U.S. Unleashes Military to Fight Fake News, Disinformation

The title is absurdly misleading. It sounds like this project is an effort to detect deep faked content, by DARPA. The article does a ton of editorializing around that.<p>Ironic, considering the topic of the article.

This a a grant program running by DARPA called Semantic Forensics. [1]<p>&gt; <i>The Semantic Forensics (SemaFor) program will develop technologies to automatically detect, attribute, and characterize falsified multi-modal media assets (text, audio, image, video) to defend against large-scale, automated disinformation attacks.</i><p>The primary use case for this is election security, but more generally being able to detect and defend against an adversary trying to seed political discord with fake accounts, or fake news, so-called &quot;deep fakes&quot;, etc.<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.grants.gov&#x2F;web&#x2F;grants&#x2F;view-opportunity.html?oppId=319894" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.grants.gov&#x2F;web&#x2F;grants&#x2F;view-opportunity.html?oppI...</a>

I am interested in the technical aspect of implementing such a system.<p>I know the founder of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fakeskiller.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fakeskiller.com</a> which is a browser extension for highlighting fake news (they also released a mobile app not so long ago).<p>They use fact checking organizations to classify news as fake news and highlight posts in social media, which contain links to fake news. They also provide link to rebuttal.<p>But since there is always a lag between producing clickbait fake news and working on proving it&#x27;s a fake, I assume those who fight disinformation and propaganda will be on the losing side.<p>That&#x27;s why the founder of Fakeskiller always invites everyone on educating those &quot;useful idiots&quot;, who are sharing those fakes and sharing truth with them.<p>But can the propaganda be effectively fought technically? I assume, no.

Non-clickbait title: US DARPA finances a project that aims to detect disinformation campaigns.

I&#x27;m a bit confused on what sort of authorities anyone&#x27;s got here or what the actual intent of the program is. Ultimately, does DOD have any sort of authorities to do anything about potential US person speech and how would that be constitutional? They have a need to understand who&#x27;s doing what in various theaters, but I&#x27;m not sure why anyone would want DOD messing with content in the US.

Emphasis on &quot;fake news&quot; and fact checking is so misguided.<p>The core problem is unsourced, unattributed information. The difference between gossip and journalism.<p>What is the provenance of every statement?<p>The Correct Answer is adding signatures to every thing, so we can independently verify that someone said something.<p>Once we have traceability, people can figure out what is more true (less wrong), over time. Just like with academic publishing.

Relevant video by Smarter Every Day[0]. Basically interviewing military people talk about the information part of war in the modern era.<p>&gt; I just made a weapon?!<p>-Dustin @21:35<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE</a>

There should be a clear distinction between news that are factually false and those that share viewpoints that are counter to the mainstream. Labeling the latter &quot;disinformation&quot; is a mere act of political speech.

What could go wrong?

&gt;to defend against large-scale, automated disinformation attacks.<p>I realize cable news has become entertainment without even trying to correct themselves the next day, but if it was really viable to automatically generate a quasi-ARG experience, wouldn’t Hollywood have developed it first?<p>I for one welcome the coming onslaught of fake news, at least I won’t have to question the motive of the news source.

Will they give the actual civilian toll after drone attacks on Yemen?