Misinformation Pt 3 - Immunizing against Misinformation

In the first two posts about Misinformation, I suggested there are three good questions to ask when we encounter misinformation. The first two are:

1. Who created this lie?

2. What is their motivation for creating the lie?

This now brings us to the third question:

3. What role do I play when I spread the lie?

When you repost misinformation, you are effectively furthering the goals of the individual or group who originated the lie. In the worst case, this could be a State-backed group, with the goal of creating division and conflict within your country. So, the role you are playing is supporting a foreign entity against your country. When I put it like that, it sounds a lot like treason, doesn't it?

I'm being overly provocative, but hopefully you get the point.

To make a small personal effort to combat this sort of misinformation, I now call it out very directly. Some of my Facebook friends probably find it uncomfortable. Some of them might think I'm a sanctimonious jerk. But I am beyond caring at this point. I believe this problem is too insidious to give people a free pass when they repost other people’s lies.

One of the most amazing things to witness is the reaction of people trying to defend reposting misinformation. Rather than apologize, they often double down on their post. Their logic is “well, it would not be surprising if it was true, because that's the kind of thing those bad people do”. Which is completely illogical.  At that point, I imagine content creators sitting in the cubicle of their misinformation content factory, observing this exchange and high-fiving each other. They hit the bullseye - they created a lie, convinced someone to spread the lie, then that person defended the lie, even when they knew it was a lie. I wonder if they have a bonus program for that.

So what can we do?

Ideally, we would be fighting this misinformation through the coordinated efforts of the social media companies and governments. To date, I do not see much evidence of that.

So, I believe what we should do is build our own set of norms for how we handle misinformation. Norms have powerful moderating effects on behavior. It is not only because of laws that we wear seatbelts in cars, and we don't drive cars while drunk. It is also because of norms. Driving drunk and not wearing a seatbelt are deemed to be socially unacceptable behaviors.

I hope that we can develop a set of norms for social media. We already have for one particular event – when our account gets hacked.

When we receive a strange message from a friend in Facebook Messenger, we now know to exercise caution before opening it. Once our friend knows they have been hacked, the norm is to:

1. Post a message, telling everyone your account has been hacked
2. Apologize for any offence or inconvenience caused
3. Feel slightly embarrassed (“Everyone gets hacked sooner or later, but I really should have been more careful…”)

I believe a similar norm can be created for reposting misinformation. When someone points out to me I reposted misinformation, the expectation should be:

1. I post a new message, telling my FB friends I have now learned that the post was actually untrue
2. I apologize for doing reposting it
3. I delete the repost
4. I feel slightly embarrassed

We can each make a small impression if we decide to confront misinformation whenever we see it. In the absence of serious effort by the social media platforms, this might be our best path to “immunization” from misinformation.