
How to fight lies, tricks, and chaos online - apsec112
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20980741/fake-news-facebook-twitter-misinformation-lies-fact-check-how-to-internet-guide
======
ttctciyf
Ironically, the headline is misleading because the article has nothing to say
on how to "fight" bad information - it merely provides hints on how to avoid
being personally taken in by it.

"Fighting" bad information would imply doing something to stop _others_ being
taken in. The essence of the problem is that less sensational correct
information doesn't self-propagate to the same extent that more sensational
but incorrect information does, and nothing in the article addresses this.

Though the provided heuristics are fine and dandy, accepting them as a
"solution" is effectively conceding defeat; the underlying problem won't be
solved by an inevitable minority of individuals applying these rules. A deeper
and more widespread awareness of the problem of agnotology[1] is required as a
minimal starting point.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology)

~~~
matmann2001
This is my main gripe. How do I actually combat the BS once I've detected it?

------
vorpalhex
This is an excellent guide. I've been critical of The Verge before, but they
did a really good job with this one.

One thing I've struggled with is talking about known-unreliable content with
someone when a third party enters the conversation, extracts one or two parts
without context, and then goes on to share unreliable, non-contextual
information. As someone who treats politics like baseball and enjoys the kind
of "inside the game" deep chat, it's an issue I've had a few times now and
still don't have a good solution to.

~~~
reportgunner
Can you please elaborate on what was good in this one ?

Seems to me like anything else I've read from verge.

------
JoeMayoBot
This is a nice guide for people who are interested in this much effort to get
to the facts. They would also be willing to spend the time. Though most people
don't have time/willingness/discipline to read the entire article, let alone
take the advice. Most people look at something, apply their own mental filter,
and react.

I remember seeing much of the 3rd party advertising/viral posts during the
2016 election and seeing that much of it was obviously troll bait trying to
get people to fight. After flagging several items on Facebook, the feedback I
received (from Facebook) was that it was legitimate content and they had no
intention of removing it. Later, my suspicions were confirmed when I watched
the news about the Russion campaign to affect the election and saw images from
the exact same content I reported to Facebook.

During that time, I also noticed that people consistently shared that content,
regardless of it obviously (to me anyway) of being fake. BTW, it was coming
from all sides of the political spectrum by people I regard as being
intelligent. People were too willing to re-post/share/retweet something that
supports their world-view without verifying the veracity of the content.

A few people might read this article and be more informed and have valuable
tools to bring them closer to the truth, but many more will keep doing what
they do today.

------
chupa-chups
Don't believe anything without verifiable sources (which is scientific
standard, but unfortunately doesn't apply to press yet).

If you _do_ only believe in stuff with verifiable sources, simply not reading
or believing online available material without links to original research,
you'll save yourself from around 95% of propaganda out there, including online
hate spreaders on youtube, facebook and even the (more than just a few times
appearing) journalist spreading government propaganda out there.

I'm aware that most of the readers here know this, but still it appears to me
that a vast majority of readers in the internet do not have the "verify
sources yourself" mentality yet. It'd be great it you educate your peers
accordingly.

~~~
imgabe
Not only check for verifiable sources, but actually go and verify them.

For example: story says proposed bill will have horrible effect on thing you
care about: bills are public record, go read the text of the bill and see
before freaking out.

~~~
Uehreka
Part of the problem is that I have no context for most of the the stuff in
those bills.

If it's about healthcare spending, I have no idea how much spending is normal,
or to be expected, or where it usually comes from. I have general feelings
about this stuff (I'd like to see Americans spend less on healthcare and I'm
fine with rich people paying more taxes) but while reading the text of a bill
I have no idea whether a good looking paragraph is going to be completely
invalidated by a 4 word sentence 2 pages down. Bills are public, but they
aren't written for a lay audience.

Instead of reading bills myself, I decide to trust folks who are well versed
on the topic to provide me with analysis.

------
motohagiography
Seems earnest. The test I use is, "would I share this with people who I know
disagree with me politically, and would it improve how we related to one
another?" The result is a fast filter and a lot of finding original'ish data
sources to share.

I think when the internet closed distances (real and mimetic, in the Girardian
sense) it created a cultural power vacuum into which everyone in the world is
now rushing. The idea of preserving truth and specifically, the power of the
institutions that formerly mediated it, is a kind of nostalgic sentiment of
people trying to hold on to the vestiges of a culture that has been
disintermediated and overrun. In this sense, the media is a failed state.

The other filter is I am careful of adding new words to my vocabulary, because
neologisms mean less and less, and are increasingly just shibboleths for group
identity among people for whom discourse is just another struggle for power.

Nice toolkit, but it's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I have cut out
news that takes itself too seriously to recognize that it has lost the plot.

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
The Fine Art of Baloney Detection by Carl Sagan

[http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/pmo/eng/Sagan-
Baloney.pdf](http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/pmo/eng/Sagan-Baloney.pdf)

------
iwazaki
I keep wonderring if people should just accept what we are now: don't know
basic logics, be vulnerable to biased opinions disguised as facts, tend to do
the easy things instead of right thing, or don't even have a value about right
and wrong.

Almost everyone in the US can drive, but driving is a learnt skill. Reading is
not a skill worth mentioning now, but not so long ago it's a privilege only a
few could enjoy.

Does the development of network and social media requires new skills and
education?

------
jessaustin
Humans have poor memories for issues that are not central to their lives.
Memory, however, can be trained. If more people remembered the last giant news
industry scam, they might more readily recognize the current giant news
industry scam.

Somehow I doubt the author of TFA would be happy about _that_.

------
amoorthy
The unfortunate reality is most people will not apply such guidance regularly
given the torrent of information we are faced with.

Pardon the self-promotion but my company, The Factual, has built a chrome
extension that evaluates how opinionated and well-sourced a news article is
and gives you a simple red/yellow/green rating. We're transparent with details
behind the rating. Not as good as The Verge's advice but hopefully more
pragmatic to apply regularly. Feedback appreciated.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejji...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejjicefdjlblgnojolgbideklkp?hl=en)

~~~
mistermann
It's good to see anyone working in this space, but I'm skeptical about the
trustworthiness of the results one can expect from this sort of approach, with
current technology.

From
[https://www.thefactual.com/static/extfaq.html](https://www.thefactual.com/static/extfaq.html)

\--------------------------------

The Factual automatically calculates the credibility of an article based on
four factors:

a) The diversity and quality of its sources

b) The factual tone of the article's writing style

c) The expertise of the journalist on the topic based on historical focus

d) The site reputation based on historical scores of every article on the site

Because the calculation is automated, without human involvement, criteria are
consistently applied across articles and sources.

\--------------------------------

a) Value can be derived this way, but "quality" seems subject to bias,
intentional or not

b) I'm curious how this would be accomplished - it's a huge problem, but most
human minds do extremely poorly at the task in my experience

c) "Expertise" often has the same issues as "quality"

d) This seems fairly straightforward

That such issues are not noted in "How reliable are the scores on articles?"
is also somewhat unsettling.

I might install this and give it a spin, because I would have great fun
dissecting articles that get a high score but are guilty of ideological
framing/bias and other popular rhetorical techniques.

~~~
amoorthy
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. Answers to your questions/comments:

1\. "Quality" of each source is a historical rating for each site. This varies
as sites write higher or lower scoring articles over time. So not a judgment
call we are making.

2\. Factual tone is a set of NLP algorithms evaluating the degree and extent
of emotional words used as a percentage of the total text. There are also
other indicators like how many first person statements are present,
unnecessary adverbs etc. Not perfect but directionally accurate and useful as
part of the overall rubric.

3\. Author expertise does not have subjectivity. Articles are classified into
one of several subject areas and we look at how often the author's prior work
falls in the same subject area and how well those prior articles rated.

I'll add to our FAQ after your response to see which issues remain unresolved
after my comments above. Thanks again.

~~~
mistermann
> 1\. "Quality" of each source is a historical rating for each site ("cited"
> third site"). This varies as sites write higher or lower scoring articles
> over time.

So an average of the score of all articles you're previously processed, _that
cite that third site as a reference_?

I can certainly think of plenty of sites where this would be non-problematic,
but some sites I could see having very high variance. Do you account for this
in any way?

> 2\. Factual tone is a set of NLP algorithms evaluating the degree and extent
> of emotional words used as a percentage of the total text. There are also
> other indicators like how many first person statements are present,
> unnecessary adverbs etc. Not perfect but directionally accurate and useful
> as part of the overall rubric.

My intuition tells me a skilled writer may score ok on this, whereas a human
reviewer might catch things.

> 3\. Author expertise does not have subjectivity. Articles are classified
> into one of several subject areas and we look at how often the author's
> prior work falls in the same subject area and how well those prior articles
> rated.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a big deal, but there are some obvious
shortcomings.

Overall, this seems like the type of tool that is sorely needed, so I hope you
find success. I'm particularly interested in it for how contentious of an
issue it is.

It would be cool (and good for credibility I'd think, as well as potentially
providing you some free labor if you allowed feedback) if you had a public
accessible page on your website where people could manually submit links and
see how your engine ranks each of the 4 attributes. Any chance you might do
such a thing?

------
JohnFen
It really boils down to what we were literally taught in school (way back
when, I don't know if they still teach this stuff):

Be suspicious of any information that you receive that you haven't actually
fact-checked. As in, don't believe it is true (or believe it is untrue) just
because you saw it. Be doubly suspicious if that information confirms a belief
that you already have.

------
jsonne
Fake news isn't the biggest issue with media. It's obvious and can be easily
taken down or discredited.

The selective editing of facts by individuals with personal bias inside large
organizations that are supposed to be trustworthy to push narratives and frame
thinking in a self serving and incorrect way is much more insidious imho. It's
also a way harder problem to solve.

~~~
h2odragon
> supposed to be trustworthy

why is it they're "supposed to be" trustworthy? who told you that they were
worth trusting? What previous examples do you have where these organizations
acted in your interest or at least to your benefit?

How is it that you expect _anyone_ on this planet to be "trust" worthy? what
exactly is it you expect from them? that they tell you the truth as they
believe it? that the beliefs they hold are totally accurate and reproduce-
able? that your experiences will not diverge from their to the point their
advice no longer accurate for you? that you will understand the efforts
someone make to communicate to the point that their thought becomes yours?

Incoherent rant; but i hope to make the point that we assign a lot of
responsibility to others that we cannot reasonably expect them to be aware of,
much less fulfill, here.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
You can't do _anything_ without trust, so drop the faux-contrarian cynicism.

Seriously: everyday, you rely on thousands of facts that get to you via
intermediaries. News, obviously, but also the map data for your navigation,
the lunch menu at work, the flier with your daughter's soccer schedule on the
fridge, etc.

Of that information, you can validate almost exactly zero from first
principle. I have not, for example, ever verified that Japan exists or Donald
Trump is president.

So what you do is: you develop relationships of trust, with people (you are
more likely to give your spouse the car keys than any stranger), or with
institutions (google, New York Times, the Iraqi Information Ministry).

These people/institutions have the interest of keeping you as a reader (or
lover). That means even if they could profit from selling you out on any
single issue, they would risk being found out and losing far more. It's
iterated prisoners dilemma, essentially.

Peoples' assessment of quality media like the Times or Economist has also
become completely unhinged from reality. Re-read their coverage of both
Mueller as well as the current Ukraine affair from the beginning, and it's
astonishingly accurate. The Times had an almost complete if maybe rough
outline of the Ukraine scandal on day _two_ after the first rumours, for
example.

~~~
h2odragon
>drop the faux-contrarian cynicism.

contrarian cynicism is all i do. there is nothing false about it, i assure
you.

------
coleifer
Jeez just stay off Twitter. It will eliminate 99% of your outrage trolling
exposure.

------
specialist
Just have everyone sign their work. No anonymous sources. Duh.

Anything unsigned is gossip.

Anything unsourced is propaganda.

This isn't rocket science.

------
reportgunner
So who is this "researcher danah boyd" ?

~~~
reportgunner
Where are the _verifiable sources_ for her claims that people who posted the
Hilary meme were duped by propaganda ? (this article was linked in the parent
article as the only reference to danah boyd)

[https://points.datasociety.net/you-think-you-want-media-
lite...](https://points.datasociety.net/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-
you-7cad6af18ec2)

------
Ididntdothis
I think especially in politics a lot of people don’t really want to know
what’s true but latch onto whatever “fact” that feels good to them. When the
whole birther issue came up I had several discussions with my right wing
neighbor who even after all evidence pointing towards this being nonsense
still thought that Obama was born in Kenya. When you look at the stock market
or unemployment there was continuous improvement since 2008 but plenty of
people hold the idea that the country was in bad shape either before or after
trump’s election. No fact or chart can convince them otherwise.

That’s why a lot of people fall for fake news because they don’t really want
to know the real (and often very complicated) facts.

------
dredmorbius
An interesting crossover from a Matt Levine column linked from another HN
story (BlackRock's anti-coal announcement):

 _When I was an investment banker, I once negotiated a billion-dollar swap
deal with the chief financial officer of a foreign company. I was pretty sure
he was the CFO. He had business cards. He was smart and knowledgeable. I met
him, once, at the company’s offices, though after that we only spoke by phone.
Our local banker knew him. When we signed the deal we got representations of
authority and so forth. But at some point someone on my desk asked how I knew
that he was really the CFO of this company. What if he was just some guy,
taking my bank for a billion dollars? What if he snuck into their offices to
meet with me? What if the office I went to, on a brief and busy visit to a
foreign city, was fake? What if he was the company’s janitor? What if our
local banker—a relatively new hire—was in on it too?_

 _None of these worries were especially well founded, but once you start down
that path it’s hard to stop. It’s hard to be certain that anyone is who they
say they are, especially if they’re thousands of miles away in a country with
a different language and legal system. You have checks and certifications and
people to vouch for them, but if you are in a paranoid mood you might worry
that they are all part of the conspiracy too. My colleagues spent months
asking me “how’s that deal with the janitor going?” Mostly I laughed, but it
was a little nerve-wracking._

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackr...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackrock-
has-green-plans)

Turns out another company, Lekoil, got had.

The nature and role of information and media is interesting. We _trust_ that
what we see, or hear, or read, has a strong correspondence to some underlying
reality. That it isn't some selective sample of reality (lying by ommission).
That representations are as they claim.

And, most of the time, even amongst strangers, this is the case.

What mass media allow, though, is for a control point, in that changing a
small quantity of information can have a profound effect. The promise, again
and again and again of "new media", from the cave painting to mobile apps, has
been to decentralise information, put it in the hands of the public and
individuals, remove gatekeepers, and give both voice and fact-checking
abilities to anyone.

Sometimes that works.

But very often, the problem is that we find that trust has a scaling problem.

\- We can't keep track of who is or isn't an honest source.

\- Honest sources turn dishonest.

\- Honest sources are subverted, from within, without, overhead, or
underneath.

\- Vulnerabilities are found, and disinformation injected.

\- Playing to the crowd, often on emotion, empathy, identity, and above all,
fear and anger, are used to distract or mislead.

Ironically, both excessive centralisation _and_ decentralisation are
vulnerable to attack, though by different modes. Centralised media tends to
play strongly to establishment power. Decentralised media is more subject to
either the madness of crowds or nonestablishment forces.

Full vetting, constant vigelance, perfect identification, global reputation
and credit scores, are not only impossible but quite often themselves avenues
of attack and control.

But a mix of partial approaches can very often prove _sufficient_ whilst also
being _robust_ against manipulation.

Of all the lie-busting techniques I've encountered, the one which seems most
useful is to seek correspondence across elements -- from different sources,
within different elements of a story, with known facts. Where a direct
comparison to a ground truth isn't possible, at the very least _this points
out where potential concerns may lie._

(The method is also strongly applicable to many technical situations as well:
if your monitoring, meters, or gagues disagree with one another, you may not
know _what_ is wrong, but _something_ almost certainly is.)

Circumstances in which an element, or quite often, a _person_ is highly
resistant to verification, most especially if they react in anger or emotive
appeal (shaming, insults, special pleading, appeals to empathy or pity), you
may also want to look with suspicion. These aren't perefect tells of lies, but
they're often provoked by someone prefering to conceal manipulation. Nonhuman
elements (sources, data, systems) which are suddenly resistant to further
exploration are also suspicious.

A tool I try to employ is suspended judgement. That is, if I _don 't have to_
make a decision on truth value, I don't make one. "When it's not necessary to
make a decision, it's necessary to not make a decision." And if you _do_ have
to make a decision based on partial or uncertain information, making a
decision in the direction which _minimises harm_ and _maximises future
options_ is often the best.

Often actions can be taken to simply reduce risks -- keep agrieved parties
separate, head to higher ground, move away from falling obects, ease off the
throttle, raise vigelance, tell others to be alert. These don't commit to a
given path, but lower risk and increase options.

That said, several resources mentioned in the Verge article and discussion are
excellent.

WNYC / On the Media's "Breaking News Handbook" is indeed excellent.

As is Carl Sagan's Fine Art of Baloney Detection.

A few years back I compiled a number of these in "On nonsense: Forms thereof,
falsifiability, pseudoscience, bullshit, youth culture, and other craziness"
[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28ge14/on_nons...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28ge14/on_nonsense_forms_thereof_falsifiability/)

Another set of rhetorical dirty tricks -- billed as originating from a
specific political operative though I've no clear evidence that it did, but
also find no denials it did _not_ , is here, along with several similar
guides:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2d0r1d/the_rea...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2d0r1d/the_reactionary_political_debate_playbook_karl/)

Finally, there's a case of a nearly 120 year old hoax I ran across, and
decided to debunk as thoroughly as possible, this being Thomas Westlake
Gilruth's exceedingly long-lived "Banker's Manifesto" fraud. Just the thing
for those who like this sort of thing:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/39w8u4/jp_morg...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/39w8u4/jp_morgan_and_the_bankers_manifesto_of_1892_hoax/)

