The Borg Misinformation Collective

The Future of the Misinformation Superhighway

[incrediBILL]

I always assumed the web as it evolved would make everyone smarter by having everything we know as a world wide web of people at our fingertips.

Wrong.

Based on what the masses are believing today, the future of the misinformation highway scares the hell out of me. I can't believe the masses are so gullible about things that are easily debunked garbage. Many are not even willing to think for themselves or do any fact checking, that if their friend or family member forwards it along it must be true! Then they promote it to their list of followers, and it just spreads like wildfire.

When I sometimes bother to debunk something that I know to be false they don't bother to promote the truth to their followers so the misinformation persists.

When you consider that the Internet is our current "Borg Collective", I start to wonder how the Borg actually got anything done based on the sheer amount of misinformation that is being passed around. More importantly, how did they do anything right when the wrong information is spread. Perhaps the Borg solved this but it's still a rampant issue on our collective.

So how in the heck is the internet going to improve humanity when it turns out instead of giving us all enlightenment it's giving us enLIEtenment.

Just the volume of junk that I get being passed along from relatives that I have to debunk on a regular basis is damned scary.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that's had conversations with people that parrot all this misinformation and instead of having an actual discussion you end up debunking one wrong thing after another and end up passing the Snopes website back and forth on your tablet like it's a party game.

Now fast forward to the future where we possibly do have an actual neural interface with the web, or just Google glass, where the misinformation spreads even faster and the bulk of the population is walking around talking about these things like they're facts and taking action based on this misinformation.

What some governments, cults, emperors and dictators couldn't do, which is get everyone to mindlessly believe their garbage, the Internet does easily, often without even trying thanks to social networks!

Now imagine what wetware hackers could do by simply taking advantage of the naivety of the masses that propagate misinformation in the new social media outlets on the web.

I can see some scary stuff happening if it isn't already.

How do we know some of the current misinformation isn't being planted as experiments to test the penetration of the meme and working on perfecting the technology before doing something totally unexpected by manipulating the gullible masses in unimaginable ways.

Society as a whole is too gullible and mobile misinformation can be dangerous.

I hope the next generation is less gullible and capable or sorting out fact from crap better which is our only hope with this technology.

[phranque]

you could say the same thing about earlier technologies - like the printing press.
some people read text books and others prefer the National Enquirer.

How do we know some of the current misinformation isn't being planted as experiments to test the penetration of the meme and working on perfecting the technology before doing something totally unexpected by manipulating the gullible masses in unimaginable ways.

ever heard of Edward Bernays?
do you watch any television?

[birdbrain]

 
 "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human  
 
  stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." 
 
                     Albert Einstein 
 

birdbrain

[aristotle]

It's easy to understand the pessimism. But it's better to fight the war against lies and mis-information on the web than on the battlefield. And remember that the long-term trend over the centuries is favorable, even with the occasional bumps.

[not2easy]

Or as I read on Facebook:
"If it says so on the Internet, you know it is true because you can't lie on the internet."
- Abraham Lincoln

[incrediBILL]

you could say the same thing about earlier technologies - like the printing press

Except not everyone had a printing press, very few did, where billions have computer and phones making the spread of popular misinformation trivial at best.

Hell, I don't even trust the Wiki nor should anyone because you have no clue what agenda why certain edits were made

It's good enough for government work, I give it that much credit ;)

[phranque]

that's a poor analogy.
a printing press is more like a web server than a computer or a phone.

perhaps you missed my point.
prior to the printing press most communications occurred on a one-to-one basis.
a room full of people was your biggest audience.
the printing press allowed the wide dissemination of (mis)information to a far greater extent than previous publishing technology (scribes).
the web increased the scale in that enterprise over previous technologies by making information virtual (vs the physical printed word) and by increasing the number of channels (over broadcast technologies).

[brotherhood of LAN]

You can take the tech further back and blame the propagation of this misinformation on biological reproduction, the informational content and propagation of that is really the root cause ;)

On a more related tangent, I remember how we used to track how many pages Google had indexed by what it showed on the home page, and how sometimes the number would jump by 50%. It was obvious that 'the sum of human knowledge' hadn't grown that much, just variations of the same and who was saying it. Now with the barrier of entry to creating online so low (technically and financially) there's a lot more garbage out there. Talk is most definitely cheap!

The full spectrum of information and opinions on it can indeed be mesmerising. It generally helps to have a healthy dose of scepticism. When it boils down to it IMO, first hand experience is pretty much all you can bank.

I think the groupthink elements of online interaction are more problematic than the believing of conspiracy theories, or whatnot.

[jimji]

I'd be interested to know if you, incrediBILL, have any ideas as to how this spread of misinformation could/can be countered?

Maybe some sort of Misinformation Watch Agency that holds a government mandate to scoot around the Net and forcibly correct posts of anything that can be proven to be wrong?

Just throwing out an idea, to kick off the flow of ideas to counter this threat. Not stating I'd agree with such an agency, but somebody will think of something like that, eventually. If they are serious enough.

We must not forget that governments in the past have sanctioned the burning of literature they felt was some sort of threat to their view of what society's goals should be.

So let's say we get a majority of representatives to sign off on a charter that truth shall prevail, how do we accomplish that?

[incrediBILL]

Yikes, I surely wouldn't want government intervention, but much like we detect malware, browsers and email programs could check with a service like Snopes to see if the content has been debunked.

Give you a real world example that blew my mind. During lunch at a place I used to work, many of us gathered at the food truck now and then. One say some lady picked up a bottle of Snapple and pointed to the (K) on the bottle and started going off about that being the Klan symbol and her and her BF would NOT drink Snapple because of that. I loudly, for all to here, informed her that my wife was Jewish and the symbol meant that Snapple was (K)osher so any kosher Jews knew it was OK to drink it. She turned red and ran back into the building.

At the time that particular misinformation was running rampant and they most likely got it from the web.

One small group corrected at a time ;)


However, if how do we trust the people correcting the misinformation? How do we know they aren't adding to it?

Could you imagine a box pops up not alerting you that some major historical event never happened or was a hoax?

I could see that happen easily because those same people that easily believe misinformation also get tricked into installing trojans that could tell them anything it wanted.

So the solution could end up being worse than the problem but at the end of the day, if I could stop all my elderly friends and relatives from forwarding this junk like it's factual, and not hurt their feelings in the process, then my job is complete ;)

[tangor]

The real problem is education and knowledge which is NOT being taught in schools, since the gubermint (sic) got their hands on it. We have whole generations taught not to question, to be politically correct, easily offended, and unable to think for themselves. That's why the misinformation is sent about, again and again,

[DenRein]

incrediBILL:

Just the volume of junk that I get being passed along from relatives that I have to debunk on a regular basis is damned scary.

When I think back of my relatives *many* years before even the personal computer, I remember many crank ideas. They were into flying saucers, seances with the dead, anti-vaccine, religion, and politics.

I shut them out even at a very young age. I would dispair if I saw them spewing every day on my facebook feed. What is new may not be a surge in crank ideas but the abillity to propagate them.

[chewy]

How to deal?

>hang out a place like foo.

Reading here makes me feel that I am not alone.

Makes me glad to be a member and drop in from time to time.

[incrediBILL]

What is new may not be a surge in crank ideas but the abillity to propagate them. 

But the problem with the propagation is there's a lot of people that buy into it just because someone they know forwarded it then it must be true.

FWIW, I've had some mind blowing discussions with people in person that have so many crank ideas, not flying saucers or anything, but just off the wall everyday things that boggle my mind, like the (k)osher story above.

After a while talking to some people I wonder if we even live on the same planet. Since perception is reality and their perception of the same things is obviously different, are they wrong?

Here's my own personal classic misinformation story from just FOUR people and I could even prove they remembered it wrong but they wouldn't budge. About 15 years ago on Xmas eve we played a game of Shots Monopoly with friends. When you landed in JAIL you took a shot. We had 2 bottles, bourbon for the ladies, tequila for the men. At the end of the night, the tequila was gone, the bourbon half full. The winner was a lady, both women did really well, therefore they didn't do many shots.

However, 15 years later, my buddy and his wife swears we drank shots when we went past go. Mind you, my wife remembers it exactly the same way I do and I even remember enough about the game that I could prove we drank in Jail.

I reminded them I was trying to roll to go to jail, they remember that but can't explain it. I reminded them the women won, and had a half empty bottle. The women crossed GO more than the men, they should have had the empty bottle. They remember that too but can't explain it. They swear we did shots on GO, not JAIL, although they remember all the evidence that proves them wrong but absolutely refuse to listen to reason and logic and prefer to stick with a faulty memory.

After a bit, I gave up, felt like I was in a loony bin and I was the one losing my mind.

That's when I really realized you can't fight misinformation once they believe it so strongly.

Even in the face of strong logical evidence to the contrary they continue to believe it the wrong way.

My wife and I both remember shots on Jail.

The only thing we can come up with is our friends are either losing their minds or they've been replaced by their counterparts from an alternate universe that DID do shots on Go, or all of the above ;)

But the fact that perception is reality means our friends and I now live in two totally different realities and when they tell that story to other people the misinformation continues to spread.

Brains are just computers and very faulty ones at that. There are some good science shows on neural biology to watch that show how brains generate faults all the time. The simple game of "telephone" spreading information is just the tip of the iceberg.

That's one reason I think technology like Google Glass will help, not hinder, because witness accounts are wholly unreliable where playing back the recording proves what happened without any memory fault as the recording is cold reality.

I think many people will freak out when technology like Glass proves them wrong on a regular basis.

Then what?

Can you imagine how people will feel when they know for a fact that they're perception of events is frequently wrong?

IMO, I think that being faced with cold facts will cause a lot of people to have serious self-esteem problems and lead to way more depressed people than we have today.

Xanax will be on the coffee table in a candy dish.

[DenRein]

Can you imagine how people will feel when they know for a fact that they're perception of events is frequently wrong?

Sadly, yes I can. They will resort to conspiracy theories to explain the lies (said tongue in cheek) you call facts .

Consider that some are convinced the Apollo moon landing was fabricated. Consider the Obama birth certificate. Consider the creationist museum showing man coexisting with dinoraurs. Consider that the idea planes crashing into Twin Towers on 9/11 was orchestrated by US Govt.

There is evidence to debunk these ideas but evidence is not enough. People have an amazing capacity to believe what they will despite the evidence.

I could continue with more contemporary examples but do not want to spawn thread drift debating merits of specifc ideas.

[birdbrain]

 
  A major cause of world problems is the so called.... 
 
                   "The Word of God" 
 
  Of course, there has only ever been... 
 
 
                   "The word of man" 
 

  
  Therefore be silent and prate not about God, for whenever thou dost prate about  
  God, thou liest, and committest sin.  
 
                         Meister Eckhart 
 

birdbrain

[weeks]

However, 15 years later, my buddy and his wife swears we drank shots when we went past go. Mind you, my wife remembers it exactly the same way I do and I even remember enough about the game that I could prove we drank in Jail.

Ah, Bill, all I can do in this case is welcome you to getting old and point you to the song, I Remember It Well:
[youtube.com...]

Ha. (But, not; it drives me crazy, too).

As for the larger concerns, I wish I could easily point to that study where misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to the correct facts, and not only did they rarely change their mind they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. But, you have seen this yourself, no doubt, from all sides.

What is the circuit breaker? If you're really interested in this subject, you might read this short article:
[vox.com...]

While this article doesn't directly address Bill's question about the power of the web to inform (or, as Bill might put it, the lack of power) and the internet's failure to make for a more reasoned world, I'd say the question is addressed here. For example:

There's plenty of evidence that in a casual context — turning on the TV or whatever — you can dilute the message by putting too much information in it. This whole information-overload issue is more critical in a more casual context. And that's always important.
Most of the research on misinformation has mimicked casual situations. People just sit there and read something like a newspaper article, and that’s when you get backfire effects and people are very susceptible to misinformation.

If you're looking for "what to do," there is a link in the article to a free booklet you can download. But, warning, there are no easy answers.

Pointing to the schools is shooting fish in a barrel. School reflect their society, not the other way around. I can assure you that most professionals (down to the first-grade teachers in your area to the halls of every college admin building) are trying to find ways to teach students to think. Lots of debate on this. Here's why. What they know is that most of their students will be changing CAREERS (not just jobs) several times in their adult lives. They want to teach students to think because they are concerned about their students.

Here a link to a link of one example of a school trying to teach students to think:
[ritholtz.com...]

[lucy24]

I could even prove they remembered it wrong

Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, anyone?

But don't be too quick to blame the Internet. Recently a friend informed me that it was illegal for the internet to give information on {subject}.

:: pause here for level stare and "What. Are. You. Talking. About." ::

He repeated the assertion.

I fired up the browser, went into Major Search Engine, and fed it some likely queries: "How to X", "X Techniques". Overflowing hits, with all the detail one could want.

For an encore, I was tempted to enter "kiddle p o r n" into the same search engine ... but I hadn't the nerve.

Friend had not even tried to verify the original (mis)information. I didn't press him about his source. Sigh.

down to the first-grade teachers in your area

You must not live in my state. Possibly not even in my country. Decades ago, mine was one of the first states to require elementary-school teachers to have a college degree. That is, a degree in some recognized academic subject, not "Elementary Education". Other sates have since followed suit, with equal lack of success. Turns out that no power on earth can force someone to become educated if she doesn't want to be. Our state universities are now rife with major-oids like "Liberal Studies"* which consist in their entirety of courses that do not count toward any major, anywhere, in any department.


* Do I need to explain that that's "Liberal" as in "Liberal Arts"? Yes, I suspect I do.

[edited by: lawman at 6:43 am (utc) on Jan 26, 2015]

[graeme_p]

Going back to the printing press, it has been used for plenty of misinformation, and caused plenty of harm, right from the start.

One of the first "best sellers" was Malleus Maleficarum, which was hugely influential in the revival of witch burning/killing in early modern times after a millennium of suppression. I would say that is a lot of harm!

Going back to the internet, I find one problem is that people regard the internet (which means the web to them) as one source. They say "I read it on the internet" but cannot tell you which site they read it on.

Turns out that no power on earth can force someone to become educated if she doesn't want to be

Very true, but I have to say that many governments are encouraging it (and funding it) because they measure by numbers - if the aim is to increase the proportion of the population who have reached a particular level of education, the easiest way to do it is to make it easy to get to that level by encouraging easy subjects or lowering standards.

[Samizdata]

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe. (Frank Zappa)

Resistance is futile.

...

[aristotle]

Well you can't just throw up your hands and do nothing. You've got to get in there and fight. The enemies of truth may have billions of dollars to spend, but for the most part they're not competent enough to spend it wisely. So they can be beaten. And plenty of good people realize this and have joined the fight.

The great thing about the web is that you can potentially reach very large audiences at little cost, especially if you have a good knowledge of SEO. So get in there and fight.

[tangor]

The great thing about the web is that you can potentially reach very large audiences at little cost, especially if you have a good knowledge of SEO. So get in there and fight.

Sadly, this is true, and SEO will not save us from stupidity. (sigh)

The idiots that keep sending/buying into, this krap are that way because they have not been taught ordinary skepticism or a desire for knowledge ... and that starts at home, and the schools.

Look at the subjects that were taught back in the 1700s and what passes for a college education these days. Heck, I don't have to go back that far, 1950s...

[chewy]

many do-gooder type sites I work with are sitting unvisited - and there are few that stand out - but SEO is only a tiny portion of their traffic.

we all know which sites are getting used the most.

not sure the web is where it is at, at least from an SEO perspective, however I do see glimmers of hope amongst the dreck.

[engine]

Misinformation can be passed between two individuals.
The advent of the printing press allowed individuals to spread misinformation more widely.
The same is true of the telephone, broadcasting and text, etc., The only difference with the Internet is the misinformation can be spread even more widely.

Only last week someone said to my wife, and a couple of others in the car, that there was a wind power generator being built locally and that they should fight its development to stop it. They gave reasons why it's a bad thing.

The wife got back and told me about the news of this wind power generator. Only that day i'd read about a proposed development, locally, but it was not a wind power generator, it was a solar power generator. I pointed this out to my wife and she agreed that it's odd they'd got it so wrong.

It just shows how swiftly a message can be misinterpreted, and could, potentially persist for some time, until the facts were discovered.

Why let the facts get in the way of a good story!

There are so many instances of misinformation in our everyday lives, so it's important to try and establish the facts. When I hear people say, "Google it for the answer," I have to add, just make sure you trust the source.

The Internet simply allows the information, or misinformation to be spread faster than in the dark ages.

It's sad that may people believe everything they read online, and unfortunately, many younger people can be influenced more easily. The Internet has become their encyclopaedia, and more.

Let's look at the other side and be positive and say that it allows us to spread the facts faster, and more widely.

[ken_b]

Misinformation isn't always about wrong info, often it's about only relating selectively chosen bits of the truth.

Which may be harder to deal with than dealing with completely false info.

.

[physics]

When you consider that the Internet is our current "Borg Collective", I start to wonder how the Borg actually got anything done based on the sheer amount of misinformation that is being passed around. More importantly, how did they do anything right when the wrong information is spread. Perhaps the Borg solved this but it's still a rampant issue on our collective.

It's because they didn't have emotions and therefore weren't greedy, didn't lie, didn't have their own agendas, and accepted scientific evidence and made decisions accordingly. For better or worse, humans don't seem to be able to do this.

[Brett_Tabke]

My favorite bumper sticker:
Is that true, or did you hear it on Fox News?

[toidi]

Content is king! Nobody ever said it had to be good content or even correct. Some of my toughest online competition (big brands) will publish anything, right or wrong, and it works for them.

oh, and i have been shown that snopes is a conspiracy site :-7

[netmeg]

I don't know why anyone is surprised when people on the web are just as stupid as people off the web. You just see a bigger megaphone is all.

[weeks]

OK, sure... Fox News is pandering to people's established biases.... People are unfair and unthinking... that will never change... Can't argue.

But...!

There is hope. Case in point: Buzzfeed. I'm serious. This is working the web right, and it's not just Buzzfeed that's doing it. And, in the context of WebmasterWorld, note:

...What’s especially exciting about BuzzFeed, though, is how it uses that knowledge to make money. The company sells its ability to grok – and shape – what works on social to brands; what they don’t do is sell ads directly (in a narrow sense BuzzFeed almost certainly lost money spinning up servers and paying for bandwidth to deliver “The Dress”). The most obvious benefit of this strategy is that, contrary to popular opinion, and contrary to its many imitators, BuzzFeed does not do clickbait.... [stratechery.com...]

What? Read Ben Thompson's analysis carefully and maybe all will not seem quote as hopeless.