👍Facebook Likes: Social Media’s Misinformation Gateway Drug?

The image shown above, as well as many of propaganda network homepages like “Jihad Watch” and “Dave Hodges Common Sense Show” clearly display how fringe/extremist political sites include the Facebook’s “👍” button front and center. You could even make the argument it’s an essential part of their brand:

Facebook’s Tracking Code is Literally Everywhere (Blastingnews.com, 20–Nov-16)

What really caught my attention after collecting the tracking data on the right-wing propaganda “fake news” network is that nearly every single site — whether conspiracy, pseudoscience, hoax, anti-banking, anti-science, anti-Facebook, and anti-tracking is connected directly to the Empire, and its intergalactic Death Star’s predictive modeling superlaser.

This makes little sense to me: Many of the 114 sites amount to little more than a Wix, Squarespace, or an “index.html” file clumsily ftp’d onto a nine-dollar-a-month GoDaddy page. Many are something an 11-year old could code themselves in half an hour. It is dubious that these websites should be able to garner tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of Facebook “page likes.”

Usanewsflash.com, 20-Nov-16

Theeventchronicle.com, 20-Nov-16

In my view, like “Voldemort” in the Harry Potter series, people who are truly worried about the Illuminati, Federal Reserve, George Soros, SR-71s, Precious Metals, and the New World Order would be scared to even say the word “Facebook” out loud in public, much less sign up for Facebook, complete every life detail on their profile, and then read content put out by Wix-template dark side fringe news sites and click on hundreds of “like” buttons.

Still, this shows that this content must be entering social media through page likes which will later be seen by certain connections (we will never know how many) on Facebook. Through “homophily” and attention-biased algorithms, 👍 fake news content might go on to spawn further confirmation bias (via group agreement) or “rage trolling” (via group disagreement).

🎰Propaganda-lylics

What I’ve done in this research post is take a Star Wars-esque look at pervasive ad tracking by diving into the #Election2016 micr0-propaganda machine’s behavioral tracking shadow. Using publicly available data and open source tools, I’ve touched on a number of potential major privacy/security concerns: thousands of advanced trackers, Facebook code everywhere, and even sketchy Russian ad tech (see the list and dataset I shared earlier).

There is no question these trackers are on millions of personal and work computers, mobile phones, and even the family iPads of anyone who has ever visited these propaganda sites on these devices. So, what about “fake news?”

“Get the Book!” & “What’s that about fake news?” (ChicksOntheRight.com, 20-Nov-2016)

My previous research argued that what we are calling “fake news” is more akin to a micro-propaganda machine. This research data shows that what hides behind fake news sites is a highly coordinated behavioral tracking weaponized shadow network. The underlying tracking technology that fuels the privacy Death Star’s predictive influence modeling superlaser seems to play a part in:

A. Surveilliance of the key actors who produce propaganda — as well as all the people who respond to it

Watching the people who trigger the responses allows political strategists, data ops, and technology companies to see (and probably even initiate) social conflict in what Uber executives might refer to as “God View.” This type of omnipotent gaslighting can then be used to generate long-term data insights on millions of voters.

The more “shocking” the propaganda the micro-propaganda machine produces, the larger the social response; the more people who can be rage-trolled into fighting about things that mostly amount to coordinated distractions, the better. Why? Because all of this data can be captured and semantically mined, as well as merged with past, present and future datasets to increase the accuracy of predictive behavior modeling.

Why didn’t Clinton’s campaign work? Probably because they were being rage-trolled by “micro-propaganda machines” like the one I’ve explored in my last Medium few posts.

The data I’ve collected in this post suggests that it’s not as much about the fake news, viral hoaxes, and strategic misinformation the micro-propaganda machine creates and distributes around election times: This material helps, of course, but any group of actors will generate this type of content for you if you know how make them 😡angry enough.

My exploration of the shadow network of trackers and behavioral data collection infrastructure behind the propaganda network provides evidence that it has more to do with the behavioral data the content the propaganda machine generates. This includes—as I’ve pointed out in this post—gathering rich, detailed, and deep insights on:

The millions of naive people who can be coerced into creating, distributing, and defending this network of “fake news” and psy-propaganda and; The millions of people who end of fighting about on Facebook, Twitter, in person, in the news, op-eds, news comments, on TV, in media, popular music — and especially — with their own wallets.

All of this can be coordinated with enough data and technology. Together it’s what amounts to weaponized “shadow tech.”

B. Centralized measurement and long-term behavioral tracking to build predictive models.

When behavioral data, including historical data related to content engaged with on these sites, Facebook “likes,” Twitter RTs, email newsletter sign-ups, home and work history, time spent on social media, employment and income data, purchasing history, education, frequent shopping/customer loyalty cards, travel history, and religion are combined across millions of trackers, this technology can be easily be used to generate the kind of big data needed to rapidly advance the accuracy of predictive voter models.

It’s the Empire’s final stage in constructing the privacy Death Star’s™ superlaser. Maybe a better name for it is “propaganda-lytics.” ⤵️