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In the Ukraine Conflict, Fake Fact-Checks Are Being Used To Spread Disinformation (propublica.org) 73

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Social media posts debunking purported Ukrainian disinformation are themselves fake. That doesn't stop them from being featured on Russian state TV. ProPublica: Researchers at Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub and ProPublica identified more than a dozen videos that purport to debunk apparently nonexistent Ukrainian fakes. The videos have racked up more than 1 million views across pro-Russian channels on the messaging app Telegram, and have garnered thousands of likes and retweets on Twitter. A screenshot from one of the fake debunking videos was broadcast on Russian state TV, while another was spread by an official Russian government Twitter account.

The goal of the videos is to inject a sense of doubt among Russian-language audiences as they encounter real images of wrecked Russian military vehicles and the destruction caused by missile and artillery strikes in Ukraine, according to Patrick Warren, an associate professor at Clemson who co-leads the Media Forensics Hub. "The reason that it's so effective is because you don't actually have to convince someone that it's true. It's sufficient to make people uncertain as to what they should trust," said Warren, who has conducted extensive research into Russian internet trolling and disinformation campaigns. "In a sense they are convincing the viewer that it would be possible for a Ukrainian propaganda bureau to do this sort of thing."
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In the Ukraine Conflict, Fake Fact-Checks Are Being Used To Spread Disinformation More

In the Ukraine Conflict, Fake Fact-Checks Are Being Used To Spread Disinformation

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  • Who could have predicted "fact checking" ever being misused?
    Literally nobod-.... well everybody with a fucking brain to be honest

  • The value of pieces of information lies not in veracity, but in utility.

    Factual accuracy isn't just unnecessary, it's unwanted.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Debunking the debunkers? Factchecking the factcheckers? The Ghost of Kiev? Snake Island? Literally everything coming out of that place right now is an outright lie, and people have obviously started to realise it. So all that can be done is to tell more lies.
    • The first casualty of war is the truth. (no matter if you have the fact checkers fact checking the fact checkers who fact check the fact checkers) At the end of the day journalists and fact checkers can't use social media as their sources of information...

    • Literally everything coming out of that place right now is an outright lie, and people have obviously started to realise it.

      That has been more or less true for at least the past eight years, though it has got rather worse this year. Oddly enough, no one in the West noticed.

    • Agreed, everything coming out of Russia is lies. That's what you meant, right? Because no one can be stupid enough to believe that Russia is telling the truth or that it's in the right to be invading or that they aren't the ones shelling civilian targets.

  • is a synonym for lies and spin

  • In war, you can't believe what either side says.

  • If you're getting your news in the form of social media posts and memes I've got some bad news for you. Unless you actually know the person posting it, and they witnessed it first-hand, 99 times out of 100 it's pure bullshit.

  • Misinformation (Score:3)

    by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Thursday March 10, 2022 @04:55PM (#62345333)

    I don't quite agree with this statement:

    "The reason that it's so effective is because you don't actually have to convince someone that it's true. It's sufficient to make people uncertain as to what they should trust," said Warren, who has conducted extensive research into Russian internet trolling and disinformation campaigns. "In a sense they are convincing the viewer that it would be possible for a Ukrainian propaganda bureau to do this sort of thing."

    Creating legitimate confusion about who to trust is certainly part of it. But in general, I find misinformation is usually pretty easy to detect, which makes me suspect it isn't so much about trying to trick people, but allowing them to trick themselves.

    Russians, like most people, want to be proud of their country, and don't want to be pariahs in their own community (and be at risk of arrest).

    If you accept the truth of the invasion you're left with an ugly choice, cheer for the bad guy or turn on your own country.

    Or you can accept the propaganda at face value and pretend you're one of the good guys.

    Certainly we'd like people to do the former, but it's a lot easier to do the latter.

    • If you accept the truth of the invasion you're left with an ugly choice, cheer for the bad guy or turn on your own country.

      Or you can accept the propaganda at face value and pretend you're one of the good guys.

      Certainly we'd like people to do the former, but it's a lot easier to do the latter.

      Is that how you reasoned about the invasions of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. etc.? All of which were far less justifiable, and which between them killed literally millions of civilians.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )
        We (US) never invaded Yugoslavia or Libya. Afghanistan was understandable, but we should have gotten out as soon as we didn't find Bin Laden. The first Iraq was a justified counter-invasion to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. The second invasion if Iraq was a black stain on the US's reputation, as it was based on politician's lies (I'm looking at you Cheney), in that one way similar to Russia's current war. Completely different in other ways, though, as Iraqis didn't want to fight for their leader S

        • I used to know an old Lutheran priest who when the Iraq war was starting to rev up, travelled into Iraq to tend to the war victims he was sure where to arise. He found sadams government wanted him to go to military bases as a human shield, but he was able to convince them to let him stay with the civilian population in a school and let it be known to the americans that there was an australian priest with civilians in that particular location. So far so good.

          What he found , somewhat to his surprise, was that

      • If you accept the truth of the invasion you're left with an ugly choice, cheer for the bad guy or turn on your own country.

        Or you can accept the propaganda at face value and pretend you're one of the good guys.

        Certainly we'd like people to do the former, but it's a lot easier to do the latter.

        Is that how you reasoned about the invasions of Yugoslavia,

        Before my time, but seemed to be far less an invasion and more an attempt to prevent a genocide.

        Afghanistan,

        I was wary of it at the time though not really decided.

        Iraq,

        Strongly opposed to it at the start, never wavered, I seem to have been right on that one.

        Syria, Libya, etc. etc.?

        Less invasion more attempts to prevent genocide/depose murderous dictators (probably fallout from the Iraq war). They seemed well intentioned but I'm honestly unsure if they were wise ideas (and was at the time).

        All of which were far less justifiable,

        Less justifiable than what? Russia invading Ukraine?

        and which between them killed literally millions of civilians.

        Iraq ha

    • But in general, I find misinformation is usually pretty easy to detect...

      Be careful about convincing yourself that you are able to easily detect misinformation, as that'll build a blind-spot that someone's gonna eventually exploit.

      • But in general, I find misinformation is usually pretty easy to detect...

        Be careful about convincing yourself that you are able to easily detect misinformation, as that'll build a blind-spot that someone's gonna eventually exploit.

        Not really.

        Misinformation is only one small subset of bad information. A columnist who's a little too optimistic about people's fundamental drive for freedom can give you a sincere, but inaccurate view of the world as well. Or they can make the mistake of assuming foreign leaders think the way they do and make bad assumptions as a result. Or sources can be wrong in a dozen other ways (or you might just misunderstand them due to your own priors).

        These are way tougher to detect than misinformation. But watchi

      • If you don't mind, here's my own improvement to this observation:

        a blind-spot that someone is already exploiting.

    • This is a problem with authoritarian governments - people are told all the time that they must never criticize the government or say things the opposite of an official government stance. Even in some democracies this happens (India for example). But in the free world we can criticize our leaders all we want, we don't get arrested for disagreeing! That's how you can tell you're in a free country becuse when the leaders do something stupid then the residents will come right out and say so. If the leaders

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Remember when Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase "alternative facts"?

      For a lot of people the truth doesn't actually matter, what matters is winning the argument. If they need some alternative facts to do that, fine.

      Same with fact checking. Just find some alternative fact checkers to support what you want to believe.

  • Putin has shot himself with this kind of kids tactic once again. This shows the need for social verification of fact checkers. I dismissed social media for a long time until seeing its use in grassroots activism and now in reporting snippets from the field in war. It is not a replacement for real intelligence gathering, but it is useful for escaping weaponized state censors (Roskomnadzor) and now in destroying their disinformation campaigns. The incomplete archival and even more incomplete internet access t
    • Ghost of Kiev? Snake Island...? The Russians have a lot of catching up to do on the disinformation front I'm afraid. Perhaps you haven't been paying attention as you wallow in your obvious bias?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jzanu ( 668651 )
        You guys are all so obvious. You shouldn't get paid for any of this bullshit. And even Putin, as stupid as he really is now, will eventually realize that. Then you'll be on the wall to be shot. Get out while you can.
        • No one is getting dragged into your pathetic little war over your pathetic little corrupt country by your pathetic former dancer of a leader appointed in a US coup. No one is coming to save him and he could have solved this crisis years ago easily. He didn't, because he's an idiot. Like you.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Jzanu ( 668651 )
            Germany and NATO could overrun Moscow in less time than you guys have been stuck in the mud. Think about that while you try to justify Ty serving a psycho like Putin who wants to kill all Russians he can while you suck his dick asking for more.
      • The Russians have state sanctioned official misinformation and propaganda plus laws that forbid staying the truth, that they are at war in Ukraine. I don't know how you come up with the idea that they have catching up to do.

        • The Russians have state sanctioned official misinformation and propaganda plus laws that forbid staying the truth, that they are at war in Ukraine. I don't know how you come up with the idea that they have catching up to do.

          Regardless of what the monkey is allowed to say, speak, or do, I don't know how they come up with the idea that the war in Ukraine, is still a secret. It's 2022. We're not delivering intel by fucking horseback. North Koreans are probably following along. An entire side of that war, is still broadcasting to the world.

          • Parents in Russia don't believe children's news from Ukraine: https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

            • Parents in Russia don't believe children's news from Ukraine: https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

              Truly sad to read, but there is a difference in trying to maintain a secret, and mass deception and brainwashing.

              If Russia truly wanted to keep a war/conflict/liberation a secret, a child in Ukraine wouldn't have been authorized to even communicate to a parent in Moscow. At all. In this example, it would only take 1% of Ukrainians convincing Russians of the truth, for word to spread around the world. The other 99% could remain brainwashed. Doesn't matter. The secret is out at that point.

              They don't want

              • Well, the truth is out in the open, thereby not a secret, but if it is generally met with disbelief, due to effective propaganda or whatever, what's the difference? Please don't mix things up, gpp was arguing that the Russians are behind when it comes to misinformation, brainwashing and propaganda. You started on secrecy, no one else was talking about that. I think that both parties state things that need salt added, but claiming that Russia is behind Ukraine is a real stretch. Yet that is what gpp was sayi
        • They need a Ghost of Kiev and a Snake Island incident, as well as a fake nuclear power station incident. Other than that, getting there.

          • Snake island was a real thing - the government mistakenly thought the soldiers had died, but then it was discovered that they were captured after they ran out of ammo. This is normal fog of war stuff. The ghost of Kiev, nobody believed that. If these are the two big misinformation data points you have and you're stacking it up against Putin's law that you can't call the war a "war", then you've got some serious brain damage.

          • What about nobody in Russia, or even in reach of Russia, being allowed to say that Russia is waging a war in Ukraine? Also, claiming that children's hospitals are military bases when video evidence from verified sources shows without any doubt that there are pregnant women getting rescued? They need much more than just a ghost of Moskou or a snake Island equivalent. But they're hard at work...
      • Found the Putin shill.
        • I'll be happy to let the 82 non-dead Ukrainians of Snake Island know they're actually dead. Maybe they should commit suicide?

    • Let's wait a few weeks and see what you think then.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jzanu ( 668651 )
        Putin is too much of a pussy to launch nuclear weapons. He won't give up his hookers to live in a bunker without servants. He is weak and old. And he wants to kill Russians as much as Ukrainians. Why else did he send ill-equipped, outdated, undernourished, undertrained troops?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      Picking a side and assuming that everything they say is a lie is a trifle naive. You afraid you'll float into the sky if Putin declares gravity is real? No? Then it is not who speaks that matters. It is what components are true and what are false. The rules for eliminating noise don't change because it's news programs and social media posts. Fantasy delusions of white hats and black hats don't belong here. They don't belong anywhere. Even children know better. That doesn't mean all sources are equal, it mea

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jzanu ( 668651 )
        I know how Russians of the Soviet-era work. Putin is the most base of them all showing all the old weakness and inabilities. This is the war that should have come at the end of the Union, rather than the CIS that was created to reign in the breakaway republics that Russia valued. There is nothing simple about it, but your fake neutrality is obvious, and your lack of actual substance hidden behind some paltry eloquence from a few extra English classes is still obvious.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jd ( 1658 )

          Since you know zero about what I think or know, or which country I'm from, I must assume your skill with the tarot deck surpasses your ability to produce a credible argument. Your understanding of my arguments is zilch because you never read them. You've picked a few key words and fantasized the rest to fit your preconceived ideas of how a person you have no knowledge of but have arbitrarily decided to hate anyway would be.

          Ignorance is wonderful. You and Putin are more alike than you could possibly imagine,

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jd ( 1658 )

          BTW, I do not care what you know about how the Russians of the Soviet Era worked 20-30 years ago. For a start, it's irrelevant to the rest of the planet, because 7.789 billion aren't Russian, most of those who are weren't alive in the Soviet era, a decent percent of those who were will have retired, and some unknowable percent of whoever is left will have changed their views of the world.

          Secondly, I am assuredly not neutral. I don't divide people up by nation, race, wealth, gender or religion, but I do divi

  • Disinformation that is a pure lie is never going to be effective, so all lies contain some truth to them. And as all truths are modified internally to reflect the internal world view without reference to reality, all truths contain some lies to them. This does not mean they are equal. It means that you have to carefully analyse multiple sources. Lies between multiple sources will be random, truths will be consistent, so if you superimpose sources that are genuinely different, the noise will lessen and the s

  • Russian embassies are doing this crap all the time. Today the Russian embassy in London was denying bombing a maternity hospital because one of the women in the footage was a model, implying it was somehow staged... Except the model was heavily pregnant and was in the maternity hospital because of this. The hospital that Russia bombed.

    I've also seen them spreading garbage about Ukranians smuggling ammonia around presumably as a pretext to set off huge ammonia explosions or chemical weapons. I've also seen

    • Lavrov himself claimed that Ukrainian solders were in the hospital. But he's always been a liar, everyone knows it, he only say these obvious lies for Russian consumption because he knows that rest of the world scoffs at him.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        A fun fact about Lavrov is he has two wives, the official one and his fuck buddy one. The fuck buddy one has a daughter (not by him) who paid for a £4 million pad in London in *cash*. Him, fuck buddy & her mother are all registered as diplomatic staff so they can go on jaunts around the world. This sort of shit is the modus in the top of echelons of Russian government.

        The UK has an "unexplained wealth" law that they could use to seize the daughter's property and others like it but they seem curi

        • Don't forget that Russia has proved it is not hesitant to poison people in the UK for political purposes :-)

          The unexplained wealth law might not apply to foreigners who don't pay tax, and it's really only been used once or twice I've heard.

  • In Soviet Russia disinformation spreads YOU!

  • Censor away, but realize that in the process you are hiding things like the Russian foreign ministry trying to spin bombing a maternity hospital.

    Stuff like that needs to be seen, not sanitized away.

    I'm sure certain elements in German society would like nothing more to have the 30s and 40s be a blank in the history books.

  • "real images of wrecked Russian military vehicles"

    How about real video, with Russian tanks firing at nothing out of fear?

    Although this one looks more like video games, I found it more shocking because it's a real version of that.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Comba... [reddit.com]

    IMHO, most intense is that lorry that runs off the road and a poor soon-to-be-dead Russian climbs out.

  • The grownups will think for themselves.

  • As per usual, in both fact-checks and counter-fact-checks, it's all convenient interpetations and definitions chosen to push the preferred narrative

    The example in the article of the explosion - I've seen that exact video used and claimed to be a Russian attack on parts of the internet - but not in formal settings or pushed by media outlets, but in discussion forums etc. Is that worth building a debunking fact-check around? Maybe, maybe not. Is it obscure enough to claim there's "There’s little to no

  • I mean, it worked for Snopes.

  • But hey, they've been doing that for the last 2 years, so now everyone is used to it.

  • It's not innovative. We are just more used to it in the commerce. We are not used to dealing with FUD as a *normal* part of political discourse. People are rushing to create new names for it. But it's just FUD.

  • Seems like the only safe choice. Everybody is lying, and at the same time, accusing everybody else of lying.

  • So it's like the western main stream media liars.

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