Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 8
Posts 1 - 8

Invasion of the troll armies: from Russian Trump supporters to Turkish state stooges

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 6.11.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | fake news, politics, threat
Summary | Thousands of trolls out there are pretending to be someone else. They spread fake news and write fake texts in exchange of some money. For instance, Russian people were paid by their government in order to pretend to be Trump's supporters. In China, the practice is common; the government pays people to manipulate social media. The article lists other examples such as Russia, Ukraine, Israel, the UK, North and South Korea, and Turkey.
Image Description | Image of military men (their faces has been replaced by thumbs up), image of someone using a laptop, two social media illustrations
Image Tags | computer/laptop, male(s), social media

Germany Tells Sites to Delete Hate or Pay Up

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 30.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | Germany has the strictest policies when it comes to illegalizing slanderous, threatening, and extremist language from public spaces. Germany has just passed a law that allows them to fine Facebook as much as 57 million dollars if they do not remove offensive content quickly enough from the platform. While some may say this is censorship , German lawmakers claim that respectful online encounters are a necessity for free speech to thrive. Facebook is now working on improving the flagging process for offensive material and are also using artificial intelligence to remove fake news.
Image Description | Blurry man looking at a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone

In Europe’s Election Season, Tech Vies to Fight Fake News

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 1.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, Facebook, fake news, Google, law, politics
Summary | In light of recent elections, many people are eager to combat misinformation online. Major tech companies like Facebook and Google are being pressured to purdue solutions to stop the spread of fake news on their platforms. Germany even demands fines from Facebook for not complying with federal laws targeted at keeping hate speech and fake news controled. Competitions with rewards of several thousand dollars are asking for programmers to come up with fact-checking software which can weed out false news.
Image Description | Image of a computer programmer working on solutions to flag fake news and a Reuters image of election posters from France.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Rumors on WhatsApp Ignite 2 Mob Attacks in India, Killing 7

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 25.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | fake news, law, threat, WhatsApp
Summary | In India, a piece of fake news has spread on WhatsApp. It said that a number of children were abducted in the region. Promptly, a mob has formed of over twenty people hunting down the alleged child abducters and murdering them. The police had however not recorded any cases of child abduction in the area.
Image Description | Image of people burying the dead after a mob attack.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

On Twitter, a Battle Among Political Bots

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 14.12.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, fake news, politics, Twitter
Summary | People on social media are often discussing/debating with bots when it comes to politics. A lot of bots are created to misinform the public (they are called protests bots or propaganda bots). During the 2016 US Presidential election, many tweets with the hashtag MAGA or CrookedHillary came from automated bots.
Image Description | Photograph of people at a rally for Trump, photograph of a street with many police cars, and screenshots of several tweets
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), Twitter

Germany threatens to fine social media companies €50m for hate speech and fake news

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 14.3.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, fake news, law, politics
Summary | Germany is threatening to sue Facebook should it not do something against abuse and fake news on its platform. Germany has very strong defamation laws so Facebook needs to regulate its content if they want to stay in Germany. A new mechanism to flag fake news has been developed.
Image Description | Reuters image of many Facebook logos under a magnifying glass and a portrait of Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, male(s)

Facebook reportedly testing new tool to combat fake news

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 6.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, fake news, threat
Summary | Facebook is apparently looking into ways to combat fake news spreading on their platform. They have had to face much criticism because of this. Users have started getting little survey questions after clicking on news media links posted on Facebook asking them to evaluate how trustworthy the article is. It is not known what Facebook will do with the results of this poll.
Image Description | Getty image of the Facebook logo on various screens and a tweet.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s), Twitter

2016: the year Facebook became the bad guy

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 12.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | 2016 has been a bad year for Facebook. Many scandals surrounded the company. It became clear that Facebook is now longer just an advertizing machine with access to almost 2 billion people world-wide but that it also curates what news media most of these people perceive - whether Facebook wants to accept this or not. They no longer just have to deal with sensoring nudity and human rights violations content but also fake news. While Zuckerberg denies that the fake news bubbles have influenced the presidential elections, his company at the same time makes tons of money selling exactly this persuasive power to advertisers.
Image Description | The Facebook reaction emojis and dislike (thumb-down) emojis, glasses in front of like buttons, and a man holding a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone

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