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Thousands Turn Out For Nonexistent Halloween Parade Promoted By AI Listing | Defector

Thousands of Dubliners showed up for the city’s much-anticipated Halloween parade on Thursday evening. They lined the streets from Parnell Street to Christchurch Cathedral, waiting for the promised three-hour parade that would “[transform] Dublin into a lively tapestry of costumes, artistic performances, and cultural festivities.” A likely story. There was no parade, and never was […]

The Gardaí, Ireland's national police service, tried to disperse the crowds and put out the message on social media that "contrary to information being circulated online, no Halloween parade is scheduled to take place in Dublin city centre this evening or tonight." Over the remainder of the night, sleuths gradually teased out the culprit: a website based in Pakistan that consists solely of listings for Halloween events, some real and some totally made-up. That a fake listing for a Halloween parade would even be a thing anyone would want to create and promote is a product of all sorts of fucked-up incentives baked into our various tech platforms to produce authoritative-seeming garbage at scale.

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