theories that spread false narratives blaming secretive groups for world events were 20
percent less effective after people played Bad News.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
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While many spread false stories and polarizing content to push a political agenda, others are
there for ad dollars. “Disinformation has moved, in the last few years, from being a propaganda
to a business model,” says Clare Melford, co-founder of Global Disinformation Index
(GDI), a global coalition aiming to rate media sites on their risk of carrying disinformation.
Today, most online ads are placed automatically in real time, she explains, and advertisers
have no way of stopping their ads from going to publishers that spread disinformation.
“Companies, often without realizing, purchase ads that end up on sites generating
low-quality and false news,” she says. Eyeing these ad dollars, several low-quality news
websites publish emotionally charged, false narratives to maximize engagement. “The
more outrageous your content, the more clicks you get. And more clicks mean more
ads,” Melford explains.
GDI is currently working on building a prototype disinformation index that would give
a risk rating to the online news domains in the United Kingdom and South Africa. They
plan to classify their websites in two ways. First will be an automated machine learning
assessment that can classify large volumes of low-quality but high-volume sites in real
time. Second will be a manual assessment of higher-quality disinformation outlets that
may not be easily identifiable by automated means. These may include indicators such as
whether a domain has been involved in a disinformation campaign in the past.
Eventually, GDI plans to create a global index and cut off the funding to disinformation
while providing advertisers control over how their brands would be seen. “We will feed these
risk ratings directly into ad exchanges so that advertisers can decide in real time whether
they want to put their clients’ money on sites that spread false news,” Melford says.
GDI is not alone. Several entities, such as Credder and NewsGuard, are working on
providing scores to news publishers so that both audience and advertisers can judge
their credibility.
FIGHTING MOB VIOLENCE
Fake news is not just misleading voters and influencing elections; it’s killing people in
India. Several deaths and mob lynchings have been linked to videos and messages—
often fake or edited—spreading on WhatsApp.
The Facebook-owned messaging app, with more than 1.5 billion users globally, is
restricting message forwards to crack down on the spread of rumors. It is also giving 20
different research groups $50,000 to help it understand the ways that rumors and fake
news spread on its platform.
One of them is Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab, which is building a new version
of Bad News for WhatsApp users in India. “We will use the same principles, but the engine
will be slightly different,” says Linden. For one, they will simulate WhatsApp instead of