The two countries crept toward nuclear war in 2016 after a bogus article was posted by a now-defunct "news service" website backed by Iran.
Flash forward to 2020 and experts predict even more frequent and sophisticated disinformation campaigns to undermine American institutions and public safety.
"We are at war — an information war," said Claire Wardle, executive chair of First Draft, a nonprofit that works with news organizations to combat disinformation. "We certainly should worry about people, including journalists, unwittingly sharing misinformation, but far more concerning are the systematic disinformation campaigns."
"This isn't a political issue," Wardle added. "Anyone who cares about their community, and wants people to make informed decisions should care about this. If we don't take information pollution seriously, it will have grave implications for our societies. Divisions will grow and people will turn inwards to small groups of people who just reinforce existing views."
In Some Cases, Even Lives Are At Risk
Police in Burlington City, New Jersey, recently had to dispel rumors on Facebook that an officer shot a 10-year-old boy."Obviously some people — not all, but some — are trying to fuel an anti-police rhetoric," said police Chief John Fine. "I've got officers out on a crime scene, trying to interview witnesses and dealing with family. And, we've got people on social media saying the victim was shot by a cop."
Since September, First Draft has led 300 journalists through training programs to prepare for 2020 disinformation campaigns, Wardle estimated. "Over the next three months, we will be training 500 more, with the hope that they will act as ambassadors in their own newsrooms and communities so that many hundreds of people will be trained on these techniques ahead of the election.
At the global and national levels, the Associated Press started the weekly series "NOT REAL NEWS," debunking a seemingly bottomless trough of false content worldwide.
With so much false content spreading so fast, we need your help. This newsroom is committing resources to battle disinformation at the local and state levels.
See something sketchy in a local Facebook group? Get an unusual letter or a robocall that raises eyebrows? Report the details to us. We'll investigate the claims and report on our findings.
Americans have chosen social media as their No. 1 source for news. It's content they don't trust.
An October 2019 survey of 1,032 adults conducted by the Associated Press and University of Chicago found that the greatest number of Americans — 54% — got their news from social media yet only 11% trusted the news they obtained there.
It Doesn't Take Much To Fool Many People On The Net
Two years ago, "Get Out" film director Jordan Peele created a fake video of President Obama giving an address to the nation. Peele was able to make the president do and say anything in footage that appeared an authentic address from the White House.Following a national emergency, someone could post a fake video of an address from any current president. And, it could start a panic, experts warn.
Free tools allow you to verify photos and video, and this might have prevented the latest smear campaign against 16-year-old Greta Thunberg.
Since gaining international attention as a climate change activist, Thunberg has been attacked by anti-environmentalist groups, which aim to cast her as mentally unstable or an outright fraud.
Recently, they used a misleading video that's still trending on social media with thousands of daily viewers. It started Dec. 7.
Sports shooter Emmy Slinge, of Stockholm, posted a 18-second video of herself at the gun range.
Four days later, multiple Twitter accounts re-posted that same footage, claiming it was Thunberg wielding a AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.
The content falsely identifying the shooter as Thunberg currently has more than 3 million views on Twitter.
"Every time we passively accept information without double-checking, or share a post, image or video before we've verified it, we're adding to the noise and confusion," added Wardle, a former research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. "The ecosystem is now so polluted, we have to take responsibility for independently checking what we see online."
Like the Thunberg smear, most fakes are copies or composites of old photos and video ripped from the net, experts say.
For example, you could take any one of the thousands of images from the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri and re-post that content online today, claiming it's a current photo of protests in any American city.
There Are Easy Steps You Can Take, However, To Spot A Fake
To verify an image, save the photo to your computer and upload it to Google Images. Google Images will then search the net for other photos with similar characteristics, allowing you to spot fake and re-purposed content.Free online tools allow you to check the "metadata" of images taken by cellphones and digital cameras. This data can show the date and time the photo was taken. Newer cameras often contain data showing the GPS coordinates where the images or video was shot.
In addition to Google Images, the free service TinEye tracks where images appear online. Verefix shows the metadata behind an image, and Amnesty USA offers a free YouTube DataViewer.
For those using the internet browser Google Chrome, you can also install RevEye Reverse Image Search, which analyzes images on the page in your Chrome browser.
Battling Bots
Doctored images aren't the only thing to be wary of on the 'net.Chances are you're friends with a robot.
On Dec. 20, Facebook's head of security policy announced it had removed accounts with "inauthentic coordinated behavior" that "automate posting at very high frequencies and direct traffic to off-platform sites."
With free tools, you can spot them. But, it won't be easy.
Facebook announced it had removed some 3.3 billion fake accounts — a figure three times the population of China.
The social media giant estimates 5% of its accounts aren't real people.
At Indiana University, researchers with the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research created "Botometer," a program to spot your social media friends and followers who are likely robots.
Some of the social media you encounter is generated by robots formed by companies and government agencies. For example, in December, Twitter said it removed nearly 6,000 fake accounts created by the Saudi government.
Unbeknownst to some users, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter control what you see with operating algorithms designed to show you the most popular content.
Even this popularity can be hacked, experts say.
In December, researchers working with NATO said they were easily able to purchase thousands of fraudulent comments, likes and views on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, increasing the chances that certain content would go viral.
Fake accounts were also used to propagate some of the most viral content of 2019 — like the bogus claim that President Trump's grandfather was a pimp, and his father was a member of the KKK.
The claims weren't new or true, but that didn't stop the bogus report from going viral.
Bots are typically newborns. Many have profile photos that are stolen from other locations on the net. (You can use the Google Image search to see if a bot's profile photo appears in other places on the net.)
Other free tools show when a website or account was first created, who registered the site and whether it's based in the United States.
Among them, the website WhoIs.com, provided by New York-based NTT Communications, lets you pull up details about any website domain address.
Finally, if you see something on the net which seems suspect, check with multiple news sources to see if it's been reported elsewhere.
©2020 Bucks County Courier Times, Levittown, Pa.. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
