeding each other information that will kill our democracy.

I'll save my comments about logical fallacies for another time, but they're also a big part of how disinformation gets circulated and propagated.

 

[88bmwjeff]

After reading that, it seems like one big clusterfffffff--um I can't say that here.

 

[brownie0486]

The world has gone to hell ever since they put the internet on computers.

Without it, you'd not have been able to post that right?

 

[mikegalbicka]

After reading that, it seems like one big clusterfffffff--um I can't say that here.

The internet is a cesspool of misinformation (and also a huge library of very useful information on any subject at a very affordable price for most of us), and the biggest blue-chip brands (that all of us use and support so therefore help fund) and their ad agencies (which we put up with in the belief that is the price we pay to keep our costs down) are the ones funding it—by stuffing money into a Rube Goldberg machine no one really understands (now this is the part that really shocked me - but a lot of that is also part of the human condition as pointed out by kbasa above)

It is easy to believe there is some evil campaign that serves up disinformation for evil purposes (which is true but in itself is disinformation because it isn't the whole truth) but in fact legitimate attempts at advertising products is driving the scale of it beyond what the evil doers could have ever imagined using a process that no one understands because there isn't a proven better way (another part of the human condition).

And the wheel goes round and round.

 

[jandhumphreyme]

PT Barnum summed this up almost a century ago.

“And in what business is there not humbug? “There’s cheating in all trades but ours,” is the prompt reply from the boot-maker with his brown paper soles, the grocer with his floury sugar and chicoried coffee, the butcher with his mysterious sausages and queer veal, the dry goods man with his “damaged goods wet at the great fire” and his “selling at a ruinous loss,” the stock-broker with his brazen assurance that your company is bankrupt and your stock not worth a cent (if he wants to buy it,) the horse jockey with his black arts and spavined brutes, the milkman with his tin aquaria, the land agent with his nice new maps and beautiful descriptions of distant scenery, the newspaper man with his “immense circulation,” the publisher with his “Great American Novel,” the city auctioneer with his “Pictures by the Old Masters”—all and every one protest each his own innocence, and warn you against the deceits of the rest. My inexperienced friend, take it for granted that they all tell the truth—about each other! and then transact your business to the best of your ability on your own judgment.”
― P.T. Barnum, The Humbugs of the World: An Account of Humbugs, Delusions, Impositions, Quackeries, Deceits and Deceivers Generally, in All Ages

 

[Lendog]

This very long and detailed article on Wired taught me a lot about how the online advertising juggernaut operates today. If you think there is any resemblance to how advertising was done 20 years ago you will be surprised. You will also be surprised to learn how it helps facilitate the spread of disinformation.

You Think You Know How Misinformation Spreads? Welcome to the Hellhole of Programatic Advertising​

The internet is a cesspool of misinformation, and the biggest blue-chip brands and their ad agencies are the ones funding it—by stuffing money into a Rube Goldberg machine no one really understands.

Disclosure: Longtime journalist Steven Brill is the founder or cofounder of a number of publications and companies, including NewsGuard, where he is the co-CEO and coeditor in chief. Among other services, NewsGuard offers advertisers brand-safety services aimed at countering the pitfalls of unvetted programmatic advertising. This story is excerpted from his new book, The Death of Truth.

(note: Wired allows only a limited number of article views per month as do many online news sites. Usually if you clear your cache those web visit counts start over. If you are blocked from viewing the article try that first if still interested.)

It’s similar to Gracie Allen & George Burns from vaudeville, it was called comedy, …..