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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday September 15 2019, @12:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the disinformation-aggravation dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow2718

The best medicine against online disinformation is an informed society that's thinking critically. The problem is there are no shortcuts to universal education.

Enter Finnish Public Broadcasting Company, Yle, which is hoping to harness the engagement power of gamification to accelerate awareness and understanding of troll tactics and help more people spot malicious internet fakes. It has put together an online game, called Troll Factory, that lets you play at being, well, a hateful troll. Literally.

The game begins with a trigger warning that it uses "authentic social media content" that viewers may find disturbing. If you continue to play you'll see examples of Islamophobic slogans and memes that have actually been spread on social media. So the trigger warning is definitely merited.

The game itself takes the form of a messaging app style conversation on a virtual smartphone in which you are tasked by the troll factory boss to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment. You do this by making choices about which messages to post online and the methods used to amplify distribution.

Online disinformation tactics intended to polarize public discourse which are depicted in the game include the seeding of conspiracy theory memes on social media; the exploitation of real news events to spread fake claims; microtargeting of hateful content at different demographics and platforms; and the use of paid bots to amplify propaganda so that hateful views appear more widely held than they really are.

After completing an inaugural week's work in the troll factory, the game displays a rating and shows how many shares and follows your dis-ops garnered. This is followed by contextual information on the influencing methods demonstrated — putting the activity you've just participated in into wider context.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/13/this-game-uses-troll-tactics-to-teach-critical-thinking/


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  • (Score: 2) by https on Monday September 16 2019, @12:36PM (1 child)

    by https (5248) on Monday September 16 2019, @12:36PM (#894577) Journal

    The term you are looking for is flamebait.

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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 16 2019, @01:51PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday September 16 2019, @01:51PM (#894599) Homepage Journal

    Flamebait is trying to create a flamewar. Trolling is trying to misplace someone's cheese for them. Subtle difference.

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