The Feed Is Fake

Fake Fans

into the digital marketing agency that creates your music taste

Fake news spreads like an epidemic. Here’s how to stop it.

Researchers study fake news the same way they study the spread of disease. When misinformation “goes viral”, it is not just a metaphor. It is what’s actually happening. via @straits_times str.sg/viz-misinformation

An AI-Generated Content Empire Is Spreading Fake Celebrity Images on Google

A ring of websites using AI and run by an aspiring movie star are behind fake celebrity images featured in Google results, Motherboard found.

W Social, Fictional Metrics and the Beauty of Open Data

W Social's tagline is "Trust Your Feed" but the company's landing page displays inflated engagement metrics - a misrepresentation that contradicts its own promise.

Brands using AI-generated influencers to promote products on social media

Investigation finds AI content that purports to show genuine customers, prompting calls for greater transparency

How a fake network pushes pro-China propaganda

The web of 350 fake social media profiles aims to discredit the West, sometimes with garish cartoons.

Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)

SCOOP: #WSocial is doctoring metrics on its homepage, inflating the number of comments on posts by prominent people on its network. I suppose a more accurate tagline for them should be "Trust your feed?" My article about it: "W Social, Fictional Metrics and the Beauty of Open Data" 🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/ #blog #BigTech #EUBigTech #TEP #TrustedEuropeanPlatforms #TrustYourFeed

Video Feeds - Social Feeds For You, By You

Pin and/or like any of these feeds if you like their content

Leading the Herd Astray: An Experimental Study of Self-fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural Market

Individuals influence each others' decisions about cultural products such as songs, books, and movies; but to what extent can the perception of success become a “self-fulfilling prophecy”? We have explored this question experimentally by artificially inverting the true popularity of songs in an online “music market,” in which 12,207 participants listened to and downloaded songs by unknown bands. We found that most songs experienced self-ful- filling prophecies, in which perceived—but initially false—popularity became real over time. We also found, however, that the inversion was not self-fulfilling for the market as a whole, in part because the very best songs recovered their popularity in the long run. Moreover, the distortion of market information reduced the correlation between appeal and popularity, and led to fewer overall downloads. These results, although partial and speculative, suggest a new approach to the study of cultural markets, and indicate the potential of web-based experiments to explore the social psychological origin of other macrosocio- logical phenomena.

Free Our Feeds

Social media is broken: controlled by a handful of billionaires who shape what people see, say, and believe. These platforms profit from division, exploit user data, and lock people into closed systems.