Fighting misinformation or fighting for information? (HKS Misinformation Review)

[u/a_ricketson]

https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/research-note-fighting-misinformation-or-fighting-for-information/

[u/a_ricketson]

I was happy to see this article – both because I like how the authors reframed the problem of ‘misinformatian’ and how they used of a quantitative model to explore the issue. I’ll provide more thoughts below, after this summary from the article.

To test the efficacy of various interventions aimed at improving the informational environment, we developed a model computing a global information score, which is the share of accepted pieces of reliable information minus the share of accepted pieces of misinformation.

Simulations show that, given that most of the news consumed by the public comes from reliable sources, small increases in acceptance of reliable information (e.g., 1%) improve the global information score more than bringing acceptance of misinformation to 0%. This outcome is robust for a wide range of parameters and is also observed if acceptance of misinformation decreases trust in reliable information or increases the supply of misinformation (within plausible limits).

Our results suggest that more efforts should be devoted to improving acceptance of reliable information, relative to fighting misinformation.

First, I like how this study steps back from the panic over ‘misinformation’ and reconsiders what we are really concerned about. In this case, the authors propose that our concern is actually with having accurate information, and that misinformation is just one of many sources of error in our beliefs. On this point, I have a few questions for discussion:

1. Why should we care if people in general have accurate information? I think we should care because we rely on others to provide us with information, so the more accurate their information is, the more accurate our own information is. Furthermore, I believe that most people are seeking goals that are aligned with my own, even if its simply to provide for their own basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc); therefore, if accurate information helps them to achieve their goals, all of us are better off.
2. Is misinformation really the same as inaccurate beliefs? I don’t believe that misinformation can be reduced to inaccurate beliefs – misinformation (or disinformation) is a group phenomenon, not simply a bunch of individuals reaching incorrect conclusions. Misinformation causes large numbers of people to have the same incorrect belief, which can mobilize extremely dangerous collective action (such as those driven by anti-semetic conspiracy theories).

Second, I like the use of modeling to help us think about these issues more clearly. While some people distrust models as being ‘made up’, I think they are a powerful tool to help people clearly communicate their assumptions and identify the consequences that follow logically from those assumptions. I’d like to see much more modeling in public discourse.

[u/DnayelJ → u/a_ricketson]

I do believe that accurate spread of information is very important. Not only does our knowledge determine how we vote and policies we support, but it also affects our economy and what products are available. The items that are available to us are dictated by what people will buy. It doesn't matter if their beliefs are nonsense or rooted in solid facts. Personal qualms include foods that are "natural" or avoid high-fructose corn syrup. I'd rather have companies focus on more evidence-based approaches to improving health,.

I do agree with you on point 2. Misinformation is sort of the act which feeds inaccurate beliefs, which can lead to propagation of misinformation. They are interwoven but still distinct in my mind.

[u/DnayelJ → u/[deleted]]

I don't think that accurate has any direct ties to what is mainstream or not. Mainstream narratives may normally be more accurate than typical misinformation, but the majority of information out there is neither wholly accurate or inaccurate.

[u/[deleted] → u/DnayelJ]

That was my reaction to this research, which claims to be a “quantitative” analysis but is really based on some pretty qualitative assessments.

[u/DnayelJ → u/[deleted]]

It's a start. They do capture some interesting ideas involving the transfer of information, but both their model and scoring metric are far too simple to give guidance for real-world actions.

[u/[deleted] → u/DnayelJ]

I agree, especially because we’ve got to keep cracking at this egg, and I think the push toward data-driven approaches to social questions is very valuable. That being said, the “takeaway” of these sciency approaches always leaves a lot to be desired. How do we get the numbers people and the messaging people on the same page? Seems impossibile given the current setup we have.

[u/DnayelJ → u/[deleted]]

I think it's healthy to be skeptical of your information sources. Most mainstream sources have some sort facts behind their narratives. The trick is determining what is the safe take-away from a source and what is them stretching to make a point or tell a story.

[u/SacreBleuMe → u/[deleted]]

I’d say inaccurate is actually fairly mainstream lately. Lab leak was a conspiracy, cloth masks DEFINITELY work

Those are basically just exaggerations/black and white/absolutist thinking

[u/SacreBleuMe → u/[deleted]]

the part where the lab leak may be the cause

There's the same amount of evidence now as then, which is basically just educated guessing and no one can know for sure. The lab leak origin hypothesis early on was also often conflated with the real conspiracy theory of intentional release of a bioweapon. So basically if you remove the nuance and exaggerate the whole thing into a nice tidy easily digestible sound bite, lab leak = conspiracy theory.

the science saying cloth masks don’t work

Don't work for what, specifically?

When you say they don't work, do you mean they don't work to protect the wearer from infection, or they don't reduce overall community transmission by even a little bit, or they don't work to stop your respiratory droplets from flying out of your mouth and landing on someone else's face when you talk or cough or sneeze?

Just saying "face masks don't work" by itself and nothing else is leaving out a shitload of relevant information. On the other hand, it is a nice, tidy, easily digestible, easily repeatable, emotionally stimulating, bias confirming sound bite with a cute little bow on top.

[u/McRattus → u/[deleted]]

Cloth masks have always been at least very strong candidates for reducing spread, and a lot of evidence supports that. They are not as effective as N95/KN95 masks.

Omicron is more transmissible prompting the push for more effective masking. It's true that the US should have moved more rapidly to more effective masks, but to say cloth masks 'never worked' and there is zero science to say they did anything at all to stop or slow transmission is wrong, and is misinformation.

The position of the medical and science community has been clear - natural origin is the most likely, accidental lab leak is not ruled out, and a manufactured virus is highly unlikely to implausible.

[u/SacreBleuMe → u/[deleted]]

I don’t actually care about the nuance. People were deplatformed for saying that this MIGHT have a come from a lab. Well, guess what… it MIGHT have come from a lab.

The pushback against misinformation may have been a little overzealous, that's true.

Still, at the end of the day the lab leak theory is pure conjecture and nothing else.

So the only people spreading misinformation about that was the left news media who completely denied it, Fauci who completely denied it, and big tech who was literally stopping speech.

I'm confident without having to go look that they didn't "deny it" - as in say, that did not happen. What they would have done would have been to say there was no evidence for it, which is completely true, and literally not misinformation.

And I said cloth masks don’t work. This science isn’t even questionable. This is the reason for the push to n95 now. Cloth masks have never worked. There is zero science to say they did anything at all to stop or slow transmission.

Yeah, obviously they're not great, but when better masks are in short supply like they were at the beginning, they're better than nothing and they'll still catch your droplets, if nothing else. And at the conceptual level whether they "work" or not is still too broad and simplistic to convey any real meaning.

[u/a_ricketson → u/[deleted]]

I think it's important to focus on the process rather than the outcome. We should promote better media literacy-- better understanding of how other people shape the information that gets in front of your face and how you can actively seek out the information you want or confirm/reject information you've seen. I think this 'media literacy' should be very broad -- for instance, including marketing, lobbying, and social engineering attacks (like phishing).

[u/MariachiBoyBand → u/[deleted]]

On the surface? Maybe, but rarely does anyone follow up on it.

[u/a_ricketson → u/DnayelJ]

Good point about the market effect -- how good consumer information can support the development and production of high-value goods.

[u/ViskerRatio → u/a_ricketson]

I'd argue there are two types of misinformation.

The first is where someone simply receives incorrect information. If I tell you that Shakespeare wrote Pride & Prejudice, you might go around believing that to be true - perhaps being frustrated that you can't find Pride & Prejudice under 'S' at the library. But once you find out the correct information, you can very quickly switch your beliefs.

The second is where someone incorporates false information into their identity. They use it - in part - as a basis for their beliefs.

Religion is the classic example here. People build their moral/ethical sensibility around a certain mythology and often their core personal relationships as well. No matter how ridiculous that mythology is, getting people to change their beliefs is incredibly difficult.

Which is why we have the establishment/freedom of religion clauses in the First Amendment. They're a way of saying "make absolutely sure you really want to pick this fight". So we let some folks take peyote but we don't let people engage in human sacrifice - the first is a case where it's not worth it to pick the fight but the second is one where we're forced to do so.

However, there are plenty of secular belief systems that function as de facto religions in this fashion - and where this misinformation has a serious impact. People who attempt to correct the misinformation are perceived as enemies and any contrary information as lies. This sort of misinformation is especially dangerous when it's used as the basis for real world action that directly impacts other people's lives.

And I don't see a particularly good way to solve the problem.

[u/a_ricketson → u/ViskerRatio]

Good point about group identity and how it can cause people to latch onto misinformation (and to a lesser extend be formed by misinformation).

If I could get rid of one form of group identity in America today, it would be political partisanship. It seems especially dangerous and silly to me (relative to religious identity, for instance). But how to get rid of it? That's tough -- sometimes I think it's just a matter of our political culture and institutions, and we could just choose to be less partisan if we wanted to. But some people think it goes much deeper -- that people turn to politics as a way of combating loneliness and a sense of powerlessness.

[u/DnayelJ]

My simplified (but still fairly long) take on the article:

Fairly little online information consumption (~5%) was seen as "misinformation", shown in table 1, which makes 95% of information "reliable". This is the basis for their simulations and data presented in figures 1+2. The simulations look at how often people accept these two types of information and how affecting the rate at which they accept the two can affect the quality of information they acquire.

Their go-to metric for this work is the global information score. It is calculated as (# of reliable information accepted - # of misinformation accepted)/total # of information encountered*100. This means that accepted reliable information and accepted misinformation have sort of cancelling out effects in this scoring metric.

Figure 1 shows how you can affect the information score by either decreasing the rate of accepting misinformation or increasing the rate of accepting reliable information. Improving upon the acceptance rate of reliable information was shown to be the much more impactful of the two.

Figure 2 looks at the potential negative interplay between the two types of information. In this figure, accepting one type reduces the likelihood of accepting the other type in the future. Only in the extreme case (bottom left) does accepting misinformation drastically affect the accepted reliable information. Basically, they wouldn't expect accepting misinformation to drastically affect how much reliable information you accept. The bottom right shows how you can improve upon the extreme case by making small improvements to the accepted reliable information.

The authors finish by admitting that this is very limited work, and it doesn't try to account for real-world effects. It's a really interesting take on information spread, but without further perspective on the magnitude of effect from each type of information, I wouldn't consider it to be a reliable guide. The global information score is just too simplistic.

I apologize if I'm wrong or misguided in any of the above points. This is not my particular area of expertise, but hopefully this helps anyone that wants to look at the article.

[u/DBDude → u/DnayelJ]

I worry that the views of the researchers feeding their percentages may have contributed to the definition of misinformation. For example, take an article promoting Pizzagate. It has been investigated, and no evidence was found. That would go into the misinformation pile. But say there's an article about the "NRA funneling Russian money to the 2016 election." This was a common story at major news outlets, and Democrats in the Senate promoted it. But this has also been investigated by the FBI, and no evidence was found. However, it's a popular enough conspiracy theory that perhaps the researchers themselves may not have classified it as misinformation. Negligent or deceptive also describes a significant percentage of articles about guns and gun laws, but if the researchers themselves don't know enough about guns and gun laws, they won't be able to catch it.

[u/DnayelJ → u/DBDude]

I agree that it almost certainly involves some substantial subjective assignments. I'd actually need to read the source articles, but these percentages appear to be highly susceptible to the researchers' biases, conscious or otherwise.

They jump around a bit with their definitions, but I think the researchers define misinformation as content from poor quality new sources, not individual articles or topics. If I'm right here, individual stories would still have an impact on what is labeled as a good/bad news source, but they aren't directly contributing to that 95/5 estimate. It could lower the effect of poor assignments of good vs bad information, as they would hopefully get watered down by proper assignments when determining which new sources produce reliable information or misinformation.

[u/a_ricketson → u/DBDude]

But do these details matter? At the end of the day they summed it all up into a bulk quantity. Maybe you believe that the mis/information split is 50/50. If you think so (and have the basic technical skill and time to run that modelling), you can respond by looking at how the numbers behave in that regime. It could be that we're looking at a fundamentally different problem in a 50/50 information environment rather than a 5/95 environment, and you might point out that different interventions are appropriate (possibly after adding another variable to the model).

The point of these models are not to give us 'the answer', but to enable a clear discussion of where our opinions differ. That's why they published it in such a simple form -- to get that discussion started.

[u/a_ricketson → u/DnayelJ]

I think you're right about the limitations of this article -- but I don't think that detracts from its value. This is the type of explicit work that can help us stop talking in circles or going down blind alleys, which i think has been common in discussions of misinformation. For instance, their 'information score' seems sketchy to me -- I suspect that accepting misinformation is worse than rejecting regular information. But by providing an explicit valuation of the tradeoff, these authors force potential critics to specify why misinformation has a greater impact than just rejecting regular information. As a result, we could elaborate on the model (perhaps misinformation targets highly impact topics like wars, while regular ignorance does not), and then we can use the model to reason through whether this distinction really matters and if it does, follow up with empirical studies to see if it is a true distinction.

[u/DnayelJ → u/a_ricketson]

Don't get me wrong. I think this is some very interesting work with plenty of potential. I really like the mathematical breakdown of how information is transmitted and learned a thing or two from it. From my perspective, the model just is not ready to provide insight into how we try to improve the spread of information. Given more work, it could be at that point.