Disinformation and ‘fake news’: Final Report published

The truth is the internet is teaching the biggest lesson ever in critical thinking and getting your information from many sources across spectrums, countries, divides and more to find out what is really going on.

People must think about why they are hearing about something and the layers and goals that are behind it and drive it.

Let's hope that people see these disinformation and misinformation efforts as a lesson and not somewhere they can bask in their confirmation bias all day, or make decisions based on fear, in those cases the populace is easy to manipulate, divide and conquer.

When something it too salacious or fits a narrative too perfectly, someone/group is marketing you in a direction and has you possibly in an active measure.

"People must think about why they are hearing about something and the layers and goals that are behind it and drive it."

But do they or will they? The proliferation of flat earth videos on YouTube suggests otherwise. In a perfect world everyone would critically examine what they hear, but a lot of people just feed their existing biases.

(To be clear, I'm not suggesting that flat earth videos are banned because they seem harmless, if stupid. Anti-vaccine content, on the other hand, needs some additional context at the very minimum.)

It is a hard problem.

The answer is it will never fully be solved but if there is enough competing information and facts are out there, you might just get most of the people to hold down the fort.

There will always be people fooled by disinformation/misinformation and everyone probably has been fooled by some, even highly skilled intel agents that purposefully look for it and have access to more info.

As long as most people can differentiate fake/real fact/fiction/bias then we are good.

I do think it is better to have this information out to be fought, when you hide it, critical thinking skills aren't improved over time, and we become more susceptible to it.

We need to solve it before AI and neural networks target and learn about each one of us, and where we are gullible or biased. Some of the disinformation/misinformation/fake news out there is already algorithm driven and when it can be tuned to each individual's psychology that is when it gets scary. Already these networks are grouping people in smaller and smaller target groups and the result is highly effective.

Education and critical thinking is the only way, people need to challenge all authority and all information, especially after emergencies/disasters/shock/attacks as that is when the hoards emerge the most.

I think one of the lessons of the history "accelerate the contradictions" ( http://acceleratethecontradictions.blogspot.com/2010/04/acce... ) is that putting the public in a situation where they have to improve lest there be a huge disaster, is a good way to get a huge disaster.

The more competing information, the fewer people left holding a full set of accurate cards; it's becoming easier to micro-target the lies to peel off individuals with what they really want to believe.

> as most people can differentiate fake/real fact/fiction/bias then we are good

Generally they can't, because truth is not intrinsic to the news article you have in front of you. You either check it against what you already know ("confirmation bias"), against the source of authority, or you have to go do actual research (huge amount of work and nearly always infeasible).

It is a difficult problem, but the alternative is to have something like a Ministry of Truth, and that is scarier than information out there competing in the market.

Do you think your version of the truth can honestly compete with the version of the truth being pushed by foreign powers? Or someone's version of the truth being pushed by the hyper-wealthy to decry vaccinations or climate change?

We already have a Ministry of Truth, funded by the people who can round up the most bots or the most funds to spread their voice as far and as loudly as possible. I've spoken before about my mother falling for literal propaganda on Facebook before and if you don't see a problem yet, I recommend you start talking with your family and friends about what they consume and see.

"it's becoming easier to micro-target the lies to peel off individuals with what they really want to believe."

Or, more powerfully, what they are afraid of.

I agree that it's a hard problem, but it feels like people are shying away from the difficulty if I'm honest.

My issue is particularly with social media, where people aren't presented with a balance of information. Feed algorithms are structured to increase engagement at the expense of everything else. It's this lack of balance combined with people's confirmation bias that concerns me, particularly when it comes to things that have a direct impact such as anti-vaccine information.

I don't care about flat earth stuff, stupid though it may be, and I think it's right to make a distinction between harmless idiocy and the clearly harmful stuff. There's going to be a lot of grey area, but this is true of a huge amount of case law already.

> People must think about why they are hearing about something and the layers and goals that are behind it and drive it.

The truth can be benefitial though. So "the drive" for spreading information doesn't necessarily means the information is wrong.

Especially when the change must happen quickly (in this case in terms of years)

People aren’t perfect. Asking for large-scale, across-the-Board improvements in critical thinking is identical to just advocating for the status quo.

It’s also destructive. People prefer their existing believes to be verified. Making „trust no one“ popular just gives them license to discount any evidence contradicting them. So Wikipedia says illegal immigration is at a 30-year low? Those numbers must be fake. Homeland Security has the same numbers? They are in it together!

And how would you, even in principle, verify anything if you trust no one? I have absolutely no proof that El Chapo has anything to do with cocaine. I can’t examine any documents from the trial myself. And even if I could, they could just be fake anyway. Who knows how big the anti-Chapo conspiracy is? The recordings may just be voice actors, and why should I trust the translator?

Checking against what you know is not confirmation bias necessarily (example, not taking flat-earth or infinity-energy videos seriously)

At the same time even the history of science is filled with self-contradictions against what is known, what is ignored and what is discovered, 100% "skepticism" leads people nowhere.

The truth is we have always had propaganda all around us and gossip/rumor was even bigger pre-internet. Now we are absolutely flooded and I am not advocating against fighting it, I am just advocating against blocking or expecting some ultimate source as the truth.

Critical thinking can be helped by educating and making it clear that news is like advertising today, it is mostly marketing. Like on commercials when you have the fine print or pharma meds when you have to list side effects. News should also present all sides and ones that don't should be seen as biased fully.

Most people know marketing is inflated truth or lies, the same needs to be reflected of news and media. Facts and information can help decipher if it is real or not, even if people aren't paying attention or care about facts. Even small stuff like Youtube saying a certain video is marketing, unconfirmed or from a source funded by a foreign government, that is all helpful. Same way people see content in a TV ad or in a tabloid, and know not to think it is real. Now there will always be people that believe fake things, there are still people that buy goods from the phone from telemarketers, but ultimately most people know to raise their level of critical thinking and expect a higher level of trust in those areas.

A big problem is when people automatically trust a source too much or it feeds into their confirmation bias, sometimes you can't change that but you shouldn't block all content or have a corruptible institution to manage it, because the people that can develop critical thinking stop relying on those skills and now you have a bigger problem.

The 'truth' needs to be broadcast from many sources not a single source, the oceans of information need to be mostly fact based/correct with more quantity and quality than the tabloid fake news.

"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please." --Mark Twain

Because people aren't perfect, I am heavily opposed to the idea of creating an authoritative institution with the task of defining truth.

Having that wouldn't magically solve the problem of climate change, this is a stupendous stupid straw man argument. On the contrary, the lack of trust would increase the number of people being more skeptical in self defense.

The status quo isn't reinforced if people are free to create and share content unrestricted. Again to the contrary, an institution defining truth tends to reinforce prevailing powers. Obviously and evidence for that is numerous.

All the children cannot be above average.

They can if the children of tomorrow are compared with children of yesteryear, and children’s education system has improved such that children of tomorrow excel at all the metrics measured.

For example, how much “smarter” are children today than children of 1000 b.c.?

Funny, I thought the lesson here is that if you take away the barriers to the entry, all regulation, most of the financial burden, and provide nearly complete anonymity for disseminating news and information then foreign state actors will abuse it.

I can point my finger at the problems above. I can clearly articulate the problems above. I can even propose some clear and limited solutions to those problems.

But there are monied and powerful interests who do not want to solve those problems. So we will end up blaming "stupid people" or give a "blank check" of regulatory authority that ends up being abused to line the pockets of bureaucrats who will craft laws that damage free speech and the rights of common people.

Before we go start a class war about educating the unwashed masses, or create a new "TSA for the internet" let's just stop and think about how this problem has been solved reasonably for "old media" without hampering free speech or redesigning school curriculum across the globe.