- A survey conducted by Pew last year found that two-thirds of the links tweeted to popular websites came from non-human users (robots or other automated accounts), according to Axios' Neal Rothschild.
Why it's important: This is just a small glimpse of our unfiltered future. It will become easier to generate fake audio files, fake videos and even fake people, and broadcast them instantly and virally.
- False polls, fake experts, fake fundraisers and even fake think tanks are proliferating.
More than half of the Internet traffic comes from bots, not people, in this amazing visit to our fake world:
False influence has become the result of an internet filled with false measures and personas:
- Dozens of content farms and Internet hacks make money by selling or amplifying fake videos or followers accounts to politicians and influencers.
- Distorted images can make any crowd size larger or smaller than reality.
- Around the world, fake polls are being set up to distort elections.
The most popular political tactic of this cycle is to force a candidate or politicians to defend themselves against a hoax or a false report.
- In campaign, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was falsely accused of sexual assault by right-wing trolls.
- Kamala Harris found herself caught in a storm of fake memos questioning her identity and race.
Fake fundraising is becoming easier. The inability to check real characters online makes it difficult to discern how the money is processed on the internet.
- A California crook has created fake websites for Bernie Sanders and Beto O 'Rourke to cheat donors, NBC reported in March.
Be smart: False reports, fake stories and fake characters have been on television, radio and print for years. But as the NY Times notes: "Lawmakers have failed to stay at the top of social media platforms, with their billions of hard-to-follow users, from around the world."
And after: The inevitable result of a dummy information universe is a real crisis created by false information.
- Misinformation about vaccines has led to an alarming number of measles outbreaks.
- And fake Online pharmacies have caused an outbreak of deaths.
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