Ian Dennis Miller

I found an online news article last week that made me wonder whether I was looking at fake news. I discovered the article was originally written by Jessica Roy, a journalist at the LA Times, but the article had been altered to remove her name and change her words. I confirmed with Jessica that her article had been plagiarized:

The article was almost identical. Almost. But if you read it closely, there were some quirks. The phrase “the alt-right” became “the alt-proper.” The magazine “Vanity Fair” became “Vanity Truthful.” The Free Speech Movement became the “Cost-free Speech Motion.” Instead of prompting people to follow me on Twitter, it asked people to “abide by me on Twitter.”

The rabbit hole goes much deeper. Read all about it here: A fake news site stole my story. The Trump subreddit didn’t notice.

Fake news

What is it an how do you know it when you see it? Let’s ask the following questions about a possibly-fake news article:

was the article obviously generated by software?
is the content plagiarized?
are content sources and authorship redacted?
is the article hosted on a freshly-registered anonymous domain?
are the other articles on the website irrelevant and disorganized?
is there no apparent editorial board. physical office, or business?

If the answer to these questions is “yes” then you probably aren’t looking at real news. Altogether, these criteria help to identify one type of fake news: bot news. Last week I uncovered a bot newspaper site and worked with the LA Times to describe it. This is the link to that article: A fake news site stole my story. The Trump subreddit didn’t notice.

We had a recent discussion at IRN about net neutrality that involved the United States and the United Kingdom, which have approached the issue differently. Now Canada, through the CRTC, have clarified their network neutrality rules.

From the Government of Canada:

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today strengthened its commitment to net neutrality by declaring that Internet service providers should treat data traffic equally to foster consumer choice, innovation and the free exchange of ideas. As such, the CRTC today is publishing a new framework regarding differential pricing practices.

This framework supports a fair marketplace for services, cultural expression and ideas in which Internet service providers compete on price, quality of service, speeds, data allowance and better service offerings, rather than by treating the data usage of certain content differently.

The CRTC is of the view that differential pricing generally gives an unfair advantage or disadvantage to certain content providers and consumers.

The actual decision is contained within Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2017-104:

In order to provide clarity to stakeholders, including consumers, content providers, and Internet service providers (ISPs), the Commission establishes a framework and sets out the evaluation criteria it will apply to determine whether an ISP’s specific differential pricing practice is or is not consistent with subsection 27(2) of the Telecommunications Act.

In this decision, the term “differential pricing practice” refers to the zero-rating or discounting of retail Internet data traffic. Practices associated with ISPs’ own managed Internet protocol networks are not included in the analysis and determinations set out in this decision.

The evaluation criteria are the following:

the degree to which the treatment of data is agnostic (i.e. data is treated equally regardless of its source or nature);

whether the offering is exclusive to certain customers or certain content providers;

the impact on Internet openness and innovation; and

whether there is financial compensation involved.

The decision appears to preserve a low barrier for Internet publishing by barring incumbent ISPs from creating pricing structures that could stifle online competition.

Author: Ian Dennis Miller

The anatomy of “fake news”

Fake news

CRTC provides new Net Neutrality framework