Misinformation

In which we use three laws to navigate the land of fake news

The (mis)information age

I am growing increasingly bothered by the amount of misinformation I encounter online, especially on social media.

This study on how misinformation spreads puts it nicely:

The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the internet also allows for the rapid dissemination of unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories that often elicit rapid, large, but naive social responses.

At the same time, we shouldn’t panic (yet). Studies in Europe and the US tend to find that online misinformation represents between 0.7% and 6% of people’s news diets - rising up to 10% on certain social media platforms (*cough* Facebook/Meta *cough*)

That’s not a disaster, but I do think it’s a problem. Consider the amount of content online and the unrelenting stream of social media posts. Roughly one in ten of them is nonsense.

(As a quick first filter: people who share (in this study’s case political) misinformation are more likely to identify as conservative, be pro-republican, and be 65 years old and over.)

Three steps to a flood

I have to admit that before starting this post, I thought that it was worse. That’s why it took longer than I expected to write this: I had to do some digging and confront any biases I might have had. Rethink my priors, as philosophers would say. Don’t want to give you any misinformation here.

While there may be less misinformation out there than I initially thought, it’s insidious and persistent. How did that happen? I don’t think the misinformation problem will be solved anytime soon. There are three ‘laws’ that make me think so.

The law of shiny things

Okay, I made that one up (the other two are real, promise).

Still, we like shiny new things.

Eat your fruits and vegetables? Boring. Old news.

Liver smoothies and apple cider vinegar enemas for a six-pack and immunity against cancer? That’s new. Exciting. Like, share, and subscribe.

I wish I could say I was being facetious. If you Google it, you will find recipes that call for putting frozen liver in smoothies and articles on the ‘benefits’ of an apple cider vinegar enema. Don’t do either, please.

A recent paper with the brilliant title 'What the fake?’ found that to detect misinformation, focusing on novelty and emotion is enough to match the performance of current state-of-the-art algorithms.

Research on fake news and misinformation shows that ‘novelty’ is a key attribute for misinformation or fake news and contributes significantly to its viral spread and penetration in society. Novelty attracts human attention and acts as a stimulus for information sharing and decision-making. The first task of fake news is to catch our attention, and for this reason, novelty is the key.

New + controversial = engagement.

But you can’t be new and controversial all the time. Unless you make stuff up.

Sturgeon’s Law

Theodore Sturgeon was an American science fiction author and literary critic. When confronted with other critics who (wrongfully!) decried the low quality of science fiction, Sturgeon replied with what has become known as Sturgeon’s Law:

Ninety percent of everything is crap.

It’s not science fiction that is crap; it’s a big chunk of everything that is. Vice versa, you have to search for quality in whatever field you’re interested in and cherish it when you find it.

What does this have to do with misinformation? It’s okay if it’s crap. Ninety percent of everything is. Misinformation does not have to be quality material, all that matters is to keep pumping it out. In the seas of fake news, quantity will always float to the top and drown quality.

Fortunately, there are people pushing back. Diligent, intelligent people with integrity who, post by post, sift through misinformation and debunk it.

They’ve got their work cut out for them.

Brandolini’s Law

The reason why it’s so hard to fight misinformation is Brandolini’s Law. Alberto Brandolini, an Italian programmer, coined the law shortly after - I kid you not - watching Silvio Berlusconi on a political talk show.

Brandolinis’s Law, or the bullshit asymmetry principle, states that:

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

If you want to debunk misinformation that people have a vested interest in, you better bring all the evidence. People who vehemently believe in a piece of misinformation will demand references, studies, and - where applicable - clinical trials, even if they’ve never read a scientific study in their lives. (This is not a knock on people who don’t read scientific studies. It simply means that we are always more demanding for information that conflicts with our beliefs.)

By the time you’ve gathered your evidence, blocked the trolls, and crawled out from underneath the internet pile-on, the misinformation provider will have posted a dozen more blobs of fakery.

And so, misinformation persists.

Find people who care about the information they provide and consume content with care.

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