Is the Democratic Party devious enough to compete with this?

[Thad]

An increasingly popular tactic challenges conventional wisdom on the spread of electoral disinformation: the creation of partisan outlets masquerading as local news organizations.

An investigation by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School has discovered at least 450 websites in a network of local and business news organizations, each distributing thousands of algorithmically generated articles and a smaller number of reported stories.

Of the 450 sites we discovered, at least 189 were set up as local news networks across ten states within the last twelve months by an organization called Metric Media.

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_repor...ing-points.php

[Thad]

I think all parties should join to insure t-rumps removal from the Oval Office. With him in there it would be more appropriate to call it the Offal Office

[Mayacaman]

To answer your question at the top of this thread, Thad. Yes, I'm sure they are. But the information you have presented is fascinating. I opened the link. This is a similar phenomenon to the Russian operatives on facebook and Twitter during the 2016 election. I did a search on DuckDuckGo (my favorite search engine; "we don't track you") posing the question Who owns "Metric Media?" Here is what comes up:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Who+owns+%...F&t=osx&ia=web

[Thad]

To answer your question at the top of this thread, Thad. Yes, I'm sure they are. But the information you have presented is fascinating. I opened the link. This is a similar phenomenon to the Russian operatives on facebook and Twitter during the 2016 election. I did a search on DuckDuckGo (my favorite search engine; "we don't track you") posing the question Who owns "Metric Media?" Here is what comes up:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Who+owns+%...F&t=osx&ia=web

From the article ........

Metric Media

The Metric Media Foundation was created in 2019 by Bradley Cameron, whose link to Timpone (if any) remains unclear. However, his sites too sport Locality Labs’ privacy policy and terms of service, and share servers and analytics identifiers with some of the other organizations.

Our analysis found Metric Media has 189 sites across ten states. According to their “About Us” page, the Metric Media Foundation “funds more than 900 news sites that generate over 3 million monthly page views” and its operation “also produces over 600 stories daily, making it the largest producer of local news content in the nation.” The names of these news sites are not listed on their website.

The numbers boasted by Metric Media are identical to the numbers boasted by Franklin Archer: the 3 million monthly page views and 600 stories produced daily. But the relationship between Franklin Archer and Metric Media is not articulated on either organization’s website. ......

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_repor...ing-points.php