Is the industry of lies "prematurely" undermining the US election

Photo: EPA-EFE / ERIK S. LESSER

The modern way of life has made social media and internet platforms crucial for the transmission of information and news to citizens in the world, the region, and therefore also in Macedonia. It is precisely the fast and great dynamics of everyday life that contributed to disinformation and fake news spreading at an unprecedented speed through these channels. The worrisome information published by the companies' press releases is in the direction of these situations for notation YouTube и Facebook who informed that they will soon stop deleting AI profiles that produce disinformation on their platforms because they fear that this way the number of users of their products is decreasing.

In light of current events, these data are even more worrying if it is known that they occur during the party races of the Republicans and Democrats for candidates for the president of the United States, but also in the lobby of the American presidential elections. which according to the announcements should be held next year.

How problematic these decisions of the technology companies really are and what is the role of misinformation from Macedonia on the political race in the United States can perhaps be witnessed by past experiences during the 2016 presidential elections in America.

It is the acceleration of the race for president of the United States, as well as the decisions of Twitter and YouTube not to react to bots with disinformation in the domestic public, that updates the topic that has been active for several years, and is connected to the already known so-called great sites. Namely, for those sites, which first appeared during the election campaign in America, there was a well-founded suspicion that they copy content from other American sites, spread fake news, and their goal is financial gain. This kind of their action was exposed by the party of the Research Network for Organized Crime and Corruption (OCCRP) which informs that some of the sites that were operating incriminated originate from the Macedonian city of Veles.

According to OCCRP Veleske sites  usapoliticsinsider.com и usadailypolitics.com for their illegal activities, they use the Parler social network, which is considered a right-wing platform and which in the US had hundreds of thousands of users to get significant traffic to their websites.

Apart from the presidential elections in America, the topic of misinformation and fake news, was active in the presidential race this year and in Turkey.

Namely, according to the numerous news articles from the world's media houses and the two camps of the presidential elections in the second round of the square from which the previous head of state emerged victorious Recep Tayyip Erdogan they accuse the media of spreading false news about the candidates. So the camp of the main opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu was informed that disinformation in support of Erdogan was arriving on the Internet from an address in Russia and the Erdoğan camp pointed out that the fake news in the election that said the president was suffering from a serious illness was a failure illness to create a false image that he was incapable of governing the country.

In a sublimated conclusion, the domestic and foreign experts consulted say that disinformation and fake news are a great enemy of democracy in the world. They add that if disinformation can be a danger to the elections in the USA and Turkey, then what should be said about their danger to the countries of the Balkans.

In his statement on this topic for "Free Press", the Czech professor Michael Witt explains that there is currently no comprehensive, unique and precise definition of what fake news is.

Prof. Mikhail Vit

"But basically it's about lies, manipulations, distortion of facts, dosed presentation of facts, spins, sensationalistic representations of the information available, deliberate distortion of things, propaganda. That is why if their actions are not prevented then they will be the tool that instead of the elections will be used to elect future presidents and prime ministers of the countries of the region and the world", he says Vit.

According to Witt, Education is currently the only protective armor in the battle with fake news.

- Only with critical thinking and verification is this battle fought. In no other way. The state must develop educational modules that will promote a critical examination of reality. I remember a media literacy project with high school students. I came up with a news story and tasked them with finding the mistakes and illogicalities. There were about 40 errors in the short fictional news, and they located only about 10, mostly obvious ones. This means that the country must create a critical public and in this way, the fight against fake news will be successful - points out Vit.

Welles continues to create fake news, but its impact is much less

Compared to the presidential elections in the USA in 2016, now the influence of the so-called n. authors of fake news from Veles, on the decision of the American citizens, which presidential candidate to vote for, is reduced, published in his analysis of the topic "Voice of America" ​​in the Macedonian language. According to the media, in 2016 a group of young people from this city by renting domains in the USA, setting up websites and using the social network FB, managed to influence the electorate, now this problem still exists but is not so visible and powerful as in the past. According to VOA, their influence, in the past during the 2016 elections, according to some estimates, was between 60 and 80 million users. This then prompted FB to create a complete sophisticated protection of its product, according to which after the elections in 2016, dozens of FB pages of citizens from Veles were blocked, so that fake news could not be spread through this social network.

Anti-disinformation video games


All innovations in the technological world do not have a negative connotation when it comes to the use of technology and the spread of misinformation. An interesting news item says that the Kanter Strike computer game will be used to prevent disinformation coming into the world from Russia.
According to
the media this novelty in the game, which is a world brand, will have an algorithm for preventing fake news and delivering true content to those who use it. That is, to those users who play the game in Russia, and they number in the millions.
Insiders at the video game company say this unusual approach to combating disinformation will be a market innovation that will slip through Moscow's state censorship of the truth about the war in Ukraine.

 

 

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