Coronavirus fakes and troll factories

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The number of fake news about the coronavirus pandemic has skyrocketed in recent times, despite Google's recent announcement of its fight against unverified information. Yuri Mosha, a business development expert, founder of the Second Passport center, spoke about how to recognize fake news from real news and what consequences such misinformation carries.

Google has acknowledged that a lot of fake news is spread about the coronavirus regarding statistics on how many people are infected or died and in which countries. This is really so, because a lot of fake sites are being created, where photos edited in Photoshop are given even as evidence.

The news is fake, sticky and bubbly

I found several of these and asked Google to remove them. In response, I received an official letter from the company, where they said that they were not going to do this. Why does Google refuse to remove fake sites from search? They simply do not want to spend money on research, on finding such information, on employees who will do this. That is, purely business, nothing personal. And this, of course, is absolutely wrong, because Google is a huge corporation, super profitable, and they simply must have a department that will figure out where the fake is, and where is the trusted source, and remove fake sites from indexing. It's too bad that America has, I'm not afraid of this word, terrible Internet legislation that allows Google and other search engines to avoid responsibility for such things. And in Russia the situation is about the same - the law of oblivion basically does not work, and Google does not comply with the decisions of the courts in the country at all. Once I personally conveyed to them a court decision on my issue, which they ignored because they consider the Russian court illegitimate.

If you work in the Russian Federation, then please either close the search in the ".ru" zone, or comply with local law. One out of two. In the European Union, the legislation was changed, and there it is possible to bring the search engine to court. The biggest danger is that most people are unable to distinguish a fake from a real information resource and fall under the influence of such news, and this not only concerns the coronavirus, almost any event on today's agenda can be cited as an example. Their consciousness changes, the understanding of white and black is lost. Specialized black PR agencies, the so-called "troll factories", are engaged in such propaganda, and their closest ally is, oddly enough, search engines.

Google office

Keng susumpow

How to distinguish fake news from real news? There are quite a few signs. First, be sure to pay attention to the number of news publications in the same publication. Black PR specialists specifically publish the same news several times so that the search algorithm would bring it to the first pages. Second, pay attention to the name of the fake site. It can completely mimic the name of a government agency or a major media outlet with only a small difference in the domain name - fbi. media, for example. Thirdly, read about the publication itself. If the item "about us" is absent on the site, if there is no telephone, and through the registration of a domain name it is impossible to track the owner - you are 100% faced with a fake publication. And, of course, it is worth mentioning the poor-quality design of the site, grammatical errors in articles and fake photos of official documents, for which Photoshop is used.

Once again, I repeat that if Google had a department to combat fake news, they would instantly clear the information field of such things, even without court decisions. As for the disseminator of disinformation himself, unfortunately, he cannot be brought to justice. Most often it is one person who has registered 300 sites on his "left" passport and has been publishing fakes all day long. He won't make money on the coronavirus, but he can make money on libel, for example, against an entrepreneur, and he will be forced to pay money to remove the information. In business, competitors are often ordered this way, and it is impossible to find a swindler who accepts orders for denigrating. This is why Google should be responsible for public panic. But there is another very interesting problem here. Conventionally, in Europe, at your request, the news was deleted, but it will still be seen in the rest of the world.

Facebook logo

Mambembe Arts - Crafts

To prevent this from happening, states need to unite and create a global organization for Internet law, like Interpol or within the UN, the laws of which Google, Facebook, Twitter and other corporations would abide by. In the meantime, I am deeply convinced that the management of Google should be ashamed of their actions - this is a big shame for one of the world's largest corporations."