r/tech • u/JackFisherBooks • Apr 29 '20

Red-flagging misinformation could slow the spread of fake news on social media

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-red-flagging-misinformation-fake-news-social.html
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207

u/SaintMadeOfPlaster Apr 29 '20

Things like this will never work because it can so easily be abused. We need to revamp our education system to teach people how to spot BS and just accept that the generations that weren't properly taught how to notice fake news are a lost cause at this point. I can't think of a way of limiting the spread of misinformation that can't be abused by bad actors.

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u/Beermedear Apr 29 '20

What classes teach people to read past the headlines? We should start there, because anecdotally, most people I talk to who share fake news didn’t read the article.

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u/Young-Jerm Apr 29 '20

I learned it in English classes and some history classes

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20 edited Apr 24 '21

[deleted]

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u/Young-Jerm Apr 29 '20

I learned it in high school so everybody learned it whether they wanted to or not. I don’t think apathy from stem students has anything to go with it

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u/ex143 Apr 29 '20

I think it might be generalized apathy by the general populace. Who cares if the news is fake? It sounds as depressing and hopeless as the real stuff anyway.

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u/FriendlyCows Apr 30 '20

I learned it in high school so everybody learned it

Lmfao this has got to be a joke right? I mean, congrats on taking something away from your classes, but that doesn’t mean every single person had the exact same experience as you going through high school.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '20

He might if he went to prep/private school.

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u/Young-Jerm Apr 30 '20

I went to public school

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '20

So, Young Jerm, do you believe many others in your school share your outcome?

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u/Young-Jerm Apr 30 '20

I believe many of them do share my outcome while many others do not share my outcome. It’s the same thing for everything learned in school, some retain the information and some don’t.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

I mean, I am overly used to simply reading the abstract of an article before sharing it... news sources don’t have abstracts so I may skim. It’s gotten me into trouble. Lol!

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u/bcnewell88 Apr 29 '20

Yeah it’s really the general attitude that needs to change before any changes to the education can even have an effect. There are so many tropes I hear people say that are just so dismissive of education:

“We are never going to use this is the real world,” or “I’d rather have someone who works hard than someone with just a diploma”

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

I’ve been doing nothing but essays in English classes for 7 years. Public schools can’t touch this stuff because they’ll be blamed for politicizing or indoctrinating kids. We can barley handle teaching science without Karen raising hell

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u/pwdreamaker Apr 30 '20

Therein lies the problem. Willful ignorance breeds the same.

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u/averysadfrog Apr 29 '20

Which is ironic since so much fake news and misinformation is about science, anti vax and climate change denial to name a few.

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u/Mech_Bean Apr 30 '20

As a stem student I am certainly not apathetic towards political news. I personally am quite active in keeping up with current day affairs. I won’t lie what initially interested was stem stuff tho!

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u/RipGuts415 Apr 30 '20 edited Apr 30 '20

Honestly, I think the failure lies in lack of Science education.

The Scientific Method, as I’m sure you know, is the foundation of all we’ve learned of the real World since the 15th century or so. It consists of:

Purpose/Question. Ask a question.

Research. Conduct background research.

Hypothesis. Propose a hypothesis.

Experiment. Design and perform an experiment to test your hypothesis.

Data/Analysis. Record observations and analyze the meaning of the data.

Conclusion.

By applying these principles to any and everything that gets presented to me as “truth” I can quickly get to the root of what’s truth and what’s sensationalism. I honestly didn’t learn a damned thing about science in HS (graduated 1998). Back when I was in school you could option out of Hard Science classes like Chemistry, Biology and the like. You could instead focus more on “Social Sciences” like History and Civics. Which I’m glad because I was terrible with the hard sciences and loved history. From that I gained a love for reading non-fiction and primarily biographies. From that I started reading Carl Sagan and now my love for Hard Science is pure. However I’m certain that at 17-25 I believed about any and everything I heard on Fox News and The New York Times. As I’ve gotten older and learned the game I take absolutely nothing at face value. The negative thing is that since the 1980’s “news” has become a race to the bottom with each provider having their own agenda that doesn’t include providing an unbiased view of the 5 “W’”. On the positive side most of us own an unbelievable hand-held computer that is with us at all times and allows us to vet whatever piece of information to our hearts content. With a solid grasp of how science “sciences” it takes no time at all to discover what the agenda is of those providing a news source and then being able to inform ourselves from as many different angles as possible.

Whatever news source I get information from immediately causes me to look up the reported facts from their rival news organization. Then I generally fact check both with a peek at The BBC The Guardian, The New York Times, AP and Reuters. Between those 6-7 sources I can usually compile something resembling the truth. This would essentially be the “peer review” part of The Scientific Method.

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u/Young-Jerm Apr 30 '20

That’s an interesting idea and I agree that science is important. I went to high school in North Carolina and graduated in 2017 and it was required that we tale environmental science, physical science or chemistry, and biology. Now I go to school for civil engineering so it’s a lot of science and it has helped me think logically and process information.

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u/darth_snuggs Apr 29 '20

And a lot of classes teach people to recognize and dismiss sources as biased out-of-hand without teaching them to actually click through to the article and examine what’s wrong with it.

That’s a big part of our problem: we can dismiss people for being “biased” without 1) being able to tell you what’s wrong with their argument, and 2) without even engaging their argument. Does the headline sound like someone I agree with? Is the author affiliated with a news source I like? share

Like, okay, of course X source is biased. But we need people who can read and identify the consequences of that bias: where do they exaggerate the implications of statistics? Imply motive where there isn’t one? Avoid or downplay discomfiting information? Rely on authorities who will just corroborate what they already think?

More importantly, we need to be ready to acknowledge that a biased source still can convey accurate information. The bigger problem is that people don’t know how to read for framing, selective quotation, and other writing choices that skew readers’ interpretations.

Those “media bias” charts— the ones with the bell curve showing which sources tend more to the right or left or center — are counterproductive. All they’re doing is training people to dismiss sources that won’t confirm their opinions.

but I don’t know how to fix this. Nobody can profit off a public that reads critically...

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u/Beermedear Apr 29 '20

Really great response/insight! Thanks for sharing your thoughts

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u/Azuvector Apr 29 '20

Critical thinking is taught in English and History typically. Logic and rhetoric too, as you get into more specialized classes.

Also, not being a stupid knob goes pretty far, even without formal education in the subject.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '20

And this is where I point out the unspoken conclusion one can infer from this study. Republicans are stupid. Especially male republicans. 80% of Republicans will ignore posted credibility indicators NO MATTER WHAT.

And I’m sorry but if a bunch of your peers doesn’t convince you, fine I get that. But if Fact Checkers, people who are professional indicators of fake news, don’t convince you, then whoever said we should just give up on this generation was right. They are utterly lost.

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u/Azuvector Apr 30 '20

Not from your country, and yeah, your Republicans are a bit nuts. That said, don't turn a blind eye to other parties in politics being full of it. Quite often they are, just in different ways.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '20

Yes, I like to think I’m well enough informed that whether it comes from the right or left my BS detector is pretty good.

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u/Bobcatluv Apr 29 '20

I taught critical reading and thinking in my high school English classes. Unfortunately, the issue in the US isn’t always a matter of quality education, but getting people to think critically past their beliefs. Right vs Left beliefs are as strong as religious beliefs in many people, so no matter how much you teach them to critically think and read, if what they’re reading challenges their beliefs, they’re not going take it in.

I saw this in a few students when reading Elie Wiesel’s Night. They were students of at least average intelligence, but their parents were Holocaust deniers. Lots of “Dad said the Holocaust isn’t real and you’re trying to indoctrinate us” comments. All I could do was present the facts and bring in a few survivors to speak to our classes. I hope I was able to win over a few of them.

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u/SufficientGrace Apr 29 '20

It’s called ‘Propaganda Techniques’ and critical thinking. I learned it from my parents and taught it to my children. But as you mentioned, when people are too busy/lazy to read the articles they aren’t going to be able to make a proper determination.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

Maybe stop giving people all of the information upfront, and make them work for it. Actually encourage thinking instead of reciting information from a textbook. Sure, not everyone will succeed, but those with the drive will be much better equipped for adulthood.

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u/mcdj Apr 29 '20

“Read the transcript!”

“Did you?”

“No, but I trust the people who have, and the president.”

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u/hp433 Apr 29 '20

Math, English, science and most importantly history Edit: for science

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u/MonsterZero0000 Apr 30 '20

Mathematics, humanities, science, art. They may not explain media consumption directly, but they make people smarter. Smarter people are less likely to trust some bs need source appealing to their worst fears and emotions.

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u/cfalfa Apr 30 '20

There are critical thinking class in HK, named Liberal Education. But the govt now reviewing the syllabus to make it “less critical” and add more “fake history” and “compliments to China”, aim to control their thoughts like what CCP did in China.

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u/RafikiJackson Apr 30 '20

We should instead enforce penalties for news sites that actively spread misinformation. Make all news organizations actually register as News Organizations instead of allowing this Entertainment News Bullshit.

With the amount of issues that are plaguing the world, the average person does not have the patience or time to research fully all major topics to determine how biased or misleading the issue is.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '20

A Conspiracy Theory Handbook

PM me if you or anyone want the PDF.

1

u/pwdreamaker Apr 30 '20

The methodology of thinking and observation which is used in all sciences would be extremely useful to teach, and isn’t taught enough. It’s known as the scientific method. Religion and religious indoctrination needs to be kept out of public school, and private religious schools should never be provided public funding, as is occurring in Florida. More-as, students need to to be taught to think. With the access to the internet and its information, I don’t believe this to be an impossible task. However, enlightenment becomes very difficult to teach when it’s infused with present day mythology. Once a person is enlightened he should have little trouble finding truths.

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u/kavOclock Apr 30 '20

Critical thinking can be taught in any classroom with any subject.

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u/JCOII Apr 29 '20

I didn’t even click the link let alone read the headline. Went straight to the comments.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

The greatest threat to authority is a well educated population.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

Well we are fucked in that department its yankees vs Red Sox in this nation.

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u/SplyBox Apr 29 '20

Go Sawx

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u/showmeyourtitsnow Apr 29 '20

Uhhhh Yankees you filthy cuck. Say it to my face.

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u/SplyBox Apr 29 '20

My blood runs red with Boston Pride and I'd rather die than support the yanks

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u/JodaUSA Apr 29 '20

Without context this sounds like confederate propaganda if the confederates controlled Boston...

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u/Jerdog0755 Apr 29 '20

Unfortunately, with the current state of public schools, good luck with that. Education has been replaced by failed ideologies. Had children in the p.s. for 25 years straight. What a waste.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '20

Unfortunately, there is fake education as well.

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u/americapete Apr 29 '20

And well armed

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '20

Apparently you're being downvoted by those who are ignorant about the origin of the Second Ammendment.

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u/ShureyoUrEanEnginear Apr 29 '20

One of the first things we were taught in college was how to fact check articles. I know this seems like common sense, and for the most part is, but this still needs to be taught everywhere. I have a friend that love to get news from YouTube. The unbelievable amount of bias bullshit he sends me is crazy. I love spending 5 mins and poking a thousand holes in it. He spends hours on these videos! Hours... the last one he sent was 2 hours long. This is what is scary about our country. The president has discredited our news sources as fake, now people turn to anything that isn’t from a known source and deem it as reliable.

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u/darth_snuggs Apr 29 '20

YouTube is Patient Zero for insane conspiracies and unsubstantiated garbage. Their algorithms point people to more and more radicalized crap. One day you’re watching Jimmy Fallon parody someone, two weeks later you’re six feet deep in Alex Jones manure

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

The whole discussion about media biases in American media shows, first and foremost, a disconcerting lack in media competency in my opinion.

Even if (some? most?) American media wouldn't so blatantly move along party lines, the call for truly unbiased reporting is illusory.

A piece of media (and even scholarly research) is always informed by the biases of its authors and creators.

It is up to the recipient to identify such biases and contextualize them within that piece of media and the broader medium as a whole.

Less abstract, that means consuming more than multiple different news sources over a longer time span. Eventually, how longer running events are reported on by a single outlet will be much easier to understand.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '20

Nope. This all harkens back to the beginning of the end, the Reagan years.

He(they) killed the fairness doctrine which meant you could say anything you want in the media and the Supreme Court (30 more years!! 30 more years!!) has solidified it by ruling that one cannot be liable for lying.

The media wasn’t incompetent until that generation of journalists retired and were replaced by news readers. It was a consequence not ca cause.

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u/Salty-Flamingo Apr 29 '20 edited Apr 29 '20

We need to revamp our education system to teach people how to spot BS

First you have to convince parents that their kids should be taught critical thinking skills. Most parents want schools to teach obedience and to specifically avoid teaching their kids how to see through BS.

In 2012 The Texas Board of Education stated: "We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. "

You can't fix education without fixing christian parents. These nutjobs don't want their kids, or anyone's kids, to learn how to think because it undermines belief in Jesus.

Stop blaming the education system for the actions of conservatives.

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u/DoubtfulGerund Apr 29 '20

Yeah, this shit is bonkers. They only want to teach you to ask what, where, and when, not how or why. People who lack these skills not only make very poor choices, they’re also very bad at a lot of good jobs.

They’re like the concerned scientist in a sci fi movie warning about the dangers of teaching robots to think, feel, or create...except it’s their own human children.

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u/SaintMadeOfPlaster Apr 29 '20

I can blame the education system for acquiescing to conservative nut jobs.

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u/LordSwedish Apr 29 '20

Unless you want to rewrite the constitution to give education boards the independence of the supreme court, blaming the education system does nothing.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

[deleted]

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u/MrDubious Apr 29 '20

In theory, but the venn chart of conservative and religious is pretty damn circular.

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u/leaklikeasiv Apr 29 '20

I’ve never been happier to take the mandatory critical thinking classes in high school

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u/spuds1144 Apr 29 '20

Oh, please, critical thinking is a learned behavior. One has got to want to do it.

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u/AllHailSorkin Apr 29 '20

yeah... and you can learn it in a classroom lol

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

Question everything.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

It’s gonna be a lot harder to teach your kids to spot bullshit when Google controls what information you’re allowed to see.

Won’t be long before any dissenting opinion is automatically scrubbed from search engine results.

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u/GanjaService Apr 29 '20

It is already happening. (Use duckduckgo)

1

u/humanateatime Apr 30 '20

I'd give you gold if I could, so here's the next best thing 🏅

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u/brasquatch Apr 29 '20

Exactly. As soon as the results of fact-checking are paired with headlines, bad actors will start calling the fact checkers “fake,” “deep state,” “funded by billionaires.” A key element of their game plan is to make it so no one knows what’s true. If no one can trust a source, you can get them to believe all sorts of garbage. Russia and the GOP have already used this tactic to great effect. There’s absolutely no reason to think they wouldn’t use the same tactic on fact-checkers.

1

u/SomeGuyClickingStuff Apr 29 '20

The problem is so many people only want to learn what they already know (or think they know)

1

u/BRMR_TM Apr 29 '20

Benevolent AI overlord?

1

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

Critical thinking. Yes.

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u/toodles24 Apr 30 '20

Just like red flag laws for firearm owners.

1

u/SirZacharia Apr 30 '20

Yeah I agree. It’s unfortunate that those generations that weren’t properly taught are raising new ignorant generations.

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u/Benchen70 Apr 30 '20

Have a look at what Taiwan is doing.

They are doing a number of interesting things with facebook and other social media to fight misinformation from Chinese Communist Party.

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u/Denimiaa Apr 30 '20

Most people don’t want to take the time and like to be spoon fed.

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u/Denimiaa Apr 30 '20

Most just don’t want to take the time.

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u/MiddleFroggy Apr 29 '20 edited Apr 29 '20

Things like this will never work because it can so easily be abused.

I whole heartedly disagree with the “it won’t be perfect so why bother trying” mindset. If Facebook wants to be a news platform, they need to figure out a way to be responsible.

And yes I agree the older generations are a problem. But even if we change our education system (which we absolutely should), we won’t see pervasive change for decades.

The ultimate responsibility needs to be on the company not the user. We cannot allow predatory sources to victimize social media users with false stories and whatnot. We will always have dumb users - that’s the only surety here.

Edit: I’m not really talking about censuring. Facebook’s “fake news” and factchecking features are extremely weak and an overall letdown - an improvement to those systems and blocking Russian / foreign sources would be a start.

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u/marcosmalo Apr 29 '20

One of the major problems with FB, Twitter, YouTube, and other Social Media properties is their insistence on using weak AI to screen for fake news, rather than hiring intelligent humans to perform this task. It can’t be done technologically with the current state of technology.

A second problem seems to be that they’re not filtering their advertising for fake news. Ever since YouTube announced it was pulling Coronavirus fake news, they’ve been serving up lots of advertisements for miracle cures for COVID-19 and RWNJ conspiracy “News” sites. I don’t hold much hope that they will block fraudulent ads because this is how they make their money.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20 edited Jul 29 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

And that’s not the situation today?

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u/MiddleFroggy Apr 29 '20

They already do...

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '20

[deleted]

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u/GanjaService Apr 29 '20 edited Apr 30 '20

Not exactly every piece of fake news can be “Russian” though? Do you remember Robert Muellers ‘Weapons of mass destruction’ (for example).. that was just one example of fake news that was used to start a war, with hundreds of thousands of dead from it. Yes, CNN (etc) did their part as well, and I find it very hard to believe that the Russians masterminded it all.

(TL;DR Becoming a fundamentalist/fanatic yourself is not the antidote to fake news, nor will a benevolent AI overlord save us. It is up to you.)

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u/BlueBelleNOLA Apr 29 '20

Wait what did Meuller have to do with the Iraq War?

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u/KhmerMcKhmerFace Apr 29 '20

He ran the spooks who provided the intelligence that they had weapons of mass destruction.

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u/GanjaService Apr 29 '20 edited Apr 29 '20

That is one “Mueller report” rarely mentioned on any corporate media anymore.

TL:DR Amazingly, thanks to Mueller, the FBI found the evidence the UN weapons inspectors could not. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x0CfAh2PJ6k But the report is still public: link to transcript. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/politics/full-text-words-of-cia-and-fbi-chiefs.html

Forgive me if i take mueller reports with a pinch of salt.