Technology

As Fake Social Media Posts Explode, Watch How Easy It Is To Manipulate Posts Without Photo-Editors

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As the rise of fake social media posts explodes globally, there are ways to create fake posts that are able to pass any sort of photo-editing detection, and users don’t need Photoshop or anything else to do it.

In fact, you can manipulate social media posts right from your browser — much quicker than opening up Adobe Photoshop or logging onto an online photo-editor.

“In democracies around the world, more and more political parties are using social media to spread junk information and propaganda to voters,” authors of a study published by Oxford University found, McClatchy DC Bureau reported.

“The manipulation of public opinion over social media platforms has emerged as a critical threat to public life,” the researchers added.

“Social media manipulation is big business,” the study said. “We estimate that tens of millions of dollars are being spent on social media manipulation campaigns, involving tens of thousands of professional staff.”

While the Oxford study mostly covered manipulation using social media, and briefly covered fake posts, it’s important to note that anyone, including foreign agents, can manipulate social media posts.

With that said, it’s important to see just how quickly an individual can manipulate inside Twitter. There’s no use in using Photoshop or an online photo-editor. It can be detected using “noise” analysis. Inspecting the “noise” of a picture can spot edits made using photo-editing software. Manipulating a tweet or any other social media post can be done in less than a minute.

Step 1: Right click on the social media post. Select “inspect.”

Step 2: Search for the text of the tweet you wish to manipulate. In this case, “Happy birthday to this future president.”

Step 3: Find the tweet text that directly impacts the post and insert whatever you want: in this case, “I always knew Donald Trump would beat me.”

Step 4: Screenshot the fake tweet.

Viola! A fake Hillary Clinton tweet that beats detection.

This is an edited tweet.

Follow Kyle on Twitter @KylePerisic

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