
The spreading of misinformation online (2015) - nabla9
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554.full
======
delegate
To put it succinctly: most of the Internet exists due to advertising - which
is - most of the time, misinformation and/or lies.

Given the competition out there, you just have to misrepresent, overemphasise,
paint in favourable light or use a good old lie to sell your product.

We've long since accepted this as 'necessary evil' \- everywhere - on TV, in
print, on the streets and online.

And so the 'mind-fucking' techniques have evolved over the decades - from
'facts' about products to emotional button-pressing voodoo, subliminal
messages and click-baits.

The doors to 'bullshit' are wide open in our minds, even though we think we
can filter facts from crap, there are techniques that get us too.

"The spread of misinformation" is not a new phenomena at all, in fact it's
been here since before the dawn of the Internet.

What changed is the _object_ of bullshit, not the bullshit itself.

In other words, "Enlarge your penis" is coming to your social network news
article about your local politician and you won't believe it till you see it!

~~~
arca_vorago
This is simply wrong. Most of the top 100 websites that exist are probably
advertising backed, but there are thousands and millions of sites that exist
without it, not to mention the fact that the internet encompasses more than
just websites, like an iceberg the under net/dark net lie underneath the tiny
surface most people see. Its just sad to see this forgotten on HN of all
places.

~~~
dhimes
How do those sites make money (or otherwise stay in existence)? Serious
question.

------
superfad
> Digital misinformation has become so pervasive in online social media that
> it has been listed by the WEF as one of the main threats to human society.

It might be a good time to bring back critical thinking to the education
curriculum. I see that as the only real solution.

It would be interesting to know how the spread of this misinformation differs
from other types of regular news.

~~~
loafa
> It might be a good time to bring back critical thinking to the education
> curriculum. I see that as the only real solution

Contrary to the popular view, I don't think people in general lack critical
thinking skills. When confronted with something that they don't want to
believe, even the dullest and least educated among us are _great_ at finding
every single flaw in the argument. It's only when they're confronted with
something that they _want_ to believe that these skills fall apart.

What people are bad at is not critical thinking skills, but critical thinking
_discipline_. It takes real discipline to apply the same standards to
everything whether you want to believe it or not, and I don't know many people
who are up to it. Unfortunately like most virtues it's not something easily
taught.

~~~
rustynails
It appears to be deeper than that. I'll try to illustrate using a modern
example.

In Australia, the media (and the overwhelming majority of feminists) refuse to
acknowledge that Donestic Violence has female perpetrators or male victims.
Mission Australia (a large charity organisation) even ran a smear campaign
saying that men refuse to acknowlege it happens (a sleight of hand to redirect
focus back on males). Some feminists even argued that domestic (of the home)
violence only refers to female victims (I found that gem on ANC news). It even
got worse when channel 9 and 1800 respect (a government department) took an
aggressive gender based campaign that explicitly put the blame on young boys.
"It's a boy thing" was one of the charming lines in the ads that saturated
print time TV in 2016. Not one single feminist (not one that I could find)
raised a single objection against any of this, despite it being a fundamental
breach of human rights.

In case you are wondering, the Australian Bureau of Statistics identified that
1 in 3 victims of domestic violence in New South Wales (our largest state) was
male. These statistics are totally ignored by government, the media and
feminism.

You will see similar trends worldwide. For example, the majority of feminists
in the U.K. Refuse to acknowledge many women were voting well before many men
were and that women were running successful businesses long before they
supposedly were according to the modern media
([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-
politics/9933592/Wom...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-
politics/9933592/Women-voted-75-years-before-they-were-legally-allowed-to-
in-1918.html)).

This doesn't come down to critical discipline, it comes down to blatant
pathological lying and bullying on a mass scale. Places like The Verge (among
many media outlets) have embraced and driven this prejudice.

The media is extremely manipulative. The bullying of little boys today by most
media outlets and many businesses blows my mind. I can't imagine any period in
the last 100 years has been so committed to such extreme sexism. Even
educational material like Horrible Histories has joined in on the gendered
attacks.

I'm not sure what to put this down to. I usually use terms like feminism and
political correctness. However, it's also the apathy of most decent people.
It's a collective social issue, not just of individuals. People desperately
need to take a stand against feminism and political correctness.

This goes beyond critical discipline. This is a collective social disease.

~~~
bruceb
> I can't imagine any period in the last 100 years has been

>so committed to such extreme sexism.

I guess the fact women couldn't vote in a number of western countries in the
early and mid part of last century or there were almost no women in charge
corporations or govt power until the last 30 years (with a very few
exceptions) doesn't qualify as extreme sexism?

One can decry the overreach and excesses of some "social justice warriors"
without going red pill extremist. Do some women commit domestic violence? of
course. But how many men have killed women vs women who have killed men? Save
the extremism for some outraged subreddit.

~~~
soundwave106
I'm not sure why you are being downvoted here. I found the post you are
replying to as way too shrill myself.

The truth is, I've seen several articles in the past concerning female
domestic violence against men. Such as here: [http://time.com/2921491/hope-
solo-women-violence/](http://time.com/2921491/hope-solo-women-violence/) and
here: [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/05/men-
victims-...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-
domestic-violence) So these articles do exist out there.

Generally speaking, I personally think there's a fairly easy biological
explanation for the emotive difference in reporting and society: men are
biologically stronger than women, and thus will have a greater tendency to
injure / harm when they engage in domestic violence. This is noted in the Time
article as well as several references in the Wikipedia article on domestic
violence against men
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men#Gender_symmetry)).

This is not to say that domestic violence against men should be ignored (on
the contrary, it shows that there is a blind spot, contributed by certain
social stereotypes driven by the biological fact that in general, men are
stronger than women). But in my view, turning this into a tired "social
justice warrior vs. men's right's activists" Internet argument is a great way
to get this issue ignored. When this happens, activists tend to entrench in
their circles and shout at each other, and the rest of the population ignores
them and continues onward with their standard assumptions.

------
kneel
I really take issue with these kinds of articles.

Misinformation, fake news, propaganda all pretty much the same thing and
they've all been around for a long time.

Our media is a reflection of who we are. Confused, misled, naive and easily
persuaded. Suspension of disbelief happens to even the smartest cookies, no
one escapes.

Until a automatic reliable semantic fact checker comes along with 99% accuracy
we're all in this swirling pile of garbage together.

~~~
mseebach
The vast majority of news (even knowledge in general) isn't centred around
clearly delineated falsifiable facts. The Trump "biggest inauguration crowd
ever, period" statement is an outlier, a far one, because it's so easily
falsifiable.

I enjoyed WaPos fact checking of the inauguration speech, here:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-
checker/wp/2017/01/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-
checker/wp/2017/01/20/fact-checking-president-trumps-inaugural-address/)

What they do, for each statement, is opaquely deciding on a falsifiable
interpretation of the statement, then proving it wrong. It's a devil-reading-
the-bible thing (not that Trumps speeches really bear any comparison to the
bible). They do not make a rigorous attempt to tease out all (or even most, or
even more than one) reasonable interpretations of the statement, and figuring
out which are more or less true.

The first statement is illustrative. Trump said (abridged, see the link for
the full quote) "Washington has gotten rich off the backs of the rest of the
country". WaPo finds that growth in DC hasn't outpaced the rest of the country
since 2006, and thus that there is _no empirical evidence_ to Trumps
statement. That's it. In the process of reaching this very clear conclusion,
they do state that household income is one of the highest in the country (not
offering any explanation for this observation) -- directly falsifying their
own conclusion. There is, evidently, _some_ empirical evidence of this.

This process, which is called _fact checking_ , by one of the most esteemed
newspapers in the nation -- it's not some crank blogging -- is
epistemologically dubious to the extreme.

Trump may very well have a very dubious relationship with the truth, but I
have no faith that "fact checking" is going to save us.

~~~
knz
> This process, which is called fact checking, by one of the most esteemed
> newspapers in the nation... Trump may very well have a very dubious
> relationship with the truth, but I have no faith that "fact checking" is
> going to save us.

I'm torn on this. The truth, especially if it's from multiple sources, still
matters. The challenge is to break through the partisan barrier and
unfortunately I think that can only be done on a personal level. Personal
credibility can break through partisanship far more effectively than any
reposted article can.

~~~
mseebach
Of course the truth matters. My argument is that fact checkers won't (can't)
have a central role (they have a supporting one, sure) in working out the
truth, as the GP posited.

A statement like "Washington has gotten rich off the backs of the rest of the
country" can be both true and false, depending on which interpretations and
assumptions you apply when evaluating it. WaPo decided on a (fairly lazy, IMO)
false evaluation, but you can easily do the opposite: The federal government
has grown, it's financed by taxes predominantly collected in the rest of the
country and directly or indirectly, the federal government dominates
employment in DC. There - 100% correct, verifiable facts that support the
original statement.

But _why_ is this true of DC? Perhaps it's a good thing that we have highly
paid professional management of the federal government, and that this is
geographically concentrated? Perhaps everything is more effective, with better
services and ultimately cheaper than if the same agencies had been
geographically spread out, devolved to states or cities, or didn't exist at
all? How do you decide _that_? There are decades of argument (roughly 25, to
be exact) about the proper size and organisation of the federal government --
these are fundamental areas of disagreement between reasonable people and the
best fact checker in the world won't get you closer to settling that.

------
ideonexus
I appreciate the methodology of this study, especially using science news
posts as the comparison against conspiracy and troll posts. I make it a point
to remain friends with people who post conspiracy theories online, but I've
long ago given up trying to engage them in meaningful dialogue. I simply find
myself spinning and spinning in their circular rationalizations.

Instead, I try to share posts from HN and science news sites. This means that
I am setting the topic and the tone. It also makes my identity and culture as
a nerd public. In my extremely diverse network of online friends, this means I
am ever so gently prodding the overall culture in that direction.

I think in a war of ideas, we have to make sure our empirically-supported
fact-based beliefs need to be put out there in order to compete. We are
playing a long-game here to influence our culture, and I believe that the
majority of people will see over the long term the benefits of empiricism and
healthy skepticism compared to the chaos and emotionalism of the conspiracy
theorists and dogmatists.

~~~
baq
> Instead, I try to share posts from HN and science news sites.

if you share on facebook, the feed algorithm probably hides it from them,
which makes the problem worse.

echo chambers are profitable in the same sense being a drug dealer is
profitable: you come for a fix that makes you feel good.

~~~
ideonexus
It has been my experience that my science posts get far fewer likes (and I
assume fewer views) than the political posts my friends make.

------
fareesh
The internet essentially turned news into a free market commodity. The Editor
has been replaced with the Eigenvector in that good ol' recommendation
algorithm everyone uses (I assume some variation of PageRank), to infer what's
most relevant to the current user. By virtue of this alone, an echo chamber is
being packaged and delivered to users on content platforms.

The seemingly insurmountable problem is to get people to consume content that
challenges their preconceptions, as opposed to having them validated
repeatedly in exchange for a dopamine hit.

~~~
baq
> The seemingly insurmountable problem is to get people to consume content
> that challenges their preconceptions, as opposed to having them validated
> repeatedly in exchange for a dopamine hit.

very well put, sir. people are addicted to information that confirms their
beliefs. very good observation indeed. well played, mr zuckerberg, well
played.

------
PaulKeeble
CCP Greys discussion about thought germs is extremely interesting look on how
and why misinformation spreads. I much less rigirous look at the topic but
very accessible.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

------
EekSnakePond
The early internet couldn't verify identity.

Thus, if someone said they were "18/f" we assumed they were 44/m. If they said
anything younger than that, we assumed FBI. Everyone was bullshitting everyone
because identity could not be proven. 56.6kb wasn't enough for rich media
lifestreaming culture. It was only text and the occasional person who owned a
scanner. You could call this version of the internet a Derrida paradise.

As internet speeds became better, identity still couldn't be proven, but it
could take on characteristics that were more natural for our senses: faces,
motions, and sound. Compared to pure text identification, this development is
quite the relief for minds used to living in such identity paranoia.

Social media companies piggybacked off of this relief and built entire
networks which incentivized positive identification, which was the core for
the ad tech revolution. But, the problem with positive identity is that you
will attract the very old, very battle-tested, and very entrenched wolves who
know how to hack identity: the politicians, the social sciences, the
charlatans, the trolls, mass media agents, the psyop engineers, the alphabets,
and the rest of the industries who profit from poisoning the well of identity.

And now, here we are, accusing each other of engaging in genocidal racism
because we've turned pixels into the inputs of a Skinner box of ideological
signaling.

------
empath75
I think the reality of the situation is that the 'consensus reality' as agreed
up in the west wasn't decided upon by a bunch of intellectuals in ivory towers
carefully considering available facts and using logic to derive universal
truths. It was decided in a paroxysm of violence that engulfed the entire
world and led to the deaths of millions of people, and left us on the brink of
nuclear annihilation.

The liberal world order that Putin and Trump are in the middle of tearing
apart was not stable, and now we're in a period like the 1840s or the interwar
period where all of the questions that everyone had thought had been settled
no longer seem as though they are, and there's really nobody left alive who
remembers the cost of solving problems like this with bullets and bombs. So
we're going to do it again.

It's going to be a rough few years coming up.

------
pfd1986
"Our findings show that users mostly tend to select and share content
according to a specific narrative and to ignore the rest. This suggests that
the determinant for the formation of echo chambers is confirmation bias."

No news there. I wonder, though, if science needs to fight back with better
guns against confirmation bias.

------
EJTH
Maybe you should just have answered the TSA's offensive questions? Sure beats
having to live without your digital goodies.

