Page 35 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - October / November 2018

The Brain Fake News Connection 35

How Your Brain Tricks

You Into Believing Fake

News

Continued from Page 20

This is important, because people or
organizations with an agenda can game search
results by packing their sites with keywords, so
that those sites rise to the top and more
objective assessments get buried.
The lessons they’ve developed include
such techniques and teach kids to always start
with the same question: Who is behind the
information? Although it is still experimenting,
a pilot that Wineburg’s team conducted at a
college in California this past spring showed
that such tiny behavioral changes can yield
significant results. Another technique he
champions is simpler still: just read it.
One study found that 6 in 10 links get
society that can distinguish between the two.”
retweeted without users’ reading anything
You also need a society that cares about
besides someone else’s summation of it.
that distinction. Schools make sense as an
Another found that false stories travel six times
answer, but it will take money and political will
as fast as true ones on Twitter, apparently
to get new curricula into classrooms. Teachers
because lies do a better job of stimulating must master new material and train students to
feelings of surprise and disgust. But taking a
be skeptical without making them cynical.
beat can help us avoid knee-jerk reactions, so
“Once you start getting kids to question
that we don’t blindly add garbage to the vast
information,” says Stanford’s Sarah McGrew,
flotillas already clogging up the web. “What
“they can fall into this attitude where nothing is
makes the false or hyperpartisan claims do
reliable anymore.” Advocates want to teach kids
really well is they’re a bit outlandish,” Rand
other defensive skills, like how to reverse- PARANORMAL STAKEOUT
says. “That same thing that makes them
search an image (to make sure a photo is really with
successful in spreading online is the same thing
portraying what someone says it is) and how to
that, on reflection, would make you realize it type a neutral query into the search bar. But LARRY LAWSON
wasn’t true.”
even if the perfect lessons are dispersed for free Investigating and Research Ghosts,
Tech companies have a big role to play
online, anyone who has already graduated will Hauntings, and things that go “BUMP” in
in stemming the tide of misinformation, and
need to opt in. They will have to take initiative the night using Police Investigative
they’re working on it. But they have also
and also be willing to question their prejudices, Techniques to Solve the Paranormal.
realized that what Harvard’s Wardle calls our
to second-guess information they might like to
“information disorder” cannot be solved by To contact Larry Lawson - Email -
believe. And relying on open-mindedness to
engineers alone. Algorithms are good at things larrylawson@xzbn.net
defeat tribal tendencies has not proved a
like identifying fake accounts, and platforms are
winning formula in past searches for truth.
flagging millions of them every week. Yet
That is why many advocates are www.XZBN.net
machines could only take Facebook so far in
suggesting that we reach for another powerful
identifying the most recent influence campaign.
tool: shame. Wardle says we need to make
One inauthentic page, titled “Resisters,”
sharing misinformation as shameful as drunk
ginned up a counterprotest to a “white civil
driving. Wineburg invokes the environmental
rights” rally planned for August in Washington,
movement, saying we need to cultivate an
D.C., and got legitimate organizations to help
awareness of “digital pollution” on the Internet.
promote it. More than 2,600 people expressed
“We have to get people to think that they are
interest in going before Facebook revealed that
littering,” Wineburg says, “by forwarding stuff
the page was part of a coordinated operation,
that isn’t true.” The idea is to make people see
disabled the event and alerted users. The
the aggregate effect of little actions, that one by
company has hired thousands of content
one, ill-advised clicks contribute to the web’s
reviewers that have the sophistication to weed
being a toxic place. Having a well-informed
through tricky mixes of truth and lies. But
citizenry may be, in the big picture, as important
Facebook can’t employ enough humans to
to survival as having clean air and water. “If we KNOW THE NAME,
manually review the billions of posts that are
can’t come together as a society around this
put up each day, across myriad countries and KNOW THE GENIUS IN YOU
issue,” Wineburg says, “it is our doom.” []
languages. with SHARON LYNN WYETH
Many misleading posts don’t violate From the creator of NEIMOLOGY,
tech companies’ terms of service. Facebook, Sharon Lynn Wyeth interviews and discovers
one of the firms that removed content from the genius in the name of her guests and will
Jones, said the decision did not relate to “false tell listeners how they can find out what their
news” but prohibitions against rhetoric such as
names tells them about their inner genius. To
“dehumanizing language.” Apple and Spotify
contact Sharon Lynn Wyeth - Email -
cited rules against hate speech, which is
knowthename@xzbn.net
generally protected by the First Amendment.
“With free expression, you get the good and the
bad, and you have to accept both,” says www.XZBN.net
Google’s Gingras. “And hopefully you have a