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Ask HN: How do you deal with lies on the internet?
64 points by drenvuk on March 1, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 118 comments
The Russia - Ukraine War, Covid 19, the previous couple of elections. I'm wondering how you personally deal with possible deliberate misinformation on the internet. Lately I've begun to doubt every source of information that could possibly be shared because of financial, political, or misplaced altruistic motivations. So I've been ignoring as much as possible.

What is your approach to gathering and filtering information? Current events or otherwise.




I'm an American, living in the US, and for situations like Ukraine specifically, I don't believe anything right away. War is chaotic, and social media makes it more so. It costs me nothing to reserve judgement, because nothing depends on me except that I might accidentally share false info. Better to stay quiet, think, and wait. The truth may come out eventually. No one cares if I personally think it's true, but there is some tiny bit of culpability for sharing stories that aren't true.


I agree, this is probably the best approach. Stop, breathe, apply critical thinking and give it some time to process the information and see how it fits into the big picture. You need to detach yourself emotionally from the issue you're trying to observe and evaluate (aka don't choose sides, it's not a football match). And as ever; if in doubt, go against the majority. That's your safest bet. The average person is more or less an idiot (I don't mean this as an insult, I'm not sure how to explain it in just a few words).


> The average person is more or less an idiot

No insult taken. Upon observing this same phenomenon, I am forced to conclude that I must also be more or less an idiot.


The first step is admitting you have a problem.

I am also an idiot.


I am not an idiot. I may occasionally be ill informed resulting in sub optimal decisions or advice. Which is kind of the point of the question. How do you evaluate information? Do you trust Big Media? Do you trust grainy videos from the war zones? So you trust the declaration of the leaders at war?

I don't think there's a clear cut answer to any of these questions. Your truth will be a mix of your prejudices and the incoming information.


There’s also the feel of being played and deceived when something you had strong emotional reaction (i.e. Ukrainian father saying goodbye to his daughters) turns out to be propaganda and part of information warfare.


Absolutely, that one specifically got me. Didn't that turn out to be a Russian soldier or something? Regardless, the firehose of social media content isn't tuned for accuracy, it's tuned for volume.


Yes. I have two daughters, and my eyes get wet and my throat closes every time I remember that scene. But then, it turns out that most likely I'm manipulated. I say most likely, because I'm not sure anymore, and I don't want to get invested anymore and research what is true and what is not.


It is a tough feeling if you make yourself aware that to emphasize might mean you are taken advantage off. Probably not too healthy to experience that too often.


This works only to a degree. Reserving judgment can't entirely stop emotional reaction which is the target of many of these info nuggets. Also, it can be really hard to notice that you are in an echo chamber, when e.g. you see a highly liked tweet claiming X, then some reputable newspaper reports X, then someone you personally know and respect says "have you heard that X", and X is also generally consistent with your worldview, it is very hard to reserve judgment.


That sums it up for me.

I remember, a number of years ago, an Australian eMag, called Crikey, did a series on "Half of all news is spin"[0-1].

I doubt things have improved with age.

[0] https://www.crikey.com.au/topic/spinning-the-media/

[1] https://www.crikey.com.au/2010/03/18/spinning-the-media-repo...


This is good advice in my opionion. If you're trying to stay informed and perhaps to shape your opinion then I feel it's important to aknowledge aspects and arguments you haven't considered before. Weighing their importance is often out of scope with the information available but knowing there's another reason, perspective or argument can help.


> costs me nothing to reserve judgement

i sorta disagree, the other day I told one of my neighbours I didnt follow a piece of news that was local and was waiting for it to blow over so people would let me forget about it. They got aggressive about how one of the 2 sides was definitely wrong. this is to say that sometimes people will get angry with you for having no opinion


The similar people in my life are going to get bent out of shape regardless. They are the same people who end up saying, "if you aren't with me, you're part of the problem". IMO If no action is still an action, a reserved opinion is still an opinion.


This is absolutely right. It will take time for the truth to filter out of all the fake information being spread out there. The best we can do as rational individuals is to wait for a few weeks before jumping to conclusions. This obviously doesn't mean to ignore the situation, providing help to civilians is still something that should be done right away.


Speaking of social media usefulness, but unrelated, but I found it strange/funny/sad/depressing, I signed up last night on Twitter and one of the posts about Ukraine at the top was like

"Like for Zelensky, RT for Putin, who do you prefer" With some thousands interactions

Does humanity really need social media? Why politicians keep posting their communications there, why they feel they need to expose citizens to such brain damaging content just to be able to see what they say


Twitter is also a source of claims that civilian objects are out of bounds for the conflict. Well it proved to be an evidence of not being the case.

RT / Like is a blatant manipulation and Twitter should ban it.


> Twitter is also a source of claims that civilian objects are out of bounds for the conflict. Well it proved to be an evidence of not being the case.

This claim could be true, but outdated.


What helped me a lot was moving everything from "X is..." to "Y claimed X is..." thinking. Then it's easier to spot groups, research them, assign them some mental trust level per-topic, adjust it later, etc. There's nothing wrong then with always keeping "but they may be wrong" in mind. But you'll find a reasonable consensus on reality with time.

Also backing out of stupid places quickly is great. I.e. don't confuse a post on Twitter from someone you trust with the responses to that post. It's going to be almost completely trash if the original poster is even semi-known. They exist in the same area, so need active mental separation.


It's hard because "everybody is lying" might be one of the lies.

My approach is slow thinking. I really don't have to form an opinion quickly on most things. If ever. I read for enjoyment. Something makes it hard to write propaganda that's actually interesting and enjoyable to read.

I've shut down the "engagement" media, even if I agree with them.


I sometimes get a feeling of jealous admiration for people who can so eloquently put down in writing their opinions about things that are happening in the world and can clearly choose sides with their seemingly irresistible arguments. If I wanted to write my opinion about something publicly, I am afraid I could be attacked with counter-arguments and would not be able to properly respond to most of them on the spot. Then I need to retreat and think them through. This renders me unable to express my opinion because of this uncomfortable situation. I don't think it's a big loss though because I can still do it in my private circle.

Sometimes this inability to distinguish facts from fiction, hearing seemingly rational arguments from two opposite sides and trying to choose one side causes such mental fatigue that I simply want to go with my gut and ignore the other side completely. Then again, one day I learn that what I believed to be right before, I believe to be wrong now.

I am genuinely interested, do you have any ideological or political leaning? How do you then know that they are correct and you are not being lied to?


I'm a terrible debater. Perhaps like you, I steer clear of debates and think about things slowly on my own. I do have an ideological leaning, but I try to keep it separate from parties, so it's not a "they," and I can weigh one against the other.

One thing I can do is take stock of things in between election cycles, and ask myself if I regret my previous voting patterns or not. So far I haven't ever felt a reason to switch sides. This includes both primary and secondary elections -- local and national. So far I have never regretted my votes in secondary elections, but in practical terms, partisan gerrymandering renders my vote irrelevant. I have changed how I think about primary candidates, over the years.

I listen to my kids. They are quite smart and critical minded, plus they have more at stake than I do. I'm willing to support their interests. I once took my daughter to a protest march because she was too young to go by herself, and I was worried about her safety.


> It's hard because "everybody is lying" might be one of the lies.

This seems very obvious. A gereralization about everyone is almost never true. In my interpretation you're implying that people will interpret that as more than "i don't know whom to trust" with an emotional undertone, which seems odd to me. Do people accustomed to critical thought take such statements literally?

My rule of thumb is if media engages me emotionally... then I doubt it's meant to be informative. I have a distinction where I try to identify if my emotional response seems wanted by the content creator or is "my enthusiasm for the topic" or a touchy subject for me...

I don't think you can expect to take anything that comes your way by a medium directed at masses as "truth". This is something that people seem to forget in times where life generally goes well.


> It's hard because "everybody is lying" might be one of the lies.

Absolutely - note it it a deliberate information warfare strategy to make people doubt all sources equally.


Indeed, if rational dialogue becomes impossible, then the world belongs to those who are not restrained by rational dialogue, such as thugs, oligarchs, and dictators.


There can be a deluge of facts that are each individually true and are still misleading, or that are collectively meant to bring you to a specific conclusion. In that sense, it doesn't matter if everyone is lying, because your personal philosophy isn't built on whether a fact is ruled true or false by some fact-checker (hey, it's materially true, but we "debunked" it), but rather on how those facts and the reactions of those around you affect your life.


> It's hard because "everybody is lying" might be one of the lies.

See: the legitimacy that Russia would actually invade Ukraine. While there was definitely a lot of hype and "IT'S HAPPENING!!!" across various media and social media, at the end of the day it seems like US intelligence got this one pretty right.


Jon Stewart's The Problem podcast spent two episodes talking about misinformation recently. Jon's views are informed by him being an outsider during the Iraq War in saying that the war was unjustified early on. He used this to justify that the mainstream media shouldn't always be trusted to tell the truth.

He then goes on to say that engagement is key, but I don't buy that at all. Engagement is what is being maximized by lies. The money men are already in control of the information flows and it makes money to spread misinformation. You can clutch the 1st amendment forever, but the world has changed around it and we need new thinking if we want to pull up from dystopia.


This Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

It’s not perfect, but Wikipedia does a good job of being neutral and sticking with facts.

On forums like HN, Facebook and Reddit, I rarely bother with correcting people. The sites are not tailored towards factual information, they’re tailored towards engagement. And dis-information is more engaging (people argue about it) than straight facts.


RSS feed to it: https://www.to-rss.xyz/wikipedia/current_events/


> "And dis-information is more engaging (people argue about it) than straight facts."

Odd statement. People generally don't enter a discussion with the intention of "engaging with disinformation". They are intending to engage in discussion.

Sometimes facts are agreed, with contested implications; other times contested facts and exchange of evidence informing those facts.

> "The sites are not tailored towards factual information."

Tailored? See, we could right now engage in a discussion about "fact tailors" and whether they exist. And if they do exist, is the art of tailoring not about adjusting presentation in a manner that suppresses unsightly truth so the end result looks good?

> I rarely bother with correcting people.

In other words, you're denying those people the opportunity to be corrected by you!


A key thing missing from today's web is a sense of *reputation*. Websites run by centuries old establishments of fine journalism can look exactly the same as blog spam or straight up fake news websites run by some random internet weirdo.

My solution for this at the moment is the Media Bias Fact Check extension. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/appsextensions/

MBFC has a good breakdown of where any given news source gets their funding, as well as previous articles posted from a particular news source and if they are considered to be reasonably fair, slanted, or provably incorrect.

Really though, this level of exposure to domain reputation needs to be built directly into the address bar of every major browser. People should see flashing red red lights when visiting any domain with a bad reputation. This would also go a long way towards tackling many forms of phishing as well.

Obviously giving this power to some central authority would be bad. I've been donating regularly to MBFC, but I'm not sure how well that scales. What we eventually need is a crowd-sourced domain reputation database. There's a few ways to do this, and really we need the browser support first, and the built in agility to let users point to alternative trust databases. This sort of thing is badly needed, soon.


> Lately I've begun to doubt every source of information

That's my approach - it takes a lot of credibility for me to believe anything I find on the Internet. Critical thinking has become a critical skill as it's really the only means of sniffing out the truth. If something smells a little fishy, it's probably a fish.


The most important thing browsing reddit has taught me is to never believe in a piece of info right away if it seems to induce outrage in anyway. Now, anytime I read something that feels "too bad to be true", my bullshit detector starts ringing and I start to question, what are the sources? Who reported this? Is there video/photo evidence? Have any reputable news sources reported this? And so on.


Follow the trail to the source. Oftentimes, all the major news outlets will cite the same source for an event, but lace the story with their biases in the process. Usually, that single source will only have so much information themselves, so it's easy to see where the other sources' biases take over.

Another comment mentioned Wikipedia, and I'll add it can be also useful here, as it's an easy way to verify if a common factoid on a matter origins from a legitimate source.


I think Julia Galef's "scout mentality" can be helpful here. Try to be aware of your biases - do you want this to be true? - and if so, be extra sceptical. Try to consider the possibility of the opposite of what you think being true - what would that look like? And try to assign percentages to your beliefs, instead of booleans. Be prepared to update your views over time as more facts emerge.


For the Ukraine war: also do not trust any information sources.

Even the good guys are lying.

I've been watching foreign news (Sky News, while I'm American), to avoid both our own biases, and the inevitable chatter about American politics. Sky isn't perfect, but at least if they're being deceptive, it probably won't be targeted at me.

I also like the Reddit live thread and a Twitter account @EnglishUkraine, keeping in mind that they both will have bad information sometimes given how quickly they report everything.

Normally, I just don't read the news. Pretty much at all. It takes a pandemic, or an invasion to get my attention. It's a conscious choice that I believe is beneficial to my health.


I don't know if that is the same SkyNews that we have here but if it is I would avoid it like the plague. It's effectively our version of Fox News. If you want something non-biased (from Australia that is) then ABC News or SBS World News is as close as you are going to get. Both are funded explicitly in a way that avoids biases (but also why our government has been trying to take said funding away...).


British Sky News is quite decent, and reasonably well respected. Despite its ownership, it certainly isn't at the level of Fox News (or even The Times).


No way is SkyNews as partisan as Fox.

You'd never see someone like Sam Coates for example on Fox. And he's not the only one.


Austrailian Sky News != UK Sky News

Sky, BBC (especially BBC World) and ITN (especially Channel 4) are all pretty good in the UK


Ah fair point. I assumed UK. Sorry jpgvm


You couldn't get away with actual Fox News in Australia but Sky is as close as it comes.


Interesting. Perhaps because it's British, I couldn't tell it was biased.

They definitely are not Putin fans, but that seems universal right now.

I'm checking out your alternative recommendations now, thanks!


British Sky News seems ok - he was talking about Australian.

DW is also ok.

But overall, the Financial Times seems the best imo - they mostly just give the facts, and they are very careful to make sure the sources are credibly and specify it when they are not.


About 20 years ago I listened to a photographer talk about his photos of a community hospital. Someone asked him why did he chose this as the work he wanted to pursue. He said (paraphrasing), "When I really want to find out about something, I go study it. I don't listen to the news or read someone's opinion. I really wanted to see what healthcare in America was like, so I convinced a hospital to let me photograph their daily activities for use in their marketing." I try to follow that advice. I largely don't pay attention to the internet, or the news. I skim current events, but beyond that I largely don't deal with it. If I want to learn something, I spend the time to go find out for myself.

I haven't heard this phrase for a while. I learned Scooby-Doo and my dad explained what it meant to me when I was like 5. "Only believe half of what you read and nothing that you see." We've been fabricating news since the beginning of time. It's just more apparent now. The internet didn't start it. It just made it more apparent since more people are in the propaganda game now.


We've got a pretty good method for determining what's true. It allowed homo sapiens, a species that has existed for about 300,000 years, to go from developing the first working airplane to the first spaceship capable of putting a human on the moon and successfully bringing them safely back to earth in just 66 years. This method is called "science" but the essence is just to be very observant of reality and [to corroborate observations by logically reasoning about what else would have to occur along with the original observation, then checking to see if those things happened]. Reality is consistent, so all of the artifacts of an event, if accurately recorded, will be consistent.

Often it's difficult to get good measurements on phenomena (eg on a specific battle in a war before the advent of freely searchable, practically real-time satellite imagery) which may mean you have to seek out reports from first-hand witnesses/participants/victims. In those cases, I advise searching for source documents from first-hand sources/legitimate researchers and available source footage, and if you can authenticate the material, you can use it to guide formation of an understanding. There's a lot of uncertainty in this and it takes time, but if you really want to know an answer you have to put the time in.

Obviously it isn't viable for you to dig into every single thing, so I'd say my shorthand method is to lean towards experts who have access to source data/data generating processes of interest and read their papers.

Regarding trusting news sources: all news sources misinterpret some things, but not to the same degree. The editors and journalists are the real QA mechanisms, so use the past accuracy of the company and the journalist in determining the baseline amount of uncertainty you should have in any specific piece of reporting.


Usually I start hating everybody, start a temper tantrum in my room, then my house, then the streets. Everybody in sight needs to know there's somebody wrong - on purpose! - on the internet. My anger convinces everybody immediately, usually. My blood pressure rises, just as my voice. I feel my heart pumping, just as my inevitable headache. But it's all worth it. /s

On a more serious note: just (try to) ignore that sh1t. Every minute spent thinking/feeling about someone else's agenda is a minute not spent on life. Seriously, the magpies in the trees in front of my house are more interesting than any news channel, politician, youtuber, or whatever.

Search for 'no contact' or 'grey rock' with your favorite search engine. I think it can help a lot of people in a lot of situations, just as it helped me. Pro tip: it's not only applicable to the situations it was intended for.

Have a good day y'all! I'm going to watch some magpies.


My own strategy for dealing with lies on the internet is to not get caught telling them. ;)

My small but exquisite social network informs me of things like the start of WW3 and I miss out on something then I have simply made my choice. If it's not my agenda or the agenda of someone I love, then it doesn't deserve mind-share. The MAD-men who try to rule us with the threat of nuclear apocalypse deserve no one's attention.


Pay for a quality (online) newspaper subscription.

In particular, do not rely on news media that aim to be _the first_ to report. Being first comes at the cost of being thorough and balanced.


This is just my opinion, and fwiw I might be totally wrong or off-base, and I am open to suggestions:

Consume your news from multiple sources across political, cultural, and social spectrums. Know where each source comes from, and who is paying for it. Familiarize yourself with what are generally considered "objective" sources as well. So, in the instance of the Russia/Ukraine war, I've been using wikipedia, because it more or less states the facts of events as they happen, without too much bias. So I can make my own opinions. And since it is open-source, everything there faces tons of scrutiny.


For current events, my strategy is largely to stick to Associated Press (AP) reports. I ignore anything that's not super reputable, and don't have social media accounts.

My understanding is that, for many years now, the AP has been an organization for journalists to publish news in a neutral-enough way that it could be republished by other outlets with whatever context/framing/spin it wants.

A lot of the time, when you read a news story in politically-motivated new source, they're just taking AP stories and then adapting them to a narrative that better fits their audience.


Read sources with different points of view and take the average. Pretty easy with the Russia-Ukraine situation, just take 2 western or Ukrainian news sources, 2 Russian and 2 relatively unrelated (China, Africa, etc.) Same with elections (2 Dems, 2 Reps, 2-3 unrelated international). Much more difficult with COVID since nearly everybody has the same point of view, and the remaining ones are marginal. IMO, in such a situation the best option to get the truth is to wait for 2-5 years after it is finished.


If one side is serving chocolate cake, and the other shit, then what you end up with is a half-shit, half-chocolate confection. Some people apparently like that, but I personally don't.

Another way of saying this is historian John M. Barry's quote, "when you mix politics and science, you get politics," also famously cited by Peter Daszak.


I think the idea is to apply some "mental kalman filter" for all of the more or less unreliable news sources and ending up with a better approximation of what the real situation is. And at least that should be equal or better than any single source alone.


If your goal is to get a feel for all of the different spin/propaganda that are out there, then this maybe is a good strategy.

If your goal is to get an accurate picture of events, I think focusing on reputable news sources is a much better strategy.


The mean is a statistical measure which is very sensitive to outliers. Your weighting function should be more like an M-estimator.

The more extreme the source, the less weight it gets.

Also it means little to combine multiple sources of similar persuasion. Both Russia and China saying something is not worth 2x, since they are correlated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-estimator


The idea that Russian state-controlled media are useful to find the truth in the middle seems a bit far-fetched. Reputable media in most countries call this a war, Russian news says it is a special operation to rid a country that doesn't really have any claim to sovereignty of its Nazi-leader. Chinese media is pretending nothing is going on at all.

So applying your method leaves us with: a conflict (but not really a war) where Russia is not quite invading a not quite country to protect Russians and get rid of Zelenski, who is a bit of a Nazi?

There may be nuances and opinions, but the facts presented by non Russian/Chinese media seem rather uncontested.


Exactly. It's pretty obvious countries are hedging their bets for WW3.

Chinese social media is cheering on russian soldiers.

Chinese state media calls for "peace and justice"... and blames war on U.S aggression.

Chinese state media talks about Chinese Air Power and Shanghai Communique, one china policy.

Russia banned twitter and calling it an "invasion" or "war". Russians are getting arrested for protesting a war.

U.S intelligence has known about the planning for this war for a while and even informed China.

Thanks, I think I'll pick western media bias instead.


Hell Russia knew about the planning of this war and informed everyone many months ago. The u.s. president went on national news and informed the people that it would happen more than a month ago (and that Russia would win) . Many people simply reject information they don't want to hear


> Read sources with different points of view and take the average.

This is a horrible algorithm. Someone claims the Holocaust claimed millions of lives, but someone else claims it never happened or at most killed a few thousands. Is the truth "somewhere in the middle"? Of course not. You cant just average sources of information of different quality.


Realize that one's truth is one's observation.

So from this, you can have X's truth being based to a certain degree on Y's statement, which may be his(Y's, that is) actual observation or a relayed observation from another person, say Z.

By observing different opinions carefully and in good will you can map and sort of create a tree of observations.The closer you want to get to the actual truth, the closer you would want to get to the leafs of the tree.(Obviously you always have to keep a reference of the thing you want to know, otherwise you get into detailed observations that don't answer your question).

Now obviously the actual issue is when one's legitimate observation is misrepresented as truth, even in good will, by that person.Therefore, there's no best strategy because you need to focus on both depth and collecting a breadth of observations/statements.Think of it as a multipartite graph(in the case of "objective" truth), or a tree(this would be more akin to pure subjective observations).

Ignorance is "fine" as long as you don't claim the truth.Also pay attention to people claiming to know the absolutes or authoritative fact-checkers, most wise people never claim to know much of anything besides their own observations.


Read multiple sources, especially if it comes down to you making a decision on something like voting and then you should read voting history and where a candidate stands on certain policies you care about.

If you are just trying to keep yourself informed, I like NPR or BBC news websites to scan headlines. Lately I feel like the goal of being updated on "current events" is a waste of time but I keep getting pulled in.

Now when reading anything in financial news, it is basically opinion unless there are numbers there. Things like sentiment about investors and headlines like "stocks tumbled today because of XYZ..." People don't know the intent of any action on the stock market because you don't know who is doing what, unless it comes out of SEC financial disclosures. There are a lot of quarterly and annual cycles that happen with large amounts of activity because of index fund re-balancing, options expiring, etc. [0] and it feels like financial news tries to dumb everything down for some reason.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/triplewitchinghour.asp


My approach is to slow down. Be careful with anything fresh hot of the press. To stay in touch with 'news' I started to listen to independent podcasts that are supported by donations. These weekly podcasts then review, discuss and contextualise last week's news based on what multiple different types of public and mainstream media have reported.


reduce area of focus

no need to know everything

for the things that matter [to you] read broadly and infer… hope for the best


When there's a lot of lies around and it feels like you are under attack, truth itself becomes something good and valuable. Indeed, what's good is what is true! Lies are false and not good.

And so, I worship God with prayer. goodness and truth is being worshiped by doing so, literally.

It at the very least helps reorganise what's important in life.


Any event occurring today has to be understood in the context of recent and often not-so-recent history. You can't make sense of what's happening in Ukraine without understanding what was going on during the Maidan protests in 2014. You can't understand BLM without going back at least to the 60s.

On top of this, you need to be aware of the tendencies in constructing media narratives and assess whether they are showing in whatever you are reading. "Cui bono?" and all that. The techniques and patterns haven't changed much and you can read works by e.g. Chomsky to develop a critical sense for what you should look out for.

As others have said, follow the money. The Ukraine story is obviously not a simple good, handsome actor PM vs. evil, Soviet spy dictator. So why is it being painted this way? And what might the real story be? You want a media source that is providing historical context, ideally along with on the ground information from people who are engaged with events at a local level, and also does not hide its ideological position and motive in sharing the story. You won't have the full story after this obviously but it's better than narratives with unmotivated claims depending on cherry-picked sources and undisclosed financing.

I actually find that the far left media can usually provide the greatest insight into a situation, you just have to take the ideology with a grain of salt. They are advancing an agenda but don't try to hide it and their information comes from networks of people engaged in local communities and struggles and who follow relevant political and economic ties very closely. Here is a long interview with a Ukrainian anarchist that can give way more detail on the situation than any paid journalist could hope to:

https://crimethinc.com/2022/02/03/ukraine-between-two-fires-...


I think about "The Noble Lie".

Is it okay to tell lies in order to maintain social harmony or advance an agenda? Your leaders do it. Your bosses do it. Social media does it. And if you're a parent, you probably do it.

Personally, I try to avoid the news, social media, and do everything within my control to create a "low information diet" where the only inputs are high quality and carefully curated. I value thought-out content. That means it takes many months or years to put together, not 240 characters of a hot take from something seen online.

Being a veteran of the internet, I don't trust any mainstream sources. Seeing first-hand how fast certain popular content can be censored, I no longer value any aggregate sites as of like 2012. Also they are scary in terms of groupthink.

Where ignorance is bliss, Tis folly to be wise.


Good question. Most of the news you read about the conflict are fake at the moment.

Videogames footage has been used, old footage from years ago as well. The western media even used footage of Ukraine soldiers committing crimes of war, branding them as Russian soldiers, in the general indifference.

You have to understand, that as of now the western media have entered the war propaganda mode. If you want to inform yourself neutrally you can't trust anyone media alone.

I watch the Russia Today (RT) streams on YouTube. It's good to have a differing point of view. I don't take everything they say as granted, neither I so that with western media. There are also a few western youtube channels trying to do objective reporting on the conflict, my favorite one is S2 Underground.


> I watch the Russia Today (RT) streams on YouTube. It's good to have a differing point of view.

How does watching a state-controlled propaganda channel offer a "differing point of view"?

Isn't the goal to be exposed to truth, as opposed to a smorgasbord of different forms of propaganda?

Is it that you want want to understand what the perspective of someone who lives in Russia is going to be, acknowledging that the average person's information sources are likely highly state-propaganda-filtered?


I watch both western and eastern media because I don't trust either. By putting together information from both sides, I try to get an objective point of view.

Anyway I must say, the west has put out many more lies for what I've seen so far.


Just think about that from a logical perspective: if you start your proof with false axioms, you can never produce anything true. You can only produce a universe of internally-consistent false statements.

The only way out of the propaganda trap is to find organizations that legitimately care about good journalism. They definitely exist!

One place to start might be Wikipedia, the culture there is very much "organize knowledge" as opposed to "achieve some political end".


> One place to start might be Wikipedia, the culture there is very much "organize knowledge" as opposed to "achieve some political end".

There's a crowd right now trying to remove any reference to neo-nazism in the Azov Battalion wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Azov_Battalion&ac...

Please go ahead and verify it yourself. Among this crowd there are the same people that curate the sections about the Uyghur oppression in China. I don't fully trust Wikipedia either for these reasons.

> Just think about that from a logical perspective: if you start your proof with false axioms, you can never produce anything true. You can only produce a universe of internally-consistent false statements.

I strongly disagree. By watching propaganda from both sides, I can easily understand what are the interests in play and what is each side's reasoning. By confronting it then with the rest of the independent information I can form a cohesive opinion. I won't trust anyone to provide me with "news" at the moment. We have to do the hard job and create our news with the sparse information available.


> There's a crowd right now trying to remove any reference to neo-nazism in the Azov Battalion wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Azov_Battalion&ac...

There are always going to be people trying to push certain agendas anywhere.

There's a major difference between an organization whose overarching goal is to produce accurate information, and an organization whose overarching goal is to push for some kind of political gain.

I checked the article you linked to and there's a reference to neo-nazism in the opening paragraph. So your example seems to indicate that Wikipedia is able to withstand ideological attacks (which agrees with my general impression).

> I can easily understand what are the interests in play and what is each side's reasoning.

While I can see that it would be hard to get a feel for what different actors' motivations are from raw facts, I believe that you would still need them as a baseline to understand the propaganda. And it sounds like a lot of (error-prone) work!

Although I speak from ignorance as I am not on any social media and am pretty extreme about filtering my information sources. But I have to say, having had conversations with two people who take this approach, that I am skeptical: both have ended up with very strange/distorted world views and have trouble trusting any institutions (Which makes sense! A core goal of someone trying to destroy a system is to undermine its credibility!)


Wouldn't the best perspectives be those unaffiliated with either side in the conflict?

Ok sure, you may wish to discount "western" media, but Russia is directly involved in the conflict, and has a vested interest in the outcome. They are ground zero for propaganda.

Shouldn't you go for something like Hindustati Times or Al Jazeera for more "neutral" stance?


Nobody has a neutral stance at the moment. That's why I watch both sides. The NATO propaganda is shoved down my throat while I browse the web, watch tv, talk with a neighbour. For the Russian propaganda I go to the RT streams.


I've taken a minute to read through your other comments after referring people to state run propaganda on this one, and it's a whole lot of misinformation about the war. I have my own thoughts on your account origin but either way I hope hn has some antibodies against this.


My account is 5 years old and I'm Italian. I have no interest in supporting any particular side, only for the truth to come out.


The "neo-stoic" crowd would tell you to reduce your circle of interest as closely as possible to your circle of control.

In many situation, this means realizing that you have little control most things (which is depressing), and then take the logical step of not following the news altogether.

This becomes a lot trickier when the news is in you "center of concern" (I'm trying to find the best translation for "center of emmerdement".)

For example, regarding COVID-19: you have zero effect on whether the next strain of the virus will mutate in the bloodstream of some farraway foreigner, even if they were lucky enough to get all the vaccines and treatments and everything.

Yet, when the variant will hit, you'll be hit too, and you'll get the restrictions and lockdowns, and anti-restrictions protests, and anti-vaxxers point of view, and fringe medical advice that might not end up being fringy at all, etc...

Should you care ? Should you not care ?

Also, elections. We have the luxury of letting candidates explain the same world in completely opposite terms - and we have to choose which one is less wrong. Or less lying.

In the end, I suppose the only thing in your control is to let time expose the most blatant liars, avoid trusting them too much ; and, most importantly, DO NOT LIE TOO MUCH yoursefl.

This might involves keeping eyes opened, eyebrows raised, and mouth shut. Not a very popular stance - but, hey, they're neo-stoicians, not tiktok influencers.


> “Most of the information on this topic is crap.” “What do you mean by that?” Crade demanded. We all looked at him, because in an instant he had become markedly defensive. Sammann raised his eyes from the screen of the jeejah and gazed interestedly at Crade. He let a few moments go by, then responded in a calm and matter-of-fact tone: “Anyone can post information on any topic. The vast majority of what’s on the Reticulum is, therefore, crap. It has to be filtered. The filtering systems are ancient. My people have been improving them, and their interfaces, since the time of the Reconstitution.

We haven't yet reached this degree of sophistication.


Folks seem to be covering the basics. I would add, take time to think about why you want to "gather information"? What I mean is, most news is not actionable, or even if it is, you're not going to act on it. (When was the last time you contacted your representatives in re: some issue?) If you can't or won't act on a piece of news, do you really need to know it?

Figure out what you really want and need to know first, then look around for the (typically small and chronically underfunded) groups who are tracking and affecting those issues and values.


I don't need to know stuff that's happening just this minute. Mostly acting on yesterday's data is just fine and usually that's more reliable than the firehose of current events.

And if you start fighting against the tide of incorrect information, remember the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle[0]: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it."

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law


Treat the entire internet as a theater designed to capture your attention, to make you think and feel a specific way and in turn to influence your decisions. Do not trust anything coming towards you. If a source is invisible unknown, discard it. If you do not know the person(s)/entities sending information to your mind, how can you possibly trust/know what their intentions are? So yeah, guard your mind well. It is best to only visit the internet a few times a month and even then, treat it all as if it is made up and tailored to control you.


Meet people in person that are actually working on these issues. I met Jeffery Lewis and Scott LaFoy in DC and talked with both of them about arms control and got their read on Russia and who in the west is nuanced and trustworthy. I also pull information from multiple sources. Al Jazeera, BBC, CBC, NYT, etc and I mentally keep track which voices are later proven wrong and more importantly, I keep track of which voices issue corrections. The least trustworthy journalism has no corrections, which would be preposterous. Everyone makes mistakes.


Personally I think old-school independent news media is still the best source of information, although it's best to look at both right- and left-leaning sources to get a good sense of what's real.

And it's best not to read the comment section. To the extent commenters are human at all, they may be paid influencers. And if they are not, people's natural tendency is to repeat the most viral information, which is often incorrect or things that cause outrage in favor of some ideological viewpoint.


>Lately I've begun to doubt every source of information that could possibly be shared because of financial, political, or misplaced altruistic motivations.

Good. Sorting out the objective truth of a situation has always been hard. The internet is not some sort of magical genie that changes this inescapable fact.

The biggest problem comes from your own biases. If people are involved you will end up with a bunch of objective truths, many at odds with one another. You have to understand these truths in superposition.


I follow a few journalists in areas that a follow. Understanding the “beat” gives you a sense of the events around the issue.

With things developing quickly like the war in Ukraine, I think you really need to keep your emotions at a distance. You have all sorts of propagandists and scammers literally or figuratively “monetizing” your attention and concern.

This is where I really have come to hate online news. The dopamine rush of doom scrolling and cable news is so much worse than newspapers were.


I find it quite frustrating and now only read news from really established sources, no more online news from smaller or niche outlets. Since quite some time I also avoid websites that had a lot of trolling. (Like the German Heise.de) On the other hand when I see completely outrageous comments I sometimes take the time and contradict them. FWIW from all the feed-like platforms, Reddit seems to keep up quite well these days


I fall back on peer reviewed information - published research, pre-prints, journal editorials, etc . - and for everything else I apply bias analysis like I was taught to do in college history courses - rely on primary sources first and only use secondary sources when you must.


I always assume that the author has a motive. It could be altruistic, it can be deceptive, but there's always a motive. Compare multiple sources together and assume that every situation is always evolving and that even the best of intentions get it wrong sometimes.


I'm convinced that just like we'd stretch and warm up before exercise, we need to warm up our skepticism before consuming information.

You can start by reminding your self that what you're about to read was shown to you so someone else can get more money and power.


I find getting off social media is a massive help. Delete it, chances are you will find it has been a net negative for most of the time you have been using it.

Don't pay too much attention to headlines, most of the time they are misleading, discount any articles with “sources say”, “experts say”, all of that nonsense. Only pay attention to actual sources that you can verify.

Always check the sources once found, don't take anyone's word for it. In this instance it might be worth watching the countries' leader's speeches in full, from Putin, to Zelenskyy.

Sit back, and wait (unless you're actually in the middle of the conflict, in which case you won't need the news to tell you). Most things take weeks, if not months, and years to come out.

Use critical thinking to process things, and remember if it's in the news it's likely completely unique, and won't affect your real life anyway.

If war is coming to your country you will know without switching the telly on, if there is a pandemic you will know because many people will be dropping all around you.


Counter-intuitive but…

You stop consuming it. You actually do not need to be informed on every topic at every moment. There are people who do this professionally - it’s a full time job and even they get misinformed.

You cannot voraciously consume this stuff while also being immune to propaganda. You’re actually more vulnerable to it the more you consume. Ignorance in this case can actually work in your favor.


A good example of this is how Putin floated a statement that was meant to seem a threat toward nuclear war. He did that to distract everyone from talking about how he was losing the war. It worked perfectly.


> He did that to distract everyone from talking about how he was losing the war. It worked perfectly.

Did it? Or did people just talk about both?


I use the HN community as a filter. The highly educated are harder to fool.


Oh, sweet summer child. The educated are easier to fool because they tend not to question their own assumptions.


Do you have proof? Most knowledge came out of discoveries with the scientific method, which is not perfect but rigorous enough to avoid those human errors.

What you are describing is inherently human, biases affect both the educated and uneducated, but only one group was trained in critical thinking - at least that was the purpose of education (less and less today)


My only evidence is the number of people on HN who seem to believe in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and falsehoods, and obvious partisan propaganda. The premise that HN is hard to fool is undone by simply spending enough time here.


Examples? Crypto? You can't avoid some crazies in any community, the problem arises when it becomes the consensus


The point is, using HN comments as a quality or truth filter doesn't work, especially since most people here only ever engage with the comments. It's the blind leading the blind here.


It's the internet.

Rule 1. Be anonymous, see rule 2

Rule 2. Everything is a scam

Rule 3. Everyone is lying, see rule 2.


If you search for "Dead internet theory" and it appeals to you, it'll free you from even considering sources that you don't actually know IRL.


I stay off social media. I have a subscription to the Financial Times epaper - published once a day, so yesterday’s fact checked news. Even then I expect bias.


I give it time. I'm not likely to be of any use against the war on Ukraine so I'm getting weekly updates for it

Same with Covid, Trump, etc prior. I don't personally need to know this stuff in realtime and I'd probably mentally unravel if I tried to keep up with it all


I Ignore anybody who tells me that a free press is the enemy. I also ignore news that comes packaged with a comment section (HN is the exception).


I simply ignore as much as I can. Some information(especially military) are not supposed to get out to public without tampering.


I consider the lies noise. Twitter/FB etc the Signal to noise ratio is fixed, whereas with RSS I can tune it.

Hackernews is REALLY noisy.


Apply Bayesian reasoning, and update your priors accordingly. Oh and avoid emotional content and stick to text.


> I'm wondering how you personally deal with possible deliberate misinformation on the internet. Lately I've begun to doubt every source of information that could possibly be shared because of financial, political, or misplaced altruistic motivations. So I've been ignoring as much as possible.

Precisely that is the result that the masterminds behind the "firehose of lies" and the propaganda want. Distrust in media, distrust in government makes it easier for the enemy (no matter if it is Russia, China or domestic) to act. And the fact that way too many people do not have the adequate time (because they have to work two jobs or way beyond reasonable overtime) or the skills (more than half the US are barely literate [1]) to properly judge news on their authenticity makes things only worse.

The word democracy has demos at its core: the populace that forms the society. And the less people trust democratic processes like elections or an independent and fair justice system and the more people withdraw from taking part in democratic society as a result of all of that, the worse the eventual outcome is. The best condition for authoritarian rulers to rise is when the majority of people doesn't care or doesn't recognize the looming danger.

[1]: https://www.wyliecomm.com/2021/08/whats-the-latest-u-s-liter...


The more emotionally intensive the news are, the more skeptical I am towards it.


Ignoring what I am not interested in; pretty open to various opinions on what I am interested in, especially if I haven't yet formed my own opinion. Trusting that either I can spot the lies myself or, if not, at least they will challenge my sensemaking apparatus, revealing to me what I do not know or what the weak points in my knowledge are.

Don't know how to properly deal with information that requires my immediate action though (buy a product / not buy a product; invest in bitcoins / not invest in bitcoins; get a vaccine / not get a vaccine, etc.).


Lately I've begun to doubt every source of information that could possibly be shared because of financial, political, or misplaced altruistic motivations. So I've been ignoring as much as possible.

This is what the people sewing misinformation in the first place want. You can act their pawn and ignore the world around you, leading to making underinformed choices at the polls, at the newsstand or wherever, or you can trust your own bullshit detector.

It's hard to have this conversation when you just write off every source of information. Most of the established news sources get the facts correct, and from there, it's a matter of ignoring the analysis/opinion sections. AP and Reuters are two trustworthy sources that pretty much stick to the facts. Most of the top 25% of this chart is pretty good, TBH: https://adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/?utm_source=HomePage_St...

Also, keep in mind, humans write these stories. Getting one thing wrong here or there is not an indictment of that writer or their publication, if it's handled properly by printing a correct or retraction.


> Also, keep in mind, humans write these stories. Getting one thing wrong here or there is not an indictment of that writer or their publication, if it's handled properly by printing a correct or retraction.

This is the normal feeling I think we've had for decades. The recent ten years or so has felt much more as though:

- certain news stories are just not reported if they are going to send the wrong message. E.g. reporting on the BLM organisation (on both sides)

- certain news stories are just built out of nowhere and even if technically retracted, are not retracted with the same force as they were generated. E.g. Covington kid reality on the left, Covid facts on the right

Perhaps it was always this way, but that's how it seems to me.


Subscribe or visit a quality newspaper, and limit your intake of news to (mostly) that. For international news and high-profile issues like the current war, British newspaper The Guardian is accessible (no paywall) and good. It has a moderate progressive/liberal bias and in general has a solid track record of being factual as well as participating in investigative journalism.

American readers here may be able to suggest suitable US newspapers.

Yes, weighing various sources for a contentious issue is a good thing, but you can't do that for everything. And drinking bits of news from the fire-hose of social media means you have to weigh every nuance and distrust every sender. Good journalism does this for you; just be aware of where any medium stands and what its reputation is (i.e., don't expect the Daily Mail to provide you with a solid analysis of Putin's war).

Being Dutch, I am a subscriber to a Dutch newspaper (NRC; the other quality national newspaper is De Volkskrant) on paper in the weekends and digitally the rest of the week, and supplement this with a yearly contribution for The Guardian, which I visit for a non-Dutch view of certain topics (I found this valuable for the topic of Brexit).


I first assume I cannot take for granted what I am reading, no matter how credible the source apparently is. It doesn't matter if it's a Hacker News comment or an article by a reputed organization.

Then I try to use my brain to think what the article is saying. I see the claims the article makes, and ask questions to verify and counter those claims. Just to give a hypothetical example:

"New vaccine developed for Covid-19 promising 100% effectiveness! Will we finally be living without Covid-19?"

I'll go like:

- Hmm, a bit clickbaity title. Should have some asterisk marks attached to it.

- The 100% effectiveness claim. Is it based on a research paper?

- If yes, is it peer-reviewed?

- If it is peer-reviewed, where is it published? Is it a source that has high reputation for being trustable?

- If yes, did they do randomized control trials?

- If yes, what's the sample size? Is it large enough to be credible?

And so on.

From here, the content actually might go beyond my level of expertise and knowledge (I am not a virologist, so I am not technically qualified to verify the claims or smell a rat if there is one), but much of the time, many claims will fail to live up to these simple questions that are very basic. The more "no"s I get from these questions, the lower it gets on my credibility list, and if it drops beyond a certain point, I conclude it's fake and move on. If it stays high up there multiple times, I tend to believe it to be "possibly true".

Note that I don't assign anything as "facts" that easily.

The thing I keep in mind is this: there is zero point in "keeping up-to-date" with news unless I am willing to analyze the content to the best of my abilities and draw conclusions from them. If anything, just gobbling up whatever news comes out is harmful to mental health. I don't want to be turned into an "information zombie" who doesn't ask questions.

Also, it's completely fine NOT to try to read every news. Like, I don't know anything about American football (sorry!) so analyzing tier lists for teams is something highly interesting for many, but is not something I'd prefer to give time to.

And now is, in my opinion, a great time to do this analysis. The world is in chaos, and these times brings out the worst in people. So now we get to see things that we wouldn't see in the best of times, and who knows, maybe the data we internalize on how people react might come handy at some point in the future. :)


Lots of heuristics. As many have mentioned, "a priori, don't believe anything on the internet" is a great starting point. You wouldn't trust a complete stranger as much as your best friend; almost everyone is a complete stranger on the internet, with the bonus of having a megaphone and opinions to spread. On the internet, no one knows you're a dog. But actually, most sources are humans, and most want to just share their perspective (as opposed to knowing the truth and deliberately lying), however flawed it might be.

Follow the money.

You used to be able to rely more on coincidence counting - meaning more sources saying the same thing means its more likely to be true. That has way less weight when one tweet gets shared, articles written about it, then people tweet the articles, and it comes full circle. You can manifest "facts" easily. And most news reports the same original source. But it's still useful if you can triangulate with multiple high-quality sources, or sources of conflicting persuasion. NBC reporting X is worth 1 unit. NBC, ABC, CNN reporting X is still just 1 unit. But CNN, Fox, Al Jazeera, and AP all reporting X is worth 2-3 units. There should be a logarithmic curve to your confidence. Any situation could flip on its head.

Think like a Bayesian. Every statement should have some prior probability of being correct, near 50/50. Increase the weight if the source is good, it jives with other things you are confident in; decrease it if the sources is bad or it doesn't sit right. De-rate "shocking" information - it tends to outspeed quality but nuanced info.

Knowing who to distrust is often more useful than knowing who to trust. It's often easier to infer as well. Create a mental "trustworthiness score". You start by identifying low quality reporting or straight up lies. This drops a sources' score. Other news from that source is also likely to be bad. Other sources that cluster near this source are also likely to be bad.

All media can be faked (manually or with AI), but at this time, deepfakes have some glaring limitations, and most fakes are in fact "cheapfakes" of the lowest possible effort. Why spend time photoshopping when you can just slap a misleading caption on an old photo?

The information firehose - tweets, shares, comments sections - can be useful for cutting edge info and building the big picture, but wielding it is an art. Most is gossip. Often the most popular/liked opinion is simply wrong, but also often, the truth is there deeper in the thread, but buried. Bullshitting is easy, but speaking facts is hard and time consuming. Look for "rich"/"deep" comments that show someone doing their homework.

I'm loathe to recommend any particular sources (you should develop your own), but I'm partial to the OSINT groups like Bellingcat. AP and Reuters are decent for "mainstream" media.


I go all https://xkcd.com/386/




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