Page 8 - ARUBA TODAY

A8 WORLD NEWS
Thursday 23 May 2019
Fake news changes shape as EU heads into elections

By KELVIN CHAN "Each country has got its
LORNE COOK own political priorities; the
ARITZ PARRA campaigns will be quite dif-
LONDON (AP) — Fake news ferent in different places."
has evolved beyond the But it could also be a mat-
playbook used by Russian ter of not looking in the right
trolls in the U.S. election. As place. Oxford University re-
the European Union gears searchers studying tweets
up for a crucial election, related to the EU elections
it is mostly homegrown found that only a small
groups rather than foreign fraction came from Russian
powers that are taking to or "junk news" sources while
social media to push false mainstream news stories
information and extremist dominated.
messages, experts say. However, some junk news
And private and encrypted stories can be several times
chat apps like WhatsApp more popular than those
are increasingly the fa- from professional media or-
vored platforms to spread ganizations, with the most
false information, making it successful centered on
harder to monitor and fight. populist themes such as an-
There were worries that the ti-immigration and Islamo-
bloc's May 23-26 vote for phobia while few attacked
the EU parliament would European leaders and par-
be a ripe target for foreign ties or voiced skepticism
meddling, given Russian In this May 9, 2011 file photo, EU flags fly outside the European Commission headquarters in Brus- about the EU, according
interference in the 2016 sels. to the researchers, who
ballot that brought U.S. Associated Press compiled about 585,000
President Donald Trump to tweets in seven European
power and allegations of warfare" is much harder das. coordinated malicious ac- languages.
disinformation — plus a lack for governments and tech The aim is to sow "little seeds tivity. "Almost none of the junk
of solid facts — surrounding companies to react to, she of distrust ... to slowly erode The two social media com- we found circulating on-
Britain's Brexit referendum said. Adding to the con- trust in institutions and di- panies, along with Google, line came from known Rus-
that same year. fusion, some world lead- vide people over a longer have tightened up require- sian sources," said Nahema
So far, no spike has ap- ers have themselves been period of time," said Schott. ments for taking out politi- Marchal, a researcher at
peared on the 28-nation guilty of spreading false or Facebook said that after cal ads, including confirm- the Oxford Internet Insti-
bloc's disinformation radars misleading information on Avaaz shared its research, it ing identities of ad buyers. tute. "Instead, it is home-
and tech companies say social media. removed a number of fake They're putting all political grown, hyper-partisan and
they haven't found signs of Online campaign group and duplicate accounts ads into publicly search- alternative media that
a coordinated operation Avaaz said Wednesday it for violating its "authentic- able databases, although dominate."
by foreign actors. There is, found 500 suspect Face- ity policies" and took action researchers say they don't It's also become harder to
though, a constant buzz of book pages and groups in against some pages that give a comprehensive view keep track of disinforma-
false information that main- Germany, Britain, France, repeatedly posted misinfor- and the ads aren't always tion as more online con-
ly seeks to erode the EU's Spain, Italy and Poland mation. properly classified. versations go private, said
image and that has ground spreading fake news seen Tech companies have The nature of European Clara Jiménez Cruz, co-
on since the last Europe- 533 million times in the stepped up broader efforts elections may be a factor founder of Spanish fact-
wide elections in 2014. past three months. Face- to fight fake news. in behind why they haven't checking group Maldita.es.
"Previous, it was broadly book has taken down 77 of Facebook has set up an EU been targeted. For one Twitter posts or public Face-
about Russia, fakery and the pages, some of which election "war room" in Dub- thing, turnout is usually low. book feeds are only part of
looking for bots. Now what Avaaz had previously an- lin, staffed by data scien- Around 42 percent of vot- the story, with many mes-
we see is the transnational nounced. tists, researchers and threat ers cast their ballots in 2014. sages and discussions now
Far Right deploying that One of the pages taken intelligence specialists Beyond that, Europe's citi- moving to private Face-
digital toolkit, less fake down, supporting Italy's working with teams in Cali- zens often use the EU elec- book groups or encrypted
news, more hate-speech, right-wing League party, fornia to monitor for abuse tions to cast protest votes WhatsApp and Telegram
and a more complex set of had shared a video pur- around the clock. about issues of domestic chats, which EU and na-
tactics to amplify populist porting to show African mi- Facebook's vice president concern. tional governments can't
narratives," said Sasha Hav- grants smashing a police for public policy in Europe, Around 400 million people easily monitor, she said.
licek, CEO of the Institute car that had racked up 10 Richard Allan, said this in 28 countries are eligible Avaaz said in a report that
for Strategic Dialogue, a million views. But it was ac- month the company hasn't to vote in the world's big- millions of potential Spanish
London-based left leaning tually a scene from a film detected any major at- gest transnational elec- voters were flooded with
think tank. "That isn't to say and had been already de- tacks. tions, choosing 751 repre- false, misleading, racist or
that is there is no Russian bunked several times over "Part of that, we hope, is sentatives to the European hateful posts on WhatsApp
activity but that it's harder the years, Avaaz said. because we put in a lot of Parliament, the EU's only ahead of national elec-
to identify definitively." Christoph Schott, cam- preventive measures," he democratically elected in- tions last month.
The trend now is for popu- paign director at Avaaz, said. "We've gotten better stitution. On WhatsApp, where it's
list and far right groups in says that fake news is often at fake account detection "The European elections so hard for outsiders to
Europe to "manipulate in- amplified with "bait and and removal." are still basically 28 differ- peer into private conversa-
formation" through more switch" tactics like building Twitter, which launched a ent national campaigns, tions to debunk lies, "that
nuanced messages, to up an audience for a page tool for EU users to report fought mostly on national is where we find most of
promote anti-migration, on a generic topic such as deliberately misleading issues," said policy analyst the hoaxes," said Jiménez.
anti-gay and climate de- football or cooking, then election-related content, Paul Butcher at the Europe- "And especially where we
nial themes. This "narrative ramping up political agen- also says it hasn't seen any an Policy Centre think-tank. find them first."q