Yellow Jackets ‘fake news’ shared millions of times on
Facebook
False or misleading news helped amplify the movement, with
help from RT, Avaaz’s report states.
By NICHOLAS
VINOCUR 3/13/19, 6:00 AM CET Updated
3/13/19, 7:06 PM CET
France's Yellow Jackets protest movement led to an explosion
of false or misleading news items circulating on Facebook, with posts shared
some 4 million times over a five-month period, according to a study of social
media activity during the protests.
The analysis, carried out by researchers for the Avaaz
activist network, showed that the top 100 false posts flagged by fact-checkers
had been viewed a total of 105 million times on the social network over the
period, which stretched from November last year to this month.
The study also underscored the unparalleled popularity of RT
coverage of the movement on YouTube, with video posts produced by the
Kremlin-backed news outlet gathering more than 20 million views on the
Google-owned platform — more than twice as many views as Le Monde, L'Obs,
France 24, Le Figaro and LeHuffPost combined.
According to Christoph Schott, who coordinated the research
together with Luca Nicotra, the results show how "lies" designed to
grab attention spread much further on platforms than factual reporting,
facilitated by algorithms that encourage users to share and engage with popular
content.
"It's easier to tell lies than truth in a very
compelling manner," said Schott. "It's much harder to come up with a
factual headline that goes viral than a false one, and the people who are
producing this stuff know what they are doing — they use the platform to create
viral effects."
Most of the top 100 false or misleading Facebook posts
related to the Yellow Jackets movement have been produced by domestic
activists.
Avaaz — which describes itself as an activist network that
carries out campaigns based on polling of its support base — tasked a team of
reporters, researchers and data analysts to examine posts shared by pages,
groups and profiles associated with the movement, looking for false or
purposely misleading content.
France's Yellow Jackets protest movement erupted late last
year in response to a planned hike in fuel prices. After an initial call to
protest was shared on Facebook, the grassroots movement gathered national
momentum, staging more than a dozen rounds of protests, whose participants
identified their support by wearing high-visibility jackets, which French
motorists are required to have with them.
The movement, which initially enjoyed widespread support
from the French public, lost some of its popular backing following several
weeks of disruptions to road transport and violent clashes between protesters
and police.
President Emmanuel Macron embarked on a speaking tour of the
country in response to the crisis, and has promised to unveil new measures at
the conclusion of a so-called Great Debate.
While much attention during the crisis focused on fake news
produced by foreign actors, Schott pointed out that most of the top 100 false
or misleading Facebook posts related to the Yellow Jackets movement have been
produced by domestic activists. RT's coverage, much of which was
straightforward, helped to bolster and amplify the movement's reach online.
"This is pretty much home-grown fake news that was able
to infect all of France, and it happened at a huge scale," he added.
RT dominates YouTube coverage
In their study, Avaaz's 25 researchers in Europe focused on
posts that had previously been flagged by fact-checkers for Le Monde or Agence
France-Presse as being deliberately misleading. Among the top six, they cited a
photograph of a woman with a bloodied face made to look as if it was taken
during a Yellow Jackets protest, but which was actually taken in Madrid in
2012.
As of March 6, the post had been shared more than 136,000
times. Facebook added related articles that pointed out the misleading
information below the post after it was flagged by fact-checkers.
In another example shared more than 349,000 times, a user
posted a photograph of a protest on Paris' Champs-Elysées avenue, claiming that
it was about to be censored. The post was never taken down.
A third example concerned a letter, purportedly written by
French actor Gérard Lanvin, which criticized Macron. Lanvin denied that he had
written the note, which distorted portions of a letter he wrote in 2013, and
was shared more than 251,000 times on the platform. Facebook took down the
original post, but it was reproduced and could still be found as of the
report's publication, Avaaz said.
A spokesperson for Facebook did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.
On YouTube, the report underscored RT's dominance over other
outlets in terms of the total number of videos posted and video posts about the
Yellow Jacket movement. In total, RT France's videos about the Yellow Jackets
garnered more than 23 million views, compared with just under 11 million for
videos by all "mainstream" outlets combined.
A spokesperson for Google had no immediate comment, nor did
RT immediately respond to a request for comment.
A protester with the slogan, "Macron, return the money
to the people" written on his vest stands near French police during a
protest against rising oil prices and living costs, on December 1, 2018 in
Marseille, France | Clementt Mahoudeau/AFP via Getty Images
Avaaz's Schott said the results of the research had been
presented to representatives from Facebook, as well European Commissioner for
Security Julian King and Commissioner for Justice Věra Jourová, along with a
call for platforms to start making systematic use of fact-checking tools to
label false or misleading stories.
In 2018, the European Commission published a "code of
disinformation" that called for greater transparency around political
advertising, cooperation with researchers and tools for people to flag false or
misleading items. Commissioners King and Mariya Gabriel slammed Facebook last
month for "fail[ing] to provide all necessary information" about
online ads.
King has called for "rapid corrections" that are
"given the same prominence and circulation as the original fake
news," but so far has stopped short of calling for legislation that would
force platforms to hire fact-checkers or endorse any sort of rating system for news.
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