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Why People Believe Fake News 65

How Your Brain Tricks

You Into Believing Fake

News

Continued from Page 64

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
retweeted without users’ reading anything information,” says Stanford’s Sarah McGrew, winnings to purchase manure and spread it all
besides someone else’s summation of it. Another “they can fall into this attitude where nothing is across his ex-boss’s front lawn. This is a fake
found that false stories travel six times as fast as reliable anymore.” Advocates want to teach kids news story in the vein of old school fake news
true ones on Twitter, apparently because lies do other defensive skills, like how to reverse-search that we have all been seeing for a decade now
a better job of stimulating feelings of surprise an image (to make sure a photo is really and many of us gleefully point out the fakeness
and disgust. But taking a beat can help us avoid portraying what someone says it is) and how to of in an attempt to seem smarter than everyone
knee-jerk reactions, so that we don’t blindly add type a neutral query into the search bar. But even else.
garbage to the vast flotillas already clogging up if the perfect lessons are dispersed for free However, some of the other news articles
the web. “What makes the false or hyperpartisan online, anyone who has already graduated will that were shared could potentially have been
claims do really well is they’re a bit outlandish,” need to opt in. They will have to take initiative very damaging indeed, and probably did cause
Rand says. “That same thing that makes them and also be willing to question their prejudices, damage in one way or another. For example, a
successful in spreading online is the same thing to second-guess information they might like to story went viral about a Muslim that demanded
that, on reflection, would make you realize it believe. And relying on open-mindedness to pork free menus, threatening that Muslims
wasn’t true.” defeat tribal tendencies has not proved a would leave the U.S. if this did not happen. This
Tech companies have a big role to play winning formula in past searches for truth. story was clearly fake but it did prompt a lot of
in stemming the tide of misinformation, and That is why many advocates are racism and xenophobia, showing just how
they’re working on it. But they have also suggesting that we reach for another powerful dangerous these things can be.
realized that what Harvard’s Wardle calls our tool: shame. Wardle says we need to make
“information disorder” cannot be solved by sharing misinformation as shameful as drunk 2,383,021
engineers alone. Algorithms are good at things driving. Wineburg invokes the environmental • Lottery winner arrested for dumping
like identifying fake accounts, and platforms are movement, saying we need to cultivate an $200,000.00 of manure on ex-boss’ lawn.
flagging millions of them every week. Yet awareness of “digital pollution” on the Internet. 2,290.000
machines could only take Facebook so far in “We have to get people to think that they are • Former first lady Bush dies at 92
identifying the most recent influence campaign. littering,” Wineburg says, “by forwarding stuff 1,304,430
One inauthentic page, titled “Resisters,” that isn’t true.” The idea is to make people see • Woman sues Samsung for $1.8M after cell
ginned up a counterprotest to a “white civil the aggregate effect of little actions, that one by phone gets stuck inside her vagina.
rights” rally planned for August in Washington, one, ill-advised clicks contribute to the web’s 911,336
D.C., and got legitimate organizations to help being a toxic place. Having a well-informed • BREAKING: Michael Jordan Resigns From
promote it. More than 2,600 people expressed citizenry may be, in the big picture, as important The Board At Nike-Takes ‘Air Jordans’ With
interest in going before Facebook revealed that to survival as having clean air and water. “If we Him.
the page was part of a coordinated operation, can’t come together as a society around this 831,116
disabled the event and alerted users. The issue,” Wineburg says, “it is our doom.”
• Donald Trumps Ends School Shootings By
company has hired thousands of content
Banning Schools
reviewers that have the sophistication to weed
through tricky mixes of truth and lies. But Top 10 Fake News Articles 824,137
Facebook can’t employ enough humans to • Florida Man Arrested For Tranquilizing And
manually review the billions of posts that are put By Facebook Engagements Raping Alligators In Everglades
up each day, across myriad countries and 797,628
languages. 2018 was the year we started to realize just how • Two altar boys were arrested for putting
Many misleading posts don’t violate tech much fake news tended to hit Facebook every weed in their censer-burner
companies’ terms of service. Facebook, one of single day. Indeed, the top 50 fake news posts 760,314
the firms that removed content from Jones, said got over 22 million engagements on the social • North Korea Agrees To Open Its Doors To
the decision did not relate to “false news” but media platform. An interesting thing to note is Christianity
prohibitions against rhetoric such as that this is actually less than last year, although 633,642
“dehumanizing language.” Apple and Spotify only by 7%. Facebook has had a rough year in • Man Eats Girlfriends Booty For The First
cited rules against hate speech, which is 2018 and has attempted to improve things by Time Dies From E. Coli
generally protected by the First Amendment. hiring more staff, becoming more transparent 631,589
“With free expression, you get the good and the and creating algorithms to stop the spread of • Muslim Figure: “We Must Have Pork -Free
bad, and you have to accept both,” says fake news. When you take all of these things Menus Or We Will Leave U.S.” How Would
Google’s Gingras. “And hopefully you have a into account, you will realize that a 7% drop is You Respond To This? []
society that can distinguish between the two.” not progress, it’s little more than a rounding
You also need a society that cares about error especially when you consider the fact that CHECK OUT
that distinction. Schools make sense as an the number is still higher than it was in 2016. THE ‘X’ ZONE TV CHANNEL
answer, but it will take money and political will Some of the biggest fake news stories of
to get new curricula into classrooms. Teachers the year are relatively harmless. For example, “Searching For Answers,
must master new material and train students to the most widely shared and interacted with fake Demanding The Truth”
be skeptical without making them cynical. news story told the tale of a man that won the The ‘X’ Zone TV Channel
“Once you start getting kids to question lottery and promptly used $200,000 from his www.xzonetvchannel.com