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Speaker 1: France is just days away from a crucial runoff in
Speaker 1: its presidential campaign, very much like the last US presidential election.
Speaker 1: It could go down in history. Is one of the
Speaker 1: most consequential electoral decisions of this generation. So it looks
Speaker 1: like in the past half we're seeing the numbers from
Speaker 1: the actual votes, the actual const of the votes from
Speaker 1: the Interior Ministry, showing that Immanuel mccon could actually be
Speaker 1: leading twenty three or points three percent four Immanuel mccon.
Speaker 1: The second and final round of voting is scheduled for
Speaker 1: May seven. Candidates from France's mainstream political parties are all out,
Speaker 1: leaving an independent Emmanuel Macon and Marie Lepin, leader of
Speaker 1: the National Front, which has been known as a populist
Speaker 1: right wing party. Our reporter in Paris, Marie ma Wad,
Speaker 1: describes it like this, It's going from basically a boxing
Speaker 1: match to a no holds barred ultimate fighting spectacle, if
Speaker 1: you want to compare it that way. But as election
Speaker 1: day approaches, we're getting a worrying case of deja vu.
Speaker 1: Fake news stories are being read, liked, and shared online
Speaker 1: in the critical final days as the voters make up
Speaker 1: their mind about which candidates to back. Here's Maria again
Speaker 1: one false report um which I think is my favorite
Speaker 1: because it's the wackiest. It's about how the Lepans were
Speaker 1: growing marijuana. According to this report, growing marijuana and their
Speaker 1: basement to make a bit of cash to pay for
Speaker 1: their campaign. After the US election, with a public outcry
Speaker 1: over fake news, social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and
Speaker 1: Google said they were going to do something about it.
Speaker 1: Have they? Hi, I'm Brad Stone and I'm Paga Cary.
Speaker 1: And this week on Decrypted, we're taking another look at
Speaker 1: the problem of fake news and whether changes at Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Google have been effective at curbing the reach of
Speaker 1: misleading and sometimes outright fabricated stories. These companies are facing
Speaker 1: their first major test now half a year after they
Speaker 1: committed to tackling this issue. In the wake of the
Speaker 1: U S elections, We'll take a look at how much
Speaker 1: fake news is circulating in France ahead of the vote
Speaker 1: and talk to expert fact checkers about the search for
Speaker 1: a real solution. Stay with us. We've been covering the
Speaker 1: issue of fake news for a few months now. It
Speaker 1: first blew up as a major concern after the US election.
Speaker 1: Regular listeners of this show may remember that we dedicated
Speaker 1: an episode to the topic last year. For anyone who
Speaker 1: needs a recap, basically, here's how it went. Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: Facebook CEO, initially tried to brush off the issue. You know, personally,
Speaker 1: I think the the idea that you know, fake news
Speaker 1: on Facebook, of which you know it's a it's a
Speaker 1: very small amount of of of the content UH influenced
Speaker 1: in the election in any way, I think is a
Speaker 1: pretty crazy idea. But very soon after Mark Zuckerberg made
Speaker 1: those comments, Facebook started coming under enough pressure from enough
Speaker 1: different quarters that pretty quickly the company had to backpedal.
Speaker 1: Here's what Justin can, a tech investor and founder of
Speaker 1: the streaming site Twitch, told us at the time. It's
Speaker 1: a nonpartisan issue. I think people making decisions based on
Speaker 1: fake news is not a good idea, right That's that
Speaker 1: I think everyone can agree that that's actually going to
Speaker 1: be bad for American society and discourse in general. Since then,
Speaker 1: the main social networks have made a few changes. They
Speaker 1: have partnered with local media on fact checking projects. Just
Speaker 1: last week, Google made changes to its powerful search algorithm
Speaker 1: intended to demote links to suspicious websites, and in France,
Speaker 1: Facebook has deleted as many as thirty thousand accounts linked
Speaker 1: to fake news. But there hasn't been a major political
Speaker 1: event to test out these new policies until now. In France,
Speaker 1: presidents get elected in two stages. The first round of
Speaker 1: voting took place on April and narrowed the race down
Speaker 1: from a field of eleven candidates to the final two.
Speaker 1: In some ways, the dynamic playing out in France isn't
Speaker 1: a million miles away from what US vote has experienced
Speaker 1: last year. On one hand, there's the front runner, Emmanuel Macron.
Speaker 1: Then there's Marine Lapan, who Macron is facing in the
Speaker 1: final vote Las Islamists. We called Mary, who's our reporter
Speaker 1: in Paris you heard from earlier, to give us a
Speaker 1: little bit of background on these two. Now, these two
Speaker 1: candidates disagree on almost everything. Lepin, on one hand, once
Speaker 1: out of Europe, whereas Macon wants all in. Micon is
Speaker 1: backing a bunch of free trade agreements, whereas lepan is
Speaker 1: for protectionism. Marine Leapin has been a figure on Frances
Speaker 1: far right for some time. A victory for Marine is
Speaker 1: currently seen as a long shot, but after Brexit in
Speaker 1: the election of Donald Trump, anything seems possible. Leapin is
Speaker 1: definitely an anti euro and anti European candidate and that
Speaker 1: helped her when the favors of Russia. But who wasn't
Speaker 1: the only one in the French election who has been
Speaker 1: calling for a sort of closer tie. But what has
Speaker 1: tied mainly been closest to to Russia is really this
Speaker 1: this sort of explicit um move that she made by
Speaker 1: paying visit to put In. And it's specifically in this
Speaker 1: context of populism that we're seeing fake news emerge in
Speaker 1: France just the way it did in the US. Here's
Speaker 1: Jonathan Ditsch, he's the CEO of Bacamo Social and he's
Speaker 1: been tracking online discussions relating to the French election. In
Speaker 1: just the past several months, we've seen h a quarter
Speaker 1: of a million, I think a quarter of a million
Speaker 1: references in French social media just with the keyword fake
Speaker 1: news um, and that would be those references be mentioned
Speaker 1: like in Facebook and Twitter or something like that. So
Speaker 1: if you imagine, those are just the people talking about
Speaker 1: it and then the reach that goes out from that.
Speaker 1: But that's just what the traditional media outlets are saying
Speaker 1: about fake news. Here's how much actual content he's seeing.
Speaker 1: When we measured this for the time period between the
Speaker 1: beginning of November and a couple of days into April,
Speaker 1: that reframe and alternative section encompassed about one quarter of
Speaker 1: all of the links shared during that time. Just for
Speaker 1: context there, reframe and alternative content is what Jonathan classifies
Speaker 1: as potentially fake or deliberately misleading news that's opposed to
Speaker 1: other kinds of content like news articles from traditional news
Speaker 1: organizations or material coming directly from the campaign. The words
Speaker 1: reframe an alternative are are euphemisms for something that's very dangerous,
Speaker 1: and the fact that Jonathan dis just saying that perhaps
Speaker 1: one quarter of all links shared during this time are
Speaker 1: fake news is pretty scary. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: Jonathan says a really significant portion of fake or junk
Speaker 1: news stories relating to the French election have some kind
Speaker 1: of link to Russian websites and news sources. We characterize
Speaker 1: a site as having Russian influence if it links to
Speaker 1: Russia Today or spot nick News or even maybe one
Speaker 1: of the Russian newspapers. I mean, those are all indications
Speaker 1: that the site may have Russian influence. We also see
Speaker 1: in the sites that are in the reframing section it's
Speaker 1: about them, that that have links to Russian driven sources.
Speaker 1: In what we call the alternative section, it's about them.
Speaker 1: It's hard not to want to know is this a
Speaker 1: delivered strategy from the Russians, What if any effect is
Speaker 1: it having on voters? And the truth is it's really
Speaker 1: hard to say. It's hard to hard to hard to
Speaker 1: really know that for sure. But we do know that
Speaker 1: this content is being published in French around topics that
Speaker 1: are relevant for the French election. And is that sufficient
Speaker 1: to say it? I don't know, But it's almost impossible
Speaker 1: to distinguish whether that's really overt action or it's just
Speaker 1: a sympathy, if you will, for that point of view,
Speaker 1: as in the US election, there's a lot of smoke here. Clearly,
Speaker 1: Russian President Vladimir Putin has a stake in the French elections.
Speaker 1: He'd like to see Western Europe further destabilized, which helps
Speaker 1: him extend Russia's power and his influence on the world stage.
Speaker 1: But even if it's not connected to Russia, it appears
Speaker 1: that we fall for these fake news stories pretty easily,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't take much for them to go viral.
Speaker 1: He's marry again. Most of these fake posts, and most
Speaker 1: of these hoaxes or stories that look plausible or are
Speaker 1: meant to look plausible, um, they're very often a deformed
Speaker 1: version of a real fact. And the all there, of course,
Speaker 1: is that people who are not ill intentioned will fall
Speaker 1: for them and they'll start sharing them around because it
Speaker 1: looks like a rumor that could maybe be true. But Brad,
Speaker 1: if you think a quarter of all links sounds like
Speaker 1: a large number, and I did while I was reporting
Speaker 1: this story, just wait until you hear how much fake
Speaker 1: news US voters were exposed to before the election. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back after this word from our sponsor. You
Speaker 1: know where you want to be. Red Hat has the
Speaker 1: broad portfolio of open source technologies to get you there.
Speaker 1: Meet your evolving business challenges head on with secure solutions
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Speaker 1: Before the break, we heard there's actually a lot of
Speaker 1: fake or misleading news being shared on French social media
Speaker 1: just days before the country has to choose its next president.
Speaker 1: But even though the numbers in France may seem high,
Speaker 1: it turns out it's about half the amount of fake
Speaker 1: news that US voters were exposed to before the November
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen presidential election. My name is clem up in Disigo,
Speaker 1: and I'm at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University
Speaker 1: of Oxford. Clementine has been working on what she calls
Speaker 1: junk news. That's a kind of catch all term for
Speaker 1: news that is definitely misleading, if not entirely fake. The
Speaker 1: free count with the US election, For instance, we studied
Speaker 1: the case of Michigan UM. In Michigan, we found as
Speaker 1: much fake news as professional news share them tweet tour
Speaker 1: in the days leading up to the US election. So
Speaker 1: compared to that, UM and in French voters were sharing
Speaker 1: way bitter credit to news on Twitter than the U
Speaker 1: s vooters. That is as much fake news as professional news.
Speaker 1: So that's one junk news article for every credible story
Speaker 1: oh Man. As a journalist, I find that to be
Speaker 1: very distressing. Why was it so much worse than the US. Well,
Speaker 1: for one thing, social media companies have been taking the
Speaker 1: fake news issue more seriously, so it's possible that some
Speaker 1: of their efforts are actually helping right. Facebook and Google
Speaker 1: have introduced a whole host of new measures since the
Speaker 1: US election to do things like limit the amount of
Speaker 1: money fake news sites can make through advertising. Google took
Speaker 1: a few different steps um. The first was to try
Speaker 1: and remove as many fake news types as it could
Speaker 1: from Google ad sence UM, which is the way that
Speaker 1: a lot of these people made money right by loading
Speaker 1: their their fake news sides with with ads. That's Alexios Manzarles.
Speaker 1: I'm the director of the International fact Checking Network at
Speaker 1: pointer UM. We are a loose alliance of hundred or
Speaker 1: so fact checking organizations around the world. Alexios has also
Speaker 1: been working with Facebook. Facebook after much pr shaming, came
Speaker 1: to a decision in December UM that both sort of
Speaker 1: attacked the financial side of it UM by making sure
Speaker 1: or trying to make sure that fake news sides couldn't
Speaker 1: boost UM, they couldn't use their advertising assistance, but also
Speaker 1: couldn't boost posts on Facebook. Facebook has been doing more
Speaker 1: than just targeting ad revenue. They've developed tools to help
Speaker 1: us a spot fake news when it appears in their
Speaker 1: news feed. We know that people don't want to be
Speaker 1: lied to or deceived on our platform, and that is
Speaker 1: a role we take a d percent responsibility for. This
Speaker 1: is Chris Cox, Facebook's chief product officer. He's addressing a
Speaker 1: crowd of people at Facebook's developer conference called F eight.
Speaker 1: This was launched in France. It's called Perspectives. So if
Speaker 1: you find a story and feed, or you read an
Speaker 1: article about a topic, when you return, you're presented with
Speaker 1: the points of view of all of the French candidates
Speaker 1: on that topic. This isn't just the candidate that you
Speaker 1: are you've connected with. This is all the candidates and
Speaker 1: it's a pattern that we think is super interesting because
Speaker 1: it's presenting a complete story. Because this feature has been
Speaker 1: working well in France, Facebook is looking at making it
Speaker 1: more widely available. Google has also made changes to its
Speaker 1: search results. In particular, there's a new fact check tag
Speaker 1: that publishers can add to news stories, and it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be visible in the list of search results. Here's Marie.
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google. They've teamed up with local newspapers in
Speaker 1: a project called cross Check, which spots hoaxes and flexed
Speaker 1: them to readers online with the help of local journalists.
Speaker 1: So far, it seems that initiatives like cross check have
Speaker 1: been well received, but I do have some concerns about
Speaker 1: whether these kinds of projects can really address the fake
Speaker 1: news issue at scale. A story could go viral in
Speaker 1: minutes or hours, but fact checking is a more time
Speaker 1: consuming process. By the time a story gets debunked, thousands,
Speaker 1: maybe tens of thousands of people might have already read
Speaker 1: it and believed it. Cross Check spotted all the fakes
Speaker 1: that I previously talked about, and I guess that attests
Speaker 1: to some success of that initiative. Of course, the challenge
Speaker 1: for social media is getting rid of a fake story
Speaker 1: quickly enough that it doesn't leave a mark in voters
Speaker 1: minds after making the rounds. And that's not all, Alexio says.
Speaker 1: There's some evidence that articles debunking fake news don't actually
Speaker 1: get back to that same group of people who read
Speaker 1: the false story in the first place. I think we've
Speaker 1: seen um some indicating that hoax has spread faster and
Speaker 1: the neer than their corrections. M but I haven't seen
Speaker 1: anything truly reliable on who gets fake news and who doesn't.
Speaker 1: There's been some work from Balta Coot, Chalky at the I,
Speaker 1: M T and Luka that claims that these are really
Speaker 1: two separate audiences. Um, I don't you know. I I
Speaker 1: could see that being the case, but I think we
Speaker 1: need more and more research to prove that. Another issue
Speaker 1: with the spread of fake news is bought. These are
Speaker 1: automated accounts that can spue out thousands of tweets or
Speaker 1: posts in a single day. Facebook recently deleted thirty thou
Speaker 1: of these accounts, and Twitter has been active here too.
Speaker 1: Twitter is uh is quite responsive to these, to these
Speaker 1: questions of of chank news circulating over the platform. UM
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's also I mean, the question is also
Speaker 1: whether you can automate the detection of faith news. Um
Speaker 1: so this is also something that the project is going on,
Speaker 1: or you can automately automatically sign votes and automated accounts
Speaker 1: in order to to take a decision maybe to close
Speaker 1: the accounts. That was Clementine. Again. At the same time,
Speaker 1: we do have to be careful. It's too soon to
Speaker 1: really know how much of an impact these measures are having.
Speaker 1: As Alexio said, it hasn't yet been studied carefully, so
Speaker 1: we can't rule out this one simpler explanation. The term
Speaker 1: faith news didn't exist in the French social media dialogue
Speaker 1: before roughly the end of the US elections, and now
Speaker 1: it has come out of nowhere to represent a massive,
Speaker 1: massive part of the discussion. That's Jonathan again. He's the
Speaker 1: consultant in Paris who studies online conversations. Right. Part of
Speaker 1: the answer might be that we're just more aware of
Speaker 1: the issue now, so perhaps we're less likely to be
Speaker 1: taken in by a fake news story. And the answer
Speaker 1: probably also has something to do with how much the
Speaker 1: public trusts their media institutions. Here in the US. Surveys
Speaker 1: have suggested that number is depressingly low. But there is
Speaker 1: still this tricky issue of foreign meddling in elections. Because
Speaker 1: it can be so hard to figure out who first
Speaker 1: published a story or where it came from, it's easy
Speaker 1: for websites associated with foreign governments to circulate their version
Speaker 1: of the story. Here's Jonathan again. We've also seen stories
Speaker 1: which seemed to emanate from foreign sources that are designed
Speaker 1: to to try to create a more sympathetic point of view. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, to take some of the stories about about
Speaker 1: Macolm's alleged hidden accounts overseas banking. This is something that's
Speaker 1: been rubbished um by traditional media, and yet it continues
Speaker 1: to exist uh in the reframing in alternative media sources.
Speaker 1: There are allegations of more substantial Russian medaling in the
Speaker 1: French elections too. For example, the reports that Russian max
Speaker 1: cyber groups managed to breach the Mark Kron campaign. That's
Speaker 1: not unlike what happened last year when Russian hack has
Speaker 1: infiltrated the Democratic National Committee. Here's our reporter in Paris, Marie.
Speaker 1: Some experts have said, you know, it's hard to pin
Speaker 1: down who's behind these cyber attacks, but they look like
Speaker 1: they've been perpetrated by the same group that tried to
Speaker 1: infiltrate the Democratic Party in the US, and a group
Speaker 1: called the pond Storm, which some people have said is
Speaker 1: linked to Russian intelligence services. Getting a handle on fake
Speaker 1: news isn't just important for France. There's a general election
Speaker 1: coming up in June in the UK and then Germany
Speaker 1: federal elections of scheduled for September plus, there is a
Speaker 1: ton of fake news that has nothing to do with politics.
Speaker 1: Watch out for the health advice you're reading about on
Speaker 1: the web. There is definitely fake news and other topics,
Speaker 1: and I would think that health specialists have a particularly
Speaker 1: strong grip on how widespread fake news about um cures
Speaker 1: or or alleged cures to all kinds of ailments are
Speaker 1: on the internet. I remember seeing some of these on Zeka,
Speaker 1: for instance. But bringing it back to politics, there are
Speaker 1: some encouraging signs that the public is becoming more aware
Speaker 1: of what they're reading and sharing online. I asked Jonathan
Speaker 1: whether he saw a spike in the number of fake
Speaker 1: news articles being shared before the first round of voting
Speaker 1: in France, which took place on April, and he told me, actually,
Speaker 1: we saw the opposite. What we saw is that there
Speaker 1: is a greater sharing of traditional and campaign UH links
Speaker 1: from the traditional media and campaign sources over the month
Speaker 1: of April UH. And that's actually been a fairly steady
Speaker 1: increase over the past couple of months. And so what
Speaker 1: that means now is, whereas it might have been about
Speaker 1: one in every four links was from these reframing or
Speaker 1: alternative sites, now it's just under one in every five.
Speaker 1: Jonathan says he's seeing more articles being shared on average
Speaker 1: per account, and he's seeing more accounts sharing articles, so
Speaker 1: traditional media stories are rising as a portion of the total,
Speaker 1: and platforms like Facebook and Google will be refining their
Speaker 1: tools all the time. For example, spamming used to be
Speaker 1: common on both sites. It's loss of a problem today,
Speaker 1: or at least we're all better at ignoring it, And
Speaker 1: it seems like both companies are tackling fake news the
Speaker 1: same way. Although interestingly, Alexios was very clear that while
Speaker 1: a lot of the content is being distributed on Facebook
Speaker 1: and Google, um so therefore they have an important stake
Speaker 1: in the outcome, these companies shouldn't have to take all
Speaker 1: the responsibility. But this is really a job for everyone.
Speaker 1: It's a job for high school teachers who need to
Speaker 1: teach the digitally native not to be digitally naive. It's
Speaker 1: a job for fact checkers who need to make sure
Speaker 1: they're reaching beyond their bubbles. It's a job for media
Speaker 1: organizations to double up, double down, sorry on their own
Speaker 1: fact checking processes before they published things, and to be
Speaker 1: more honest about corrections. So I do think this is
Speaker 1: not there's no silver bullet, and Jonathan had similar views.
Speaker 1: He put it to me like this, The real reason
Speaker 1: why people are susceptible to this is because they don't
Speaker 1: feel like their stories being told and they don't feel
Speaker 1: like they're hearing something that's relevant to them. P I. I
Speaker 1: I do agree with Alexios and Jonathan. It is everybody's
Speaker 1: responsibility to get educated and maybe be a little bit
Speaker 1: skeptical about the stories they read. But I gotta say
Speaker 1: I feel like Google and Facebook have an extra responsibility here.
Speaker 1: Their success has destabilized the traditional media. We've seen it
Speaker 1: all across the world, and you know the fact that
Speaker 1: it is open to vacuum for these less uh you know,
Speaker 1: trusted news sources to come in and then in some
Speaker 1: cases mislead people. It's tough to handle, particularly being a
Speaker 1: member of the press. I think these companies, you know,
Speaker 1: they've taken a passive attitude. They've gone and said, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to address bad things when we see them,
Speaker 1: we'll get them off the network. And that's frankly not
Speaker 1: good enough. The velocity of news and sharing moves so
Speaker 1: quickly now you almost have to prevent it from ever
Speaker 1: taking hold in the first place, and we've seen the
Speaker 1: destructive outcome that fake news can have. I think I
Speaker 1: agree with you. We wouldn't tolerate this kind of content
Speaker 1: being distributed on any other platform. So um, I think
Speaker 1: if we're applying standards across the board, the web needs
Speaker 1: to catch up to whatever the outcome in France, one
Speaker 1: hopes that people are making their decisions based on real
Speaker 1: news instead of date news. And with that, that's it
Speaker 1: for this week's Decrypted. Thanks for listening. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear what you thought of this episode. You can record
Speaker 1: a voice message and send it to us at Decrypted
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net or I'm on Twitter at Pia
Speaker 1: Gattari and I'm at brad Stone. If you haven't already,
Speaker 1: please subscribe to our show on Apple podcast or wherever
Speaker 1: you normally listen. While you're there, please leave us a
Speaker 1: rating and review. It really helps more listeners find the show.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Akuta, Liz Smith, and Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 1: A big thanks to Marie ma Wad for contributing from Paris,
Speaker 1: and to our new reporter Nico Grant, who helped with
Speaker 1: a big chunk of the reporting and research for today's show,
Speaker 1: Alec McCabe is head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week. Decrypted is brought to you by red Hat,
Speaker 1: whose broad portfolio of open source technologies for the enterprise
Speaker 1: helps you get from where you are to where you
Speaker 1: want to be. Red Hat the open technology to help
Speaker 1: you realize your vision. Learn more at red hat dot com,
Speaker 1: slash opent tech