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Those Cute Cats Online? They Help Spread Misinformation (yahoo.com) 171

Posted by EditorDavid from the grumpy-about-cats dept.
"Videos and GIFs of cute animals — usually cats — have gone viral online for almost as long as the internet has been around..." writes the New York Times.

"Now, it is becoming increasingly clear how widely the old-school internet trick is being used by people and organizations peddling false information online, misinformation researchers say." The posts with the animals do not directly spread false information. But they can draw a huge audience that can be redirected to a publication or site spreading false information about election fraud, unproven coronavirus cures and other baseless conspiracy theories entirely unrelated to the videos. Sometimes, following a feed of cute animals on Facebook unknowingly signs users up as subscribers to misleading posts from the same publisher. Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation, said this kind of "engagement bait" helped misinformation actors generate clicks on their pages, which can make them more prominent in users' feeds in the future. That prominence can drive a broader audience to content with inaccurate or misleading information, she said.

"The strategy works because the platforms continue to reward engagement over everything else," Ms. Ryan said, "even when that engagement comes from" publications that also publish false or misleading content.
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Those Cute Cats Online? They Help Spread Misinformation More

Those Cute Cats Online? They Help Spread Misinformation

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  • MISINFO EVARWHERRRRE (Score:4, Insightful)

    by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @07:42PM (#62047893)
    Calm down kids. This is the Internet, stop taking it so seriously.

    • Re: MISINFO EVARWHERRRRE (Score:4, Insightful)

      by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @08:34PM (#62048001)
      It is funny how every misinformation story mentioned election fraud and the COVID vaccine. None of them mention the Rittenhouse circumstances, GPS/Fusion dossier, the pee tapes from Russia, concealing and blocking the Hunter Biden laptop story, etc etc. why does only one parties lies count every time? Both are guilty of it.
      • Because the winners (survivors?) always write history.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Places like modern Baltic nations suggest that survivors often beat winners in writing of history.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by lilTimmy ( 6807660 )
        Well, to be fair, COVID is basically the plague and the whole election fraud/"the big lie" craziness that the Right is spreading almost lead to the overthrowing of democracy in one of the most powerful nations in the world. Kyle Rittenhouse is basically a speck in comparison.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

          almost lead to the overthrowing of democracy in one of the most powerful nations in the world.

          No. That never happened. There was absolutely no time during the Jan 6th riot that the dude in the buffalo helmet was going to become the next leader of America.

          Saying that the Jan 6th riot almost overthrew democracy in America is a good example of a "big lie" from the left.

          • Re: MISINFO EVARWHERRRRE (Score:4, Informative)

            by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday December 05, 2021 @01:40AM (#62048513)

            It lead to a thankfully incompetent _attempt_. If you remember, they did not seek to place the buffalo-headed man in charge. They sought to overturn the election results in favor of their candidate, the orange-muskrat helmeted man who was already President.

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

              They sought to overturn the election results in favor of their candidate

              There was absolutely no mechanism for them to do that. Do you really think that if they had broken down the last door and grabbed Mike Pence, the American people would have said "Well, golly, Trump is going to be our president for another four years"?

              There was precisely zero percent chance of that happening.

              It was just a right-wing mob that got out of control. It was no different than the left-wing mobs that got out of control in Minneapolis, Seattle, and Kenosha.

              • Re: MISINFO EVARWHERRRRE (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday December 05, 2021 @04:45AM (#62048685)

                > There was absolutely no mechanism for them to do that

                There was no legal means. Violently invading the Senate and forcing a recount under armed guard is startlingly similar to what Russia, under Putin's buidance, did to the Ukraine in 2014. The Wikipedia article seems well documented and quite alarming: a violent invasion of their legislative bodies led to secluded vote under armed guard, with no head count and apparently without even enough members to provide a quorum, to turn a large region of the Ukraine over to Russian control

                        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                Being a "right wing mob that got out of control" does not alleviate them from responsibility for their acts, anymore than being a "left wing mob that got out of control" alleviates BLM protesters from responsibility for arson and looting committed as part of their protests.

                • Re: MISINFO EVARWHERRRRE (Score:4, Insightful)

                  by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Sunday December 05, 2021 @04:55AM (#62048707)

                  Let's assume for a moment that everything you said is true. That legislative body is completely overrun, and they held a vote to "turn something to control of a foreign nation". Let's even assume that it's something that legislative has power to do, and not just some utterly pants on the head level of retarded hypothetical of "we vote to turn something we have no sovereign control over to someone else who we have no sovereign control over" that you brought up.

                  Which bureaucratic US organisation would recognize such vote as valid? Name the actual traitors. I'll wait.

                  • Simple, they were shouting “hang mike pence” because he wouldn’t certify the election for trump instead of the duly elected Biden. I don’t have their plans, but it seems to me the senate was closely split by vote count along party lines. You just murder the VP and enough democrat senate members to get a majority, then it’s a simple matter of going ahead and voting trump to be speaker of the house. When Trumps presidency ended he would then be next in line for succession and a
                    • You realize that everything you suggest would not hold up. The election certification act of 1887 is unconstitutional. It simply has not been challenged. The constitution is very clear about the election of president. The minute the Electoral College casts their votes in December, Joe Biden was the next president. Jan 6 was a procedural vote. No SCOTUS would uphold a challenge to the votes from the Electoral College. Everyone understands this. Pence understood this. You might not like the Trump/Pence admini
                    • Dumbass, I never said anything about certification other than just not doing it. Then murder your way to a majority, then vote in a new speaker of the house. If somehow Biden took office, impeach him and any VP then speaker trump is president again. Now that jan 6th failed a handful of states have taken away presidential voting for citizens and instead the state congress can assign electors how they want for whatever or no reason, remember we don’t vote for president in America the electors do so
                    • No my friend; you are grossly mistaken. None of what you suggest would happen outside of a novel. In 1988 I swore an oath to defend the constitution. That oath never expires. You would have seen an enormous call to arms. As far as states choosing their electors, thats always been the process. Granting popular vote to the people of the state for choice of electoral bid is a matter of each states individual constitution. Before 1836 only a couple states did that. Why is it everyone thinks we elect kings? If

                    • In 1988 I swore an oath to defend the constitution. That oath never expires. You would have seen an enormous call to arms.

                      Yes, but if members of the Congress and senate are tortured into saying that defending the "insurrection" is defending the constitution, the call to arms would be for a different cause.

                    • No. We did not swear an oath to a government. We swore an oath to the constitution. That document is a matter of public record.

                    • I didn't say anything about the "government". I am not sure why you bring it in.

              • the American people would have said

                Hey everyone in Myanmar, ShanghaiBill has the answer for you! Simply tell the dictator you don't want him anymore!

                The thing about your position is that it's even dumber than the position of the person you're replying to. I'm sure 74 million American people would happily have accepted Trump, which is precisely what leads to political unrest in a nation.

                • If the military had taken over congress then I would agree, however a few nutjobs would then have the most powerful military in the world to deal with, it was never going to end in the government being overthrown.

          • Saying that the Jan 6th riot almost overthrew democracy in America is a good example of a "big lie" from the left.

            Yeah, I'm sure the chants of 'hang Mike Pence' if he doesn't overturn the election for Trump were all in good fun. It was an attempt by the right, an incompetent attempt, but one to overthrow democracy none the less.

            • I think youre giving way to much credit. There was zero chance the government would have been overthrown. Had everything gone their way the government still would not have been overthrown. It was a bunch of idiots who didnt bother to read the constitution, and therefore did not realize that once the electoral college casts their votes, you cant change the outcome.

              • Had everything gone their way the government still would not have been overthrown.

                I guess "their way" was to overthrow the government. So your statement seems contradictory in that light.

            • It was an attempt by the right, an incompetent attempt, but one to overthrow democracy none the less.

              The key word is "incompetent", so it was not even close to actually overthrowing the democracy. It was close to getting some politicians killed yes and it was not good.

          • insurrection incited be the president doesn't matter if everyone involved is sufficiently incompetent.

            You apologists are setting the stage with an incredibly dangerous precedent. It really matters when the president attacks the core of democracy because they're far more likely to succeed than anyone else. I like how you downplay it by focusing on the horned guy, rather than who matters in an attempt to smear the entire premise.

            We see what you are doing and are not fooled. You however appear to bee fooled v

            • The lucky bit is that the republican party is being controlled by a lazy, feckless failure.
              As you point out, their plan was a stupid one, but I'm sure they've learned from that failure and will succeed the next time they decide they don't like the result of an election.
              They can keep trying since there is no punishment if they fail, and they only need to succeed once.

      • Nobody could actually verify the laptop story and the only source to publish it was a tabloid owned by Fox. If there was any truth then why wasn’t Fox News running it? We’re how many years into laptop-gate and not a peep about the case.

        • Re: MISINFO EVARWHERRRRE (Score:4, Insightful)

          by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Sunday December 05, 2021 @08:32AM (#62048939)
          To add to it I don’t think very many people believe hunter is innocent of the every day favoritism and cronyism that pretty much every other business leader engages in. Hunter should have a criminal record for drug use and been in prison according to his own dads political policy he shaped and implemented, but instead of a life of prison and joblessness for drug abuse, he was shuffled from million dollar board position to million dollar cushy job. I see Biden as a hypocrite that was obviously wrong then, as well as now, and the proof is he didn’t treat his own son like his policies treated every other American. Every democrat (except maybe a handful) and all republicans engage in this, as well as nearly every last business leader/ceo/rich asshole. You have to put it in perspective, that low level corruption and favoritism is nothing compared to blackmailing a country to propagate lies to try to influence an election not to mention the hundreds of other crimes the last president committed.

          • He immediately attempted to buy a gun illegally upon his father being elected to the presidency, and the sekrit squirrels tried covering for his ass.

        • Nobody could confirm it? Nonsense. Tony Bobulinsky, a former business partner of Hunter Biden got on national television and confirmed that the emails recovered from the laptop and addressed to him were accurate, and that Hunter was holding 10% of the payoff for the "Big Guy", and that this was a reference to then-candidate, now President Joe Biden.

          There was no one disputing the authenticity of the laptop, even at the time. Not even Hunter Biden himself disputed it. The problem was it was the timing was too

      • Oh boy, here we go with this shit.
        • Actually no.

          Those of us who read/follow the Internet in Eastern Europe/Russia have known this for years. It is a standard practice for most "influence" operations like Ukrainian CIPSO, British 77th Brigade, etc as well as their Russian counterparts to run humour, cats, etc channels which "remove their false plumage" in the run-up to a large event like elections, etc.

    • https://youtu.be/lBFg5lIsAZQ [youtu.be]

      The dogs didn't have muzzles on, the people had muzzles on! ... maybe some kind of a zombie thing...

    • Re:MISINFO EVARWHERRRRE (Score:5, Informative)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @09:05PM (#62048039)

      50% of the population has below average intelligence.
      65% of Americans think they have above average intelligence.
      That is a lot of stupid people who think that are smart.
      Stupid people who think they are smart are very confident in their beliefs.
      Stupid people will often latch onto the most confident person.
      So the stupid leads the stupid often very confidently in a stupid ideology.

      Misinformation is often touted much more confidently than truthful information, because the truth is actually more nuanced and not 100%, so it cannot be explained so confidently without oversimplifing it to make people jump to the wrong conclusion.

      • If you define stupid as below average intelligence and smart as above average intelligence, I would surmise you are in the former group because you have completely ignored mediocrity in your definition.

        Otherwise, I pretty much agree with your main points.

        • It’s not even stupidity, though it does correlate with it. It’s blindly handing over thinking to “trusted sources” by accepting sound byte sized pieces from people they see as authority figures like church pastors, political leaders, or other people they see as “betters” and who they look up to so as to be high in the pecking order and look down on everyone else “who deserve what they get” because they are inferior. They feel comfort in this, as they are dee

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        50% of the population has below average intelligence.

        That is a misleading statistic. While technically true in that if you take the median then 50% of people will be below it, in fact that's not generally what "below average" means - it refers to the arithmetic mean.

        On top of that, IQ is a bell curve and subject to a certain amount of measurement error, and small variations don't have any meaningful effect and often vanish when an individual takes multiple tests. So in fact most people are so close to average intelligence that any minor deviations are irrelev

      • 73.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Like the one I just claimed. I think you forgot how Mean, Median, and Mode work. Its not possible for 50% of the population to have below average intelligence. If they comprise 50% of the population, then they are setting the value of average. A 100 IQ means average for the year the test was taken out of all the test takers. Someone scoring a 100 in 1937 could be leaps and bounds above someone scoring a 100 in 2018. Thats the problem with measuring averages.

        • You need math training. If there are two people with IQs of 90 and 110, the average IQ is 100 and 50% of the population has below average intelligence.

          I have a guess as to where you might fall on this spectrum...

      • Credulity and IQ aren't hard-linked.

    • Re:MISINFO EVARWHERRRRE (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Reiyuki ( 5800436 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @09:07PM (#62048045)
      Instead of teaching people to think critically, they want to put training wheels on the entire Internet.

      • wish i had mod points; but this exactly.
        it's at best a bandaid, at worst a crutch.
        either way, it solves nothing and continues eroding personal responsibility.

      • Social media is a brain-washing cult that you are exposed to 24/7. Your critical thinking PSA is heavily out-matched.

        • Social media is actually a perfect place to learn critical thinking skills.

          Appeal to authority, appeal to popularity, and appeal to ridicule are easy to spot if your mind is looking for them.

          The hardest is spotting such fallacies when someone posts something you agree with.

          • This PSA was brought to you by Facebook. Please continue to enjoy your enragement... sorry, I mean engagement!
          • But social media is often an echo chamber more than civil discourse. Most people block anyone that they dont agree with until they decide one day they want to go on the attack and get into an argument. so the only stuff they are hearing is stuff that they already agreed with. Hence the term echo chamber.

            • If you block people on FB, you're probably a fucking loser with no real-life friends, and you derive the minimal satisfaction you need to keep you from killing yourself from the number of people with enough pity to friend you.

      • Worse, this is entirely how the advertising algorithm works in social media platforms. Someone says 'give me 5000 viewers just like this' and pays money to advertise to those that watch X type of video. It could just as easily been targeting car repair videos. Cat videos are popular. All advertising works this way. Its the entire point behind Neilson ratings. Social media algorithms are designed to cherrypick viewers based on charted behaviors. If you watched videos on strategies on playing slot m

  • Cuecats? They were great! (Score:3, Funny)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @08:39PM (#62048007)

    Free bar code scanners - what's not to like?

    • I don't get mod points anymore, so here's a virtual +1

      may Radio Shack RIP.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tragedy ( 27079 )

      You know that the inventor of the Cuecat, J. Hutton Pulitzer, went on to develop bamboo fiber detection technology for the Arizona audit? So, in a way that seems to relate back to the actual topic.

      • You know that the inventor of the Cuecat, J. Hutton Pulitzer, went on to develop bamboo fiber detection technology for the Arizona audit? So, in a way that seems to relate back to the actual topic.

        Lol, that sounded so bizarre that I thought you made it up.

        His wiki page is a wild ride of bullshit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Taking us back to the old days of Slashdot. Thank you.

      • Remember catscans.org? (I think). People would gently load their felines into their scanners, hit the scan button, and upload their startled expressions. The original site went down over 20 years ago, but everything old is new again:

        https://thecatscan.tumblr.com/ [tumblr.com]

  • I should buy misinformation today.

  • Oh, it's all true. It starts out with Garfield... (Score:3)

    by zephvark ( 1812804 ) on Saturday December 04, 2021 @10:16PM (#62048189)

    It just starts out with Garfield, a charmingly misanthropic cat that hates Mondays and, improbably, loves lasagna. And I thought, "you know, I hate Mondays too! And there's nothing wrong with a good lasagna!"

    It went from there to Al Qaida and becoming a fervent follower of Brother Trump the Christ, so quickly, let me tell you. In heaven, I will be greeted by 70 pussies to grab. All the cats! Yes.

    It is as foretold. We shall all become crazy cat ladies. And men. And individuals of infinite non-binary gender. All you have to do is believe that President Garfield died for your sins. You must believe on him. Never believe "in" him, that would be ridiculous. Believe ON him. /miao

  • Now they are taking a page from the sex offenders playbook.

      The ones who come up to a kid and promise free candy, puppies, and other desireable items.

  • Remove snob "know it alls" from your movement.
    You're being obliterated by charismatic people, even if they're wrong.

  • The internet can be used to spread false information.

    Then again, so can letterpress, mimeograph, Xerox machine, oil panting and watercolor, and people who are speaking.

    Seriously, if you have to say that cute cat videos are spreading disinformation, and you buy that BS, and need to do something about it, we need to just shut all forms of communications down.

    I'd expect an article like that to come from Paranoia Today, not the NYT. Next up, an article on Oxygen is poisonous - how breathing will kil

  • I see lots of "only a genius can solve this (ridiculously simple) puzzle" - obviously gaming the algorithms.

    I also see lots of attempts at harvesting personal data. Some are more blatant ("what was your first pet's name?") than others. If I don't ignore them outright I poison them with nonsense data. No, my first pet's name wasn't "potato". :-)

    ...laura

  • I only get my cat videos from trusted, peer viewed content providers.

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