fake news - live

[space otter]

happy fourth to ya all

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-facebook-ad-stock-models-080039156.html

FAKE VIEWS: The Real Americans In Trump's New Ads Are Foreign Stock Models

Ed Mazza•July 4, 2019

President Donald Trump's latest online ads for his reelection campaign feature what's supposed to look like testimonials from real Americans. But it turns out the people in the ads are stock footage models from overseas.

The spots are running on Facebook and Google.

According to the Popular Info website ― and a HuffPost search of stock footage archives ― videos and stills of the models from the Trump ads are available on the iStockphoto website as well as from other sources that resell such images.

"Tracey from Florida," shown strolling along what appears to be a Florida beach, said in a voiceover that Trump was doing "a great job" and "I could not ask for a better president of the United States of America."

But she isn't Tracey, she's not from Florida and the voice is unlikely to be hers. The footage is of a stock model who according to the description is "walking during sunset at the beach along the Mediterranean."

Another featured American ― "Thomas from Washington" ― is this guy, whose image is sold via stock footage in video and stills, in this case as "bearded and tattooed hipster coffee shop owner posing."



He can run a coffee shop in multiple countries ― images of him are available with a sign on his door in at least six languages but was provided from a stock footage producer in Turkey. CNN discovered that the exterior of his supposed coffee shop was actually stock footage of a storefront in Japan. 

"If I did anything remotely like this for any one of my clients I'd be fired," Democratic ad producer J.J. Balaban told CNN.

The ads do include a disclaimer: The fine-print words "actual testimonial actor portrayal" appear briefly in the spots, although they're easy to miss.

Popular Info reported that the models in the ads seemed to target groups that Trump struggles to connect with, such as the young woman billed as Tracey from Florida or this man, who seems to be Hispanic and claims to be a "lifelong Democrat" yet supports Trump's border plan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=18&v=CrV1OoSxwyE


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=18&v=CrV1OoSxwyE


However, there is no indication the testimonials were from people in the demographic groups portrayed in the videos.

"As a producer, you want to control — you want people to look a certain way and you want them to sound a certain way," former cable exec Jay Newell, who teaches advertising at Iowa State University, told The Associated Press. "The fact that the footage is from outside the U.S. makes it that much more embarrassing.


ah i see this is originally from huff
..hahahahahah figures

also
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-2020-campaign-uses-stock-photo-models-in-new-political-ads/ar-AADH8pB?li=BBnb7Kz



found it
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-facebook-ad-stock-models_n_5d1d7f12e4b0f312567eb8ae

07/04/2019 04:00 am ET
The Real Americans In Trump's New Ads Are Foreign Stock Models
The Trump campaign's latest ads use footage from overseas models along with supposed testimonials from real supporters.

By Ed Mazza

video...if you don't want to read


President Donald Trump's latest online ads for his reelection campaign feature what's supposed to look like testimonials from real Americans. But it turns out the people in the ads are stock footage models from overseas.

The spots are running on Facebook and Google.

According to the Popular Info website ― and a HuffPost search of stock footage archives ― videos and stills of the models from the Trump ads are available on the iStockphoto website as well as from other sources that resell such images.

"Tracey from Florida," shown strolling along what appears to be a Florida beach, said in a voiceover that Trump was doing "a great job" and "I could not ask for a better president of the United States of America."

But she isn't Tracey, she's not from Florida and the voice is unlikely to be hers. The footage is of a stock model who according to the description is "walking during sunset at the beach along the Mediterranean."

Another featured American ― "Thomas from Washington" ― is this guy, whose image is sold via stock footage in video and stills, in this case as "bearded and tattooed hipster coffee shop owner posing."

same pic of husky guy above
He can run a coffee shop in multiple countries ― images of him are available with a sign on his door in at least six languages but was provided from a stock footage producer in Turkey. CNN discovered that the exterior of his supposed coffee shop was actually stock footage of a storefront in Japan. 

"If I did anything remotely like this for any one of my clients I'd be fired," Democratic ad producer J.J. Balaban told CNN.

The ads do include a disclaimer: The fine-print words "actual testimonial actor portrayal" appear briefly in the spots, although they're easy to miss.

Popular Info reported that the models in the ads seemed to target groups that Trump struggles to connect with, such as the young woman billed as Tracey from Florida or this man, who seems to be Hispanic and claims to be a "lifelong Democrat" yet supports Trump's border plan:

same video as above

However, there is no indication the testimonials were from people in the demographic groups portrayed in the videos.

"As a producer, you want to control — you want people to look a certain way and you want them to sound a certain way," former cable exec Jay Newell, who teaches advertising at Iowa State University, told The Associated Press. "The fact that the footage is from outside the U.S. makes it that much more embarrassing."

[space otter]

CNBC
Prime Day is coming: Tips to spot a fake review on Amazon
Jade Scipioni  18 hrs ago

Amazon Prime Day kicks off midnight PST on Monday and lasts for two full days for the first time. While you're researching what to buy this year, there's an aspect you should keep in mind: Whether the Amazon reviews your reading are legit.

On Tuesday, members of Congress wrote a letter Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demanding to know what the company is doing about deceptive ratings and reviews ahead its Prime Day, which generates more than $4 billion in sales for the e-commerce giant, according to last year's numbers.

There are methods in place: Amazon uses artificial intelligence and a team of investigators to block and remove inauthentic reviews 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it works with social media sites to stop inauthentic reviews at the source, it pursues legal action to stop offenders and it's constantly improving these systems, an Amazon spokesperson tells CNBC Make It.

But still, fake reviews on the site – where sellers pay people or use bots to drum up phony positive reviews about their products in an effort to influence Amazon and Google rankings as well as consumers – are on the rise.

According to data from Fakespot, a website that uses artificial intelligence to help consumers determine the reliability of online reviews, fraudulent reviews on Amazon have climbed from 16.34% last June to more than 34% this June in all product categories. And in April, a probe carried out by U.K consumer group Which?, found tens of thousands of fake five-star reviews on products listed on Amazon.

(The problem has been intensifying since Amazon began to court Chinese sellers in 2015, according to data from Fakespot data. Amazon plans to pull its third-party services on its Chinese website starting on July 18, two days after Prime Day ends.)

There are some things you can do to try and distinguish the fake reviews from the authentic ones though, according to Fakespot COO and co-founder Robert Gross. Here are his top five tips to help spot fake reviews.

1. Know where the problem is the worst
Electronics and gadgets are some of the most popular things sold on Amazon Prime Day; they're also the categories where Gross sees the highest percentages of fake reviews, particularly for Bluetooth headsets, cell phones and accessories and electronics. Ahead of Prime Day, many sellers in these categories aggressively create fake reviews to be "prominently displayed next to deals." In other words, if someone looks at a Prime Day deal and starts searching for similar products, the ones that use fake reviews aggressively will pop up in the product search results page, he says.

2. Look at the star-rating distribution
Gross says a big red flag that a product may have fake reviews is an "unnatural" distribution of five-star ratings. If a product from a seller that you've never heard of has several hundred reviews, and those reviews are all five-star, you should question their authenticity.

Even if a product has a large majority of five-star reviews and only a couple of one-star reviews, it's worth questioning. In that case, read the one-star reviews, as they are more than likely real, according to Gross' findings.

He also says customers should look for products that have a variety of ratings, including three or two-star reviews, because no matter how good a company is, not every product or customer experience is going to be perfect.

3. Look at the language of the review
One of the most surefire ways to catch a fake review, says Gross, is to look at its language. If the reviews are very short and provide no details (like "good product," or "great company") there's a good chance it's fake, based on Fakespot's data over the last year.

Also look out for multiple reviews that have similar language to each other, says Gross, as some sellers create fake reviews using a variation of their company's marketing copy.

4. Sort the reviews by most recently posted
Gross says that Amazon and other e-commerce sites have gotten into the bad habit of showing consumer reviews that it deems to be the most relevant, not the most recent.

"These are usually the first reviews a consumer will see, and sometimes they are years old. Other times these reviews have been upvoted [by likes or comments] by fake review farms to push them to the top" he says.

Gross advises consumers to sort the reviews by "most recent" to get a better idea where the company or product stands today.

5. Don't count on 'Verified Purchase' tags
Gross says while Amazon's "Verified Purchase" tags are intended to help customers identify which reviews are legitimate, they have been taken over by fake reviewers and sellers, "to the point of being useless," he says.

"Verified purchase tags are easily gamed by fake reviewers and sellers that use them. They will typically ask the reviewer to buy the product and leave a five-star review. Once the five-star review is left, it will be labeled as from a verified purchaser. The seller then sends the 'buyer' a gift card for the amount or a little more to compensate them for the fake review," he says, adding that consumers shouldn't rely on them for authenticity.

Of course, even if reviews are fake, that doesn't mean a product is bad or good. And Gross points out that Fakespot does not analyze whether a product is good or bad either, only the quality of the reviews. However, if a consumer has never heard of the seller or company, they should do their own research before buying, he says.

"A good deal is not always the best product," he says.

Don't miss: The FTC just prosecuted a fake paid Amazon review for the first time — here's what that means for users

[space otter]

even if you think you know who is writting what...do you?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/carl-beech-westminster-pedophile-ring-sentence-jail_n_5d3b1117e4b0a6d6373ea9bf?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaHVmZnBvc3QuY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAETxEAO1dodKGa9f7ZEUCf7efd27MJh25Xm9zG4tyvMvDLYQGdl6ALFyd4s-d2BxLP6-RYV2Vz9KaRcBa2iT6cjABTQ3ufMgqwEJybY6wmdBHGcuMiPhxNgK5SPTpYnsZLUtkJhYoVD7HBNyvo4-bjdt2wowCwcjv9wzx9jl4LEN

WORLD NEWS 07/26/2019 11:39 am ET
UK Pedophile Sentenced To 18 Years For Making Up VIP Pedophile Ring Abuse Story
Ex–child advocate Carl Beech said he'd been abused by a murderous pedophile ring, but it turned out he was the pedophile.
headshot
By Chris York

A former UK child advocate who lied about being abused by a murderous VIP Westminster pedophile ring has been sentenced to 18 years in jail.

Carl Beech, 51, was convicted of perverting the course of justice and fraud on Monday, over the lies which ruined the reputations of a number of political figures.

He repeatedly told officers he had been abused in the 1970s and 1980s by a string of high-profile figures from the worlds of politics, the military and security services.

His claims about being sexually abused as a boy and witnessing three child murders at the hands of the group led the Metropolitan Police to raid the homes of 91-year-old Normandy veteran Field Marshall Lord Bramall, the late Lord Brittan and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor.

The force has come under widespread criticism for the investigation, which closed in 2016 without making a single arrest and was described by Proctor as a "truly disgraceful chapter in the history of British policing".

Among Beech's allegations were claims that his stepfather, an Army major, raped him and passed him on to generals to be tortured and sadistically abused at military bases by other establishment figures.

Lord Bramall said the impact of Beech's "monstrous allegations" were worse than any of the injuries he had received in the Army.

He said: "I thought I could be hurt no more. I was never as badly wounded in all my time in the military as I was by the allegations made by 'Nick'."

Lord Bramall described the horror of having his house searched by 20 police officers as his seriously-ill wife lay in bed, adding she died without seeing his name cleared.

PRESS ASSOCIATION VIDEO
Harvey Proctor making a statement after the conviction of Beech earlier this week.
Beech was also convicted of voyeurism and possession of indecent images of children.

During sentencing at Newcastle Crown Court, prosecutor Tony Badenoch QC said images of a pre-pubescent boy ― referred to as Child E ― were found on a secret app, disguised as a calculator, on Beech's iPad.

He said these pictures and videos were shot by the defendant in his bathroom without the boy knowing.

The prosecutor told the judge: "Carl Beech, whilst he was committing these offenses, was in almost daily contact with senior police officers investigating his invented claims of pedophile activity by others."

Badenoch told the court Beech's conduct involved "the cynical manipulation of the criminal justice system on an unprecedented scale".

He added that this was "sophisticated and well-planned criminal behavior".

COLIN MCPHERSON VIA GETTY IMAGES
Lord Leon Brittan, centre, died before his name was cleared.
Badenoch said the allegations made by Beech "could scarcely have been more serious".

He said: "The defendant was motivated by entirely selfish purposes."

"The defendant derived sexual pleasure from graphically describing the violent sexual abuse of young boys. He enjoyed the attention and celebrity."

On Monday, the jury rejected Beech's unfounded allegations and convicted him of 12 counts of perverting the course of justice.

He was also found guilty on one count of fraud, relating to a £22,000 ($27,000) criminal injuries payout he falsely claimed for being raped by Savile.

The jury were unconvinced by his claims that Army generals, at the height of the IRA terror threat, could sneak off unguarded to join horrific child abuse sessions.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, Diana Brittan, widow of Lord Brittan, described the trauma of having to deal with her husband's terminal illness while facing "a series of false allegations and smears of the very worst kind".

She said: "I feel he was caught up in a totally unjustified witchhunt which took its toll on both him and me."

"He was denied the dignified death that he deserved."

She added: "His name has now been cleared but he will never know this. The system has let him and my family down."

PA ARCHIVE/PA IMAGES
Field Marshall Lord Bramall pictured in 2000.
The Met Police's £2 million ($2.5 million) Operation Midland into the lurid allegations by the man they named only as "Nick" ended without making a single arrest.

Sir Edward Heath's godson Lincoln Seligman said in a statement read to the court that the jury's verdicts had confirmed that the late former prime minister "was always as he remains, wholly and categorically innocent of these depraved and wicked accusations".

Seligman condemned the Metropolitan Police, Wiltshire Police and politicians "who should be ashamed of themselves" for giving credence to Beech's accusations.

He said: "It is unlikely this damage will ever be undone."

Collingwood Thompson, defending, said in mitigation that there was an "unfortunate combination" of his client making his allegations at a time that police started a policy that "complainants should be believed".

Thompson said: "Although the flames were started by Beech, they were fanned by the policy that was adopted."

He also told the judge that there was "no realistic prospect" that any of his client's allegations would have resulted in prosecutions.

Over the course of the trial, which spanned more than two months, jurors heard how Beech spun officers lie after lie.

He claimed that the gang of men, who he referred to as "The Group", had run over and killed a boy named Scott in front of him – but prosecutors said that the child described had in fact never existed.

The fraudster gave false hope to the family of Martin Allen, who went missing in 1979 at the age of 15, by saying that he had seen a youngster matching his description raped and strangled in front of him.

After Operation Midland was closed, Beech fled to Sweden at a time when the Crown Prosecution Service were considering whether to bring charges against him, buying two properties there and trying to evade justice by using false identities.

He was extradited back to the UK to face charges in October last year.

His lies were at one stage wrongly described as "credible and true" by a senior detective.

Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Sir Stephen House said that officers in the case had worked in good faith, and that an "internal debrief" would take place following Beech's conviction to identify whether lessons could be learned.

Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson has been criticized for meeting with Beech in 2014, but the politician said he had simply told him the allegations would be taken seriously, saying in a statement: "It was not my role to judge whether victims' stories were true."

[space otter]

not a lot of time this morning..making elderberry jam today  so
read this is you are interested..
you really just can't trust anyone anymore..truly sad





https://www.huffpost.com/entry/patricia-russell-cfp-fake-finance-blogger_l_5d38f4f4e4b020cd994e447d



MONEY
How This Fake Financial Expert Tricked Outlets Into Publishing Her Advice
Who is "Patricia Russell"? Not a certified financial planner, for one.
ByCasey Bond
07/26/2019 07:08pm EDT | Updated 15 hours ago

[ArMaP]

you really just can't trust anyone anymore..truly sad

You should never trust anyone just because they appear honest, that's how scammers scam.

Apparently, people appear to trust other people with more ease online than on real life, when it should be the opposite.

[space otter]

well trust is a big issue anymore...this article covers a lot of ground and i have only copied a small part

entire article here:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/facebook-saudi-arabia-fake-accounts_n_5d442f85e4b0aca3411c7bc2?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaHVmZnBvc3QuY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADaTriWdm2d_PnQyZVHp1iOa9-k6xWzxfKyATPIUALjd0tUGn7YeXkbP2QEQL6tM-26eQqa7C0p_jEcZvrDwYZGKLzDWBE03fme0mWoXlSp6MQVyiBJZSgqgD7NoX98-8NwZz6sGiRu4Z2cSr1C4G-1cz_sBZXAOOGJ5tiNLDXVx

WORLD NEWS 08/02/2019 08:46 am ET
Facebook Says It Dismantled Covert Influence Campaign Tied To Saudi Government
Facebook said it had suspended more than 350 accounts and pages with about 1.4 million followers.

Jack Stubbs


excerpt:

ONLINE BATTLEGROUND

Social media companies are under mounting pressure to help stop illicit political influence online.

U.S. intelligence officials have said that Russia used Facebook and other platforms to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and are concerned it will do so again in 2020. Moscow denies such allegations.

The Atlantic Council's Ben Nimmo said online information operations were becoming increasingly visible as more governments and political groups adopt the tactics and the social media companies step up efforts to take them down.

Facebook has made at least 14 public announcements about takedowns of "inauthentic behavior" stemming from 17 different countries this year. The most recent announcement before Thursday included accounts run by people in Thailand, Russia, Ukraine and Honduras.

The network based in the UAE and Egypt that was also dismantled on Thursday was separate from the Saudi campaign, Facebook said, although it targeted some of the same countries in the Middle East and Africa with messages promoting the UAE.

"This shows how much social media has become a battleground, particularly in the Gulf, where you've got very strong regional rivalries and you've got a long tradition of working through proxies," Nimmo said.

"This is almost becoming normalized," he added. "Where you get geopolitical tensions, you get stuff like this going on, and we're moving into a space where the platforms are dealing with this almost as routine." (Additional reporting by Katie Paul in SAN FRANCISCO and Ghaida Ghantous in DUBAI; Editing by Peter Graff and Richard Chang)

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

Question. Was the outcome of the election affected by any interference by any means either direct or indirect by whom ever?

I don't believe so.

Rock 

[space otter]

Question. Was the outcome of the election affected by any interference by any means either direct or indirect by whom ever?

I don't believe so.

Rock 

hey Rock     we are ALL somehow affected by the words of others..written or spoken..in agreement or disagreement

you can call it interference, motivation, re enforcement of your own thought or persuasions to another view point..

you (we) can be in non-belief
BUT
it happens every minute, hour, day
their is almost always a reaction to someone else's words

some do it on purpose and some just do it to state their point of view..
some try to measure the affect we have on each other and some try to assign other things to it

doesn't matter.. it happens .. and will continue to happen

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

hey Rock     we are ALL somehow affected by the words of others..written or spoken..in agreement or disagreement

you can call it interference, motivation, re enforcement of your own thought or persuasions to another view point..

you (we) can be in non-belief
BUT
it happens every minute, hour, day
their is almost always a reaction to someone else's words

some do it on purpose and some just do it to state their point of view..
some try to measure the affect we have on each other and some try to assign other things to it

doesn't matter.. it happens .. and will continue to happen

Still didn't answer my question, but let me be specific. Did the Russians alter the outcome of Trump winning the election? I don't think so. Now that doesn't mean they or others didn't try, just that it didn't affect the outcome. Trump won more states. Period.

[space otter]

have you ever heard of gerrymanderring?  and the electoral college?

that's how he won..
any republican would have won
but not by popular vote..and that's the end of my political analysis


but the attempts to encourage our thinking in a specific direct were and  are on going 
and that was the point

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

have you ever heard of gerrymanderring?  and the electoral college?

that's how he won..
any republican would have won
but not by popular vote..and that's the end of my political analysis


but the attempts to encourage our thinking in a specific direct were and  are on going 
and that was the point

"U.S. intelligence officials have said that Russia used Facebook and other platforms to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and are concerned it will do so again in 2020. Moscow denies such allegations."

Well of course I have, and that's 'OUR' system...like it or not....(the Russians have nothing to do with it)....is the system perfect? Of course not...and both parties, when they get control, try to some extent, to gerrymander...But that is why we have courts and judges to try and see that doesn't happen...

Rock 

[ArMaP]

Did the Russians alter the outcome of Trump winning the election? I don't think so.

I don't think that it happened to a relevant number of people, but, as you said, that's how the system works, the only way of preventing that from happening is to close all communications and allow only those media sources that the state says are "good".

[space otter]

But that is why we have courts and judges to try and see that doesn't happen...

right  and

List of federal judges appointed by Donald Trump - Wikipedia
Search domain en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_judges_appointed_by_Donald_Trumphttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_judges_appointed_by_Donald_Trump
As of July 26, 2019, the United States Senate has confirmed 131 Article III judges nominated by President Trump, including 2 Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 43 judges for the United States Courts of Appeals, 86 judges for the United States District Courts, and 0 judges for the United States Court of International Trade.


Fact Check: Has Trump Appointed 1 in Every 8 Circuit Court ...
Search domain www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/21/fact-check-has-trump-appointed-1-in-every-8-circuit-court-judges/https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/21/fact-check-has-trump-appointed-1-in-every-8-circuit-court-judges/
In total, Trump has appointed 39 federal judges to date, including 17 district court judges and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Obama had 27 nominees approved at this point in his presidency, while President George W. Bush had 57 confirmed.



Trump Has Record Number of Judges Confirmed in 1st Year ...
Search domain www.newsmax.com/politics/donald-trump-record-number-appointed-judges-first-year/2017/12/15/id/832021/https://www.newsmax.com/politics/donald-trump-record-number-appointed-judges-first-year/2017/12/15/id/832021/
Trump Has Record Number of Judges Confirmed in 1st Year. The Senate confirmed James Ho to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on Thursday, HuffPost noted. Ho's confirmation officially broke the record for Trump, who now surpasses Presidents Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, who had 11 circuit court judges approved in their first year,...



Trump is nominating a ton of judges and US attorneys ...
Search domain www.businessinsider.com/trump-judges-attorneys-nominations-2017-7https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-judges-attorneys-nominations-2017-7
During that same timeframe in President Barack Obama's first term, Obama had nominated just four district judges, five appeals court judges, and 13 US attorneys. In total, Trump nominated 55 ...

[ArMaP]

How can people expect an independent justice if judges are appointed by the president?

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

SO....

You don't think that Obama, Clinton, appointed judges that fit their political mind set?

Come on...

Or how about the Bushes? Surely they appointed judges that were polar opposite of their political base.

In a perfect world everyone would think the same and everyone would vote the way you or I would.

But I'm a realist and I don't hate anyone.

Now I DO dislike some people, but hey that's just me.