The last column, “ Is past the key to future? ” (Jan. 30, 2017), was not about the fortunes of the news media industry. It was about the rupture caused by technological disruption in the value system that governs the information ecology. The story I am sharing now is hard to believe and I would have dismissed it as fantasy a year ago. It is about a bunch of teenagers who made money by generating traffic to websites through sensational fake news and, while doing so, played a role in upending an election far away.
In the political imagination of the developing world, undivided Yugoslavia represented the ideas of non-alignment and peaceful coexistence. One of its ancient cities, Vilazora, was renamed Titov Veles at the end of World War II to commemorate Josip Broz Tito. After the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the city became a part of Macedonia and it was renamed Veles in 1996. The lies and slander that have been produced by some of its youngsters in the recent past were amplified by social media platforms to alter the rules of public discourse. This inconspicuous town became the unlikely epicentre for fake news in the run-up to the U.S. presidential elections.
Craig Silverman and Lawrence Alexander of BuzzFeed spotted the role of this small city in the sudden spike in fake news (“How teens in the Balkans are duping Trump supporters with fake news”, Nov.4, 2016). They identified more than 100 pro-Donald Trump websites being run from Veles, which has become a sort of cottage industry. The youngsters from Veles had created websites with American-sounding domain names such as WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and USADailyPolitics.com to ensure traffic, and began generating fake news. For instance, a story on WorldPoliticus.com cited unnamed FBI sources and claimed that Hillary Clinton would be indicted in 2017 for crimes related to her email scandal. Trump supporters used social media to generate more than 140,000 shares, reactions, and comments for this baseless story. These numbers, in turn, became a source of revenue for those producing fake news through their Google AdSense account.
Creating fake news
This easy way to earn a substantial amount of money has, of course, a chilling, darker side to it. The Financial Times reported that a particularly inflammatory story was put out by one of the Veles websites on December 6, 2016. It claimed that Syrian terrorists had attacked New York, when no such attack took place (“Macedonia’s fake news industry sets sights on Europe”, Dec.16, 2016). When the FT correspondent asked Slavcho Chadiev, the town’s mayor, about the websites credited by some with helping to elect Mr. Trump as U.S. President, his opinion was not really different from that of the teenagers who were generating fake news without guilt or responsibility. He said: “No one can be sure, but it’s nice to think we could have changed the course of American history… Some think we should now be called ‘Trump’s Veles.’” The FT report documents the total absence of concern for truth. “One of my best stories said Trump had slapped a Muslim guy at a rally,” said one 17-year-old website owner to the FT . Another website owner said that he had “created more than 10,000 fake Facebook profiles to post links across the social network and used an automated tool to schedule millions of posts.” The FT report also cites one of the Facebook groups managed by him called “American Politics Today” that has more than 85,000 followers.
In its magazine section, the BBC profiled some of the youth from Veles who are actively involved in generating fake news (“The city getting rich from fake news”, Dec.5, 2016). One of them told the BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby: “The Americans loved our stories and we make money from them. Who cares if they are true or false?” He added: “Teenagers in our city don’t care how Americans vote. They are only satisfied that they make money and can buy expensive clothes and drinks!”
Role of technology companies
My concerns are not restricted to the activities of a bunch of teenagers from a distant country exploiting political cleavages to earn some money. They are also about the role of major technology companies, which have become global platforms and the carriers of traffic to news sites. The Washington Post ’s Caitlin Dewey has meticulously explained how Facebook repeatedly trended fake news (“Facebook has repeatedly trended fake news since firing its human editors”, Oct.12, 2016). She reported that Facebook, on August 26, 2016, laid off its editorial team and replaced them with engineers to vet news. Earlier, editors verified trending topics that were thrown up by the algorithm. Now, the engineers were asked to accept every trending topic linked to three or more recent articles irrespective of the source.
The automated streams push advertisements to fake news, which in turn undermines the financial sustainability of credible news organisations. That is just one part of the tragedy. The shifting of the crucial editorial gatekeeping responsibility from humans to algorithms undermines democracy. In an interview to The Guardian (“Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?” Nov.10, 2016), Claire Wardle, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, said: “Facebook stumbled into the news business without systems, editorial frameworks and editorial guidelines, and now it’s trying to course-correct.” But a closer reading of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statements reveals that he is still not prepared to concede that his company is not a mere platform but a major news organisation. His company’s “engagement” metrics are oblivious to that all-important line that divides news from misinformation. The answer to this disturbing reality may not lie in more technology or mathematics, but probably in a question: how did the social media, which was a hero during the Arab Spring in 2011, reduce itself to a villain now?
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
