If you’ve already had lunch today, here’s a fun read on the origin of the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime
For those who remember, weren't these sites actually the origin of the term "Fake News" back in 2016, before you-know-who quickly co-opted the term to use it against actual journalists? Before that, that's what these hastily-erected, phony sites were called.
The article mentions NewsGuard rated these outlets. It is important to note that the former CIA director, Michael Hayden, is involved. Maybe NewsGuard is legitimate, but having a CIA director on the board is very weird.
what is difficult, IMO, is the know whether or not you're seeing news that have been carefully curated for you, with some partisan motive - or if it's just some recommendation algorithm that's serving you stuff it thinks you will like.
I've seen some news sites that will seemingly push (news) content on the front-page that is aligned with the stuff you read most about. So if such a site only pushes, say, immigration crisis news - is it because you have a history of clicking on such articles, or is it some partisan news website that is pushing negative stories regarding immigration?
Can confirm:
We're spinning up a local newspaper site that covers the crime, decay and the hope filled people that are correcting the problems. The local incumbent paper refuses to cover any of it.
Of course, this is considered right-wing.
One of my bigger concerns with AI is its potential to spread misinformation, but does anyone know of folks using the models for detecting it? I'm not into the AI hype but I feel that's one area that has some potential benefit.
The article suggests that this is primarily a right-wing phenomenon and then throws a mention about a left-wing group without any indication of how much money is involved in each direction or whether the left-wing version is spewing the same kinds of lies the right-wing does all the time. It's this kind of both-sidesing of fascism that makea media in the US untrustworthy.
This problem isn't just websites and social media.
Not mentioned in the article but pink slime sites also send out printed newspapers that look like what traditional newspapers look like except a lot thinner.
It arrives in your mailbox and plenty of people have no idea it's a complete partisan advertisement disguised as news. Some assume it's just partisan news like most news is now.
They saturate mailboxes and are probably effective at reaching older voters who are much more likely to vote.