21 ms·

Is there anyone seeing people reflect increased skepticism of internet sourced information following this stuff? Like, I learned in HS to discount the validity

by ianai 7y ago

Is there anyone seeing people reflect increased skepticism of internet sourced information following this stuff? Like, I learned in HS to discount the validity and value of “stuff I read on the internet” to 0 until I could verify if through alternate sources.

pixl97 7y ago
But this is also a means to attack people. For example, what alternative sources. Are they also compromised? This falls under the Bullshit Asymmetry attack.
- ianai 7y ago
  If you do enough research through multiple, reputable sources trends do emerge. If someone says something radical like the president is a lizard person and every news outlet is pretty convinced he was born in the US to human parents then it’s safe to work with the understanding that he’s a human-as a silly example to illustrate the concept.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    As a counter example, I thought roughly 25% of Americans thought Obama was not born in America, despite the birth certificate? And that a similar percentage believe the Bible is the literal truth of God?
    - filoleg 7y ago
      While I am aware that he was born in the US (Hawaii), i can see where the confusion might come from (aside from willful ignorance and hatred for him as a person), considering that he was the first president born outside of the continental US (Hawaii; and we all know how many continental americans still don’t realize that Puerto Rico is a US territory) and lived in Indonesia between ages 6 and 20.
      - meowface 7y ago
        And the conspiracy theories propagated by Donald Trump from 2011 onward (and others since 2008) when he tried to run in the 2012 election.
        filoleg 7y ago
        Oh yeah, agreed. It definitely didn't help the case that some prominent public figures fell for this as well (or did it intentionally knowing that was false, who knows), which helped propagate the misinformation even further.
alamaslah 7y ago
I saw people express skepticism before this stuff, that is part of why this is effective. It partly depends upon there being low trust in "sources of truth". Want to know the funny thing? The people that eroded the trust are now the ones complaining the loudest about the results. Also, why does sex sell? Because people desire sex.
- ianai 7y ago
  Yep, that’s what keeps me up at night. I’ve had family express their individual preference for sources with zero credibility or authority over sources from medical doctors/phds/other reputable sources. They’re predisposed to believe manipulative stuff and prefer it!
  - ben_w 7y ago
    This came up recently in a podcast I listen to. One point was that people start off open-minded, but if you receive only confirmatory feedback, then you not only gain a belief, but switch mode to become less curious — Without curiosity, evidence that should persuade you no longer does. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/twiml-ai-podcast-formerly-this-week-in-machine-learning/id1116303051?i=1000460583134 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/twiml-ai-podcast-forme...
  - spookybones 7y ago
    There is also the phenomenon that conspiracies tend to be more interesting, and sources without credibility deal in these. And, they can pump out a lot quickly, since they do not fact check. So, more exposure overall. I know a lot of people who start out entertained by them, but soon believe them wholesale. Why read counterpoints to pizzagate when I can read even more theories about how it takes place?
    - ianai 7y ago
      Solipsism, man, it’s all solipsism. You’re right too. (On an unrelated note, that’s also what made Star Trek much more interesting to me than Wars. Until pretty recently there weren’t any or only one tv show to really watch in the Wars universe. But lots of Trek.)
on_and_off 7y ago
Maybe even more ? Not to pat my own back but I haven't waited for this to distrust information veracity (whether online or not). The biggest problem is that you risk to distrust any new information, in particular any information that does not align with your worldview is easier to discard if you just scream "fake news" and get it out of your head without a thought.
makomk 7y ago
Yes - but generally only of information that contradicts their pre-existing views. This whole thing is, after all, basically a way of helping to reassure Guardian readers who've seen their political side lose with the help of those they expected to support them that their views were right all along, and that it's all the fault of global manipulation by big tech brainwashing the other people into voting against their own interests. I've never seen any of the people bemoaning this consider that maybe their side suffers from a systematic disinformation problem, not even after being caught out time and time again by false information spread on social media, often by journalists.
- meowface 7y ago
  What kind of false information? I don't trust a single media outlet on Earth, but curious to see your examples.
  - ianai 7y ago
    How can anyone communicate believable information to you if you already don’t trust anyone? Regardless, I’d suggest reading Descartes or some philosophy of logic. You can’t trust everybody, but there are high value sources out there. The media are largely ok.
    - meowface 7y ago
      I didn't articulate my view on that fully; I do spend a lot of time thinking about epistemology and logic, and I trust a lot of people (though I'm not very trustful of most large corporations). I was just setting that up to make it clear I was asking for evidence out of curiosity rather than passive aggressive skepticism. Generally if a media outlet reports something as a hard fact, I do believe it.
      - ianai 7y ago
        Nonetheless your comment made me realize the current propaganda problem has many people acting and in a state of disbelief not dissimilar to being solipsists. I remember reading about that POV quite often in philosophy. So maybe a relevant piece of work exists for just our current problem.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Having used online media for well over three decades, much the opposite. The "don't trust what you read online" meme is a persistent one, but it's also long been reactionary and incomplete. 1. Yes, there's disinformation on the Internet. Shocking, but true. And yes, the ease, scale, scope, and speed of online disinformation dwarfs all previous media. And while I frequently argue that scale matters, we can at least point to the fact that the mechanism isn't a new one: rumour and disinformation networks predate mobile, the Web, Internet, electronic, and print communications technologies. 2. From early days, the Internet was very often where both disinformation and rebuttals were most available. Two specific incidents I can recall by memory: the Pons-Fleischmann "cold fusion" paper, in 1989, and Intel's Pentium F00F bug (Spectre/Meltdown aren't their first on-die rodeo) (1997). Each was distributed widely online, though largely via non-Web protocols. I received a copy of the Pons-Fleishmann paper two days after its release (stunningly quick for the time) via FTP. The F00F bug was circulated on mailing lists, particularly those concerning any kind of numeric programming, several days ahead of general news release. 3. "Online" is simply a channel, and use of the term conceals more than it reveals. Harold Lasswell's five-questions approach to content analysis is useful: "Who says what, to whom, why, to what extent and with what effect?" That is, in online comms, known and reputable sources, speaking on known and reputable channels, tend to be more trustworthy than unknown and unreputable sources speaking on unknown and unreputable channels. The risks of impersonation and mimickry are real and actual, yes, but also the general notion that if someone is claimed to have said something but denies it, you might want to check assumptions. Similarly, the message itself ("says what"), audience ("to whom"), and actual or apparent intended outcome ("with what effect") are also relevant. (See generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_analysis) The simple fact that a thing is said online doesn't of itself make it more or less credible. The elements of content analysis are a far more useful guide. Verification of information acquired online is often also going to involve online sources. Though offline may also come into use.[1] 4. Reality is that the Internet (increasingly apps) and Web are now where most communications happen. Both legitimate and valid, and illegitimate and invalid, messages are propagated. As my friend Woozle put it a few years ago: [B]ecause of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place. That's now true of the Internet, though it's true of any medium. Cable TV, talk radio, Citizens Band, television, radio, magazines, books, pamphlets, church sermons, theses nailed to parrish doors, and the like, have been used through the ages. Art and music likewise: Michelangelo operated a propagandistic arts factory for the Medici, and liturgical music and classical art were an arm of Church propaganda (in both the original and contemporary meanings of the word). The three most published books in history are all propaganda, again, in original and contemporary meaning: the Bible, the Koran, and Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book" (The Sayings of Chairman Mao), each with billions of copies printed. Facebook more messages to more people than that, every few days. It is the largest propaganda engine ever created. Oh: and some of the earliest online abuse was organised around political and cultural conflict and genocide. See Dorothy Demming, "Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism: The Internet as a Tool for Influencing Foreign Policy", ~1998: http://www.iwar.org.uk/cyberterror/resources/denning.htm http://www.iwar.org.uk/cyberterror/resources/denning.htm Documented as well by Howard Rhiengold in 1993: http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/18/The_Virtual_Community.pdf.txt;jsessionid=45036658BB456097EF216C7337796DD4?sequence=2 http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/18/Th... An account is also included in John Quarterman's proto-history of the Net, The Matrix (1990): The most striking use of the Matrix [Quarterman's term for online communications networks, Ed.] occurred to late to be described elswhere in this book. When the Chinese govenrment cleared Tianamen Square on the morning of 4 June 1989, reports of eyewitnesses were sent out by Chinese students by telephone and facismile within hours of the actual events, typed in by Chinese students abroad, and immediately broadcast throughout the world on dozens of networks and maling lists.... Though cautions of excessive credulity over online communications are valid, I strongly suspect that at least some of the impetus for that particular caution comes from powers and institutions which are challenged by a communications channel they can not directly control. This can, at least at times, have benefits, though the rise of the Net itself as a locus of surveillance, control, and manipulation is to my mind among the biggest stories of the past decade. ________________________________ 1. For an example of a meme debunking, there's a case of a now 127-year-old hoax which still has legs. Some 18 years after its initial appearance, the hoax was being re-publicised by a US congressman, and I believe entered into the Congressional Record -- just to show that even well-known and highly-institutionalised sources can get things Very Very wrong. All this for a bit of political fluff tossed out to encourage attendence at a party meeting. The "Banker's Manifesto of 1892" hoax: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/39w8u4/jp_morgan_and_the_bankers_manifesto_of_1892_hoax/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/39w8u4/jp_morg...

by ianai 7y ago

pixl97 7y ago

But this is also a means to attack people. For example, what alternative sources. Are they also compromised? This falls under the Bullshit Asymmetry attack.

ianai 7y ago
If you do enough research through multiple, reputable sources trends do emerge. If someone says something radical like the president is a lizard person and every news outlet is pretty convinced he was born in the US to human parents then it’s safe to work with the understanding that he’s a human-as a silly example to illustrate the concept.
- ben_w 7y ago
  As a counter example, I thought roughly 25% of Americans thought Obama was not born in America, despite the birth certificate? And that a similar percentage believe the Bible is the literal truth of God?
  - filoleg 7y ago
    While I am aware that he was born in the US (Hawaii), i can see where the confusion might come from (aside from willful ignorance and hatred for him as a person), considering that he was the first president born outside of the continental US (Hawaii; and we all know how many continental americans still don’t realize that Puerto Rico is a US territory) and lived in Indonesia between ages 6 and 20.
    - meowface 7y ago
      And the conspiracy theories propagated by Donald Trump from 2011 onward (and others since 2008) when he tried to run in the 2012 election.
      - filoleg 7y ago
        Oh yeah, agreed. It definitely didn't help the case that some prominent public figures fell for this as well (or did it intentionally knowing that was false, who knows), which helped propagate the misinformation even further.

alamaslah 7y ago

I saw people express skepticism before this stuff, that is part of why this is effective. It partly depends upon there being low trust in "sources of truth". Want to know the funny thing? The people that eroded the trust are now the ones complaining the loudest about the results. Also, why does sex sell? Because people desire sex.

ianai 7y ago
Yep, that’s what keeps me up at night. I’ve had family express their individual preference for sources with zero credibility or authority over sources from medical doctors/phds/other reputable sources. They’re predisposed to believe manipulative stuff and prefer it!
- ben_w 7y ago
  This came up recently in a podcast I listen to. One point was that people start off open-minded, but if you receive only confirmatory feedback, then you not only gain a belief, but switch mode to become less curious — Without curiosity, evidence that should persuade you no longer does. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/twiml-ai-podcast-formerly-this-week-in-machine-learning/id1116303051?i=1000460583134 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/twiml-ai-podcast-forme...
- spookybones 7y ago
  There is also the phenomenon that conspiracies tend to be more interesting, and sources without credibility deal in these. And, they can pump out a lot quickly, since they do not fact check. So, more exposure overall. I know a lot of people who start out entertained by them, but soon believe them wholesale. Why read counterpoints to pizzagate when I can read even more theories about how it takes place?
  - ianai 7y ago
    Solipsism, man, it’s all solipsism. You’re right too. (On an unrelated note, that’s also what made Star Trek much more interesting to me than Wars. Until pretty recently there weren’t any or only one tv show to really watch in the Wars universe. But lots of Trek.)

on_and_off 7y ago

Maybe even more ? Not to pat my own back but I haven't waited for this to distrust information veracity (whether online or not). The biggest problem is that you risk to distrust any new information, in particular any information that does not align with your worldview is easier to discard if you just scream "fake news" and get it out of your head without a thought.

makomk 7y ago

Yes - but generally only of information that contradicts their pre-existing views. This whole thing is, after all, basically a way of helping to reassure Guardian readers who've seen their political side lose with the help of those they expected to support them that their views were right all along, and that it's all the fault of global manipulation by big tech brainwashing the other people into voting against their own interests. I've never seen any of the people bemoaning this consider that maybe their side suffers from a systematic disinformation problem, not even after being caught out time and time again by false information spread on social media, often by journalists.

meowface 7y ago
What kind of false information? I don't trust a single media outlet on Earth, but curious to see your examples.
- ianai 7y ago
  How can anyone communicate believable information to you if you already don’t trust anyone? Regardless, I’d suggest reading Descartes or some philosophy of logic. You can’t trust everybody, but there are high value sources out there. The media are largely ok.
  - meowface 7y ago
    I didn't articulate my view on that fully; I do spend a lot of time thinking about epistemology and logic, and I trust a lot of people (though I'm not very trustful of most large corporations). I was just setting that up to make it clear I was asking for evidence out of curiosity rather than passive aggressive skepticism. Generally if a media outlet reports something as a hard fact, I do believe it.
    - ianai 7y ago
      Nonetheless your comment made me realize the current propaganda problem has many people acting and in a state of disbelief not dissimilar to being solipsists. I remember reading about that POV quite often in philosophy. So maybe a relevant piece of work exists for just our current problem.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Having used online media for well over three decades, much the opposite. The "don't trust what you read online" meme is a persistent one, but it's also long been reactionary and incomplete. 1. Yes, there's disinformation on the Internet. Shocking, but true. And yes, the ease, scale, scope, and speed of online disinformation dwarfs all previous media. And while I frequently argue that scale matters, we can at least point to the fact that the mechanism isn't a new one: rumour and disinformation networks predate mobile, the Web, Internet, electronic, and print communications technologies. 2. From early days, the Internet was very often where both disinformation and rebuttals were most available. Two specific incidents I can recall by memory: the Pons-Fleischmann "cold fusion" paper, in 1989, and Intel's Pentium F00F bug (Spectre/Meltdown aren't their first on-die rodeo) (1997). Each was distributed widely online, though largely via non-Web protocols. I received a copy of the Pons-Fleishmann paper two days after its release (stunningly quick for the time) via FTP. The F00F bug was circulated on mailing lists, particularly those concerning any kind of numeric programming, several days ahead of general news release. 3. "Online" is simply a channel, and use of the term conceals more than it reveals. Harold Lasswell's five-questions approach to content analysis is useful: "Who says what, to whom, why, to what extent and with what effect?" That is, in online comms, known and reputable sources, speaking on known and reputable channels, tend to be more trustworthy than unknown and unreputable sources speaking on unknown and unreputable channels. The risks of impersonation and mimickry are real and actual, yes, but also the general notion that if someone is claimed to have said something but denies it, you might want to check assumptions. Similarly, the message itself ("says what"), audience ("to whom"), and actual or apparent intended outcome ("with what effect") are also relevant. (See generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_analysis) The simple fact that a thing is said online doesn't of itself make it more or less credible. The elements of content analysis are a far more useful guide. Verification of information acquired online is often also going to involve online sources. Though offline may also come into use.[1] 4. Reality is that the Internet (increasingly apps) and Web are now where most communications happen. Both legitimate and valid, and illegitimate and invalid, messages are propagated. As my friend Woozle put it a few years ago: [B]ecause of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place. That's now true of the Internet, though it's true of any medium. Cable TV, talk radio, Citizens Band, television, radio, magazines, books, pamphlets, church sermons, theses nailed to parrish doors, and the like, have been used through the ages. Art and music likewise: Michelangelo operated a propagandistic arts factory for the Medici, and liturgical music and classical art were an arm of Church propaganda (in both the original and contemporary meanings of the word). The three most published books in history are all propaganda, again, in original and contemporary meaning: the Bible, the Koran, and Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book" (The Sayings of Chairman Mao), each with billions of copies printed. Facebook more messages to more people than that, every few days. It is the largest propaganda engine ever created. Oh: and some of the earliest online abuse was organised around political and cultural conflict and genocide. See Dorothy Demming, "Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism: The Internet as a Tool for Influencing Foreign Policy", ~1998: http://www.iwar.org.uk/cyberterror/resources/denning.htm http://www.iwar.org.uk/cyberterror/resources/denning.htm Documented as well by Howard Rhiengold in 1993: http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/18/The_Virtual_Community.pdf.txt;jsessionid=45036658BB456097EF216C7337796DD4?sequence=2 http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/18/Th... An account is also included in John Quarterman's proto-history of the Net, The Matrix (1990): The most striking use of the Matrix [Quarterman's term for online communications networks, Ed.] occurred to late to be described elswhere in this book. When the Chinese govenrment cleared Tianamen Square on the morning of 4 June 1989, reports of eyewitnesses were sent out by Chinese students by telephone and facismile within hours of the actual events, typed in by Chinese students abroad, and immediately broadcast throughout the world on dozens of networks and maling lists.... Though cautions of excessive credulity over online communications are valid, I strongly suspect that at least some of the impetus for that particular caution comes from powers and institutions which are challenged by a communications channel they can not directly control. This can, at least at times, have benefits, though the rise of the Net itself as a locus of surveillance, control, and manipulation is to my mind among the biggest stories of the past decade. ________________________________ 1. For an example of a meme debunking, there's a case of a now 127-year-old hoax which still has legs. Some 18 years after its initial appearance, the hoax was being re-publicised by a US congressman, and I believe entered into the Congressional Record -- just to show that even well-known and highly-institutionalised sources can get things Very Very wrong. All this for a bit of political fluff tossed out to encourage attendence at a party meeting. The "Banker's Manifesto of 1892" hoax: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/39w8u4/jp_morgan_and_the_bankers_manifesto_of_1892_hoax/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/39w8u4/jp_morg...