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he used humour and wrote in the third person, using the moniker “ l’inspecteur viral ” (the viral inspector, in english; he admits it sounds better in french). he played the part, acting as a kind of detective, delving not just into fake news stories and debunking them, but also investigating the business of fake news and how it spreads online.
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yates was one of only a handful of people in north america doing this type of work. reporters at buzzfeed had been focused on the issue for years , but there appeared to be little concern elsewhere.
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yates dove into these algorithms, performing a makeshift experiment in 2017 . he created two facebook accounts and exposed them to conspiracy theories and other radical content. one of the accounts, which he named gérard engagé, interacted with the content, liking the posts, while the other, herbie neutre, abstained. facebook’s algorithm then promoted more extreme content to gérard engagé, leading ‘him’ down a rabbit hole — and allowing yates to eventually conclude that the algorithm had tried to “radicalize” gérard engagé.
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“all the disinformation problems and sources were already out there and were already active (before the pandemic),” said colette brin, director of the the centre d’études sur les médias at université laval and co-editor of a recent report, portrait of an infodemic .
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